Declined! In Which Rep. Blackmar's Cause Of Death Is Swept Under The Rug

Esbon Blackmar

     A while ago, while looking for more information about Milo Galloway, I stumbled upon this photo of Esbon Blackmar.  Esbon was a business associate of Milo's and for a short time a United States Representative.  The site where I found the picture was Find A Grave and along with the picture it had a short biography of Esbon which I was surprised to find attributed his death to an accident.  

     Newspapers of the period in which he died all described his passing in November of 1857 as a suicide due to financial setbacks.  The same fate that I believe befell Milo, who died five months before Esbon.  Both were quite well to do men who suddenly lost their fortunes, though the newspaper is strangely quiet about Milo's death.  Other records tell the story however, of lawsuits and defaults.

     I sent a copy of the newspaper article from 1857 to Find A Grave and finally heard back from the individual who maintains Esbon's page-- Declined. General reason: Content submitted does not belong in this data field.  What does that even mean?  Why doesn't a story from a contemporary, local newspaper belong?

     Personally, I believe it's wrong to whitewash history, even if it is that of a relatively unknown person.  Part of genealogy today is about context and the everyday details of ancestor's lives.  Trying to  understand them and their motivations as best we can through our 21st century lens.  Besides which, this sad event occurred over 160 years ago.  For researchers who might be interested, I'm posting the obituary as it appeared in 1857--

SUICIDE OF HON. ESBON BLACKMAR --The  citizens of Newark, Wayne County were thrown into great excitement this morning in consequence of the announcement of the suicide of Hon. Esbon Blackmar, not only a prominent citizen of Wayne County, but well known throughout western New York.  On Monday last, Mr. Blackmar was compelled to yield to the pressure of the times and make an assignment.  It is supposed that his financial embarrassment so depressed his spirits as to cause him to commit self-destruction.  The lifeless body of Mr. Blackmar was found in a spring or shallow well in the cellar of his house.  His head was downward and the feet projecting just above the tile surface of the water.  He represented his district in congress some ten years since and was widely known and esteemed as a man of ability and integrity.  He was largely involved in banking and in produce dealing. -- Rochester Union
 

     Another news article claimed he was "harassed by creditors" the day before his death and the site WikiVisually notes, "according to published accounts his business failed in the Panic of 1857 and he was in debt for more than $150,000, (about $3.7 million in 2014)."  I understand that suicide is an unpleasant topic, but I would certainly want to know what had happened were it an ancestor of mine.

So They Hung Patrick After All

     April will be here before I know it and with it, Patrick Hore Day.  I've spent a lot of time thinking about Patrick's short life and hoping that by some miracle his death sentence wasn't carried out.  Perhaps a jailbreak or sentence commuted to transportation.  Alas, last night I found a newspaper article that confirmed Patrick had been hanged as scheduled on April 5th in 1798.

     The second sentence in the above article reports the craven execution of Patrick and three of his fellow patriots.  I first learned of Patrick when several boxes of papers of the Browne-Clayton family were discovered by the National Library.  The following is from those papers:

     United Irishmen Patrick Hore and his gang, namely Christopher Beaghan, Oliver Carey, John Currin, John Howlett and James Muldoon were arrested on 14th March 1798.  They were charged with ‘being evil disposed and Designing persons’ who, on 10th March, had gathered at Mount Neal, Carlow, and ‘wickedly’ conspired 'with certain other persons' to ‘Willfully and of Malice prepare to Kill and Murder the Honorable and Reverend Francis Paul Stratford [brother of the Earl of Aldborough] against the peace of the King. That they on the 10th of March in the 38th year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the third King did at Mount Neal, Carlow between Sunset of said day and Sunrise on the Day next following did Cut down take and Carry Away one Deal Tree, Value 5 shillings, One Ash Tree, Value 3 shillings and one Oak Tree, Value 10 shillings the goods of Francis Paul Stratford, Esquire without his consent, he being the Owner thereof.”
     On 26th March, they appeared before the General Assizes held at Carlow, where upon Information taken by Benjamin Bunbury, revealed that these six men had met earlier in the year at Garristown where they ‘contemptuously maliciously and feloniousy did Administer an Unlawful Oath and Solemn Engagement upon a Book to Mathew Brennan of the import following that is to say "Damnation to the King and All the Royal Family and all his heirs and forces by Sea and Land " and that he [Mathew]should be United with them’. It was further alleged that the day after they met at Mount Neale they were planning ‘Wickedly Unlawfully Maliciously and feloniousy did Compere Confederate and agree together and to and with each other … to Kill and Murder Luke Lyons against the peace’.
     The six men were found guilty and sentenced to be ‘hanged by the neck till dead, execution to be done on Monday the fifth day of April next’.

