What I knew that led me to think they were married and divorced:

• Nathan added Marcy to his family bible, which is located at the NEHGS, and later crossed her out.
• They had one daughter that I know of, my gggg-grandmother Nancy Ann (Aldrich) Darling.  Late in life, Nathan Aldrich and his third wife, Lois, were living with Nancy’s son Ellis and his family.
• In 1802, Nathan published an advertisement in the Providence Patriot disowning Marcy
• By 1809, Nathan and his second wife, Chloe, sold a piece of property to Marcy’s father Richard Ballou in Cumberland, Rhode Island, and from then on, lived in Wrentham, Mass.

What I was NOT finding was any evidence of Marcy’s death. I wondered how that first marriage ended.

In Rhode Island at that time, divorces occurred in the Supreme Court.  Records for the Supreme Court are stored at the Rhode Island Judicial Archives.  I wrote to the Archives last fall requesting that the file be looked up.  The answer came back that it could not be found.

More recently I decided to go in person, not knowing how much searching, if any, I would be allowed to do.  The Judicial Archives are located at 5 Hill Street, Pawtucket, R.I.  There is free parking across the street.

You enter and go up to the second floor, where you sign in.

When I explained that I was looking for historical records, staff member Andrew Smith was called to assist me.

I thanked Andrew for trying to help me via email a while back, and said that I was here with the same question.  We talked about different forms of the names, and the time and place for the possible divorce.  He checked the index again, no luck.  He was willing to bring me the handwritten volumes summarizing  ALL Supreme Court cases, in chronological order, from the period we were talking about.

I sat in a research room containing an old conference table which had probably graced a courtroom 75 or 100 years ago. I settled in to go, page by page, through the two volumes he brought me, which ran from approximately 1802-1807.

A true Rhode Island story

The first thing I noticed, as I paged through, was the set of judges on the R.I. Supreme Court at that time, which was repeated at the beginning of each “session” entry.

Peleg Arnold, Chief Justice

This is why taking the time to page through, record by record, can be so valuable.  If my theory about Marcy Ballou’s mother, Lucy Arnold, is correct, then Marcy was actually the great-niece of Chief Justice Peleg Arnold.  This is getting to be SO Rhode Island.

Less than halfway through the first book, I got lucky.  I FOUND THE DIVORCE.  Here it is:

[p. 220] “M. Aldrich”   Be it Remembered that at the present Term of this Court Marcy Aldrich wife of Nathan Aldrich of Cumberland in said County prefered her petition, praying for reasons therein stated, that a decree of divorce may be passed in her [p.221] favor dissolving the bond of matrimony now subsisting between her and her said husband and for alimony – after hearing the same. It is ordered, adjudged and decreed by the Court here, that the prayer thereof be granted.

Of course I noticed the mention of a “petition” and “for reasons therein stated”.  What was in the book was just a summary.  The real divorce petition should have been stored separately.  Unfortunately, that couldn’t be found.  Andrew did find one for a “Mary Ballou” which he showed me, but it wasn’t my case.

another divorce petition

Inside that petition:

Inside the other petition

You can see that if the Marcy Ballou/Nathan Aldrich petition could be found, it would likely contain 6 or 7 sheets of information about the marriage.  Andrew promised to try again to find it, but that has not been successful.

I did notice in the summary record that she received alimony.  After his newspaper ad refusing to pay any further debts of hers, I can only smile and perhaps, in a very not-based-on-evidence kind of way, assume this is some further proof that Chief Justice Arnold was her uncle.  His name appeared on the session she was involved in, but whether he recused himself, I have no way of knowing right now.

However, I now know that they actually divorced in 1803.  Nathan and his second wife moved a bit farther up the road into Massachusetts and had several more children.  Marcy’s parents were in Cumberland, so I suspect she stayed there, however briefly.  Later, there is evidence that Nancy Ann lived with her father.  Did Marcy die?  Remarry and move away?  Become debilitated somehow?

The R.I. Judicial Archives

I mentioned to Andrew that I was going to write about my visit in my blog.  He said it was ok to mention him.  If any genealogists want to access historical records from the archives, they can contact him directly:

Andrew Smith, Judicial Records Center, absmith  at  courts  dot  ri  dot  gov.

The Judicial Records Center web site gives more information about record holdings and making requests, but Andrew suggests you email him directly to save some time.  I would suggest anyone traveling to the center might want to email in advance to check on availability of records, and open hours.

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The Narragansett Historical Register was published under the leadership of its editor, James Newell Arnold, from 1882 to 1891.  Of the nine volumes, I own eight of the more recent reprints from Heritage Books, Inc of Maryland, 1994-1996.

Narragansett Historical Register, modern reprint

If you’re not lucky enough to own these colorful reprints, the original volumes are no longer under copyright and are available online.  I have linked to copies of those, below.

Originally published as a periodical, the set contains serialized transcriptions of local vital records from around Rhode Island, articles about local history, notes about local historians and authors, transcriptions of sermons and diaries, church history, a few illustrations and portraits, genealogical inquiries, short snippets, and quite a bit of editorial comment by Rhode Island’s favorite genealogist, James N. Arnold.  And yes, the occasional poem.  Mr. Arnold did a wonderful job of collecting short historical and genealogical articles from colleagues around the state.

