When John Graves Isn't John Graves, and Walpole Isn't Walpole

For decades, the death date and place of  John Graves, father of Nathan Graves, has been widely circulated and accepted as 29 December 1766, in Walpole, now Cheshire Co., New Hampshire.  This date and location appeared in early published works and family group sheets about the Graves family, and was later copied to online family trees and websites.  Much of this material failed to cite any source material.

In my continuing quest to give substance to my own family tree, I’ve located entries which cast serious doubts on this long-accepted date and place.  In the excerpt below, the name, date and town appear to be a logical source for the belief that this refers to “my” John Graves.  There is one glaring contradiction, however:  the state.  This refers to Massachusetts, not New Hampshire.

Thinking this might have been a town within an area originally part of Massachusetts but later New Hampshire, I did some further research.  Walpole, NH and Walpole, MA are two distinct places.  Walpole, NH is on the Connecticut River, and Walpole, MA is southwest of Boston.  Using primary sources, I was also able to construct an entire family for the John Graves of Walpole, MA, and it wasn’t “mine.” 

I began with this marriage for John Graves and Mrs. Mary Smith of Dedham, MA, which is in close proximity to Walpole.  Between 1741 and 1762, they became parents to eight children, three of whom died young.  The five surviving were Mary, Ebenezer, Abigail, Anna, and Lucy.  They re-used names of their deceased children at least twice:  Mary and Ebenezer.  John has been described as a cordwainer (shoemaker). 
            While it's possible that the John Graves I'm researching could have raced up from where he was known to have lived, in the Saybrook-Killingworth area of Connecticut, or down from his new home in Cheshire Co., NH, in time for his demise 1766, it's more likely that the death date refers to the other gentleman.  Interestingly, other sources state that my John Graves was also a cordwainer.  Perhaps they "shared" more than a death date!
            All of this research revealed another anomaly:  I believe the above marriage entry says "Mrs. Mary Smith," and I'm not alone.  It's transcribed that way as well in a published volume, here:

           The authors of at least one family history published online, and no doubt many family trees, assume that Mary Smith was a single woman when she married.  It's stated that she was the daughter of Josiah Smith and Mary Paine.  While this may indeed be true, she would have had to have a first marriage to a man also named Smith at the time of her marriage to John Graves.  I will leave that question to her descendants!

The process of consulting original materials is becoming easier, with regular additions of scanned images being uploaded to various websites.  FamilySearch.org, in particular, is one of the regular stops on my genealogical journey.  

So, the question of the death of John Graves of Connecticut or New Hampshire remains unanswered.  However, even if it means erasing one of my “facts,” I find a great deal of satisfaction in untangling these mysteries. 

 I only wish I didn't create more along the way...

Lambert Eckerson: party animal?

     Over the years, I've come to think of my distant ancestors as not having much dimension.  While I admire them tremendously for facing the hard work, financial setbacks, and personal loss many of them experienced, none of what I learned about them suggested much time devoted to "fun."  As genealogists, we access things like census, land, court, and vital records, most of which make for matter-of-fact reading.  The pictures available to us are usually formal poses, with the subjects frozen into rather stern expressions.

     So, imagine the jolt I got, when I read the following article published in the Hornellsville (NY) Weekly Tribune of 20 October 1899.  It reprints an advertisement for a dance to be held in January of 1847, with tickets available "at the bar" for $1.50.  My ancestor, Lambert Eckerson, is listed among the managers of the committee hosting the event, which started at 1:00 p.m. and continued into the following morning.  The 1899 comment is that the venue was "the hottest old place in that section of the county." 

     Lambert Eckerson, 1821-1903, was almost two years away from his wedding to Harriet Graves at the time of the dance.  Would she have been allowed to attend such an event?  She would have been 21 at the time, but perhaps being in the vicinity of "the hottest old place" wasn't encouraged!

     Another smile when taking a peek into the lives of my ancestors.

