Of Patience, Family Bibles, And The Internet

     My fourth-great-grandfather John Vincent died during the War of 1812 fought between the newly established United States and England from whom the US had declared it's independence. His death was from disease but I can't help but hope he got to harass the English a bit beforehand.  I've always wondered what prompted John to leave his wife and four young children to enlist twelve days before his youngest child's first birthday in August of 1813?  The answer may well have been money.  That year the fledgling congress authorized increases in both the monthly pay and the cash bounty for soldiers. 

     Thanks to the pension application filed by John's widow I've learned quite a bit about him, but it hasn't been easy.  Another thing I've found is there is a dearth of information on that war.  It's not for nothing that the conflict is often referred to as the forgotten war.  From surviving documents I've learned where John enlisted and in what regiment, learned the names of his captains and other officers, but I've been mostly unsuccessful in finding anything like a history of his regiment.  Nor does there seem to be any source that would tell me which of two generals his known officers served under, Wilkinson or Hampton, but I'm leaning towards Hampton.

     Once one gets away from the New England states, information from that period is very difficult to come by and John's war was mostly fought in New York.  John's son Thomas is next in my line and while I know he died as a young adult, there are no sources to indicate the cause. One needs a lot of patience and perseverance to put together a picture of the ancestor's life during that era.  Luckily though, sometimes patience is rewarded.

     Thomas' sister Janet Vincent was the youngest child of John.  An infant when he left Saratoga County she would have no memories of her father.  Being a female she presented the extra challenge of tracing a woman whose surname changed at her marriage.  The break came with viewing an application to a lineage society which included the information that Janet's mother Mary Clement Vincent had married again after John's death in 1814.  Her new name was Mary Howland which opened the door to not only the aforementioned pension application, but eighty-two year old Mary Howland herself in the 1860 census of Butler, NY in the home of  "Jenett" Witherel.  Janet had been found!  She also appears in her mother Mary Howland's pension application as does her husband Darius Witherel.  Or Wetherel, or Wetheral, or ... it's one of those names whose spelling is a challenge.

     The census of 1850 also shows Mary in her daughter's household along with a young man named Ray Witherell who is not with the family in any other census.  Who was he?  It would have been easy to believe he was Janet and Darius' son but that couldn't be assumed.  The answer to that question came several months later in a family bible at the top of the right hand page.

     Ray was in fact the son of Darius' brother John.  The bible also shows "Jennett" Vincent wife of Darius, the birth of their son Hadley and barely visible above Hadley's name can be seen the faded words, infant daughter... 1840 died the sa...  A local history of Butler, NY mentioned Darius being a wealthy farmer and the fact he and Janet were parents to four children only one of whom reached adulthood, Narcissa who was born in 1851.

     So I keep searching the internet hoping for newly digitized records because patience is something I have plenty of when it comes to genealogy.