Friday, May 30, 2014

From Buffalogen's photo collection - 7

What uniform is this man wearing?  Who is he?


No photographer identified

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Three Virginians called Edward Marks Sr.

   
Virginia


    In the late 1700s and early 1800s, there were three men in southeastern Virginia called Edward Marks Sr.  They were residents of Brunswick, Prince George, and Surry Counties.
    Edward Marks Sr. of Brunswick County, was born circa 1747 and died in Brunswick County before 26 March 1787.  He married Lucy Bailey in Surry County on 21 June 1768.  The couple had six or seven children.
    Edward Marks Sr. of Prince George County, was born before 1761 and died in Prince George County after 7 August 1820.  His wife Sally, whose maiden name is unknown, did not share in the division of his land and preumably pre-deceased him.  He had four children.
    Edward Marks Sr. of Surry County, was born in 1757, possibly in Brunswick County, and died in Surry County before 26 June 1837 when his will was proved.  He married Elizabeth Bishop in Sussex County on 24 February 1782.  She was not mentioned in her husband’s will, so presumably died before 21 September 1835.  Only one son has been conclusively identified, but there were probably other children.
    Many of the records of these counties have been destroyed, leaving large gaps devoid of land, probate, and vital records that could clarify the ancestors and descendants of these three Edwards.  Although no connection between them has been discovered, it is likely they were related.

    Is anyone interested in a DNA project encompassing known male descendants of these three men?

Thursday, May 22, 2014

From Buffalogen's photo collection - 8

Who are these men?  They were probably residents of Buffalo, New York.


Tintype in Lydia Maybach's photo album




Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Abigail Fillmore & her namesake DAR chapter


NSDAR marker, Forest Lawn Cemetery, 2014
    Abigail Powers was born in Stillwater (Saratoga) NY on 17 March 1798, daughter of Rev. Lemuel Powers and Abigail Newland.  She was educated at New Hope Academy in New Hope (Cayuga) NY and subsequently taught there.  She met Millard Fillmore when he became one of her students in 1819, and the two married in Moravia (Cayuga) on 5 February 1826.
    The couple moved first to Buffalo (Erie) New York, and then to East Aurora, a community southeast of Buffalo, where Millard practiced law and Abigail continued to teach, the first First Lady to hold a job after marriage.  Their house, built by Millard in 1826,  is still standing, although not in its original location.  It is now the Millard Fillmore Museum.
    The Fillmores moved to Buffalo in 1830 and Millard rose to political prominence.  In 1848 he was elected Vice-President to serve with President Zachary Taylor and the family moved to Washington, D.C.  After Taylor’s death on 9 July 1850. Fillmore was sworn in as President and the family moved into the White House.  Abigail established the first library in the presidential mansion.
    The Fillmores had two children, Millard Powers  (born in East Aurora in 1828) and Mary Abigail (born in Buffalo in 1832).  Millard, a lawyer, was a lifelong bachelor.  Mary Abigail, who often served as her father’s hostess while he was president, died from cholera at 22 years of age without having married.
    Abigail, never in good health, died from pneumonia shortly after her husband left the presidency in 1853.  She was buried in the large Fillmore plot in Buffalo’s Forest Lawn Cemetery.
    After Abigail’s death, her widower returned to Buffalo to practice law.  He married, as his second wife, Caroline (Carmichael) McIntosh, a widow, and the couple lived in a mansion on Niagara Square in the center of Buffalo.  Among his many accomplishments, Millard founded the University of Buffalo, the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society (now the Buffalo History Museum), and the Buffalo Club.
    Abigail Fillmore Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, was established  in Buffalo in 1925.  The chapter’s gavel was fashioned from a newel post from the Fillmore mansion that was salvaged when the dwelling was razed.
   
Fillmore plot, Forest Lawn Cemetery, 2014
One of the first projects of the chapter was the erection of a memorial monument to Abigail Fiillmore in the Fillmores' cemetery plot.  Later the chapter donated a large flag pole on the site, which is high on a hill.  The chapter also donated a collection of antique toys to the Millard Fillmore Museum in memory of Abigail Fillmore.
      Every year representatives of Abigail Fillmore Chapter hold a brief memorial service at the Fillmore plot and place a wreath at Abigail’s commemorative marker.   