     When the news article mentions the charge of digging graves it must be in connection to the supposed plots to murder Francis Stratford and Luke Lyons.  It does go on to say that two of the convicted were transported, but if the papers were referring to them as the "Patrick Hore Gang" I don't hold out much hope for Pat.

Whose Naturalization Is That Anyway?

     Yesterday I had to run an errand in a village located between my home and the village of Lyons.  Lyons being the place I have to go in order to view the state censuses for Wayne County, New York.  They aren't online although the original books still exist and have been filmed, transcribed and indexed.  Fortunately, I live in the same area my ancestors settled in, so I keep a running "to do" list of research questions as they arise, arranged by the repository that holds documents that could shed some light on the subject.  If I find myself in the neighborhood of one of those repositories I can just drop in.  Yesterday it was the Wayne County Historians office that was conveniently located near my destination.  I printed off a list of queries filed under WCH and hit the road.

     With the help of Jane, a lovely person who never tires of assisting researchers, or has the good grace not to show it, I made some great discoveries.  One was John Taylor Vincent in the 1855 NYS census of Butler, New York showing him born in "Seretoga" and living with his wife "Sharlott".  Another was the naturalization of my great-great-grandfather Philip Power from Cullen Castle, County Waterford.  Another find was the declaration of Mathew Ryan, a fourth great-uncle, that read he was from not just Ireland as usual, but Tipperary, Ireland!  I also found the 1868 naturalization of Cornelius Ryan.  There were only two men of that name in Palmyra, New York, my third great-grandfather and his son Cornelius Jr.  The document could belong to either one of them.

     The old naturalizations don't offer much information.  A name, residence and former residence, along with names of sponsors is about all they contain.  I knew from  the baptismal registers of Annacarty/Donohill Parish in South Tipperary that Cornelius Jr. was baptized in May of 1844 making him not quite old enough in 1868 to have applied for citizenship in 1863, five years being required to pass before those final citizenship papers could filed.  But in the 19th century people played pretty fast and loose with ages and names.  Both men arrived in the United States in 1860, and both lived in Palmyra.  This would take some digging.

     One of the first things I do when I find documents like these, is to take a look at the sponsors or witnesses to try to determine their relationship to the subject.  In this case it looked like C W Williamson and J F Swain were the sponsors.  After looking through censuses from that time frame and finding nothing, I thought perhaps I was misreading the name Swain, maybe it was Strain so I tired that.

  
     There in the 1880 census I found John Strain, son of Irish immigrants and a shoe dealer.  Cornelius Jr.'s occupation was shoemaker!  Another clue was that the naturalization was signed by Cornelius; his father could neither read nor write though he could conceivably have learned to sign his name in his 70 or so years.  The clincher was the 1870 census.  It showed that Cornelius Sr. was not a US citizen, but his son's entry indicated he was.  I feel confident saying the naturalization I found yesterday was indeed for Cornelius Jr.


                 

Irish Genealogy News Blog

    

     If you're doing Irish Genealogy and aren't reading this blog you should be.  Written by Claire Santry the site has so much to offer it's hard to list it all.  There are links, advice, and of course news about the latest Irish records.  It was Clair's blog I turned to to keep me updated as I impatiently awaited the release of the records from the Valuation office a few years back and I stop in at least once a week to catch up on anything I may have missed.  I was excited to read this headline recently-- "Beyond 2022: project aims to recreate the Public Record Office of Ireland before the 1922 fire".  Read about it here.

