Wordless Wednesday: Grandma Ingalls-- Mary Fay Ingalls?

 

Wordless Wednesday: Mary Fay aka Grandma Ingalls

 

Wordless Wednesday- Fitzwilliam New Hampshire

Wordless Wednesday- Catamont Tavern Site & Bennington Monument

Saturday Challenge- Where Were They in 1900?

A typical scene*

From an old GeneaMusings by Randy Seaver.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to:

1)  Where were your ancestors in the year 1900?  Make a list with their ages and location (with the street  address if you know it).

This assignment shouldn’t be too hard I thought, I’ll only do my direct ancestors, not aunts, uncles, or cousins. Right. In the year, 1900, I had four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, nine 2-great-grandparents, and one 3-great grandmother alive! Well, here goes:

Grandparents

William Ward lived in Scipio with his parents at age 13. This undoubtedly would have been the Mapleton area.

Frances Ingalls Ward at age 11 would have been on the Fort Drum military base. No that’s not right. Fort Drum didn’t even exist yet. She lived near North Wilna on her father’s farm. Today the area has been absorbed into Fort Drum.

Marion Wooster was age 4. He had been born in Iowa, but in 1900 was living back east where the family had come from on the outskirts of the hamlet of Lysander in northern Onondaga County.

Alice Valentine Jennings Wooster would have been 7 and living on her father’s farmland in Ireland.

Great-Grandparents

Charles Ingalls at age 36 owned a farm in the town of Wilna Jefferson Co, New York, just north of the settlement of North Wilna. The previous year he had lost his first wife (my great-grandmother) in childbirth and had not yet remarried.

William Jennings at age 51 and his wife, Sarah (Damery) Jennings age 38 were living on their farmland in Keelinga, Leap, County Cork Ireland. This is a small community in southwest Cork not far from the sea. One of their granddaughters and her husband own it today.

John Ward was 46 and his wife, Maria (Titus) Ward was 42 that year. They lived in the town of Scipio on a farm that we believe was near the four corners of Mapleton.

Verner Wooster age 37 and his wife, Edith (Duff) Wooster age 36 would have been on one of their farms. This one was in Lysander, New York, but they still had a farm in Iowa that they would travel back and forth to over the years.

2-Great-Grandparents

John Brown age 65 and Anna (Wright) Brown age 64 were living in Antwerp not far from their son-in-law Charles Ingalls, recent widower of their daughter Achsah. Antwerp is the town next to Wilna and the homes were about 5 miles or so apart.

James Duff was age 64 and Nellie (Johnson) Duff was 53 this year. Their farm was in Hampton Township of Dakota County, Minnesota. This is south of Minneapolis.

William Ward was age 72 and his wife, Mary Ann (Blackwell) Ward was 74 in 1900. They lived in Scipio, probably on the property that Mary Ann owned at Manchester Road and Cork Street.

Mary Fay Ingalls was 60. A widow, she lived with her son Charles in Wilna, undoubtedly helping him with his children.

 

Elizabeth (Tift) Wooster, a widow at age 73, she is living in her son, Verner’s home in Lysander as mentioned above at the time of the census. She appeared to consider Verner’s home as her base while visiting her children for extended times. Seven of her ten children were surviving in 1900.

Lodema (Tobias) Titus, at age 69 lived in Ledyard, with her oldest son, Daniel. He is listed as the head of household on the census. However, this was the home she had occupied for many years not far from the Great Gully that separates Ledyard from Springport in Cayuga County.

3-Great-Grandmother

Mary (Aubin) Johnson was age 85. One of the two original white women to settle in Washington County, Minnesota, she was now living in her daughter Emma’s home in Castle Rock, Minnesota. Emma and her husband, William Duff, lived not far from their siblings Nellie and James Duff mentioned above.

Despite the number of people to account for, this was not hard to figure out. Prior research has made me aware of the general vicinity of the places that my ancestors had lived. The census for 1900 reminded me of where they were living; particularly for those that had, had different homes over the years or that were staying with children.

*The picture is from Lancaster Pennsylvania taken this year while on vacation. But as they all lived on farms in 1900, this would have been typical of what they might have seen out their windows.

Bennington Museum- Bennington Vermont

Address: 75 Main St, Bennington, VT 05201

Phone: (802) 447-1571

Website: https://benningtonmuseum.org/

The Entrance

On the edge of the little town of Bennington, not far from the monument to the battle that actually took place in New York State is the little museum with a hidden research library. Tucked in almost behind the original cemeteries and just around the corner from where the Catamount Tavern of Ethan Allen fame stood, you might easily overlook the possibilities housed within there. However, if you have ancestors in this southern corner of Vermont, or just an interest in the area, do not forget to stop in to the museum.

The museum itself had a wonderful display of the life and art of Grandma Moses who lived in this area, a room devoted to the Battle of Bennington and other exhibits.

Hours: The museum is open June through October 7 days a week from 10 am to 5 pm. February through May, November and December Thursday through Tuesday, 10 am to 5 pm.

