Iskenius: Letters From Home

 

        A photograph-- the dream of every genealogist, the holy grail of family research.  Through them, ancestors that we could only imagine, come alive as we look across the centuries into their eyes. One of my most cherished possessions is a tintype of my great-great-grandmother Anna Ryan, born in 1831 in Tipperary, Ireland.  A close second would have to be personal letters.  I haven't had as much luck in that department, but that changed recently.

     While looking at my German ancestors a short time ago, I noticed a new hint for the Clements family, a book titled, "Palatine German Immigration to Ireland and U.S.", by Hank Z. Jones.  As I quickly skimmed through it, I came across this note from the author-

      Well, that's nice for someone I thought, wish it was my Clements family.  Then I read the note and preceding paragraphs more closely... Johannes Clements?  I am a direct descendant of Johannes, it WAS my family!  Now I needed to find those letters!  A Google search was disappointing, but it found a book containing the translated letters, "The Iskenius Letters: From Germany to New York 1726-1737".  Unfortunately, it's currently out of print and the closest copy is in a library sixty miles away.  Google did, however, point me to one of my favorite sites, JSTOR which I wrote about in a blog ten years ago.   https://elliesancestors.blogspot.com/2014/02/irish-articles-on-jstor-free.html

     On the JSTOR site I searched for the Iskenius Letters and was rewarded with an in-depth article written by F.J. Sypher, (also author of the book in the distant library), titled, "Voices in the Wilderness: Letters to Colonial New York From Germany". The article didn't print the letters in full, but it did include several long excerpts talking about events in Germany and family news, just the sort of thing family historians love. The very title of the article is from the closing lines of a letter sent from Germany in which the writer laments the lack of response from New York and likens his letters to an unheard voice vainly calling into the wilderness of the new world.  

     The article and excerpts contained a good deal of information about 18th century Germany as the family knew it, the family address, (Flammersfeld), along with the names of Johannes Clements' parents which I did not have before-- Johann Huprecht Clements and Catharina Elizabeth Iskenius.  This was the first time I ever saw the surname Iskenius.  I find German research harder than Irish.  The main problem being I don't speak or read German, let alone old German.  It was wonderful to find a primary source already translated by someone who did, but I wanted all of the letters.

     As they say, where there's a will there's a way and in this case, the way was an interlibrary loan.  In just under a week the letters were in my hands, and just as I had hoped, there was even more to be learned from them than appeared in the excerpts.  Family names, deaths, addresses, and chilling descriptions of the threat of looming war in the Rhineland.

 

     Catharina was a widow well into her fifties when she undertook the arduous voyage to an unseen, unknowable place with her eldest son Moritz. The letters make clear Catharina's brother Georg facilitated her and Moritz's immigration, but not why.  At the time, her son Johannes was already living at Philipsburg Manor on the Hudson River, where Catharina and Moritz joined him in 1826.  There were two other sons, Phillipus and Johannes Huprecht as well as a daughter named Christina.  Christina died at age five, but I'm unsure about the boys. They do not appear in records in America, and they are not mentioned in the book of German Palatine immigrants. Nor are they named in any of the letters, all of which do inquire about Moritz and Johannes in America and talk extensively about family members still in Germany.  It suggests they may have died as well, for surely if they were still living Georg would have spoken of them to their mother.

     Not all the letters are intact, some of them are faded or torn, others are discolored from the tape used for repairs at some point and unreadable.  While I am thrilled to have them, I can't help but wish that some of the letters from America to Germany had survived.

What's A Kloof? And Why It's Important to Know

                                          Thomas Clements and Geertrury Koens 1766

     I spent today deciphering the marriage record of my fifth-great-grandparents Thomas Clements and Geertruy Koens, and just may have found Geertruy's parents in the process. Having spent most of my research time on Irish Catholic Church registers, those of the church Thomas and Geertruy belonged to, the Dutch Reformed, are not familiar to me.  At least these were not written in Dutch. The above entry reads, "1766 Ap. 12 Reg; Thomas Clemens Y.M. from Philipsburg and Geertruy Koens Y.D. bo. in the Kloof; both liv. in the Kloof; Rec'd Certif. to the Kloof after the 3d proclamation".

