The Sad Story of Charles Garner; Or, Don't Forget to Check Those Extra Census Schedules

     Today I was looking at my family tree profile for Private Charles M. Garner, my third-great-uncle.  His story is a tragic one.  Charles was born in the spring of 1836 in rural Cayuga County, New York, to Jeremiah Garner and Clarinda Wood.  He led a simple life; he acquired a farm and in 1860 married the widow Mary Conley Gibbs.  Two years later their first child, Harriet Amelia, was born.  A typical, quiet life that was about to be shattered by national events.

     The war began on the 12th of April 1861, when Confederates in South Carolina fired on Fort Sumpter in Charleston Harbor.  While most Americans believed the conflict would be short, the opposite proved true, and as hostilities dragged on Congress passed a conscription act in March of 1863.  As required, Charles registered for the draft in June of that year.  Within a month he received a notice like the one below.

Civil War draft notice

     

     Charles began preparations for his departure, spending time with his mother, (his father had abandoned her by then), and friends, putting his farm in order, and no doubt worrying how the wife he was leaving behind would manage without him.  He wasn't aware then, nor was Mary, that he was also leaving behind an unborn son.  Albert was born on May 14, 1864 indicating Charles probably reported for duty in August of 1863.

     Now assigned to Company I of the 97th NY Infantry, Charles arrived in Washington D. C. near the fall of 1863, in time for some minor battles followed by the setting up of winter camp.  In May of 1864 his regiment, now under the command of General Grant, moved south to Virginia to participate in the Richmond-Petersburg campaign.  Around this time Charles received word of the birth of his son.  Part of Grant's strategy called for the destruction of a section of the Weldon Railroad in order to isolate Petersburg.  Charles' company I was to be part of the assault.  The battle commenced on August 18th with heavy Union losses, but by the end of the day they held a precarious grip on the railroad.  The following day saw another attack by the Confederates, halted only by the last-minute arrival of Union reinforcements.  When the smoke had cleared, the Confederate supply line had been taken, but so had Charles.  

  

     Now began a dreadful wait for Mary, who knew only that her husband had been reported missing in action.  How or when she learned he was a prisoner of war is not something I've been able to find, but from the Smithsonian's web site I discovered soldiers on both sides were allowed to exchange mail.  Prisoner's letters were collected and opened at designated sites, censored, then sent on their way to anxious friends and relatives.  It's possible Mary heard the disturbing news of her husband's capture from Charles himself.

     Prisoner exchanges, done routinely early in the war, had ground to a halt in mid-1863 over the south's refusal to treat black and white soldiers equally.  After his capture Charles was initially confined at Richmond, then in early October he, along with five thousand other soldiers, was transferred to Salisbury prison.  At the end of October another five thousand prisoners arrived.  Those huge transfers along with the Union blockade, which was causing shortages of food and medicine all over the south, in addition to the rising numbers of untraded prisoners, overwhelmed Salisbury and conditions there were rapidly deteriorating.  Prison hospital records show Charles was admitted in mid November of 1864 for treatment of diarrhea, released two weeks later, then readmitted on December 22nd.  He died there two days later, Christmas Eve, from diarrhea.  The NY Town Clerk's Registers, available on Ancestry, attribute his death to exposure and starvation.  In all likelihood it was a combination of all three factors.

     As I looked over the hints on Charles' page, I saw one for New York's 1865 census.  That couldn't be, he was long deceased by then.  Pulling it up I saw it was indeed Charles, along with Mary and their family, his occupation-- Army.  Investigating further, I read the instructions given to census takers that year which stated they should include the names of those who had died since the first of June, the official date of the census.  Charles had been gone six long months, did Mary not know that?  Checking Schedule III of the census, Inquires Relating to Officers and Enlisted Men, I found Charles listed as a prisoner who died at Salisbury but with a caveat, that is difficult to read...

    

Looks to me like it says, Reported Dead Family Cannot Ascertain anything about?

