A May December Romance

     Many hours have been devoted to uncovering the identity of the second wife of my fourth-great-grandfather Thomas Garner.  I’m descended from Thomas and his first wife Prudence Lamphere, so why do I why spend so much time on number two?  Several reasons: for one, you never know what will turn up in the records of your ancestor's associates and secondly, I enjoy a challenge. Some people like to solve crossword puzzles, I like to solve genealogy puzzles.

     Back in 2019 I wrote a blog about Thomas in which I questioned who that Laney Garner person living with Grandpa Thomas was, and if she was really his wife or had the census taker made a mistake?  She was a good twenty years younger than Thomas, who was an elderly, chronically ill man without much money, though he did have a War of 1812 pension which may have made him more attractive to Laney.  Today I decided to find all I could about her, which when you’re taking about a female in the early to mid-1800’s is indeed a challenge.

      I already had the 1855 New York State census of Summerhill in Cayuga County showing Thomas Garner age 84, born in Massachusetts and his wife Laney Garner age 59, born in Canada.  Thomas was really 82, but still much older than Laney.  Immediately above them in the census was David Robertson 50 and his wife Catherine 34, both born in New York.

      I knew Thomas had passed away in the spring of 1857 but Laney being twenty years his junior was likely still alive for the next census.  Ancestry has an annoying habit of sending hints for something called, “NY Compiled Census and Census Substitutes…”, containing scant information with no image, when they could just as easily show you the 1860 census.  I have no idea why they do this, but when you see it, it’s time to open another window and do a search of the 1860 census at Family Search.  Which is what I did when they sent me a hint for "Lana" Garner in that odd database.  I found Lana Garner living alone in 1860, still right next to David and Catherine Robertson/Robinson.  In fact, she seemed to be living with them at that point.

1859 map of Summerhill, Mrs. Garner is the 4th name down on the far left D. Robinson is right below her.

     The next logical step was the 1850 census but that presented a problem.  There was no Lana or Laney Garner listed, nor a Thomas Garner for that matter.  He was in Summerhill in 1840 with his first wife but seemed to have vanished by 1850.  Prudence died in 1848 so perhaps Thomas hadn’t yet remarried in 1850?  Since I didn’t know Laney’s surname before her marriage to Thomas, I tried looking up David Robertson to see who was living next to him in Summerhill that year.  His neighbor was Laura Wallace, age 54, born in Canada!  The age was right, the birthplace was right, and the name was very close, could it be that Laney Garner was the former Laura Wallace?

     Going further back in census records was not productive. There were many Wallace families in the area, but only heads of households were named in 1840 and Laney wasn’t one of them, so I struck out there.  Ditto with newspapers and cemetery records.  Reading through Thomas’ pension documents I found that his original pension certificate was destroyed in 1856 by a fire at the establishment where he had left it for safekeeping, forcing him to apply for a replacement.  One of the witnesses to his signature, actually his X, on that application was Laney Garner but it contained no further information about her.  There were still New York land records to be checked at Family Search, if I could find Thomas in 1850 that might hold a clue.  After forty-five minutes of finding nothing for Thomas Garner or Thomas Gardner or other variations I was about to give up.  Discouraged, on a whim I typed “Laney Wallace” into the search box. Bingo!  In 1840 Seth Runnells “demised”, (leased), twenty-two acres in the town of Summerhill to Laney Wallace for the remainder of her life…adjacent to Catherine Robertson!  Laura Wallace was Laney Wallace was Laney Garner.

Seth Runnells to Laney Wallace, Lot 16 Summerhill

     I’m still not sure of Laney’s maiden name, it may or may not have been Wallace.  A marriage record would probably clear this up, but Summerhill was located behind the back of beyond and there were several nearby villages where her marriage to Thomas could have taken place, none of which have online records.  Nonetheless, I'm getting closer all the time...