One problem with this journal is that each annual volume has its own table of contents and index, making it a bit of a chore to look things up.  So I have built an additional single pdf document containing ALL table of content and index pages. From that, as a trial, I was able to find most occurrences of the word “Warwick” by opening the “Table of Contents …” pdf, below, and using “Find” under the Edit menu.  After finding a “Warwick” entry that interested me, I would have to open the pdf of the appropriate volume (look for the red typed page that precedes each Table of Contents/Index section to know which volume is being referred to).    A true (combined) index for all volumes would be much better, of course.

Illustration from volume 2, page 12

Here are some sample article titles, all from volume 3:

• The Hopkins-Ward Letters (by Prof Ray Green Huling)
• Gleanings from the Ancient Records of Bristol, R.I. (by Col. Charles A. Green)
• Joshua Tefft (by the editor)
• The Sherman Family (by Rev. David Sherman)
• The Records of Old Smithfield
• The Whiteman or Wightman Family (by Rev. James Pierce Root)
• The Arrest of Thomas W. Dorr

Here are the volumes.  Clicking on one will immediately begin to download the pdf.  The quality of the reproductions varies.

• Table of Contents and Index pages from ALL volumes
• Volume 1
• Volume 2
• Volume 3
• Volume 4
• Volume 5
• Volume 6
• Volume 7
• Volume 8
• Volume 9

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Providence Public Library

The question: how to find some obituaries or other stories from Providence newspapers.

Heading up to level one of the PPL

The PPL has a “Rhode Island Collection” featuring the only index I know of the Providence Journal.  The newspapers are available there on microfilm.  I quickly found the Rhode Island Collection Catalog on the First Level.

Catalog of the Rhode Island Collection

The catalog holds an index of major Providence Journal/Bulletin stories since 1900.  It also includes references to books contained in the Rhode Island Collection itself, even to sub-sections within books, and of course many of those resources are earlier than 1900.

Unfortunately it is unlikely to contain references to average ancestors. There were no references to obituaries of the ancestors I checked.  I have a gg-grandmother who was killed by a streetcar, and I know there are newspaper articles about it, but she is not in there either.

So I thought of my most famous ancestor since 1900, and that is my aunt’s husband, Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, William Wilberforce Douglas.  He was mentioned in about a dozen books, and here is the card for his Providence Journal index:

Prov Journal Index for W.W. Douglas

For instance, the first item is a biographical sketch, in the “Journal” (not Bulletin), 2-19-1905, page 22.

This is a reference to him contained within a book/periodical:

Mentioned in the Brown Alumni Monthly

From this you can see that a Rhode Island resource like the Brown Alumni Monthly is also indexed in the Rhode Island Collection.  That could be helpful.  All in all, I suspect the card catalog is better suited to important folks, or to historical topics.

Most books from the collection are available only by request.   But the catalog itself is always available during open hours, and some city directories and other materials were also available nearby.  The library, located at 150 Empire Street, has more information about the Rhode Island Collection.

So I turned my attention to the newspaper articles listed above, and also just by browsing through the papers on microfilm following the death dates, I found obituaries for some additional ancestors.

These are two of my great-grampa Russell Darling’s grandparents:

• Hannah (Andrews) Lamphere, The Providence Daily Journal, Tuesday, June 25, 1878, page 2.

Hannah Lamphere, 1878

“In this city, on the 22d inst., after a long and painful illness, Mrs. HANNAH, wife of Russell Lamphere.    Funeral services at the house, 32 Candace street, Tuesday morning at 8 1/2 o’clock.  Burial at Norwich Ct. “

• Russell Lamphere, The Providence Journal, Thursday January 20, 1898, page 6.

Russell Lamphere, 1898

“LANPHERE — In Eden Park, Auburn, on the 18th inst., Russell Lanphere, aged 81 years and 6 months.    Prayer at his daughter’s residence, 17 Blackmore avenue, Eden Park, Thursday, the 20th inst., at 2 p.m.  Relatives and friends are invited to attend.  Burial at Norwich, Conn.”

Two things are new to me in these obituaries.

1. The first is found in Russell’s 1898 obituary: my gg-grandmother, Emma, was not the daughter who lived in Eden Park. Nor was another daughter, Sarah, because she lived in Pawtucket with her husband, Burrington Anthony Capwell.  So this may help me find a daughter I have been unable to track, Caroline.  Or, there could possibly be a daughter I know nothing of?  A page by page perusal of the 1900 census for Eden Park did not turn up a likely answer.  But I have more ideas of things to try.
2. The second is that they are both buried in their old home, Norwich, Connecticut.  I did not know that.  Not finding anything on FindAGrave, I posed the question to Facebook friends.  Midge Frazel suggested I consult the town of Norwich.  When I did that I found a Department of Parks and Cemeteries, and a pdf list of the thousands of people buried in cemeteries maintained by the town.

AND THERE THEY WERE, in Yantic Cemetery.  Next time, a trip to Yantic Cemetery.

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Westerly, Rhode Island Town Hall

The question:  I am looking for property deeds or other information for Daniel Lanphere, who died in Westerly in 1808.

Westerly Town Hall

Daniel Lamphere is the father of my gggg-grandfather, Russell Lamphere, Sr.  I am seeking more clues about Daniel Lamphere’s parents.  I have Daniel’s 1808 probate records, which don’t help on that point, so I thought I would try to see where his property came from.

I was unable to find all the records I wanted, and time ran out, so I think I will just re-group and re-analyze everything I do have.  One highlight of the day was finding Russell Sr’s original birth record – I’ve only seen transcriptions.