     That one made me snap to attention!  How wonderful would it be to have those lost records back?  It's a definite step in the right direction that the remnants of the fire along with copies stored off site are being seriously looked at with an eye to digital recreation.  I would however, have to think that quite a few are gone for good.  For instance, how would one begin to recreate those destroyed censuses?  Sadly, outside of church records the early censuses were one of the few documents to mention by name a significant percentage of laboring class Irishmen in the 19th century.  I've found a few Griffith's, Tithe Applotment, and criminal records for some of my ancestors in addition to church records, but that's about it.  One group from County Carlow, the Michael Hore family, appears in none of those records except church registers. They weren't land owners, didn't leave wills, and many couldn't even sign their names.  Those census records are my Holy Grail.

     The Irish Genealogy Toolkit is another creation of Clair Santry's and is also well written and informative.  On a gray, chilly day like this one it's a perfect diversion.

    

It's Not Him, In Which I Admit my Error

     Remember my last post when I talked about my Irish mining ancestors and not learning much from the tract books?  Scratch both, I was wrong.  Uncle Edward Hore from Ricketstown, County Carlow was indeed a miner, and he was doing his mining in Amador County California; I have his voter registration from that county stating his birthplace of Ireland, his occupation as miner, and that he was naturalized in Cayuga County, New York in 1860.  In the city of Auburn to be precise.  But there was another gentleman named Edward Hore in Amador County.  The 1880 census says the other Edward was born in Massachusetts.  After studying the entry in the tract book for Edward Hore, I began to notice some dates that didn't add up.

     Above is the entry.  The date of sale is August of 1872, the problem here is that Uncle Edward died in January of 1872.  So could it be his son Edward Jr.?  No, he was only six years old at the time.  The Act of 1862 mentioned in the entry refers to the homestead act passed that year.  After residing on a claim for five years the settler could file for a final certificate (the CTF in the document above) and become the legal owner of the claim.  So maybe 1872 was the year the claim was "proved"?  Nope.  In 1870 Uncle Edward and his family were living in San Francisco not on the claim as he would have been required to do.  And the final certificate dated in 1878 is clearly the moment the claim became the property of Edward from Massachusetts.

     I was a bit disappointed to learn I had the wrong Edward, but glad I had found the truth.  At this point I don't believe Uncle Edward ever owned any land in California or elsewhere.  He lived  a difficult life, fleeing the famine in Ireland, losing three children, and enduring the grueling life of a nineteenth century miner with little to show for it, dying of meningitis in a tenement in San Francisco at a relatively young age.

San Francisco Call, Jan. 27, 1872-- In this city, January 26, Edward O'Hore, a native of County Carlow, Ireland, aged 45 years. [Auburn (NY) papers please copy.]  Friends and acquaintances are respectfully invited to attend the funeral, tomorrow (Sunday) at 2 1/2 o'clock p.m. from his late residence, Beale Street, between Folsom and Howard, without further notice.

     This is exactly why all sources need to be searched out and considered.  Without digging into the land records it would have been easy to assume this was Uncle Edward's claim.


     
    

Another Bounty Land Warrant/ Or How I came To Understand The Tract Books

Transfer of the bounty land of John Vincent in 1862 showing township, range, and section numbers.

 

     Yesterday's blog dealt with my search for the land given my fourth-great-grandfather Thomas Garner Jr. for his service in the War of 1812.  In it I included links to several sources but neglected to mention the Bureau of Land Management .  That is the site where I found more details about the land acquired by Thomas after the war.  They have information pertaining to land patents, surveys and tract books, but only tract books for Arizona and Iowa are currently online there.  A while back I attempted to use the tract books available at Family Search to find information about land owned in California by my Irish ancestors who followed the lure of gold to that state.  It's not hyperbole to say that it was a total disaster.  I couldn't locate the right piece of land, the handwriting was atrocious, and did I mention they are not indexed?  I soon gave up.  Yesterday I finally cracked the code so to speak.

     The tract books record federal government land transactions and the status of public land.  They are arranged by state, township, range, and section number and can be browsed here.  There is also a "coverage table" here to direct you to the correct volume to browse, provided you are able to use the other sources to determine the township, range, and section numbers.  At first there seemed to be no order at all to the volumes but after playing with them for a bit last evening one became apparent.