     What the Kloof was I had no idea, and a Google search didn't do much to enlighten me. Online dictionaries defined it as a ravine. Geertruy was born and lived in a ravine? And what was meant by the 3d proclamation? Was that a church thing like Vatican Two? No idea what YM and YD were either.  On Ancestry I found a tree that gave Geertruy's birthplace as Woonatig de Kloot, but Google found that as confusing as I did. It did have "Kloot" in it though, so I ran a search for woonatig alone and found it just means "residence", it's not a place name.

     Also at Ancestry I found a hint asserting Geertruy was born at Poughquag and her father was Johan Jurgen Kuhns. It had his 1739 marriage record from the Lutheran church in New York City.  Johan was from, "the Kloot", of Bachway it said!  He married Anna Margaretha Bucken after three "publ", publications? Could those be marriage banns? Could the Kloot in Geertruy's marriage record be the same as the Kloot of Bachway? Checking Google again, this time for Bachway, I discovered that place is called Poughquag today. Things seemed to be falling into place. I don't ever take online family trees as gospel, but the thoroughly researched book, "Palatine Immigration to Ireland and US", by Hank Z. Jones had the same information.

     After poking around the net for a while, I came across the Dutch genealogy site of genealogist Yvette Hoitink which explained much of what was puzzling me. The letters YM and YD were abbreviations for jonge man and jonge dochter, Single man and single woman. In this case the letter J functioned like the letter Y, not uncommon in that time and place.  The site confirmed the three proclamations were indeed marriage banns. Typically, three of them were issued with the wedding soon following. According to Yvette, the banns were so important that some churches recorded the banns and not the marriage.

     I always flip to the front and/or back pages of record books to check for any notes, and in this case I found in the church register front, "pages 15 to 361 marriage banns". Excitedly I turned to page 15 and began searching, but it soon became apparent the banns were mixed in with the marriages or else someone had gone back and later added "married" to most of the entries. Some said the marriage had not actually taken place. I was unable to find records of both marriage and banns for my ancestors.

                                     Johan Jurgan Kuhns and Anna Margaretha Bucken  1739

     I'm glad I took the time to take a good look at this and determine exactly what the records contained, now I'm sure Geertruy was born in America, that this was a first marriage for her and for Thomas, and there is a good chance her father was Johan. Hank Z. Jones thinks so...

The New Research Year Begins

 

     Fall.  The very word makes me cringe.  My lovely perennial borders are now filled with dejected looking plants losing their leaves and sulking while a few brave roses struggle to bloom.  Granted, the toad lilies are in their glory, as are the mums and asters, but not much else is doing in the garden.  Even the hummingbirds have packed their wee bags and departed on their tropical vacations.  This is my cue to prepare for hibernation and resume the only thing that keeps me sane during these long fall and winter months-- genealogical research.

     I've already made a remarkable discovery this week.  A previously unknown McGarr aunt has been identified!  My great-great-grandmother Maria McGarr O'Hora was born in County Kildare in 1826.  I long ago found her baptism as well as those of her six siblings in the church records of Baltinglass Parish in County Wicklow, but something about those records niggled at me.  After Maria's birth in 1826 there was not another baptism recorded in this family until that of Bridget in 1831.  Anyone doing Irish research for that time period knows it was typical for a baby to arrive every two years, maybe three, but not five.  I always wondered about a missing child, but after meticulously combing the baptism records several times I could find no trace of him or her.

     Now, sitting down at the computer after my summer sojourn, one of the first things I did was check to see if anything new had been added to my favorite websites.  At the newspaper site, Old Fulton, I ran a broad search using names from my McGarr tree-- Shortsville, O'Hora, Quigley.    Nothing.  Then I substituted O'Hara for O'Hora. The name changed over time depending on who you were asking and being a tiny place, there was only one O'Hora or O'Hara family in Shortsville.  That search brought up quite a few hits, with this description of one article particularly grabbing my attention, look at the last three lines--

     What the what?  It read, "Mrs. Elizabeth...", and "two sisters, Mrs. O'Hara of this place and Mrs. Quigley of Rochester".  I knew exactly who Mrs. O'Hara was, it was Grandma Maria.  I knew who Mrs. Quigley of Rochester was too, she was Maria's sister Anna.  I excitedly clicked on the article dated 1904 --

     There had indeed been another child born to Daniel McGarr and his wife Anne Donahoe!  I don't know why her baptism was not recorded, but it's not the first church record problem in this family.  The names in the baptism record of their daughter Bridget were so badly mangled and some even omitted by the parish priest that it took me and an employee of the heritage center in Wicklow to figure out it was in fact Bridget's baptism.  