Russell their Eldest Son born December the 2nd AD 1776.

The siblings are:  Russell Lanphere 1776, Marcy Lanphere 1782, William Lanphere 1785, Nancy Lanphere 1787, Triphena Lanphere 1789, and Daniel Lanphere 1793 (?).

I was thrilled to find this because there is quite a gap between Russell and his next sibling, Marcy, and I always wondered if it had been correctly transcribed.  I have never found a marriage record for the parents, Daniel and Nancy.  Her name is sometimes mentioned as Tefft.  The old Tefft genealogy seems to support this theory, but the years don’t quite work out.  So, any documentation I can get is good.

Coincidentally, I ran into some Tefft researchers at the town hall.  While they couldn’t help exactly, it sure was fun meeting them.  And they said something nice about people who write blogs!  What a good day.

Seeing this list makes me realize that I don’t know too much about most of these siblings; I have found them to be hard to trace.  I think it would be worthwhile to try some more.

The link to the post you are reading is:

http://wp.me/p1JmJS-xc

But sometimes it seems appropriate to bring up the existence of the blog, when talking with someone who shares an interest in the subject matter that the blog covers.

I’d like to offer some alternatives to the blank stare and backing out of the room which I have seen a few times …

• Pretend that the blogger has mentioned writing in some other media, and respond appropriately for that. For instance, if I mentioned I wrote for a newsletter, you would ask me what the topics were, how to access that, how long I’ve been doing it, etc.
• You don’t need to have your own blog to take an interest in mine. Blogging is not really a mutual activity. It is possible to follow many blogs, and make comments if you want, and never write one, or want to write one. In fact, bloggers make great blog readers, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
• Bloggers really only want readers. That’s it. Blog reading is free, low in calories, and not dangerous at all. So if you mumble something about how you should be reading that, that would be a polite, appropriate response. That’s all you have to do! We have no way of checking whether you ever read it, or not.

• Hope I’m not pushing it, but of course bloggers also love comments. If you have something to say in response to what you’ve read, or a question, please post. If it’s hard to get through the TSA-level security of most blog commenting systems, you could let us know that, too. We’ll try to fix that.
• Reading blogs, making a comment now and then, and, if possible, linking up with the bloggers on your topic of interest through social media actually gets you into a community. You don’t even need a blog to do that. After a very short while, people get to know and appreciate each other.
• Since most bloggers are incurable blog readers, they can easily answer your questions about how to access blogs, the easiest way to subscribe to them, and where to find the good ones. A blogger would really enjoy this discussion.
• Please understand that most blogs are informative, attractive, fun, and, from time to time, heartfelt and meaningful. At their worst they’re just a little uninteresting. Having no editorial board other than ourselves does not bring out the crazy as much as you might think.
• I suppose it’s common to imagine there is some commercial transaction that a blogger is REALLY looking for, cleverly disguised as a blog about a hobby or interest. The blogger may be running an independent business, but the blog is actually the free-to-all part of that business.
• If that last point wasn’t completely clear, just speaking for myself, I’m making nothing on this! For bloggers who do produce a tiny income stream, it’s just ads. And probably, ads related to a subject of interest to you. Ads or no, blogs are probably the least commercial thing on the internet.
• This is hoping for a lot, but the best conversation with a blogger involves suggestions about what you would love to see in a blog. Even if your ideas can’t be used right away, a blogger would love to know what people are looking for.

So next time you meet a blogger, be brave, stand your ground, ask a question or two, and repeat after me: “How nice, I’ll have to take a look at that.” That would really make my day!

1. Russell Lamphere files a claim for Civil War losses

John Turner Wait

Congressman John Turner Wait (Norwich, Connecticut) filed H.R.5889 on April 19, 1880 for War Claims relief for Russell Lamphere.  This past winter I was able to view the bill on microfilm at the Boston Public Library.

Have you ever sat at a microfilm machine in a quiet library and shouted “WHAT!!”  Well that’s the embarrassing thing that happened (and luckily no worse) when I saw the amount  of the claim – $50,000, in 1880.  I’m quite sure that no funds were ever received.  But it made me curious about three things:

H.R.5889 A Bill for the Relief of Russell Lamphere

• What was the business Russell owned?  I later learned, through microfilm, that around 1859-1860, he owned a tin and metalworking shop.  Was that it?
• On what was this huge claim based?  Thanks to the efforts of a “research buddy”, I learned that the National Archives does not have any details of this bill, other than the bill itself.  Whatever documentation had existed is not there.  I have not completely given up finding information somewhere else.  I’ve really only begin to look.
• What was Russell’s relationship to Congressman Wait?  I suspect Congressman Wait was related to Russell or possibly Hannah.  At the time the bill was filed (and refiled two more times) Russell lived in Providence, Rhode Island, not in Wait’s district at all.

Russell’s exact ancestry in the Lamphere line is something I have not settled yet, and Hannah’s ancestry is uncertain, so all clues are welcome.  There is one here — Congressman John Turner Wait shares a name with one of the five associates mentioned in Russell’s grandfather – (Daniel Lamphere’s) will – Wait Clarke. Clues like that may mean nothing.  But they’re kind of fun.

