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.
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| 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.
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