Preparing for our Family Reunion

August 4, 2011

Val Genealogy , Leave a comment

I am giddy.  In 48 hours we will have four generations of Sanfords together in Oregon.  We’re coming from Pittsburgh and Atlanta, Los Angeles and Seattle, St. Paul and Tennessee.   The matriarch of our family will be with us and at 91, that’s something special.  Two of her childhood friends live in Salem and Portland will also be joining the family.

Sanford Cousins

The Sanford Cousins @ 1966

Technically, they are family too because their mother and my grandmother are married into the same family, but that doesn’t really matter.  What matters is that they have STORIES!  It’s the genealogist mother lode!

Preparing for the family reunion is more than just getting everyone there and lining up the picnic and BBQ locations.  It’s more than just chatting up everyone to bring photos and stories.  Preparing for the family reunion is about preparing myself to ask the questions I may never get to ask again.   It sounds morbid to think about but really the last time this group was together as a group was 1966 and 35 years later, not all of us are going to be there this weekend.

And I want the stories.  I want the memories that only my cousin Susan, named for my Aunt Susan has about her mother and my grandfather.  I want the stories my cousin Eddie has about his sister Linda.  I want the stories of my cousin Malcom whom I’ve never met!  And I want the stories my Aunt Susie has about her father that someone else may ask but I have never even thought about.

So I have been preparing my mind to be open to the conversations taking place and to having a tape recorder and camera ready at all times.    I am also preparing myself to not get all the stories.  To know that when I drive home on Sunday, some of the stories will have been shared and I will have missed them.

I have a plan, though, to get as many as I can:

1.  I have my research plan for the reunion.  What can these people tell me that only these people know?    Mostly these are ‘what was it like…? questions so that my dates and facts start to have context and color.  But also because in the telling small details come out that link one fact to another.

2.  I have small note cards for everyone to write one memory about my grandfather, Louis Todd Sanford.  These will go in his notebook* and act as a sort of eulogy for him that he never got.    Since some of the cousins coming never knew my grandfather, I will ask them to write a memory of their grandfather, my grandfather’s brother.

3.  I have my secret weapon:  my husband, who does not like crowds but takes amazing candid photographs.  He will be my photographer freeing me up to talk and listen.

4.  I am bringing all my notebooks and a stack of three-hole punched paper so other people can add what they know and to add their list of questions.

5.  I am bringing my parents photo albums in the hope that someone can identify at least some of the un-named people.  NOTE TO YOU ALL:  Label your photos.  Everyone of them.

6.  I am bringing my iPad and will enter into my Ancestry account  birth dates, marriage dates and other facts from the people who are there.   The current generation matters as much as those who have gone before.

7.  I am going with an explorer’s mind:  I will discover what I discover and I will discover more if I am looking for it.

I am excited and a little nervous.  I want to be present for the reunion, too.  I can get obsessed with chasing after my questions and I am genuinely  interested in and care for the living that are there.  Sometimes, though, I need to be poked into remembering that.  Besides, this will be an opportunity to learn about my generation of cousins that someone in the future will want to know.   And that is as much my responsibility to document as is  documenting something I find about Seth Palmer Kingsley in the 17th Century.

Portland or Bust.

* I keep a notebook on each family member or if the information is scant, each family unit.  In it are copies of documents, photos, research plans, census records, maps, etc.  As I find information, it goes into their binder.   If the information is in an historical book or record, I will reference the book or record in a bibliography in the binder.   I love my binders.

Understanding Place and Time

July 26, 2011

Val Genealogy, Reynolds 1 Comment

As a genealogist and historian, it’s easy to get caught up in the never-ending work of making lists:  lists of dates, places, names, events.    The pursuit of a piece of data is sometimes so focused, I miss the context.  When I was back in New York this past June, my husband and I were doing some research on his family, trying to find some information on his great-grandfather, Charles B. Reynolds.  A famous man in his time, Charles was a complete mystery to Mike until a few years ago when a writer contacted us to try to get background information on a piece he was doing about Charles.

We had scant information about him and were trying to piece together just a few more facts to go with the family lore.    In the microfiche room at the New York Public Library, we found an entry in the death records for 1832 for Catherine Reynolds.  Mike had heard that his great-grandfather’s mother had died in childbirth.  Armed with his birth date (no Vital Records for 1832 Births) we cross referenced to August deaths.  And there was Catherine.  Not English, but Irish, and buried in St. Patrick’s.  She died of cholera nine days after Charles’ birth, supposing this is, of course, ‘our’ Catherine.