    

Debt as an unexpected research tool

     After 32 years of researching my ancestors, I've begun to focus on organizing what I've already done, how well I've done it (or not), making digital copies of various materials, and creating a system for finding my way through the mountain of data.  Along the way, I've discovered that, in my earlier race backward in time collecting ancestors, there are many instances where I should have slowed down and consulted valuable resources for a more complete picture of the people, places, and periods in history.
     A recent research trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City gave me an opportunity to take a second look at some better resources.  Instead of acting on my first impulse, which is to yank a book of abstracts off the shelf, and check the index for my surname (we've all done it), I cranked through an unindexed, microfilmed copy of probate records for the years 1804-1817, in the Westminster District of Windham County, Vermont.  Vermont sometimes has more than one probate district per county, as is the case here.  These are the records of events written as they happened, not a later, typed version.  My original intent was to find something about a particular probate, but found an unexpected bonanza by accident.
     I stopped randomly on the pages of  records concerning the estate of Dr. Levi Sabin, in 1809, which gave incredible details of the community.  Among the lists of assets were notations of amounts due the estate by various individuals.  There were literally pages of these lists.  I suspect that the doctor had performed medical services on credit, and these made up a number of  notes due at the time of his death.  At the bottom of one page, I found my ancestor, Selah Graves, owing $14.05.  On the same page is his wife Sabra's brother, Ralph Roundy, as well as a member of the Emory family, which is another family connection.  Other pages list allied surnames, many of which appear next in western New York, where the next generation settled.
     The lists are a perfect snapshot of who lived in the community of Springfield, Vermont in the early 1800s. A name found on something like this is a good way to place a family on their trek in and out of communities between census years.  The FHC film number is 29150.
     I was interested in Dr. Sabin to the point of looking further into his life.  A number of applications have been submitted to the Sons of the American Revolution, based on the service of his father, Elisha Sabin.  Levi Sabin was born in 1764, died in 1808.  His marriage to Barbara Stearns occurred in 1790, in Rockingham, VT:  they produced a large family.  His estate appraisal also gives a couple of pages of medical books.
     Being in debt isn't a pleasant notion, but in this case, it proved a surprisingly useful tool; I plan to revisit this source for more happy accidents.

Size doesn't always matter...

     A fine new resource has recently been published, How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers, by Lisa Louise Cooke of Genealogy Gems.  In it, she reminds us of how many different ways the names of our ancestors might appear in the news, no matter how unlikely.
     An example appeared for my ancestor, Nathan Graves of Westmoreland, Cheshire Co., New Hampshire.  The Norwich Courier, published in Norwich, CT, printed the following article on 31 October, 1804,  page 3:  "Several apple trees belonging to Mr. Nathan Graves, of Westmoreland, were on the 19th of August last, scorched by fire, so that the apples were roasted on the trees; and within about four weeks after the same trees were discovered in as full bloom as in spring."  The same article was published in The Democrat, in Boston, 10 days later.
     Now, this tiny article isn't going to tell me a great deal about Nathan's forebears or descendants, or anything about his position in the community.  It does, however, indicate that he had enough resources to have his own apple trees.  It also illustrates what his neighbors read about him over 200 years ago, and how remarkable the sight of apple blossoms must have been at the end of a New Hampshire September! 

      

Lambert Eckerson-Harriet Graves marriage, 1848

     It's easy to collect masses of data about a family when doing genealogical research, and I'm among the guilty.  Too often, we are seduced by finding a pedigree chart online, and are tempted to accept it as fact.  Or, information gets copied over and over into various books and articles, many of which cite no sources.  The trick is to determine how much of what we stumble across can be backed up with primary evidence.  A case in point is the marriage of my ancestors, Lambert Eckerson and Harriet Graves.  A large file found online under the title "John Graves, 1635 Settler of Concord, MA and His Descendants, has some excellent clues.  Among them is the statement: "Harriet Graves, b. 20 July 1825, m. Lambert Eckerson (of Pike, NY), 1854, d. 5 Oct. 1880."  I can imagine that this information has found its way into dozens of family group sheets and publications, some of which I've collected.  However, a closer look can reveal a better result.

    During an era when marriage records were kept in many states at the county level, New York has few examples.  There are, however, a few pleasant exceptions.  A quote from the New Horizons Genealogy website states the following:   "New York State enacted a law in 1847 to require school districts to record Vital Records including birth, marriage and death records within their districts. However, some areas completely ignored the law and others adhered to it, but generally did not keep complete records, even for the years that were recorded. Unfortunately this law was terminated in 1849."

   A trip to Wyoming County in the year 2000 revealed how valuable making an on-site visit can be.  Among the holdings I was l was a slim volume of marriage records kept during the late 1840s.  Sometimes miracles DO happen:  the last entry for the year 1848,  was the marriage of Lambert Eckerson to Harriet Graves, on December 24.