     I take the above to mean the family had received no information about the manner or time of Charles' death.  Was he enumerated because Mary was still hoping for a miracle?  It seems she was.  As I looked at Schedule VII at the end of the census, Deaths of Officers and Enlisted Men, I saw Charles' name was not there, his family had not given up on him.

    Mary finally had to accept the hard truth of Charles' death, and she did marry again about four years later.  Her new husband, Mortimer Hilliker, was a Michigan farmer in which place Mary and her children took up their residence.  Hopefully she found a bit of happiness, but I would not be surprised to find that on quiet evenings when the endless farm chores were done and the stars twinkled overhead, Mary's thoughts sometimes drifted back to her young, lost husband.

     

     

To Colorize Or Not To Colorize; In Which I Compare The Ancestry And MyHeritage Technology So You Don't Have To

     When MyHeritage announced the release of its colorization technology, there was a hue, (no pun intended), and cry from traditionalists who likened it to drawing a mustache on a cherished photograph of great-grandma. I intensely dislike colorized movies, so I saw their point, it wasn't something I was terribly interested in pursuing but then again, adding color to photos is not all that new.  One can see civil war era examples that were hand tinted by the photographer in the early 1860's.  So I cautiously stuck my toe in and have since tempered my opinion somewhat. I uploaded a few of my photos to the MyHeritage site, only a few because that's all they allowed without a subscription. Then I noticed Ancestry had also jumped on the color bandwagon. Since I do have a subscription there, I decided to first try colorizing the ones I had already done at MyHeritage, just to see how they compared.

     The image of my great-great-grandmother Anna Ryan from Tipperary on the left is the original, the one in the middle was done at MyH. and the one on the far right is from Ancestry. I think Ancestry's technology did a better job in this instance.  There is too much red in the MyH. version.  In the case below however, MyH. definitely wins out. Pictured is John White, brother of James, my great-great-grandfather from Queens County Ireland. John's original on the left looks quite washed out with the face and hair blending together. The middle image is from Ancestry and MyH. is on the right. In my opinion the use of more saturated color worked well here, giving more definition to the forehead, and left facial areas.



     Neither website has very sophisticated technology, but I have to admit I enjoyed seeing the effects on my black and white pictures. Black and white is actually a misnomer, those old photos are grayscale, which doesn't lend itself to picking out minute details.  Below is a photo of my second cousin Inez Worden and her baby sister Gladys taken in 1914 and colorized at Ancestry.  When I saw it the first time I was amazed at how much I had missed!  The lake in the background really pops when colorized and the details in Inez's dress stand out much more.  I hadn't even realized that was a lake behind them.

     The same goes for the MyH. picture below of  my grandmother, (far right), and her siblings with their father taken about 1919, shortly before his death.  The background is really enhanced by color.

     The image of Terrence Sheehan above was done at Ancestry and is what I mean by the technology being unsophisticated. I know the color is completely wrong because US Army uniforms during World War 1 were not blue, they were khaki.  A professional colorizing a photo like this would never have chosen blue for the uniform.  On the other hand, it is free with a subscription.

     After trying the process, I have to say there are some circumstances where I find colorization somewhat jarring, like the weird blue uniform, but others where it is useful.  I'm still attached to the originals that reflect the historical period in which they were taken, and I would never discard them.  In only one instance have I replaced the profile image of an ancestor on Ancestry with the "improved" version, and only then because MyHeritage's "enhance" tool repaired the blurred photo.  Having said that, I also enjoyed finding details that were hiding there all along, but I had missed and would have continued to miss had I not given colorizing a try. 

You Probably Did Not Know This About Census Records. I Know I Didn't

     

     Back in the dark ages before newspapers were digitized, indexed, and readily available online, I ordered the microfilm of my ancestor's hometown paper from the New York State Library.  In it I found a trove of wonderful information, along with one article that confused me.  My second-great-aunt's husband, Patrick O'Neil was irate that the census showed an extra child in his household.  Now how did he know that I wondered?  Perhaps he was shown the entry at some point?  I really didn't pursue it at the time.

