What became of Apollonia Steuernagel?

    Apollonia Steuernagel, born in Hesse Darmstadt in 1849, daughter of Johannes Steuernagel and Anna Barbara Steig, was brought to America in 1851 by her parents.  Her father’s name appears on the ship’s manifest; however, he has not been found in any American records so, presumably, he died soon.

1860 U.S. census, Ward 10, Buffalo, Erie County, New York (Ancestry.com)

  
    Apollonia’s mother was found in the 1860 census of Buffalo, Erie County, New York, listed as Johanna Steinagel (57, midwife), with children Jacob (25, laborer), Conrad (19, varnisher’s apprentice), and Abby (10, attended school).¹  In 1865 her household consisted of Barbara Steinecker (62) and Conrad (25, laborer); Apollonia/Abby was not found in this census.²
    Barbara, widow of John Steuernagel, died shortly after the 1865 census was taken.  In August, her son Ludwig (also known as Louis) filed a petition for administration of her estate.  He listed her children as Louis, John, Jacob, Conrad, and Appelonia Steuernagel, all but the last of age.³  This is the last record of Apollonia found to date.

Sources:
    1.  1860 U.S. census, Erie County, New York, population schedule, Buffalo, Ward 10, p. 72, dwelling 523, family 516, Johanna Steinagel; digital image, Ancestry.com (accessed 8 November 2014); citing NA microfilm M653, roll 748.  Ancestry indexed the surname as Steinagel.
     2.  1865 New York state census, Erie County, population schedule, Buffalo, Ward 5, District 2, p. 2, family 13, Barbara Steinecker; Erie County Clerk's Office, Buffalo.  Records archived in 2000; only microfilm version presently available.
   3.  Erie County, New York, probate file 21711, Barbara Steuernagel, 1865; Surrogate's Record Room, Buffalo.

Who were Rebecca (Gould) Durkee’s parents?

William Durkee & Rebecca Gould - marriage [int]

    Rebecca Gould, who married William Durkee in Ipswich (Essex) MA circa 13 January 1704 [int],¹ is said to be the daughter of Henry Gould and Sarah Ward/Warr.  Henry and Sarah were married in Ipswich in 1675 or 1676, and their son Henry was born there in 1686.  Rebecca’s birth was not recorded in Ipswich.
    Unfortunately, Benjamin Apthorp Gould does not include Rebecca as one of Henry and Sarah’s children in the “Henry Gould of Ipswich” chapter of The Family of Zaccheus Gould of Topsfield .² Also, there are no estate records for Henry or Sarah.
    To make matters worse, at least one person posted online a genealogy that states that the Goulds' daughter Rebecca was born in Danvers, Essex County, on 25 August 1678 and married Ezekiel Marsh there on 1 July 1702.  The source of this information is given as “OneWorldTreeSM,”
    OneWorldTree (OWT) was a service first offered at Ancestry.com in April 2004.  According to an article by Beau Sharbrough in the July-August 2004 issue of Ancestry magazine, OWT was basically a search engine that collected genealogical information, but did not evaluate it for accuracy.  The original source of the Gould information is unknown.

Sources:
    1. Massachusetts, Essex County Town Clerk, Ipswich, births, marriages, deaths, 1663-1739, Publishments, p. 138; online  FamilySearch (accessed 21 October 2014), image 100/352.  Also on FHL microfilm 777,636.
    2.  Benjamin Apthorp Gould, “Henry Gould of Ipswich,” in The Family of Zaccheus Gould of Topsfield (Lynn, Mass.: Thos. P. Nichols, 1895), p. 317.

Certification of Death vs Death Certificate

    Instead of photocopying a death record or certificate, some municipalities issue a Certification of Death. This is usually a form onto which is copied.the data from the original record. Can you believe everything in such a document? 
    Below is the image of a certified document with raised seal (the surname of the signer has been hidden to protect her identity). Notice the year of death—1986.

    John Maybach (or Mayback as he was frequently known), a resident of Buffalo, New York, was struck by a train as he was trying to cross double tracks.  He crossed the nearer track after a train had passed and walked right in front of an oncoming train on the further track.  An account of the grisly tragedy, “Killed by an Engine: Old Man Run Down Last Evening in Tonawanda,” appeared in the Buffalo Courier on 8 January 1896.