     The reason I was having problems was that the township numbers seemed not to go in the right order.   I was looking for township 106, but the volume the table said I needed started at 107 and went to 108 and then to 109, etc... this puzzled me and patience not being my strong suit, I stopped looking.  However, the books are also arranged by range.  Looking again I found that once township 110 and it's first range was completed, the next page reverted to township 106 and it's first range.  Then on to townships 108, 109, and 110, second range.  The next page being township 106 and it's second range and so on.  Once I found the right township AND the correct range number it was easy to browse to the section number I needed.  There was an order to this after all.

     After figuring out how to use the books it seemed wasteful not to do so and I was able to locate the entry for my Irish gold miners near Mt. Diablo in California and one in Minnesota for another fourth-great-grandfather and veteran of 1812, John Vincent.  John died in 1814 of disease at Plattsburgh, New York while in the service but his widow Mary Howland was granted his warrant; which she assigned to a John Larson in 1862 a couple years before her death.  I found nothing to tell me when Mary was given the warrant but a brief, (very brief), mention of bounty land can be found in her widow's pension application dated 3 July 1854 so it must have been before that time even though the patent mentions an act of Congress in 1855.  That must reference the latest act at the time of transfer to John Larson and not the one under which Mary received the warrant.

     I can't say I discovered a great deal in the books and there are some abbreviations I need to research, but they were interesting to read and you may have better luck.

Thomas Garner's War of 1812 Bounty Land

     

     Today is one of those days I'm feeling a little discouraged.  It's been quite a while since I've found anything new on my ancestors, or even any new ancestors, so I decided to spend today rechecking my old ancestors I haven't looked at lately.  One fellow I'd like to know more about is Thomas Garner Jr., my fourth-great-grandfather.  Thomas was born at Tisbury, Massachusetts on Martha's Vineyard in 1773 to Thomas Garner Sr. and his wife Ann Williams.  The elder Thomas was a soldier of the revolution and Thomas Jr. too battled the British, he in the War of 1812.

     I'd previously read Thomas Jr's pension application and found mention of bounty land but never any details about that land.  Today I did a Google search for-- "Thomas Garner" 1812 Vermont-- I used Vermont because that's where Thomas wound up directly after the war.  A hit at Google Books brought up the book, "War of 1812 Bounty Lands in Illinois", and there on page 183 was Thomas and a description of his land along with a date of April 7, 1818.   The description also gave the number of Thomas' warrant so my next step was to try and find an image of it. By the way, the preface of the book is a good source of information on early land warrants and the rules governing them.  It's worth looking at.

     I found a site with printed material taken from microfilm in the National Archives, but it was cumbersome to use and the volumes were poorly labeled.  Growing frustrated I performed another Google search, this time for-- War of 1812 bounty land numbers-- and got lucky!  At a site called Ancestry Paths  I found an index of warrants arranged by number with links to digital copies of the volumes containing the warrants.  These are handwritten records so not searchable, but they do go in numerical order so they're easy to use providing you have the warrant number.  Reading the warrant I soon realized why I'd had such a hard time using the site I gave up on.  Both the book mentioned above and records on Ancestry, (no image),  give a date of April 7, 1818 for Thomas' land warrant.  The actual warrant uses the date January 25, 1817.  I'm sure they all refer to the same individual as they all say Thomas was a member of the 31st Regiment of Infantry under Capt. Ethan Burnap.  I have no explanation for the discrepancy in the dates.

     Regardless, even though the warrant expressly forbids assigning or transferring the warrant in any manner, it appears that is what Thomas did.  I've found nothing to suggest he ever went to Illinois and in fact the book's preface mentions that by 1825 most of the veterans had sold their claims.  Illinois, which was still a territory at the time, must have seemed a long way off in 1817, distant and uncivilized.  It no doubt made good sense to men with families especially, to take what they could get for their bounty land in the western wilderness and stay on in their present homes.  In Thomas' case his health may have been a factor in remaining in the east; the war had destroyed it and he never fully recovered though he would live a further forty three years dying in Summerhill, New York in 1857 at the age of seventy four.