     Years later while visiting the office of the Cayuga County historian, I copied the 1850 census record of Elizabeth McGarr Burns, my third-great-aunt.

     After I later subscribed to Ancestry, I accessed the same census on their site to attach it to my online tree.  Surprisingly, it was very different than the one I had transcribed in the historian's office; the one on Ancestry contained four individuals with the surname Thomas and William Condon had become a Burns.  What was going on, had I make a mistake?

1850 census of Aurelius on Ancestry

     After a little research I found the answer.  Up to the year 1880 there were several copies made of the census.  One copy was kept locally, in some cases one was made for the state, and the third copy was sent to the Federal Government.  The copy I used in Auburn was the local copy, the ones seen on Ancestry are Federal copies.  Somehow, in transcribing the census for Washington the surname Thomas was mistakenly inserted.  As we know, the more hands involved in recording documents the greater the chance for error, but to add a new, very different surname seemed quite careless.  

     This could seriously impact ones family tree.  Initially I had discounted the Burns clan in the 1850 census found on Ancestry as probably the wrong family.  It makes me wonder how many seemingly missing census entries are in fact hiding under false names and facts?

     While studying all this, I also found the answer to the question of how Pat O'Neil knew he had acquired another child in 1880.  Not only were there multiple copies of early censuses, up until 1870, they could be viewed, unredacted, immediately.  The 1880 census left a few facts out of the local copy to offer some privacy, but none of this waiting 72 years as we presently are required to do.  Once it was published in 1880 Patrick was free to read it.  We should be so lucky.

     

There's Just Something About An Old Cemetery

 

     One of my favorites on You Tube is a series called Sidestep Adventures.  It's an amateur enterprise consisting of videos made by a man named Robert and his sidekicks as they explore cemeteries in Georgia.  The older and less accessible the better.  This series featuring titles like, "Abandoned Cemetery Found in The Woods", and "Civil War Soldier Found In Abandoned Cemetery", kept me amused all last winter while a snow-covered ground made cemetery rambles unpleasant and unproductive here in upstate New York.

     A few days ago, it felt as though I had stepped into one of those videos myself.  There is a very old burial ground in Auburn, New York called Cold Spring Cemetery that I'd long wanted to visit.  This was the first Catholic cemetery in Auburn and many of the city's famine immigrants are interred there, including relatives of mine.  An inventory done in 1964 listed several McGarr and O'Hora stones, as did another done in 1984, so bright and early one morning my friend and I set out on the fifty-mile drive.

     While most of the cemetery is mowed, there is a section near the center that is completely overgrown with small, thorny trees and heavy brush.  I'm usually not deterred by that sort of thing when in pursuit of an ancestor's burial place, but this situation would have required a machete which I did not think to bring.  Next time!  You can see the jungle in the photo at the top of this page behind the large tree in the center. There are more graves to the left of that and behind it, so I'm pretty sure there are some inside the overgrown area as well.  There's also a view of the thicket in the picture below.

     One of the stones I most wanted to see was that of John McGarr, the brother of my third-great-grandfather Daniel McGarr.  Daniel never left Ireland, but John came to Auburn in the late 1830's where he opened a grocery and saloon.  In New York State's 1855 census, John stated he'd been in Auburn for seventeen years.  That would make his arrival year 1838, and though I've found those dates as given by the immigrants are often off by a few years, John married Mary Kelly at Holy Family Catholic Church in Auburn on 21 September of 1840, so an immigration date of 1838 is probably pretty close.  Luckily, we did locate Uncle John though his stone was in sorry shape like many of the other markers there.

The flag is for John's son Daniel, who died in the Civil War and is buried here

     We also found a few O'Hora stones, but most were so broken and eroded they were all but illegible.  Exploring the other side of the cemetery we noticed a path of sorts leading into a wooded area on its border.  No more than a few yards in we began seeing remnants of gravestones, some nearly intact.  Clearly the graveyard had extended into that area.  This was the point where I began feeling like I was in one of the You Tube videos, especially when that snake slithered under a fallen stone in front of me.  Unfortunately, none of the tombstones in that area could be read, but finding Uncle John made the trip a great success in my eyes.