    According to the Certification of Death, “the person named on this certificate died on the date and at the place shown.”  Not so in this case. 

First Settlers of Amesbury, Massachusetts

    In 1903 the Amesbury Improvement Association erected a memorial to the first settlers of Amesbury in the Golgotha Burial Ground (next to 52 Macy Street).  Eighteen men are credited with being the original settlers of the area that became Amesbury.
    Salisbury (Essex County) was incorporated in 1640.  In 1654 it was divided into Old Town and New Town, separated by the Pow-wow River.  In 1666 New Town was proclaimed a township called New Salisbury, the name of which was changed to Amesbury the following year. 
    Nine of the eighteen first settlers are my ancestors, several of them through more than one child.  They are Thomas Barnard, William Barnes, Henry Blaisdell, Philip Challis, Richard Currier, Jarrett Haddon, George Martin, Valentine Rowell, and William Sargent.
  

 
    Thomas Barnard, a planter and husbandman, was a resident of Salisbury in 1640.  He was killed by Indians on 7 July 1677.  His wife and mother of his ten children was Eleanor (Morse) Little.  His son, Thomas Barnard (Sarah Peasley), and daughter, Abigail Barnard (Samuel Fellows) are my ancestors.

    William Barnes received land in Salisbury in the “first division” in 1640 and again in 1641.  He was made “freeman” in 1641.  A  house carpenter, he was born in England in 1613 and died in Amesbury on 14 March 1697/98.  His wife was Rachel Lord, the mother of his eight children.  Two daughters, Sarah (Thomas Rowell Jr.)  and Rachel (Lt. Thomas Sargent), are my ancestors.
    Henry Blaisdell was born circa 1632.  His first wife was Mary Haddon, with whom he had nine children; his second was Elizabeth.  Henry, a planter and tailor, died between 1705 and 1707.  His son, Lt. John Baisdell (Elizabeth Challis) is my ancestor.
    Philip Challis, a planter, and his wife Mary Sargent had eleven children.  He died in Amesbury in 1681.  Daughter Elizabeth (John Hoyt) and son John (Sarah Frame) are my ancestors.    
    Richard Currier was born in England on 3 May 1616, and he was a resident of Salisbury in 1640.  By trade he was a millwright and planter.  His first wife was Anne, the mother of his two children.  His second was Joanne Pindor, widow of Valentine Rowell and William Sargent.  Richard died in Amesbury on 22 February 1787.   His son, Deacon Thomas (Mary Osgood) is my ancestor.
    Jarrett Haddon was born circa 1608.  His wife was Margaret, with whom he had three children.  He died before 20 March 1690, when his will was probated.  Daughter Mary (Henry Blaisell) is my ancestor.
    George Martin, a blacksmith, was first married to Hannah, by whom he had a daughter.  Susanna North, hanged as a witch at Salem in 1692, was his second wife, with whom he had eight children.  George died in 1686.  Daughter Hester (John Jameson) is my ancestor, and daughter Jane (Samuel Hadley) is my son-in-law’s ancestor.
    Valentine Rowell was born in England on 22 June 1622.  A carpenter, he married Joanna Pindor in 1643, and the couple had nine children.  Valentine died in Amesbury in May 1662.  Three of his children are my ancestors.   They are Thomas (Sarah Barnes), Philip (Sarah Morrill), and Mary (Thomas Frame).
    William Sargent was born in Bath (Somerset) England in 1598 and immigrated to American in 1632.   A seaman, he  married first Elizabeth Perkins.  The couple had nine children.  He married second Joanne Pindor, widow of Valentine Rowell.  William died in Amesbury in March 1675.  Daughter Mary (Philip Challis) and son Lt. Thomas (Rachel Barnes) are my ancestors.