     The article contained some important information, I now had the missing sibling's given name, her husband's name, names of her children, (surviving ones anyway), her death date, and amazingly, a residence.  She had been in Shortsville, New York for fifty years.  The same place her sister Maria lived, as had their late sister Bridget.  Talk about hiding in plain sight.  I felt slightly embarrassed she had been right under my nose, though in my defense the name Elizabeth Barrett meant nothing to me until the names O'Hara and Quigley were tossed into the mix.  Her age in the obituary is off, but in the census records I discovered for her, in which she herself had given her age, she fitted in nicely between Maria and Bridget.

     But now something else was niggling, surviving son Frank Barrett. His name was somehow familiar.  Searching my tree, I found Frank, or Francis, had married Mary Ann Fitzpatrick, a sister of Andrew Fitzpatrick, who had married Winifred O'Hora (O'Hara) Grandma Maria's daughter.  I had been looking at the Fitzpatrick family for a while, hoping I could link them to my Fitzpatrick's from Queen's County, Ireland.  Now I wonder if there was a Kildare connection, one Fitzpatrick child married the daughter of Maria McGarr, another married a son of Elizabeth McGarr.  Of course, it could be just a result of their proximity in this country.  It's certainly not rare for siblings to marry brothers or sisters from another family.  It is however, another research avenue to go down...

A New Way to Waste Time; In Which I Restore Angeline

   

     This post is a follow-up on a recent blog post containing a photo that may, or may not, be my great-great-great-grandfather Jermiah Garner.  I've written lots about Jeremiah, who led an out of the ordinary life, and since my blog is searchable you can read more about him if you are so inclined.

     

     This is the photograph that started it all.  It was labeled, Jeremiah Garner and his [third] wife Angeline Peck, the couple in the front row. I had my doubts about this photo.  For one thing, the lady seated next to Jeremiah looks older than him to me; Angeline was younger than Jeremiah.  She also seems a tad old to be the mother of the young child standing next to her.  However, it's a sad but true fact that women don't age as well as men.  I've looked this up in my research and it has something to do with hormones, or a lack thereof.  Which we are not going to delve into further in this blog.

     Today I thought I would take another look at this puzzle, so I uploaded a close up of Angeline from the group shot to my favorite photo editing site, BeFunky.com

     It appears poor Angeline may have been suffering from hair loss at the time this picture was taken.  Various illnesses and syndromes could be responsible, it's not the first time I've seen this in my tree.  BeFunky has lots of tools to play with, and I've used them many times, but today I noticed a brand new plaything, Old Photo Restorer!  I had to try that.

     After restoration, this is what Angeline looked like...

     That is remarkable!  And much, much better than the job Ancestry does at restoring photos.  I had one more trick up my sleeve though.  I uploaded Angeline's image to my Paint application, then shaded in more of the bonnet she appeared to be wearing.  Apologies for my clumsy editing, but Paint doesn't really allow for fine detailing.  

    I had noticed BeFunky also offered a colorizing tool, so of couse I tried that too...

     You can see Angeline now looks younger.  No spring chicken, but I could easily believe this lady was around the age of thirty-nine, which she would have been at the time.  After my edits,  Angeline's age in the photo no longer really concerns me.  I'm still going to keep digging though, it's hard to trust that online photos are always who they claim to be.  For instance, there is one circulating on Ancestry right now purporting to be the wedding photo from Angeline's first marriage (see below).  

     Angeline was twenty-six years of age when she married John Dent Collins. I think the lady in this photo looks a good deal older than twenty-six, and the groom looks nothing like other portraits of John Collins online.  Then again- 

    

      Nope, she still is over twenty-six.