     I snapped the photo below as we were leaving, while reflecting on the lives of the people who were laid to rest all about me.  They were driven from their country, endured a long, horrendous voyage across the North Atlantic by sail, and then battled prejudice and poverty to build a new life on these shores.  Only to end up here, in a slowly crumbling cemetery so far from home.  After all they'd been through, it seemed to me the least they deserved was to be remembered, if not a well-tended grave.

Networking; In Which Is Found Aussie Relatives, A Cranky Cousin, And A Castle

     

     It's so annoying, you find a promising lead, you write an email, and you wait.  And you wait and wait.  But occasionally, you get lucky.  Most of our ancestors were not only children, they had siblings who married and had children of their own.  Every so often you find a descendant of one of those siblings, your cousins; and sometimes, if you're even luckier, those cousins have amazing stories to share.

      In my case, one such cousin lived in Australia!  I had no idea I had a cousin down under.  But when I found a DNA match whose tree contained the surname O'Dwyer and wrote to her, this is what I received in response--

"Hi Ellie, I live in Brisbane.  My great-grandmother Alice O'Dwyer arrived here in about 1876.  She was born in Tipperary about 1855.  Her father was Andrew O'Dwyer."  

     That was incredible!  I'm sure she meant to add another great to that description, but this is my family.  My third great-grandmother, also named Alice O'Dwyer, was the paternal aunt of this Alice.  Comparing notes with my DNA match was immensely helpful to my research.  Using Irish civil registrations, I was able to locate the younger Alice's family living in Churchfield, County Tipperary, the very same townland my grandma Alice lived in.

     Two incredible bits of luck came from the McGarr side of my family, one was an old letter shared with me by a cousin living in Florida.  Written by a relative who had known them, it contained a firsthand account of the children of John and Mary Kelly McGarr.  John was one of the earliest McGarrs in Auburn, New York arriving from Ireland in about 1840, well before the famine and was, I believe, the brother of my third-great-grandfather Daniel McGarr who remained in County Kildare.  This wonderful letter confirmed many facts I'd found through my research, while giving some insight into how family members regarded one another.  For instance, the author showed jealousy towards several of John's children who were financially successful, calling one, "the real snooty one", remarking that another married, "a fancy detective", and "the least I can say about Kate is she lost a child while in the south. She had plenty of money".  I wonder, what was the most she could have imparted about the unfortunate Kate, who actually lost three children in the south in quick succession from scarlet fever?  

     The other was a McGarr DNA match who sent me copies of family letters from her great-great-aunt, a native of Baltinglass, County Kildare along with a photo of her great-grandfather standing  in front of the shoe store he purchased in Rochester, New York after immigrating.  I live in a suburb of Rochester, enabling a visit with my new cousin, always a bonus. 

John Quigley left in front of his store

      My latest genealogical blessing came from another DNA match, this time on the Travers side who hailed from the Castledermot area of County Kildare.  Early Catholic records survive there, but many of them are so faded that page after page are completely illegible.  After introducing ourselves at Ancestry my cousin and I exchanged email addresses since Ancestry doesn't allow for sending images.  I sent her death certificates I had, and she sent me typed pages of family reminiscences and interviews along with a copy of the will her third-great-grandmother Catherine Bede, (wife of John Travers), made at Ballyvass; John being the brother of my third great-grandmother Mary Travers O'Hora.

      I'd found the civil registration of Catherine's 1887 death from accidental burns but always wondered about the circumstances.  Those family notes held the answer, Catherine was blind in her old age and her shawl had caught fire while at the hearth or possibly from a lit pipe.  The unfortunate lady died shortly after in the local infirmary whose employee reported her death.  I was never positive I had the right Catherine since no townland was given on the death certificate, just the infirmary's address, but with details from the notes, I now believe it's definitely her.

