How could Elizabeth (Bassett) Porter (1798-1855) be included in her parents' family Bible record but never mentioned as an heir in her father's 1876 probate proceedings -- especially when New York law required all heirs to be named? In the July issue of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record I tell the story and try to cope with the conflicting evidence by confirming Elizabeth's ongoing role in the family, and looking into how probates were handled in Madison County, New York, in the 1870s.
NYGBS members can read this and other new and continued articles at the society's a preview and await the physical issue's arrival in their genealogy library. Non-members can become members here.
web site; non-members can access
Elizabeth was the husband of "Col." Harry Porter (a private in the War of 1812) and the oldest sister of my mother-in-law's great-grandfather Samuel Clark Bassett. One curiosity of this story is that Harry and Elizabeth in the late 1830s settled in the same small Illinois town where I grew up in the 1950s -- and are buried three blocks from our house!
Like most NYGBR articles, this one has a double purpose: to resolve a knotty problem (highlighting a prized New York record type) and to document a New York family. The documentation (genealogical summary) occupies more space than the problem-resolution part and is continued in later issues. Many thanks to editor Karen Mauer Green for her relentless help and encouragement in bringing this project into print.
Harold Henderson, “A Missing Heir: Reconnecting Elizabeth (Bassett) Porter to Her Parents, Lewis and Dorcas (Hoxie) Bassett” [Part 1], New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 145 (July 2014): 165-184.
Harold Henderson, "New York Thursday with Elizabeth (Bassett) Porter's Mystery in the July NYGBR," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 14 August 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]
Thursday, August 14, 2014
New York Thursday with Elizabeth (Bassett) Porter's mystery in the July NYGBR
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Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Two Simple Things Deeds Can Do
They can connect a common-name person in one place to another:
In 1840, Harry Porter "of Farmington, Fulton County, Illinois," sold property in Clarkson, Monroe County, New York, where he had lived for almost twenty years before heading west. This contemporary record confirms other records left at much later dates by his descendants.
They can provide evidence of death in times and places where vital records are scarce:
In 1823, Oliver Lee sold part of lot 29 in the Town of Warsaw, Genesee County, New York, to Matthew Hoffman. It was described as "beginning at a stake in the north line of Land owned by Chauncey L. Sheldon..." Nine years later, when Hoffman sold the same land to Isaac C. Bronson, it was described as "beginning at a stake in the north line of land owned by the late Chauncey L. Sheldon deceased..."
In this case, the deeds' information can be confirmed. Dr. Chauncey L. Sheldon has a beautiful and well-preserved 1828 gravestone in the Warsaw Pioneer Cemetery. It's documented and imaged on Find A Grave -- along with other unsourced material that does not appear on the stone. Since 1841 the graveyard has been in Wyoming County, New York, but when Chauncey died it wasn't.
Confirmation doesn't mean the deeds are unnecessary. No important genealogical conclusion should rest on a single piece of information, any more than a chair should have only one leg.
Harold Henderson, "Two Simple Things Deeds Can Do," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 July 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]
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Sunday, July 8, 2012
How Harry Porter's first deed was recorded in a county he had nothing to do with: Beware peripheral vision!
Last week I spent some time focusing on Harry Porter, the husband of my mother-in-law's great-grand aunt Elizabeth Bassett. Back in 2009 he had only been in my genealogical "peripheral vision." In other words, my interest in him had extended only to his relationship to another (non-problematic) relative. He wasn't crucial to that project, but I was just interested enough at the time to jot down the book and page numbers for his property transactions, as recorded in Orleans and Monroe Counties, New York.
Now that I'm focusing on him, I went back and copied and read the deeds themselves. What a revelation! I had always wondered what he'd been doing in Orleans County in 1825 when he never showed up there again.
Well, he was never there. That deed was made in 1819, when Harry bought 1.5 acres in the Town of Murray in Genesee County. Later that year, the Town of Clarkson was split off from the Town of Murray. In 1821, the Town of Clarkson and more was taken from Genesee County and went into the making of Monroe County. In 1824, Orleans County was split off from Genesee County, taking with it the smaller Town of Murray. Harry and his family lived for the next 15-20 years in Clarkson, where he'd made his first land purchase and where all his later land dealings took place as far as I know.
(If you're getting dizzy, take the map cure. For the county part of these boundary changes, check out the maps at the on-line Atlas of Historical County Boundaries from Chicago's Newberry Library.)
In 1854, some diligent person from Orleans County went down to Batavia (the Genesee County seat) and laboriously copied out by hand every pre-1824 deed recorded in the area that later became Orleans County -- or what he thought was the area. The Town of Murray was in Orleans County in 1854, of course, but not the part of it that became Clarkson. So Harry's 1819 deed was erroneously re-recorded in Orleans County after the fact, in Deed Book A.
Fortunately, the book was labeled properly and the recopied deed included mention of the book and page in Genesee County records. Even more fortunately, when I in turn went to Batavia, I was pleased to find that the original 1819 recording of the deed was far more legible than the 1854 copy!
The rewards of going to the original just keep coming.
Harold Henderson, "How Harry Porter's first deed was recorded in a county he had nothing to do with: Beware peripheral vision!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 8 July 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]
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Monday, May 7, 2012
Proving In-Laws without Direct Evidence (NGSQ)
If there's anything harder than finding parents without direct evidence, it's finding in-laws! That's the task addressed by Nancy Peters, CG (SM) in her article in the December issue of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly.
Mr. and Mrs. Conrad Peters lived in Monroe County, New York, for most of the second half of the 19th century. There was no marriage record -- indeed, no document of any kind naming her parents -- and the records that did exist sometimes called her Gertrude, and other times Catherine.
Combining civil and church records with a knowledge of German culture and naming patterns resolved that last issue and showed that Conrad had just the one wife. And an 1847 baptismal record named the married parents as Conrad Peters and Gertrude Eberle. The Peters and Eberle families lived near one another and associated in church affairs and baptisms. In the Civil War, Conrad Peters and George Eberle served together in Company I of the 108th New York volunteer infantry, but George died at the notorious Andersonville prison in 1864.
George's parents were named in his 1843 baptism as Christopher Eberle and Catherina Kunz. In 1865 the federal government paid Catherine Peters a benefit due to heirs of deceased volunteer soldiers. George had never married and his parents were deceased at this time. Since New York law provided that siblings would inherit from those who died without a will, parents, or children, this payment strongly implied that Catherine was his sister and Christopher and Catherina therefore her parents.
Arguably, this might have been enough to establish Conrad Peters's in-laws, but the author found baptismal records for this Eberle family in Leimen, Waldhambach -- now better known as part of the Palatinate. Christopher Eberle's handwritten signatures on documents there and in New York helped prove it was the same family, and the church record included a Gertrude born to the couple at the right time to be Mrs. Conrad Peters.
All the evidence now pointed the same way, except for one contradictory item. A surviving fragment of German civil records said that that baby Gertrude had died the same day! On closer examination, though, the civil recorder had probably miscopied a priest's note that referred to a burial record for an older man on the next line of the church register.
Note that this last conclusion was not made in a vacuum. Mistakes in records are always possible; what made it a probability in this case was the weight of all the other evidence linking the families and linking Gertrude Eberle to Conrad Peters.
Nancy Peters, "Using Indirect Evidence to Find In-Laws for Conrad Peters of Monroe County, New York," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 99 (December 2011): 281-93.
Harold Henderson, "Proving In-Laws without Direct Evidence," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 7 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]
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