Nuns in the Family; How To Find Them

     Tracking down the nuns who grace the branches of my family tree has been a challenge, but a good learning experience. Unlike priests who kept their birth names upon ordination, nuns took a different name when they entered religious life.  With a little determination finding their new name is not terribly difficult, obituaries of parents and siblings are great for that.  Then the fun really begins.

     I've had a fair amount of luck finding photos of my Sisters.  If you can determine the order they belonged to, many of these keep archives dating back to the nineteenth century, some even earlier.  The Sisters of Saint Joseph in Rochester, New York, a teaching order, sent me a trove of information on my cousin Mary Esther Gunn.  Everything from a photo, baptism and confirmation records, next of kin information, and her obituary.  

   Another potential stumbling block, one never knows how a census enumerator may have decided to list your religious ladies.  I've found them under their names in religion, their birth names, and sometimes a combination of the two. Sister Cecilia was enumerated as Cecilia Vincent Gunn in the 1930 census.  In 1940 she was simply Sister Cecilia Vincent; she passed eight years later.  

     Yet another thing about nuns, they traveled around a good deal, you never know where they'll turn up.  One of mine from Owasco, New York, Sister Mary Camillus, surfaced as a Mother Superior in sunny Rio Vista, California.  In 1900 she was enumerated as "McGarr Sister M. Comillus", in 1910 as Mary Camellus.  You have to be persistent and keep an open mind.

Mother Mary Camillus, AKA Elizabeth McGarr

     Mother Stanislaus, born Mary Ann McGarr, was a sibling of Mother Camillus.  The censuses of 1870, 1880, and 1900 all list her as Mary A. McGarr, occupation Sister of Mercy.  She spent her religious career in various spots in northern New York near the Canadian border.  I found her photograph at the site Google Books, in the book titled, The Catholic Church in the United States, Volume II, The Religious Communities of Women, published in 1913.  There are many pictures in this book, it's worth checking out if your nuns were active around the turn of the century.

     Bridget McGarr, younger sister of Mother Stanislaus and Mother Camillus took the name Sister Mary Frances, changing it at some point to Sister Francis DeSales.  Later, she too became a mother superior.  She was also an author, writing a sweet little book called May Devotions for Children.  Of course I made it a top priority to obtain a copy.  Like her siblings, she joined the Sisters of Mercy who couldn't locate a photo of Bridget, neither could I, but they sent instead a lovely photo of a chalice given to her by her sister Mother Mary Stanislaus.  

"Given by her sister Mother Stanislaus on her feast day"

     The next generation seemed easier to trace.  Probably because they weren't being sent to the wilds of northern New York or the far west.  The Quigley sisters, cousins of mine and whose grandmother was a McGarr, are one example.  There were three of them who, like Mary Esther Gunn joined the Sisters of Saint Joseph.  All three of them remained in the area of their birth.  Naturally I wanted pictures of them and I found two out of three, not bad.  The oldest was Catherine Quigley aka Sister John Joseph, born in 1912.  She is the one I couldn't find much about other than she was teaching at St. Mary's in Canandaigua and living at their convent in 1940.  She is "Quigley Catherine Sr. John Joseph" in that census.  And if you don't think the indexers at Ancestry didn't totally mess that one up...

     Next born was Margaret Quigley in 1916.  I got lucky with Margaret; she attended Nazareth Academy in Rochester whose yearbook is online.  I found her graduation photo, but what I really wanted one of her in her nun gear.  I remembered her obituary mentioned one of the schools she had taught at was DeSales in Geneva, New York so I checked Ancestry to see if they had yearbooks for that school.  Indeed, they did.  Although Margaret, (Sister Delphine in religion), wasn't a student there, yearbooks also contain photos of school staff.  I wasn't sure which years she might have been there so taking her age into account I estimated.  The yearbook from 1968 had a lovely photo of her in front of her English class that looked a good deal like her graduation picture. 

Sister Delphine

     The youngest Quigley daughter, Rita, was born in 1918.  Rita too attended Nazareth, their yearbook is where I found her picture.  The 1950 census listed her under her birth name, Rita Quigley; occupation grade school teacher.  I'm still seeking a picture of Sister Rita in her nun's regalia, she lived until 2001 so I have high hopes although by then the habit had been discarded in favor of civilian clothing.