     There were other personal mentions in the Travers notes, like a reference to a family expression, "the Travis eye".  The author maintained this was a compliment akin to having a twinkle in one's eye.  Interestingly, Travis was the name used.  Another line caught my attention, the quote of an unnamed family member, "I can still look up the hill and see the castle".  There is something wistful, almost melancholic, about this line that captures my romantic imagination.  It was obviously a reference to Kilkea Castle that sits between Kilkea, where my third-great-grandmother Mary Travers was born, and Catherine's Ballyvass.

Kilkea Castle

     

     One could spend a lifetime researching and still not find details like the ones contained in a family's personal memories and letters.  My great good fortune to have connected with such generous researchers, happy to share what they have, more than makes up for all the queries that went unanswered. It also inspires me to keep writing those emails.   

     

The Man Who Vanished

     

Phantom--Something apparently seen, heard or sensed, but having no physical reality.  That definition accurately describes James M. Garner.  Since my visit last week to the first known home of my Garner family, Martha's Vineyard, I've been reviewing the sources of information I've acquired over the years while studying them.  

     Among the most informative is the 72-page War of 1812 Pension Application file for Thomas Garner Jr. that can be viewed free at Fold3.  That is where I found his place of birth and his age, along with verifying information about his daughters Clarissa (Lamphere) and Lucy (Robison), both of whom submitted depositions for the application and who settled in Summerhill, Cayuga, New York along with Thomas and his first wife Prudence Lamphere, who was their mother.  

     Contained in the file is a request dated June 1856 by Thomas asking for a replacement pension certificate, his having been destroyed by fire.  Three witnesses signed the request, his second wife Lany, a neighbor named Aaron Murphy, and James M. Garner.  I'd read those papers many times before, but it was only today I noticed James M. Garner's signature off to the side of the other two.

Signature of James M. Garner; three lines up from bottom on the left

     I immediately set about attempting to identify James M. Garner, but with no success, the man simply didn't exist.  I checked census records and found a James Gardner born between 1811 and 1820 living in Sempronius in 1840, about eight miles from Summerhill, that seemed promising, but he had disappeared from that place by 1850.  The census that year did show a James Gardiner born 1817 living in Niles, seventeen miles from Summerhill, but his birthplace was New York.  Thomas was in Vermont in 1817 where he married Prudence and his other three children were born.  None of the entries I found ticked all the boxes for age, residence and birthplace, ditto the 1855 New York census and the 1860, 1865, 1870, 1875, and 1880 censuses.

     I next checked the public family trees at Ancestry, then tried a search of the entire site--zilch.  Same result at Family Search, Google Books, and a broad Google search.  My favorite newspaper sites turned up nothing either.  This made no sense at all, we weren't talking ancient history here, James was alive in the 19th century.

     I'm at a loss as to where to look next.  I know James M. Garner existed, though it seems just long enough to witness Thomas Garner's signature before evaporating into thin air.  This has happened before; I once found a notice in an 1818 newspaper informing Erastus Galloway that he had an unclaimed letter waiting in the town I knew my Galloway family had recently moved to.  After years of searching, I've still never discovered a single thing about him.  Erastus was a family name, two members in that line named a child Erastus in later years and I'm sure there's a connection, but who the man with the letter was remains as elusive as James M.  But I'll be looking...

A Genealogy Vacation or, Nothing Compares To Being There

     I've just returned home from Martha's Vineyard; beaches, sunsets, and best of all, (other than family time), genealogy.  Does it get much better than that?  No. Unless of course one travels to Ireland.

     Ever since I learned that my 4th great-grandfather, Thomas Garner Jr., was born at Tisbury on Martha's Vineyard in 1773, to Thomas Sr. and his wife Ann Williams, I've been curious about how the family arrived on the island and just as importantly, why?  Martha's Vineyard, and the views it offers, are absolutely gorgeous; but why would a person choose to live in such an exposed and sometimes dangerous spot, (particularly during the Revolutionary War), surrounded on all sides by the North Atlantic?  I doubted it was the scenery that drew them.  Not being a native, I was at a loss as to how to  answer these questions but after much online research I had a good idea where to begin looking... the Martha's Vineyard Museum.