So we have our facts:

  • Name
  • Death Date
  • Cause of date
  • Location of burial
  • Sextant who performed the burial

And that’s interesting enough, I guess, if you’re trying to check off a list of To Dos.  But doesn’t tell us the story.  And let’s face it, it’s the story we’re after.  It’s the story that burrows into our minds and drives us to uncover the threads that hold us together.

Let’s layer on some understanding of place and time and see how the picture changes.

To do that, I have to banish my very recent vision of New York and stroll into the time and place of a cholera epidemic for just a moment to understand what it may have been like for Mrs. Catherine Reynolds in the days before she died.

New York City and East River, 1848

In 1825, the Erie Canal has connected New York with the interior of America.  By 1830, railroads are beginning to come into and out of New York.    The first unions to protect workers are beginning to form.   New York’s port continues to thrive, bringing goods and people from all over the world.  The city is sparsely populated above 14th street (where the Apple store is now).

The industrial revolution is putting people to work in tanneries, textile factories, munitions works, on trains, building skyscrapers and millionaire’s houses.    Agrarian needs are  pushing against the needs of the iron horse and the millions coming from overseas.

In the 1830′s Irish immigrants seeking refuge from British rule inundate the Five Points neighborhood, as do African-Americans who come here seeking freedom from slavery.    The foreign-born population explodes from 9% to 46% in the years between 1830 an 1850 , most of them kept in the filthy, under-served tenement area in and around Five Points.

Five Points New York

Five Points, 1827 America's Most Notorious Slum

 Many uptown neighborhoods developed specific residential identities, while poorer areas continued to mix commerce and residences. The result was overcrowding — and not just of humans. Horses and scavenging pigs contributed to the “messiness” of the poorer wards, and the refuse left by such animals mixed with the noxious byproducts of local tanneries, slaughterhouses, and distilleries to dirty the streets and foul the air. Human waste was collected in privies (outhouses). Usually located behind or in the gaps between buildings, privies typically were shared by more than a dozen families, and almost always were overflowing. Municipal sanitation services were extremely limited, and African-American workers held the exclusive privilege of emptying privies for low wages. In summer months, the stench was overwhelming, and disease commonplace. (1)

Vintage Poster

Then, in July of 1832, a cholera epidemic swept through the New York  killing 3515 people out of the 250,000 people living there.   1.5% of the people in a city the size of Norfolk, Virginia or St. Paul, Minnesota had died in three weeks.    The epicenter was Five Points.   Those with means to do so left the city in a mass exodus of coaches and the poor were left in the teeming tenements of squalor and over-crowded disease to live or die by their own resources.  Many doctors stayed in town and many charlatans offered cure-alls that did nothing but make the suffering worse.

In 1832, epidemics were seen as the just measure of God being meted out upon the undeserving.    Many wrote op-ed columns that the sooner these vile creatures died, the better.

“Those sickened must be cured or die off, & being chiefly of the very scum of the city, the quicker [their] dispatch the sooner the malady will cease.” (2)

This is the place and time of my husband’s great-great grandmother’s death, and of the birth of Charles B. Reynolds, a man who fought for free speech, women’s rights, abolition, freedom of religion and the separation of church and state.  Likely there were dead bodies around her as she gave birth to her son because the public sanitation and body removal system could not keep up.   Likely she was looked down on and blamed for the condition in which she found herself:   sweltering rookeries full of disease and death.    She came to America looking only for a better future for herself and her future family.   She did not come for this.

The facts alone do not tell us of her remarkable story.  And they do not tell us the answers to questions I most want to know:  How did Charles live through this?  Who saved him?  Who buried her?  Where was her husband?    By understanding a little bit about the time and place that color the bare facts, I now have a picture of what her life may have been like and how remarkable it is that Charles, lived.

Provided of course, that she is ‘our’ Catherine.

Footnotes:

1.  http://www.vny.cuny.edu/cholera/1832/cholera_1832_set.html

2. http://tristero.typepad.com/cities/2008/04/index.html

CDVs: Surprising Photo Ops

July 17, 2011

Val Genealogy, History, Photographs Leave a comment

On another blog I write, I told the story of my great-great-grandfather, Elam Sanford, a postmaster for the city of Perth Amboy, New Jersey.  Someone posted a comment that they

Edward Sweezey Sanford

CDV of Edward Sweezey Sanford

had a CDV of Elam Sanford in an album of New Jersey Civil War CDVs.  When I first read the comment, all I read was “photo of Elam Sanford… Civil War” and figured this must be his son, Elam Miles Sanford, brother to my great-grandfather Edward Sweezey, and so I sent a note back and hoped the commenter would send me a copy.