And one last issue confuses me – I think that those who filed claims for war reparations needed to be loyal northerners whose property was confiscated or destroyed by the northern army during the war.  I’m really not so sure that applies to Russell, since I’ve seen his name on a local militia sign-up.  Was he just lying?  Until and unless I find the backup of that bill, I’ll never know.

2. I find a link to a cotton mill

Tin shop aside, I’ve always wondered how Russell’s skills as a cotton mill overseer (noted in 1843 birth record for daughter and 1880 census) were used during his stay in Alabama. I suspect he may have used his metal-crafting skills to maintain machinery in mills.  I’ve never been able to connect him to a cotton mill in Alabama.  At last, I found something, but it’s pretty strange.  Is there any part of this story that’s not unexpected?

Last night I saw that there were some new Alabama vital records added to familysearch.org.  Although I have almost no official Alabama records, I always check, so I looked up Lamphere (and many other spellings).  I was surprised when something came up:

“Alabama, County Marriages, 1809-1950,”  William Lanphere, 1859

William Lanphere marriage

William Lamphere is Russell and Hannah Lamphere’s oldest son, born in Connecticut.  Apparently he married Bridget A. Hearn or Bridget O’Hearn – I’m not sure – on January 7, 1859.  I don’t think the $200 “bond” was anything but a formality; it’s on every record.  Note that the record is from Mobile County – far to the south of Tuscaloosa.

What I found on the back of the record was the surprising part:

William Lanphere marriage-page 2

The location of the wedding was the “Dog River Factory”.  Now I’ve had a lot of non-church weddings in my ancestor’s files, in fact, mostly non-church weddings.  But in a factory?  with the inelegant name of Dog River?

I thought about this for a while and realized that in the mid 1800′s many factories were surrounded by factory housing, thereby becoming villages, so I tried to find out about this Dog River Factory area.

I found two sources:

• a master’s thesis on antebellum cotton manufacturing (Miller, Randall M. The Cotton Mill Movement in Antebellum Alabama. New York: Arno Pr, 1978. Print. Preview available on Google Books)
• a report of an 1853 outbreak of yellow fever in the village (1853 YELLOW FEVER DEATHS NEAR THE DOG RIVER COTTON FACTORY & ST. STEPHEN’S ROAD. From: Report on the epidemic yellow fever of 1853. New Orleans. Sanitary Commission 1854) Available on the Alabama Pioneers website.

Caring for yellow fever patients, Mississippi, 1870

What I learned was the factory began as a cotton mill around 1849.  To quote from the second (1853, “Yellow Fever”) source:

The Dog River Cotton Factory is situated Southwest of Mobile, about five miles, and has within its inclosure of some twenty or thirty acres, about 300 operatives, including their families. The houses are built in a hollow square, and form a complete village.

From the first (“Cotton Mill” source):

[p. 73]  Two cotton factors, Garland Goode and William Ledyard, joined [Phillip] Phillips as directors and purchased the summer property of James Battle, on 35 acres on Dog River.

[p. 74] During the summer of 1849, the owners laid the cornerstone of Dog River Factory, and by April, 1850 the mill was ready to receive cotton machinery. …  The original factory contained 176 looms on the first floor, 40 cards on the second, and 5040 spindles on the third with additional machinery where necessary.  A motor-driven conveyor system transferred the work from one room to another.

[p. 75] The owners purchased the cotton machinery “of the most improved kind” and in “the very best style” from the Mattewan Works of New York …  By the end of the year 1850, Dog River Factory was in complete operation.  The factory manufactured Osnaburg, sheetings and yarns, which it marketed in Mobile.  The owners usually hired female white labor to run the spindles, although in 1850, most employees were men … The 1850 census reveals that with but two exceptions skilled positions at the Dog River Factory were occupied by natives of the British Isles or the Northern states.”

By 1853 a change in management and a fire (and resulting long wait for replacement machinery from the North) caused a delay in profitability until at least 1857.  More famously, the factory was the scene of a Civil War encampment, and may or may not have been a weapons factory during the war.  But that’s not a part of my story.

Girl working at cotton mill

All of this gives me some idea that the factory might have taken young William (born in 1840) on as a factory hand, although the factory seems so remote from his home in Tuscaloosa. Did they have a connection to it? A more remote possibility is that the wife was from Dog River Factory and they went down there for the wedding. The thing I am quite sure about is that Russell’s family did not live in Mobile during 1859-1860 since I have newspapers that show his residence in Tuscaloosa.

All of this evidence is contradicted by William’s appearance in the 1860 federal census with Russell’s family in Tuscaloosa (with no Bridget).  But there were very few Lampheres (of any spelling) in Alabama at that time, so I have little or no doubt that this William/Russell father and son combo are the right ones.  I wonder if by any chance, Bridget died.

Any actual evidence is extremely valuable to me. Dog River Factory ties the family, once again, to cotton mill work … I wonder what it means?

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• Hannah (Andrews) Lamphere’s parents, Jesse and Sarah Andrews
• Lydia (Minor) Lamphere’s parents
• the unknown Lamphere line from which my ggggg-grandfather Daniel Lamphere descends

are not all that separate, and will probably be solved, ultimately, in tandem.

I am descended from them in the following way:

• my great-grandfather Russell Darling
• –his mother Emma Luella Lamphere
• —-her father Russell Lamphere (and mother Hannah Andrews)
• ——his father Russell Lamphere (and mother Lydia Minor)
• ——–his father Daniel Lamphere (died 1808)

For a long time I thought that Daniel Lamphere was the son of another Daniel Lamphere of Westerly, R.I.  But I learned I was wrong after reading some wills from Westerly; the elder Daniel did have a son Daniel, but THAT Daniel had a wife named Wealthia, who signed a receipt.  My Daniel has a wife named Nancy (possibly Nancy Tefft).