Rita Quigley AKA Sister Anne Paula 

     You might be wondering if it's worth the effort to trace an individual who never married or had children.  I say it is.  For one thing it satisfies my curiosity about them, for another it sheds light on the family life of my ancestors.  Also, their relatives are my relatives and one can never predict what may wind up in print about those family members in relation to the sisters.  For instance, the list of Mary Esther Gunn's next of kin supplied the names of her brothers and where they were living, along with names and addresses of cousins I was previously unaware of.

     I've had my best luck with the aforementioned family obituaries, church histories and news articles online, and the nun's order.  Too, yearbooks are now online at Ancestry.  Census records are helpful, but with so many variables can be very tricky to navigate.  That's where the family obituaries come in handy, they used to give the city of residence for survivors so one had some idea where to start looking.  Good luck!

I Love a Good Scandal; Or, the Strange Tale of Winifred V. Carpenter

     Still working on the unanswered questions in my tree, while waiting for those Irish records. Today, I researched this handsome fellow-

          

     Meet Charles Samuel Price Jr., the son of Charles Sr. and Martha McCallum. Charles Jr. is my second cousin twice removed.  A while ago, I found Charles in the 1930 census living in the village of Shortsville, New York!  That caught my attention as Charles had been born many miles away in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. What was he doing in Shortsville, New York?  Which just happened to be right next to the village of Manchester, where I grew up.  Then I noticed his profession, railroad detective.  That explained a lot.  Further research showed Charles' employer was the Lehigh Valley RR, founded in Pennsylvania.  At that time, and for many years after, it was the largest employer in the town of Manchester of which the villages of Manchester and Shortsville are a part.  My father, grandfather, and many other relatives all worked for the Lehigh.

     Returning to Charles' story today, I found his marriage in 1915 to Winifred V. Carpenter, the twenty-year -old daughter of Sanford L. Carpenter and Mary Slaght.  Charles was living in Rochester, New York then, working for Kodak.  He registered for the draft in 1917, was drafted, then was sent overseas from May of 1918 to April of 1919.  That may have been when his marriage to Winifred began to fail, for fail it did.  They were still together in 1920, but in October of 1922, it appeared Winifred married George O'Brien.

     That wasn't such an uncommon thing, wars and separations change people, they grow apart.  Charles and Winifred were far from the only couple who lost their way that year.  However, things weren't adding up.  Take a look at Winifred and George O'Brien's marriage record below.

     The first thing I noticed was Winifred's declaration that this was her first marriage.  The second was the name of her father, not Sanford Carpenter, but Sanford Joseph Price.  Her mother? Still Mary, but with the maiden name McConnell.  Sounds a bit like McCallum, the maiden name of Charles' mother, don't you think?  Another thing, the marriage was performed by a Catholic priest, Rev. T. Bernard Kelly.  Winifred's first marriage was performed by a Methodist pastor, she wasn't Catholic.  But George O'Brien was, as were his parents.  And had Father Kelly known of her earlier marriage to Charles Price, he would not have been sanctioning this one.  Mixed marriages were one thing, marrying a divorcee was quite another.  I'm sure his parents too would have been less than thrilled.  Did that account for Winifred's fibs about her first marriage and her parent's names; and for the fact their marriage took place forty miles from Rochester in Batavia?  Or could this have been a different Winifred?  

     I tried for a long time to find anyone named Sanford Joseph Price with no luck.  None of the few I did find were the right age or in the right place.  I also searched for another Winifred but no luck there either.  Then  I came across an obituary for Winifred's mother which settled the question- 

     It was the ex-wife of Charles Price who married George O'Brien alright.

     About ready to call it quits with Winifred, who after all wasn't even related to me, I came across this gem in the Elmira Star-Gazette dated March 16, 1927- "In Court chambers Monday a decree of divorce was granted in the following case: Charles S. Price of Wellsboro against Winifred V. Price".  What the what?  Charles divorced Winifred in 1927?  But she married George in 1922!  Was this part of the reason for the subterfuge in their marriage record?  The divorcee wasn't even divorced?  I suppose Winifred could have divorced Charles in Rochester without his being aware, but it seems like a stretch.