Yesterday I went back to the comment because I hadn’t heard from the commenter and wanted to ping him.  That’s when I saw the actual words “New Jersey Civil War CDV.”  What?  CDV?  What is that?

So I opened a browser window and typed in Civil War CDV and up came a list of websites with photos of Civil War veterans.  EUREKA!  Turns out a CDV is a ‘Carte de Visite’ .  A Carte de Visite was a type of small photograph patented in France by photographer Andre Adolphe Eugene Disderi in 1854.   The size of the photograph is 2-1/2 x 3-1/2 inches mounted on a 2-1/2 x 4 inch board.  By 1859 the CDV was in widespread use thanks to another Disderi patent method of taking 8 separate negatives on a single plate.  Oh.  And publishing a photo of Emperor Napoleon III’s using this method probably didn’t hurt either.

These cards were the size of a ‘visiting card.’   They were extremely popular and were traded among friends, family and visitors.  Albums to display these cards became common Victorian parlor fixtures.   During the American Civil War, soldiers, friends and family could inexpensively obtain, and easily carry, these photos of loved ones with them in small envelopes.    People bought photos of themselves as well as national heroes and celebrities like Ulysses S. Grant and Abraham Lincoln.

So here’s the really cool part.  YOU CAN BUY THEM!   Because people collected these cards like young men collected baseball cards in the mid-20th Century, hundreds collections of cards exist on the market for sale. There are dozens and dozens of sites.  And the act of browsing is hypnotic and seductive.  There are CDVs not just of Civil War soldiers and sailors, but of women, circus performers, lecturers, groups and buildings.  Because they were affordable and easily carried, they were popular and abundant.

Some of them are indexed including the names of the people in the group, like this one you can purchase of the Illinois 33rd:

Civil War CDV Album of the 33rd Illinois found at Cowan Auctions

Some of the collections are expensive, like the one above which estimates for $2500 – $3000 at Cowan’s Auctions.  But you can find singles and other collections online that are not expensive.  Some people may let you make a digital copy of your ancestor so you have it to complete your files.  Many of the cards include a signature or some sort of identification so you can find your ancestor if you are diligent about it.

Admiral Andrew Hull Foote

But even if you can’t find your ancestor, you can find people from the same area, the same regiment and the same walk of life, giving you a fascinating glimpse into a country at war.

While researching CDVs, I stumbled upon a photo of Admiral Andrew Foote.  This guy had ships named after him and was quite the military hero leading the Battle of Fort Henry, the Battle of Fort Doneison and earning the Thanks of Congress.  His father was Senator Samuel Augustus Foote of New Haven, Connecticut.  Which is where my Footes are from.

David Foote

Sons of the American Revolution Application for David Foote

So now I am off searching collateral lines of Footes to see where Andrew connects with me, because in my heart I know he does.  But I have no proof of it yet.  There are Sons of the American Revolution applications to peruse and Barbour Collection cards to read.  But that won’t stop me from bidding $9.95 on eBay for a picture of Admiral Foote.

In fact, it’s already on it’s way.

Chasing Myths and Legends

July 5, 2011

Val Genealogy, History, Reynolds , , , , , Leave a comment

My husband and I have just returned from a trip to upstate New York where of course, we went to Seneca Falls to explore the Women’s Rights National Park.  It’s so nice to have my own National Park!

As we drove through New York I was reading Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement by Sally Gregory McMillen.   I wanted to be connected to these women.  I wanted to be related to Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott or Lucy Stone.  I wanted to be part of something so significant for our country and for women around the world.  Hubris, I know.   But I wanted it anyway.  So I used the ‘Find Famous Relatives” button on Ancestry.com.  Turns out I may be related to a lot of people: U.S. Presidents, artists, writers, business tycoons, but I haven’t found that elusive thread that brings me squarely into the women’s rights’ movement.  Drat.