Town Hall and Fire Station, Westerly

Reviewing the literature

I looked over the good sources for Lamphere information (all available to members on the NEHGS website, www.americanancestors.org):

• Scott Andrew Bartley. “George Lanphear of Westerly, Rhode Island and his Descendants.”  New England Historic Genealogical Register 153 (April 1999): 131-140.
• Scott Andrew Bartley. “George Lanphear of Westerly, Rhode Island and his Descendants, Part 2.”  New England Historic Genealogical Register 159 (October 2005): 333-340.
• Scott Andrew Bartley. “George Lanphear of Westerly, Rhode Island and his Descendants, Part 3.”  New England Historic Genealogical Register 160 (January 2006): 47-59.

Because of my interest in Shadrack Lanphere I consulted this article about his wife, Experience Read’s family:

• Jane Belcher. “William Reed of Weymouth and Boston Massachusetts, and Some of His Descendants – Continued from volume 40, #1.”  The Connecticut Nutmegger 40 (September 2007): 182-221.

At this point I realized that my most recent theory about descending from Shadrack Lanphere  (Daniel4, Oliver3, Shadrack2, George1), and several other theories,  just didn’t match what was in those articles.

I was wrong, so wrong

So I decided to go back to what I absolutely know and start over from there.

Here are some sections of my ggggg-grandfather Daniel’s probate record:

Westerly, Rhode Island Town Council and Probate.  Vol 6/8 1798-1811, p. 350-352.

At a Court of Probate held in Westerly in the County of Washington at the dwelling house of Nancy Lanphere (widow) Relict of Daniel Lanphere Late of said Westerly deceased. December 23, 1808 Being specially convened for the purpose of appointing an Administration on the Estate of the said Daniel Deceased.  Elias Cottrell, John Cross, and Joseph Stillman present holding said court.

Personally appeared before said Court the aforesaid Nancy Lanphere and declined administration on said deceased’s Estate and requested that her son Russell Lanphere (he being the eldest son of said deceased in these parts) might have the Administration of said Estate.  Which request being duly considered by said court is granted and the said Russell is thereupon appointed.  His complying with the law bonds given in Court.  The Court doth appoint John Cross, Maxson Lanphere, and Wait Clarke to appraise the Personal Estate of said Deceased and make an inventory thereof.  The said Maxson Lanphere and Wait Clarke personally appeared before sd. Court and Engaged.

Witness Jesse Maxson Jr. P. Clerk.

To All Persons to whom these Presents Shall come Greeting.

We the Court of Probate for the Town of Westerly in the County and State aforesaid.  By virtue of the power by law Vested in us do hereby give, grant and empower Russell Lanphere late of Westerly, but now residing in Norwich in the County of New London, State of Connecticut, Administrator, to Administer on all and singular the Goods, Chattels rights & credits of Daniel Lanphere late of said  Westerly deceased.  …

The estate totaled $153.83.

So I am curious about the people mentioned in the probate record.  Some of them may be acting in an official capacity, but are the others close connections?  I spent the day learning more about them.  Westerly was a fairly small town, and their names are well known.  Of all of them, I found direct connections to two:

• Maxson Lanphere – he descends in the Lanphere line this way:  (Maxson4, Nathan3, John2, George1).  His wife was Anna Champlin.
• Wait Clarke – his wife was Abigail Lanphere (Abigail5, Nathan4, Nathan3, John2, George1).   Abigail’s mother was Sarah Saunders.  A lifelong Seventh Day Baptist, Wait died in Niles, New York.

Old Westerly Seventh Day Baptist church, built circa 1680

There’s a book about this

Amazingly, after figuring this out, I managed to find a reminiscence about this branch of the family in the following book:  Scenes, Memories and Travels of 82 Years, and Short Sketches of the Lanphear and Potter Families by Ethan Lanphear, published by the author (c1900). The author was among the many Lanphere branches that headed to New York State in the 1800′s.  The Lanphear chapter begins on page 369.

This is how the book begins:

I WAS born in Westerly, R. I., March 2, 1818. My parents were Samuel and Hannah Lanphear. We moved with an ox team and sheet-covered wagon from Potters Hill, R. I., to Alfred, Allegany Co., N. Y. The country was mostly wilderness after crossing the Hudson River at Albany until we reached the end of our journey, five hundred miles. My parents then had three children, all boys, myself the youngest. My mother’s sister and her husband, Amos Crandall, took passage with us, the goods of both families being on the same wagon. We worked our way through the wilderness to Alfred in about eighteen or twenty days, camping out nights, or sleeping in the wagon, when we could not find logs huts to cover our heads. Then there was not a frame building in that town. The earliest settlers nearly all lived in logs huts or shanties. It was a wild country, and the settlers had to meet hard fare, barely living on wild game and wild fruit.

Ethan descends this way: (Ethan5, Samuel4, Nathan3, John2, George1).

Ethan Lanphear and his present wife – from the book, c1900

So what do we know?