     After trudging through town in 80-degree temps the museum, at the top of a large hill, loomed before me.  There is a bus system, but it's still a hike from the stop to the museum.  Once inside though I easily found the research library presided over by a librarian with the delightful name of Bow Van Ripper.  After some discussion and my mention of another Garner close in age to Thomas Sr. who had married Timothy Coffin on Martha's Vineyard, Bow offered an intriguing insight, maybe Thomas was from Nantucket?  He informed me the surnames Garner, Coffin and Williams were old, well known names on that neighboring island.

     This would actually make sense.  Volume three of The History of Martha's Vineyard, Dukes County, Massachusetts, written by Charles E. Banks and available at Family Search, contains a paragraph about Thomas "Gardner" and his wife Ann Williams.  The author notes they resided on Mill Road in Tisbury but were both strangers to the island with Ann being among the first Williams found in Vineyard records, on the occasion of her marriage to Thomas in 1768.  Looking through the records I could see there weren't many Williams in that place, with none born there until the mid1840's, and those three births were all to the same couple, John and Roxena Williams. 

     The surname Garner has several variations, the most common being Gardner though I also saw it spelled Garnder in Nantucket vital records where there were numerous Gardner's. Those last two spellings were the ones I found in Nantucket records, but from other online sources I could see there were indeed people spelling it "Garner", living on Nantucket in the 18th century; I can only assume they were recorded in vital records under one of the name variants.  Vital records from Martha's Vineyard show the surname was much less common there, there were only two Gardner births, those of Thomas and Elizabeth Gardner, (with Garner in parenthesis), the children of my Thomas and Ann born1773 and1776 respectively.

     One of the online sources that showed Garners on Nantucket is a site picturing the newly restored home Richard Garner Jr., who settled in Salem, built on Nantucket for his son Richard Gardner, a whaling captain who was lost at sea.  A current site including both spellings of the surname! It's conceivable my Thomas Garner was a grandson of the drowned captain or of John Gardner who was a brother of Richard Jr. who also came to Nantucket.

 Built 1722-1724 on Nantucket by Richard Garner, Jr. for his son Richard Gardner 3rd

     Other vital and military records contained many instances where the two names seemed to be used almost interchangeably.  But of course, there were also individuals whose surname actually was Gardner, people not related to me; untangling them would be difficult if not impossible.

     I had hoped to stroll down Mill Road but for several reasons that was not to be.  Firstly, in the year 1892 the town of Tisbury was divided into Tisbury and West Tisbury.  That meant in Thomas' day Tisbury was much larger than now.  There was a Mill Road in West Tisbury, also the area of oldest English settlement, so assuming the road's name hadn't changed in the intervening years, today's West Tisbury is where Thomas actually lived.  The other problem was West Tisbury is largely residential, I didn't spot any tourist buses heading there and it was too far to walk, especially since I wasn't convinced today's Mill Road was the same as Thomas and Ann's Mill Road.  My family had already humored me with a trip to the research library so I contented myself with a glimpse of the West Tisbury area from the ferry.

     Though I didn't learn many new, definite facts about Thomas Garner Sr., I did get to see his island, and the Tisbury librarian telling me my family names were common on Nantucket was major! Who knows how long it would have taken me to figure that out on my own?  Too, I had never considered my family may have included whalers.  Seeing Martha's Vineyard and its sandy soil in person vividly illustrated how difficult farming would have been there and brought home why residents turned to whaling.  By the 1730's however, the whale population around the two islands had been seriously depleted, forcing whalers to search further afield for their prey.  Now voyages could last for years, which might explain the small size of Thomas Jr.'s family.

     Another discovery was the Quaker connection.  One of the reasons the elder Richard Garner left Salem was the persecution of Quakers in that place. Many of his coreligionists did the same, indeed, the birth records of the Garner children were found in Quaker records.  All this gives me several new avenues for research, not to mention a reason to visit Nantucket next year.