Photographs by Buffalogen, August 2014

Historic New York - Upper Cattaraugus Valley

On the east side of Route 16, south of Yorkshire Corners

    This sign was erected in 1963 and, for more than fifty years, Buffalogen drove past it, probably at least fifty times a year, and never stopped.  Early in July 2014, she stopped to read it.  It is interesting, but doesn't say much more than what she already knew.
    What the sign doesn't mention is the ice industry on Lime Lake, six miles south of where the sign is located.  In 1880 a Buffalo ice company erected an ice house on the lake and began harvesting ice to ship to Buffalo.  For the next forty years, several companies employed hundreds of men, who harvested the ice with huge saws and used horse-drawn sledges to transport the blocks off the frozen lake.  The blocks, isulated with straw, were stored in ice houses along the east shore of the lake before being shipped to Buffalo on cars of the Buffalo, New York & Philadephia Railroad Company, which ran along that side of the lake.  The ice industry fell victim to the advent of refrigeration and ceased to exist in the 1920s.  There is still train traffic on the rail line, which was completed in 1872.

Photo by Buffalogen, 2014

Find A Grave - Caveat Utilitor!

I love Find A Grave (www.findagrave.com)–I’m both a user and a contributor.  Making burial information available and preserving images of gravestones for now and the future is a great boon for genealogists, family historians, gravestone art aficionados, and many others.  I have mixed feelings, however, about the additional information, some documented, some not, that has been posted on many memorials.

Case in point–I recently came across a memorial on which the contributor had posted an obituary of the deceased, Joseph J. Jones [all names have been changed in consideration for the contributor].  It was a transcription, not an image, of the actual obituary.  I was happy to find it, even though no source was given.  Particularly interesting, I thought, was the last paragraph: “Surviving is his wife of almost 55 years, the former Susan S. Smith; He was the father of the late Susie Q. Jones.”

Thanks to Fulton History (www.fultonhistory.com), another great website, I had already found Susie’s death notice, which said she was “sister of Betty.”  Curious!  What became of Betty?  Why wasn’t she mentioned in her father’s obituary?  Dead or alive, what reason could there be for her to have been omitted?  I went looking for more information. 

The Jones family was too recent to be in census records; and city directories and the like don’t identify children.  I turned to Fulton History and searched for an obituary or death notice for one of Susie’s grandparents, who were listed as survivors in her death notice. Those for Susie’s paternal grandparents were no help, and I couldn’t find anything for her maternal grandparents.

Almost as a last resort, I googled Susie’s father by name and found his obituary, posted by the funeral home that had served his family.  Lo and behold, it was the same as the one on Find A Grave, except for one very important paragraph.  “Surviving is his wife of almost 55 years, the former Susan S. Smith; three daughters, Betty [ John ] Doe; of Wheatfield; Jane [Robert ] Roe, of Lewiston; Mary [Charles ] Coe, of Long Island; a sister, Ann Black, of Hayward, CA; 3 grandchildren. He was the father of the late Susie Q. Jones.”

Omission of facts is almost as egregious as alteration of facts.  Rather than providing a helpful resource for researchers, the Find A Grave contributor unwittingly committed a grave disservice, misleading everyone relying on that obituary for information about the Jones family.

Caveat lector!  Caveat utilitor!


Image by Buffalogen

How did William Hamilton Blodgett MD die?

   

     William Hamilton Blodgett was born in Painesville, Lake County, Ohio, on 14 October 1823, son of Clark Blodgett and Harriet Evans, and he died on 22 June 1861.  His first wife, whom he married in Lake County in 1843, was Emily Maria Tredwell, born in New York 1823-1825 to unknown parents.  She divorced him in 1851.  His second wife, whom he married in Green Bay, Brown County, Wisconsin, in 1853, was Agnes Eliza Parsons, born in Rutland, Rutland County, Vermont, on 7 November 1834, daughter of Ira Parsons and Theodotia Bardwell.

     William was a surgeon, but where he received his training is unknown.  He moved from Ohio to Calumet, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, between 1844 and 1846 and was recorded in the 1850 and 1860 censuses of Green Bay, Brown County, Wisconsin, as a physician. 
    In the spring of 1861 William apparently intended to join the Union forces as a physician.  The writer inherited a leather pounch containing several letters recommending him as a regimental surgeon.  Only a few weeks after the letters were written, William was dead.

   

    Did William ever join a regiment?  How and where did he die?  His date of death was recorded in his family Bible, but there are no details.

Sources: 

Ohio and Wisconsin marriage records

U.S. census records

Blodgett Bible held in 2014 by Buffalogen

Letters held in 2014 by Buffalogen