Obviously, I don’t know what this means yet.  But the fact that a certain branch of the family gathered round for Daniel Lanphere’s inventory seems very significant to me.  Next steps:

1. Use every means possible to learn about the descendants of  John2 Lanphear.
2. Learn more about the ancestry of Wait Clarke.  It’s a story for another day, but I believe we have a later connection with the Wait family.

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The photo of the church is from a 1922 Tract courtesy of a site that provides a history of the Sabbath Day churches. 

When you grow up in New England you don’t hear much about slavery. Despite many Rhode Island “shipping” fortunes based in the slave trade, slavery seemed to be from a remote time and place. Rhode Islanders, more than most, had reasons to want to put those days behind them.   My mother’s Rhode Island roots are distant from the seafaring communities, so I don’t suppose we had much of a role in the slave trade.  Occasionally, around 1700, one sees a slave or two in their farming homesteads, but no more than that.

Or so I thought.  I think for one part of my Rhode Island family, slavery was very real.  One of the only things I knew about my great great grandmother, Emma Lamphere Darling, was that she was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She reportedly said, concerning her family’s move up to Rhode Island in her late teens, that her father had lost his business in the Civil War, and besides, a “white woman” wasn’t safe down there.

Emma Lamphere Darling, 1857-1927

I guess you would have to know my family to understand how strange this seems to me.  My parents deliberately rejected the racial prejudice they may have observed in childhood and set out, in the 1960′s, to make the world a more equitable and loving place.  They were involved in local civil rights efforts, and were adherents to the philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King.  Those are stories for another day, but my parents built a family that now contains grandchildren of all colors.  Two of those are my beautiful daughters, so my sympathies are closely aligned with my daughters’ interests, and their ancestors who were, undoubtedly, slaves.

But I think part of studying family history is uncovering everything, whether it’s flattering, happy, attractive, reasonable, or none of those things.  If you learn with great interest about the experiences of a Revolutionary War ancestor, wouldn’t you want to know about an ancestor who lived through an equally turbulent and polarizing time in American history?

The only artifact I have of Emma Lamphere is her picture, taken before the removal up north, and another picture which I believe to be her as a middle-aged woman.  No notes, letters, diaries, or possessions.  The usual records a genealogist might use reveal only glimpses of her, and may be the work of others: sadness about her mother’s death in 1878, and listing her oldest son as a resident of her household in Providence in 1910 even though he was living with his wife and two babies 10 blocks away.

possibly Emma, around 1903

I set out months ago to learn more about Emma’s father, Russell Lamphere.  I purchased some microfilm newspapers from the Alabama State Archives.  I did, indeed, learn more about Russell’s business; he had a tin shop.  What I also found were indirect clues to Emma’s life story.  No history class ever really prepared me for the atmosphere that was reflected in The Tuscaloosa Observer.

The roll I purchased commenced in 1860.  Stories of the day were detailed at length: the presidential election, John Brown’s trial, and the need for the South to become more self-sufficient (such as “Southern Insurance”, or boys withdrawing from northern colleges).  But every single page was also filled with strident and outraged defenses of slavery.  And not infrequently, the buying and selling of slaves was clearly illustrated.

From the Independent Monitor, January 14, 1860, vol. 23, no. 39. p.1:

FLOGGED AND ORDERED TO LEAVE – The Lexington (Miss.) Advertiser of Friday last has the following:

We understand that a man by the name of Miller was unceremoniously stripped, flogged and ordered to leave the neighborhood, by several citizens of Tobula on one day during last week.  Although Miller claimed to hail from Perry county, Ala., still his conduct and intimacy with the negroes in the neighborhood, created the belief that he was a secret abolition emissary. We learn that he passed through this place a few days ago.  He alluded, we understand, to the whipping he received, in good humor, although he complained that the strap with which he was whipped “hurt awfully”.

From the Independent Monitor, January 21, 1860, vol. 23, no. 40. p.2:

MORE AFRICANS COMING. – The Sea Coast (Miss.) Democrat learns from good authority that a cargo of African slaves is expected in Ship Island Harbor the latter past of the present month.  They will be landed without secrecy, the consignees trusting to the predominant sentiment of Mississippi for an acquittal, in the event of a government prosecution.

From the Independent Monitor, April 5, 1861, vol. 24, no. 52. p.3:

ADMINISTRATOR’ SALE    By virtue of the order of the court of probate, of Tuscaloosa County, the undersigned Administrator of the Estate of William L. Bealle, deceased, will sell at PUBLIC SALE, at the Plantation lately occupied by said decedent, in said county, on the 17th day of December next, the following slaves, belonging to said estate, viz: Marin, Mary, Harriet, Mipta, Ellen, Henry Fox, Henry Cody, Moses, Jake, George, Dub, Tom, Alfred, Orry, Mary Ann, Sophia, Francis, Evaline, Edmund, Tol, Ad, Richmond, Steph, Martha and her child Tiny; together with other personal property belonging to said estate, to wit: Horses, Mules, Oxen, Cattle and Hogs, and one Carriage, one Hack, Wagons and Farming Utensils.

TERMS OF SALE:  Notes with two approved securities, payable first of March, 186(?), with interest from the day of sale.

Charles S. Bealle, Administrator

“The slave sale is indefinitely postponed”

As 1860 turned to 1861 the war went from a skirmish to a drawn out  battle.  The paper suggested that any young man who had not enlisted be derisively “bonneted” by the local women.  Jeers at the north filled much of the paper.  I realize now that my ggg-grandfather Russell Lamphere could never have remained loyal to his Connecticut roots in that atmosphere.  I have a record of an “R. Lamphere” enlisting in a  regiment at the Tuscaloosa City hall on April 25, 1860 in response to a call from the Alabama legislature … I suppose that was him.