Family legend has me connected to Maria Sanford, one of the first female college professors.  I haven’t found the connection, but I think it’s there in the DAR records.  I just need to find it!   I have some  connection to other influential women, or so family legend the Ancestry tool tells me, but I have not proven it.   Louisa May Alcott, Harriett Beacher Stowe, Mary Baker Eddy, Mary Edwards Walker … all there.  But I wanted a known and deeper connection.

And then when doing work for my  husband’s family in New York, I found it.

Moltke Manifest 1904 from Hamburg

After a trip to the Statue of Liberty we were dropped at Ellis Island to use their family research center. Mina Abramson, my mother-in-law’s mother, fled Tula, Russia at the age of 9, escaping the terrible Pogroms and violence perpetrated on the Jews.  Her father came earlier in the year, and then her mother and all her siblings arrived at Ellis Island on 16 July 1904.   I have the ship’s manifest.  And I have a picture of the Moltke.  But when we went to the Ellis Island database, we couldn’t find her.    Their experts helped us but no luck.  We couldn’t find her name, the ship, nothing.  What we found at Ancestry.com was what we had.  We were at a dead end.

Our next stop was the New York Public Library on Bryant Park.  A mecca for book nerds, the building alone is worth the trip.  Glorious architecture and inspiring reading rooms, it is a refuge for hundreds of thousands of genealogy records.   We were there to try to get confirmation of the birth of Mike’s great-grandfather, Charles B. Reynolds, and to try to find his parents.

We have a family story and a undocumented biography that says Charles’ mother died in childbirth and his father shortly there after.  And nothing more is really known about Charles until the 1860s when he began touring as a Free Thought lecturer.  In learning more about him and what it mean to be a Free Thought lecturer, I found my connection to the Women’s Rights Movement.

At the New York Public Library, the microfilm room has birth and death records for 1830s in New York.   The birth records are pretty sketchy, with only two listings for 1832.  But with the family story that his mother died in childbirth, we were able to look at the death records for August of 1832.  We found a Catherine Reynolds, from Ireland, who died of cholera on 12 Aug 1832, just one week after Charles’ birth date.    Was this our proof?  Maybe.  The family story and the written biographies have Charles’ family immigrating from England.  And Charles started his career as a First Day Adventist Preacher, but Catherine was a Catholic.    We’ll need to find more evidence, but we think there is a good chance this is Charles’ mother.

Charles B. Reynolds

As a Free Thought Lecturer, Charles was a key member of the movement and was living in Rochester and upstate New York during the 1860s, 70s and 80s.   In 1887 Charles was tried in New Jersey on two counts of blasphemy.  His lawyer, Colonel Ingersoll was friends with and active in women’s rights, abolition, and free speech with Frederick Douglas, Susan B. Anthony and others.   Charles and Susan B. Anthony both contributed to The Truth Seeker.  Charles was elected to chair the National Liberal League, of which became the American Secular Union.

In learning about Charles, Mike and I tried to confirm our family myths and we found connections to American legends for human rights.   As we were flying home Mike said knowing his great-grandfather was a compatriot of Frederick Douglas made him feel different about himself.

And that, I think, is the goal of genealogy.  Because when we know where we come from, we have better insight into who we are, and how we are the link between our past with our future.

Fort Niagara

June 19, 2011

Val History , , Leave a comment

Old Fort Niagara

Standing on the bluffs above Lake Ontario, a few miles north of Niagara Falls, Fort Niagara has stood for more than 300 years, the oldest structure in the interior of the eastern United States.    French, British and American troops fought for control of the waterways and the continent here on the eastern bank at the mouth of the Niagara River.

It’s a magnificent place.

The Fort was built first by the French Marines as to serve as both a trading post and a military stronghold.  It was built disguised to look like a large mansion or public house but everything about it was for defense.  Gun battlements behind windows, cannons hidden behind special “machicolated” dormers.   The Fort’s defenses were modified as the battle for the river trade and North America intensified.  A massive River Wall was erected in 1841 and a Hot Shot furnace in 1843.

Inside the museum documents from the fort archives reveal something about the life of the soldiers stationed here.  Court martial records, muster rolls, inventories and duty rosters give good insight into the life of the soldier here.

I can’t help it now, but I scan the muster rolls for familiar last names and Hollis is there.  The Soldiers of 1814, available in the bookstore, tells the story of three recruits, 13-year-old Jarvis Hanks,  17-year-old Amasiah Ford of Saratoga, NY,  and Alexander McMullen, of Pennsylvania.  Amasiah Ford may be my Ford, I think.  And what about Hollis?  Did any of my Hollis’ serve in Niagara?