     Winifred was still in Rochester with George O'Brien in 1930, but I had trouble locating her in the 1940 census.  I was beginning to think I should be looking for a divorce, believing George had finally discovered her deceptions and left.  Then I found George, and there was Winifred, both of them living with their employer, J. L. Rosenthal, a Russian immigrant real estate agent, in the Rochester suburb of Brighton, as his housekeeper and butler!  According to that census, the couple were residents of Miami, Florida in 1935.  

     George passed away in 1947 and Winifred in 1974.  Both are buried in Holy Sepulchre in the city though not together.  George is in his family's plot with five others, perhaps they only owned the six graves?  But what an incredible story.  I wondered, did she fool George all those years, or was he in on it?  I'd love to know.

 

     

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It Was Meant To Be; Or How Rockwell and Matilda Found Their Groove

 

     Another year has gone, and I can't say I'm going to miss it.  Between numerous cases of Covid in my family, which I somehow managed to avoid, and my emergency surgery for a strangulated hernia last month, I'm not sorry to bid adieu to 2023.  It was also a disappointing year for genealogy with few new Irish databases appearing online.  The much-promised final group of early Irish death certificates never materialized, and I've all but given up on the Valuation Office posting their digitized records.  Since I'm spending a good deal of time resting while I recover, it seemed like a good time to look into some genealogical mysteries on the non-Irish side of my tree.

     One result was my last blog about what was said to be a  photo of Jeremiah Garner.  Another mystery was the marriage between my 3rd great-grandmother Matilda Taylor and Rockwell Rood.  My line descends from Matilda and her first husband Thomas Vincent.  Thomas and Matilda married in Saratoga County, New York around 1822 and made their home in Halfmoon.  They eventually migrated westward, first to Richmond in Ontario County, NY, then to Victory in Cayuga County where they had relatives living.  Thomas died there in 1842 at the age of thirty-nine, leaving Matilda with six children and a mortgage.  What became of her after that was unknown for quite a while.  All I knew was the mortgage fell into arrears and the land was auctioned.

     Complicating matters was a headstone back in Halfmoon bearing the inscription, "Matilda Vincent wife of Thomas", and one next to it inscribed, "Thomas Vincent"; no dates appear on either stone.  Many, including a published genealogy, attributed these graves to the Thomas and Matilda who moved to Victory, but it didn't make much sense that their burials had been almost 200 miles from that place.

     In 2019 I was able to prove Matilda had not been buried in Halfmoon but had remarried after Thomas' untimely death.  He's not there either by the way, Thomas actually rests in French Cemetery in Victory.  Matilda's new husband, Rockwell Rood, was born in Vermont and by 1820 was living in Reading, NY some eighty miles from Victory.  After that he moved on to Dix, about the same distance away.  How on earth did these two meet and conduct a courtship?  I never would have connected Matilda to the far distant Rockwell, but for the 1850 census of Dix enumerating her daughters, Mary, and Amelia Vincent, living in the same household with Matilda and Rockwell Rood and their two young sons.

1850 Census of Dix, NY

     It seemed the best way to answer this question was to dig deeper into Rockwell's family since I'd found no clues while researching him or Matilda.  I found Rockwell had been born in Sandgate, Vermont to Simeon Rood and Darmarius Munger in 1789.  His father Simeon was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, so he left some military records.  One of them was a document indicating Simeon's pension was transferred from Reading to Cato in Cayuga County in 1820, two years before his death.  That was very interesting, Cato is right next to the town of Victory!  However, 1820 was decades before Thomas and Matilda Vincent arrived there and I had found no indication Rockwell was ever a resident of that area.  Then again, perhaps some of Simeon's other children had been?

     I hit paydirt with Rockwell's younger sister Damaris Rood.  Damaris married William Hagar, and their first child, Esther, was born in 1816.  Two New York state censuses, the 1855 and 1875, gave Esther's birthplace as Cayuga County.  The 1820 through 1860 censuses place Damaris Rood Hagar in the town of Victory, meaning she was living there at the very same time as Matilda and Thomas.  It's entirely conceivable Damaris was occasionally visited by her brother Rockwell who was widowed around the same time as Matilda.

     I think my question is now answered, proving once again, it's not a waste of time to research individuals you're not even related to.