As for Emma, she was born in 1857 so the Civil War and the slaves being freed were among her earliest memories.  I can only imagine the talk she grew up with, of hating the north, resenting the growing destruction and poverty all around her, and fearing these people who suddenly had gained the rights of human beings. Given what I read in the paper, an impressionable young girl could easily be convinced of the righteousness of the south’s cause.  How much she must have resented her pragmatic father for turning about and returning to New England!

Emma grew up in an atmosphere of hate and oppression, and war.  The defense of slavery is soul-crushing for all parties, and it’s something that she lived with.  She was probably insecure about her northern roots, and once up north, lonely for her southern roots.  All in all I suspect Emma’s happiness was a casualty of that war.  In the end she died too young, leaving children and grandchildren to mourn her.  But somehow I know that the fact that her descendants stepped far beyond racism to a more loving, peaceful place is something that she would not resent.  I suspect her life was hard enough that she would not wish it on anybody.  So Emma, we are not living your life.  But we are living your legacy.

The link to this post is:  http://wp.me/p1JmJS-wm

]]> http://onerhodeislandfamily.com/2012/05/03/the-legacy-of-the-girl-from-alabama/feed/ 5 onerhodeislandfamily Emma Darling Lamphere, 1857-1927 Emma adult Flogged and Ordered - Jan 14 1860 Mississippi slave arrival - Jan 21 1860 p2 Estate auction Apr 5 1861 p3 woman - flag http://onerhodeislandfamily.com/2012/04/22/the-brick-wall-stories-i-find-edward-baldwin/ http://onerhodeislandfamily.com/2012/04/22/the-brick-wall-stories-i-find-edward-baldwin/#comments Sun, 22 Apr 2012 15:04:52 +0000 Diane Boumenot, One Rhode Island Family http://onerhodeislandfamily.com/?p=1945 ]]> I am always curious about how others solve a long-standing problem, so I’d like to share my recent experience.

A few weeks ago I had a remarkable breakthrough on my Baldwin line.  Some Massachusetts town records were put on Ancestry.com and I managed, for the first time, to find the 1933 death record of my mother’s great aunt Hattie Baldwin Clapp.  The death record listed her father’s place of birth as Townsend, Massachusetts.  I knew he was born in Massachusetts, but never knew the town.

Here is the progression of how Edward Baldwin’s background came to light.

What I knew

• I knew through family lore, obituaries, and marriage records that my great grandfather Miles Edward Baldwin was born in Belmont, Allegany County, New York.  I gradually pieced together that Miles had three siblings, only one of whom, Aunt Hattie, was a full sibling.  The other two siblings were children of their mother Catherine’s by a previous marriage.
  

  Miles Edward Baldwin, Sr., circa 1900, in Providence

• I knew that Miles and Hattie’s father was named Edward Baldwin.  Their mother is sometimes referred to as Catherine Youngs and sometimes Catherine Spaulding.  I have never found birth records for Miles and Hattie; to the best of my knowledge there are none.
• The first actual evidence I found of Edward was a poorly crafted 1860 federal census record for Belmont (“Amity”) New York.  I had to go page by page to find this “Baldin” record.
  

  Ed, Cate, Anna Jean, and Hattie, 1860

• From this record, I learned that Edward Baldwin was born in Massachusetts.  I spent the next two years gradually narrowing down my guess to Worcester and Middlesex counties based on subsequent events in the lives of the various family members. Catherine married for the third time in 1870.  So I knew they were divorced, or he died, by then.

Things that threw me off the track

• In the standard “Baldwin Genealogy from 1500 to 1881” by Charles Candee Baldwin, and his Supplement, there are dozens of Edward Baldwins.  On two occasions I went through them all. The book is also divided into branches; in the end my branch turned out to be the Billerica branch.  I had wandered through the Billerica and Woburn branches, but nothing seemed right.   As it turns out, he is mentioned in the book, but is incorrectly referred to as Edmund.
  

  listed as "Edmund" in the Baldwin Genealogy book

• Once in a while, one of the descendants would indicate that Edward was born in New York State.  And given the poor quality of that entire Amity, New York 1860 census enumeration, I hated to rely on its indication of “Massachusetts”.  After all, the enumerator missed, or wasn’t told, that Catherine was born in England.  Plus, many Baldwin branches are from Connecticut.  So, I wasted time on other states.