My Fords descend from John Ford who immigrated to Plymouth Colony in 1635 with his sons Andrew I and Nicholas aboard The Blessing (according to one source).   Andrew, my ancestor, had 14 children.  At least one of which may have branched the family into New York from Massachusetts.  I don’t know.  I haven’t done much research here.  I only know that Andrew had children who had children who had my 4x great-grandmother Minerva Ford.

So I don’t know if Amasiah Ford is a nX cousin once removed.  But his story tells us of soldier life and details the bloody, hard-fought battles of the war of 1812.  Enlisting in 1813 and mustering in 1814, Ford sees plenty of the fighting, including the “Niagara Campaign”  aptly characterized as “the hardest-fought military operation of the War of 1812″ (p. 5) for it featured the bloody battles of Chippawa and Lundy’s Lane followed by the seven-week siege of Fort Erie.(1)

And to see Hollis and Ford in the same place, knowing Minerva Ford married Jephthah Hollis makes me wonder about the small circle of families that built and held our nation together.   I see this thread pulling through place after place, thread after thread.  Loomis and Kingsley in Rehoboth, Berkshire and St. Paul.   Sanford and Ford in Rehoboth and New Jersey.    Those early families who immigrated under the banners of religious freedom and opportunity,  migrated west, fought, and struggled together under those same banners for centuries.

Before today I knew little about Fort Niagara.  I knew little about the French and Indian War or the War of 1812.   I know little more now.  But today I am intrigued.  Now I have a place and some names that make me curious to go beyond the bare facts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOOTNOTES:

(1)  http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=1032

A Day at the Fiske

June 12, 2011

Val Genealogy, Palmer Family History, Uncategorized , , Leave a comment

Fiske Genealogical Library

I spent yesterday afternoon at the Fiske Genealogical Library in Madison Park with my friend Rachelle.

Church Records found at Fiske

What a wonderful collection! Plastic blue binders are chocked full of handwritten pages of notes, documents and photocopies of books printed 100 years ago,  sit binder to binder with rare books, vital records, family histories and maps.

My father’s cousin, Sanford Loomis, has hit a brick wall and I’ve joined forces to assist.  Today I found a binder on our Palmer family.  A hundred years ago letters criss-crossed the country and one guy pulled it all together writing a compelling history of this line of my family.  I also found wonderful binder full of church records of Windh

from Palmer Binder

am that detail out the raising of the church, the baptisms, fines, witches, marriages and comings and goings of the mi

nisters.   SCORE!

We have another witch in our family.   Those darn women in my family kept getting into trouble.

Back to the Palmers.  The story of Walter Palmer intrigued me.  Walter was born during the reign of Elizabeth I, Walter’s fate is tied up with the religious turmoil of the times.


Walter was a non-conformist.  I love that simple line which seems to be the story of his descendants.  Walter Palmer is the 6X grandfather of Abigail Palmer who married Isaiah Kingsley and is the mother of Seth Palmer Kingsley, the father of Ezra Kingsley, the father of Edmond Bancroft Kingsley, the father of Mary Kate Kingsley Sanford, my great-grandmother.

Walter arrived in the Americas wanting freedom.

The journey must have been horrific.

I can’t wait to get my eyes on the rest of the binder, which I put in the scanner and sent to myself and is now sitting in my “Connecticut Research” folder on my Mac.  It also includes pages and pages of history on the founding of Rehoboth, Dorechester and Connecticut which I will send out to my friend Otis at the Rehoboth Historical Society and will share with my friendtom, whose family was also in Rehoboth at the same time as the Sabins, Kingsleys, Palmers and Pecks.  Because what I also learned yesterday at the Fiske, was that those families all moved from Rehoboth to Connecticut and intermarried and followed a trial for freedom from the Atlantic inward to midwest and the Pacific Ocean.

And that’s a story I can’t wait to discover.

The Fiske’s resources are deep and rare.  The binders often hold one-of-a-kind compilations of family histories and collections.  I never expected to see such a rich research library on New England here in the Pacific Northwest.  Tens of thousands of cards catalog the subjects, people and places to be found among the books, documents and research material.

For $5 a day, access is cheap and the rewards immeasurable.  I now have a thread on “our” brick wall ancestor, Seth Palmer Kingsley and I have a rich detail about the Palmer family I never thought to look for.

Onward and upward.

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