What Can Be Found in Old Newspapers

      

     Each week I check the genealogy news for Ireland, and each week I'm disappointed. No new records means no new discoveries, so no new blogs. I'm currently considering purchasing a month's subscription to a newspaper site in the hopes something interesting may turn up, but in the meantime I'm posting an excerpt from the narrative I wrote long ago about my family in Counties Carlow and Kildare, the McGarrs and O'Horas; drawn in part from contemporary newspaper accounts to show what wonderful stories can be found even if one's ancestors didn't make it into print by name...

     Although Ireland was overwhelmingly Catholic everyone who worked the land was required by law to pay a tithe to the protestant Church of Ireland. This presented a real hardship for tenant farmers already hard pressed to clothe and feed their families. To add insult to injury, protestant landlords who did not farm the land but instead devoted it to pasture for livestock were exempt. After winning emancipation, an organized campaign of resistance to the tithe began and spread rapidly. In 1831 a list of tithe defaulters was drawn up by the government with orders to seize their goods and chattel. With the signing of that order, the opening salvo of the Tithe War had been fired. Over the following years robberies, murders, cattle maiming, riots and arsons became commonplace.

     The defaulter lists for Ricketstown and Ballyraggan no longer exist, so it is impossible to say if Michael Hore and Daniel McGarr refused to pay their tithes, but resistance in their area was high. In County Carlow, the protestant minister Rev. John Whitty, who was the beneficiary of the tithes collected locally was especially disliked by Rathvilly Catholics. Years earlier he had ordered the seizure and sale of the cattle of a tithe defaulter, so enraging Catholics that 5,000 of them stormed the sale and carried off the cattle.

     This time around, the residents of Rathvilly Parish were no less determined to protect their property. The following excerpt from The Pilot, a Dublin newspaper, details how they outwitted the troops sent to distrain the livestock of defaulters--

August 1834-- Mr. Whitty has a tremendous force at present…they have been out every day this week and were not able to effect a single seizure in the entire parish. The moment the troops are drawn out in marching order, a person on top of a hill lights a faggot of furze, and two minutes after, every person in the parish is out and not a four-footed animal is to be found in it by the time the troops arrive. When the troops come up, they are always received with, ‘three cheers for the King and the British Army.

     The situation had not changed a great deal when two years later this headline appeared in a less sympathetic newspaper, The Wexford Conservative—

Desperate Attack On Sheriff Police And Military At Rathvilly By Mob

Yesterday, the Sub-Sheriff, chief constables Fitzgibbon and Traunt, forty of the constabulary and twenty of the 23rd Fusileers proceeded to post tithe notices on church and chapel doors. At Rathvilly, large masses of men lined the walls enclosing the chapel yard, armed with pitchforks, scythes, bludgeons and stones while the women had a plentiful supply of boiling water. Finding the gates locked the sheriff proceeded to the house of Priest Gahan for the key, but he was not to be found. The Sheriff next ordered the police to scale the walls to post the notices on the chapel, upon which the party were assailed by a general volley of stones and missiles.

     Both Rathvilly and Baltinglass parishes were blessed with what would today be termed activist priests. Father Gahan in Rathvilly, as we have seen, made himself unavailable when the British came looking for the churchyard key, and Father Lalor in Baltinglass was just as supportive of his parishioners. When Daniel O’Connell came to Baltinglass in 1843 for one of his public anti-tithe meetings, it was Father Lalor’s curate Rev. John Nolan himself who helped arrange the details.

     In 1836 Father Gahan delivered a report to the local Poor Law Commissioners declaring it unrealistic to expect disturbances related to the tithe to halt as long as such was demanded. He added his belief that the condition of the “poorer classes” had greatly deteriorated over the past two decades as to their food and raiment, with most of his parishioners being poor farmers who lived in houses of mud or sod. In about twenty instances in the parish two or more families shared a cabin.

     When it was finally realized that the costs associated with collecting the tithe were far greater than the benefits it brought -- one officer noting, “It cost a shilling to collect tuppence” -- the collection was suspended. From then on, the rate was reduced and included in rent payments, bringing at least partial relief to the long-suffering Catholic population.