What solved it

• This is from Aunt Hattie’s 1933 death record:
  

  A place of birth for Edward Baldwin - Townsend, Massachusetts

• I still haven’t found a birth record for Edward (not surprisingly, because I think I would have found that long ago).  But what I did find in Townsend was a young couple, Eli and Polly Baldwin, who both died very young; Edward at 29 and Polly at 33.  In their brief marriage they had two children, Catherine (coincidentally) and Edward.  The Middlesex County Probate index [through NEHGS, membership may be required] cited some guardianship records, so off I went to the NEHGS to see that on microfilm.  It wasn’t a smoking gun, exactly, but pointed to which of Polly’s siblings  the children went to.  I’m following up on all the relatives.
• Why do I think Eli and Polly may be the parents?  Several reasons:

1. Polly’s maiden name is Spaulding, and in fact Townsend is filled with Spauldings. I don’t know what to make of that, but it sounds like a clue to me.
2. Edward and Catherine (wife) had 2 children, Miles and Harriet.  Polly has 8 siblings.  Two of them are named Miles and Harriet.  Harriet never married, and eventually had (sister) Catherine living with her.  Miles was an up and coming doctor, who became quite wealthy, and is buried in Townsend.
3. Eli was paid by the town of Townsend for making 2 caskets in 1831 [Vital Records of Townsend, NEHGS database - membership may be required].  In 1860, Edward was a lumber planer.  The skills couldn’t have been handed down directly, since the father died when Edward was a baby, but it seems vaguely appropriate.
4. Edward’s life was, I suspect, short and chaotic.  Born in Massachusetts, married to a divorced woman, living in poverty and working at a lumber mill in western New York by age 27, back in Massachusetts eventually, possibly dying an obscure death at a young age … it does not surprise me at all to think he may have been an orphan.

The clues I missed

• I always tried to make a connection between the last names of Miles and Baldwin, given that I knew one of the children was named Miles.  I even, through searching, managed to quantify the appearance of those last names in an 1830 census collection, town by town in Massachusetts.  In that scenario, the town with the most Baldwins/Miles turned out to be Gardner, Mass and nearby Baldwinville.  As it turns out, those are only about 10 miles from Townsend, but searching in those exact locations didn’t turn anything up. WHAT I MISSED was that there was a connection between that mysterious “extra” maiden name of the wife, “Spaulding”, and Baldwin.  I never thought of that.  WHAT I ALSO MISSED is that he could have been named for someone with the first name of Miles.
• I knew (wife) Catherine remarried in Sterling, Mass in 1870, so she must have been divorced or widowed.  I never tried hard enough to find a death record for Edward during the period 1860-1870 in Massachusetts.  WHAT I MISSED was a record for an Edward Baldwin who died sometime during February, 1867, in Northbridge, Mass.  No details at all are given in the town record so clearly whoever this was was not well known there.  Even though this was in my “guess” counties, I never found it.  Frankly, it all seems so mysterious, I wonder if I may find a newspaper article somewhere.

Lots of things I still don’t know

• Where did Catherine (the wife) come from?  Was she an English orphan, adopted by some Spauldings?  Did she meet and marry her first husband, with the utterly common name of William Bennett, near Townsend, and head off to western NY?
• Did Edward follow her out there? I know Catherine and William Bennett divorced, because their son lists him as alive in an 1890 document.  Was their relationship the cause of Catherine’s divorce from Bennett, or did he come out to help her pick up the pieces after the divorce?  Or, did he wander west on his own, and met her for the first time?  Why does my family story always sound like a soap opera?
  
• Did Edward have family out in Belmont?
• When and why did they return to Massachusetts?  Was Edward trying to avoid the draft, perhaps?  I see no evidence that he served in the Civil War.

What’s next?

I suspect further research into all the siblings of Eli and Polly, some local newspaper research, exploring the cemeteries in Townsend and some research in Belmont, NY, will, somewhere, somehow, provide a direct link between this new theory and the parts of the story that I know.  But I’m not sure I will ever pin down the death of Edward Baldwin, for sure.

If you accessed this through a feed, this post is found here.

1. The 1890 federal census pages are gone except for a few segments. They burned in a fire back in the 1920′s before they were reproduced in any other form.
2. Spelling means little or nothing before about 1860. Usually, the documents that survive today weren’t even written by your ancestor. If the clerk could string some letters together and in the near future people would know that referred to your ancestor, he did his job.
3. FamilySearch.org is helpful for finding vital records, and free.
4. There are a surprising number of inaccuracies in the federal census records. Sure, some of it is carelessness by the census takers, but some of it is out and out lying by your ancestors. I’m not sure I have one female ancestor since 1850 who gave her correct age in the census. They always shaved a bit off. And then there’s the surprising case of my gg-grandparents listing an adult daughter in their household. Their real daughter, Jessie Billington and her husband, upstairs, list 8 and 12 year old offspring – but they never had any children. My theory is they had taken in a local single mother and her children, and were perhaps hiding this from the landlord. Anyone have another theory?
   

   There is no Jenette, or John and Mildred

5. States have census records, too; often but not only in the “5″ years between federal censuses. For each state, the census schedule, questions asked, and survival of the records vary widely, so you have to go state-by-state to research this.
6. It’s all about sources. The style of footnotes may be something you will put off worrying about. But recording where you found something, or checking out where others found things, is crucial. The time you really learn this is the first time you find something SO wrong on the web that everyone else accepts as fact, or the first time you follow someone’s footnote and find a valuable book or article you weren’t aware of.
7. The cultural norms we take for granted about the”olden days” are not all that true. People did sometimes sue other family members, they did sometimes get divorced, and they did sometimes have a child before marriage. Well – sigh – my ancestors, anyway.
8. Newspaper articles, wills, obituaries and letters are at the heart of genealogy. At first, you wonder why people would spend years compiling names and dates. Then those names and dates lead you to the real stories you never knew about, and you get it.
9. All old pictures are valuable, and even the undocumented ones may be decipherable by comparing identified pictures of those family members.
10. And lastly, one of the first things you learn about genealogy is that most of your family members are not going to care all that much. But a few will, so be good to them.

Can you remember the first things you figured out?