The research library is open Monday and Tuesday 1pm to 5pm, and Wednesday by appointment.

Appointments can be made through a phone call or email at library@benningtonmuseum.org

Admission to the library is free with the $10 admission to the museum itself.

Photocopying is done by the librarian and is 25 cents each. Many of the files must be pulled by the librarian as the bookshelves are open, but the file cabinets are restricted.

The library is tucked away in a corner of the second floor of the museum. Inside you will find the typical research for any area, cemetery listings, histories of the area as well as information on surrounding areas in both New England and New York.

Why would a Vermont library have much information on New York? Well, the actual battle of Bennington took place in Walloomsack, NY about 16 miles to the northwest. And of course, heading directly west on Rte. 9, you will be in NYS in less than 4 miles, so many of the families in this area lived and worked in both states. Also, Vermont was originally disputed territory, claimed by both New York and New Hampshire.

While there I found out some more information on a distant cousin of mine- a half first cousin of one my ancestor’s. Even though distantly related, I have been interested in this man, Stephen Fay and his family, because it is an example of how even though we think our families are totally ordinary and maybe not that interesting, there are connections to famous events scattered throughout. Often, this is the best way to peak the interest of someone not into genealogy as well. For those not familiar, Stephen Fay owned a tavern in Bennington known as the Catamount Tavern. Today, a statue of a catamount (a large wild cat) stands in front of the site. During the time of the Revolutionary War, this tavern was a popular meeting place of Ethan Allen and it is from here that the Green Mountain Boys set out to battle for freedom. A son of Stephen’s, Dr. Jonas Fay, was a close friend of Ethan’s and even named a son after him.

Site of Catamount Tavern

Additionally, I found some tidbits of information on another old tavern. This one is across the border in the town of White Creek in New York State. Seth Chase, a 5^th great-grandfather on another line owned a tavern here before the Revolutionary War. In the library I found information that mentioned the owners of the property in the 1950s. More research needs to be done on this property, but with some of these leads I have been able to locate where the inn was and a house that sits there today may actually be the same structure.

Age Span of Great-Great Grandparents-- Saturday Challenge

It’s time to catch-up on last weekend’s Saturday Challenge from Randy Seaver:

1)  We each have 16 great-great grandparents.  How did their birth and death years vary?  How long were their lifespans?  

2)  For this week, please list your 16 great-great grandparents, their birth year, their death year, and their lifespan in years.  You can do it in plain text, in a table or spreadsheet, or in a graph of some sort.

Lodema, the oldest of my gg-grandparents

GG Grandfather -

Ward               William                       1 Feb 1830           31 Aug 1902        72 years

Titus                Samuel H                    13 Oct 1825         10 Mar 1874        48 years

Brown             John Robert                 18 Nov 1835        24 Oct 1917         81 years

Ingalls             Joseph D                     19 Dec 1834        21 Aug 1894        59 years

Duff                James                          26 Mar 1836        26 Feb 1926        89 years

Wooster          Barclay                        29 Aug 1819        3 Mar 1895          75 years

Damery           James “John”            1812                     1896                    84 years

Jennings          Richard J                                                                              unknown

GG Grandmother -

Blackwell         Mary Ann                    14 May 1828       11 Aug 1902        74 years

Tobias             Lodema                       16 Oct 1831         28 Mar 1926        94 years

Wright             Anna S                        12 Dec 1836        13 Feb 1923        86 years

Fay                  Mary Ann                    11 Nov 1840        24 Jul 1906          65 years

Johnson           Mary Ellen “Nellie”   25 Dec 1847        12 Feb 1921        73 years

Tift                  Elizabeth Hannah        11 May 1826       24 Mar 1906        79 years

Wolfe              Elizabeth                      1823                     abt 1862               39 years

Fuller               Mary                                                                                    unknown

There is a couple in Ireland, as you can see, who I have no idea of their birth and death years. There is much research to do in that area, but few records that can be found from a distance. This is one of the reasons that every time it is announced about new Irish records available online, I hold my breath and hope that they are Protestant and more specifically Church of Ireland (Anglican) records.

The oldest and the youngest were both female at 94 and approximately 39 years. Elizabeth Wolfe probably died either in childbirth or shortly after the birth of her daughter, Sarah Damery, my g-grandmother.

The average age for males of that generation was 72.5 and females 72.85. It is remarkable how close together the averages came out.

Where They Were Born

Fellow genealogist J. Paul Hawthorne started a trend on Facebook earlier today. Playing along with this, these are the birthplaces of my ancestors up to great-great-grandparents. I also have lived my entire life in New York State. So, despite this state being such a black-hole for finding information, you can see why most of my research is done here.

There's also another black-hole not so evident within this chart. With all the Catholic parish registers and such appearing for Ireland, you might think that line is getting very easy to research. Well, considering not a single one of the people born in Ireland likely ever crossed through a door into a Catholic church let alone created a record within them, I'm still waiting for the Church of Ireland (Anglican) records to become more easily accessed. When/if they finally come online- don't expect to hear from me for awhile!