Photos by Buffalogen

Friday, May 16, 2014

From Buffalogen's photo collection - 6

Who are these people? 

Possibly a group from Pine Hill Methodist Episcopal Church, Pine Ridge Road, Cheektowaga NY 




The man in the dark suit in the center of the second row  is holding a football.  The face of the woman in front of the man on the right in the top row has been scrached out.

Photo by L. Duwernell, Cheektowaga NY, 1906

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

In only three years . . .


1986
     I have a friend, a genealogist for hire, who has authored many articles about our area’s defunct graveyards and done a lot of gravestone transcribing.  Not too long ago, he photographed and transcribed the stones in a local cemetery.
    When I asked him if he planned to post the photos on one of the several online cemetery or grave sites, he said he had destroyed the images after he was through using them to verify his transcriptions.   His explanation was threefold:  the photos weren’t very good, he didn’t have time to contribute them to an online site, and he took a dim view of sites that accept undocumented genealogical information along with photos. 
    A transcription is certainly better than nothing, but “a picture is worth a thousand words.”  Any photograph, even if badly composed and/or badly exposed, can be a treasured link to the past. 
1989
    Old stones are deteriorating and disappearing at a rapid rate and even new ones are subject to vandalism, mowing damage, weather conditions, and more.  What a shame to lose forever a photograph that might have been someone's visual link to an ancestor.
    See what can happen to a gravestone in only three years!
   
    Share your cemetery photographs.  Contribute them to an online grave site.

  

Rachel Hall's marker in Washington Street Cemetery, Middletown (Middlesex) CT from Buffalogen's photo collection

Friday, May 9, 2014

From Buffalogen's photo collection - 5

Who are they?






Possibly Maybach/Mayback or Rupp relatives, perhaps Beuermanns









Cabinet card by Heckel Studio, 1565 Genesee Street, Buffalo NY

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Margaret Cochran Corbin


Corbin Monument - 2014
    Margaret Cochran was born in Pennsylvania in 1751. After her father was killed and her mother taken captive by Indians, she and her brother were raised by an uncle.  In 1772 she married John Corbin of Virginia.  He enlisted in the Pennsylvania Artillery in 1775 to fight in the Revolutionary War and Margaret accompanied her husband as a camp follower, helping with the needs of the soldiers.
    Margaret ventured onto the battlefield at Fort Washington in November 1776, helping her husband load cannon.  After his partner, the cannoneer, was killed,  John took over, with Margaret loading the weapon for him.  When John was killed, she loaded and fired the cannon alone until she was wounded during the battle–the most grievous injury being to her left arm, which was almost severed.
    Margaret survived her injuries, but was never able to use her damaged arm.  She received recompense from Pennsylvania, but the money did not go far.  In 1779 Continental Congress awarded her a lifetime pension for her war-time injuries, unfortunately less by half of that granted to male soldiers.  She also received assistance in bathing and dressing, activities made almost impossible by the uselessness of her arm.
    In 1782 she married a second time, but her husband died the following year.  Since she had a rather abrasive personality and undesirable personal habits, the rest of Margaret’s life was very difficult.  She died in poverty in 1800 and was buried in obscurity on the banks of the Hudson River near present-day Highland Falls, New York.

    The site of her burial was discovered in 1926 and her remains, identified by the vestiges of the injuries she had sustained, were moved to the grounds of the United States Military Academy at West Point.  The New York State Organization, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, erected a monument with a bronze tablet at her grave next to the Old Cadet Chapel.  
 
Commemorative tablet - 2014
   

IN MEMORY OF/ MARGARET CORBIN/ HEROINE OF THE REVOLUTION/ KNOWN AS CAPTAIN MOLLY/ 1751 - 1800/ WHO AT THE BATTLE OF FORT WASHINGTON NEW YORK CITY/ WHEN HER HUSBAND JOHN CORGIN WAS KILLED, KEPT HIS FIELD PIECE/ IN ACTION UNTIL SEVERELY WOUNDED AND THEREAFTER BY ACT/OF CONGRESS RECEIVED HALF THE PAY AND ALLOWANCES OF/ A SOLDIER IN THE SERVICE/ SHE LIVED DIED AND WAS BURIED ON THE HUDSON RIVER BANK NEAR THE VILLAGE NOW CALLED HIGHLAND FALLS/ IN APPRECIATION OF HER DEEDS FOR THE CAUSE OF LIBERTY/ AND THAT HER HEROISM MAY NOT BE FORGOTTEN/ HER DUST WAS REMOVED TO THIS SPOT AND THIS MEMORIAL ERECTED BY/ THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF THE DAUGHTErS OF THE/ AMERICAN REVOLUTION IN NEW YORK STATE/ 1926.

     On 6 May 2014 the New York State Officers Club (DAR) held its 88th anniversary ceremony at the site.
Margaret Corbin Day, 6 May 2014


Photos by Buffalogen

Monday, May 5, 2014

A Savage of Civilization

    I inherited a copy of A Savage of Civilization, written anonymously and published and copyrighted by J. Selwin Tait & Sons, 65 Fifth Avenue, New York City, in 1895.  A review in the New Publications column of The New York Times termed it “A Dramatic Story,” The review said “The anonymous author of this romance takes for theme a passage of Macaulay, where he warns us that the future destroyers of governments will come not from without, as the Huns and Vandals, who ravaged Rome, but from those Huns and Vandals that have been engendered within your own country by your own institutions. [...] The story shows dramatic force, and the incidents are strongly presented.”
    A less favorable review of the work appeared in Book News:

        "A Savage of Civilization. 405 pp. i2mo, 75 cents; by mail, 90 cents. Dissected, each individual feature of " A Savage of Civili zation " — a novel by an unknown author — is admirable. The characters are cleverly drawn, so clear and distinct in their strong outline that we recognize them as old acquaintances or imagine we do. The situations are strong, natural, intense and so realistic we know they must be happening all around us and that what we read is the literal truth, under rather than over stated. The plot is dramatic, and the story is well told in nervous, vigorous English, appealing to the strongest emotions and arousing the deepest interest. Yet as a whole the book is thoroughly unsatisfactory; as a novel a failure. The parts do not fit together. The reason is not hard to find. The author appears to be a clever writer and wide reader, having little or no sympathy for any of his creations — for neither the rich nor the poor. It is not that he tries to be just, but that it is good lord or good devil when either comes uppermost. An artist who painted a face in which each feature was faultless by itself but no two in proper proportion, and the whole without expression, would do with his brush what this anonymous author has done with his pen — produce something which is repellant however well each detail may be done. N. Y. World."
    My mother said that her uncle, Marlborough Churchill, was the author.  Marlborough (not to be confused with the U.S. Army officer and distant cousin of Winston Churchill) was born in Sing Sing (Westchester) NY in 1856, son of Marlborough Churchill and Elizabeth Louise Voris.  His father, engineer of Croton Water Works, founded the Churchill School of Sing Sing, a military academy, renamed St. John's Military Academy after its sale in 1869.  The Churchills moved to New York City, where the elder Marlborough was co-owner of Messrs. Churchill & Maury’s School.
    Marlborough was educated at his father’s school in Sing Sing (now Ossining); New York University, where he earned a law degree; and the University of Heidelberg in Germany.  He taught history and horsemanship at his father’s school in New York City, then practiced law for a few years before resuming teaching.  The 1920 census identified him as a literary writer.  Marlborough died  in Richmond (Independent City) VA in 1936.  He and his wife, Caroline May Bartley, had no children.
    The Library of Congress, Copyright Office, has digitized its records from 1891 through 1978, and they are online.  The Catalogue of Title Entries of Books and Other Articles, July 1 - December 28, 1895, No. 209 (1895), listed the book. The proprietor was J. Selwin Tait & Sons, New York, so the author did not hold the copyright.


Sources:
    The New York Times, no date, no page; online, The New York Times, accessed 28 April 2014. Google the book’s title to find the article.
    Book News, Vol. 14, no. 161 (1896), p. 268; free download from Google Books, 28 April 2014
    The Library of Congress, Copyright Office, The Catalogue of Title Entries, etc., July 1 - December 28, 1895, no. 209 (1895), p. 4, “A Savage of Civilization;” digital image, Internet Archives ((http://archive.org/details/copyrightrecords : accessed 29 April 2014).

Friday, May 2, 2014

From Buffalogen's photo collection - 4

"Touring Washington"
 
Sight Seeing Automobile Coach of Washington

Were these sightseers from Buffalo, New York?