Patriotic Service in the Revolutionary War

Honoring Israel Standish (1721-1802) and his stand on principles

Patriotic Service in the Revolutionary War <h4>Honoring Israel Standish (1721-1802) and his stand on principles</h3>

With the arrival of the 250th Anniversary of the founding of the United States there’s renewed interest in all our patriot ancestors, and the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) have been helping us establish the genealogical lines to those patriots for well over 100 years. The most common route to establishing a patriot ancestor is establishing them as soldiers in the Revolutionary War, and we have 20 or so DAR ancestors who followed that pattern. But we want to examine one ancestor who highlights a lesser-known path to being recognized as a patriot by the DAR: Patriotic Service.

Patriotic service covers those nascent Americans who didn’t pick up arms to fight the British, but still provided material support for the revolution. This could include providing funds or supplies to the Continental Army, or signing an oath of allegiance or a petition to support the cause.

In 1777 the US Revolution wasn’t going particularly well for the States. The siege of Boston had been broken in 1776, but the ousted British troops had sailed to New York and established control over the city, soon driving General Washington’s army off of Long Island and then out of New York completely. The British had captured a large number of prisoners of war from various battles and established their largest prisons in the New York city area. The largest, and most notorious was the Sugar House on Manhattan but the prison ships anchored off Long Island held just about as many POW’s. Conditions in these prisons can only be called horrific. There were no sewage systems, the food was rotten and there was very little of it (for example a standard ration at the Sugar House was 1 pound of rotten meat and 4 pieces of moldy bread every 4 days), there was no furniture to sit or lie on, on land prisoners would sometimes receive 30 min. of fresh air a week but often times they would just be granted turns standing and breathing out the windows for 10 minutes. On the ships, due to the waste-based diseases, it was almost impossible to come out of the holds for air…and if a prisoner could make it up the ladder the deck was usually so slick with excrement it wasn’t possible to stand (The Prisoners of New York). Mortality rates for captured Revolutionary soldiers was 75%, and the descriptions of their conditions can only be matched by the description of the conditions on the ships that traversed enslaved humans across the Atlantic for centuries.

It’s under this cloud of mistreatment that 32 men from Connecticut signed a petition to the newly formed General Assembly of Connecticut on 5 May 1777, pleading for the body to  interve on the behalf of citizens of that State who were being held in New York. The petitioners are clear they are in favor of the revolution, and call those who risked their life for the cause as “noble”, but they are clearly pained by the conditions of imprisonment calling it: inhumane, barbarous and deplorable. However, they are also honest that they have no idea how to accomplish any solution since they know we can’t effectively pressure the British. They do however voice the opinion that if the Assembly can figure out how to accomplish this, the “Army [will] soon be supplied with a number of men sufficient to repel our enemies”.

Text of the petition for prisoners, 1777
To the Honourable the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut to be convened at Hartford within and for said State on the Second Thursday of May 1777.
Whereas. Since the commencement of the present unnatural War, it has so happened that great number of our Friends who have nobly ventured their Life for the Defense of our Injured Country have unfortunately fell into our Enemies hands and by them are held captive and prisoners of War and treated in the most inhumane and barbarous manner many having been stripped of their clothing, exposed to the weather and denied a sufficient supply of food for the support of life and under which suffering many of our Respectable and Worth friends have lost their life: and others who still survive are yet in the same deplorable circumstances in New York and on Long Island. Suffering under the insults of the enemy and destitute of necessities and clothing or money to purchase that necessities of life; all which are so publicly known that they are undeniable facts.
Whereupon we the subscribers inhabitants in the State aforesaid pray this Honorable Assembly to commiserate and take into consideration the disgusting condition of our Friends in captivity as aforesaid who are belonging to this State and in your wisdom devise some method for the support and relief when we know not how it can be effected without some exertion of the public and which if done by your Honour and publicly known among the people. We humbly conceive would be a very great inducement to other voluntarily to insist and engage in the cause of our country and our Army soon be supplied with a number of men sufficient to repel our enemies, or in some other way grant relief.
As your Honours in your wisdom shall judge most reasonable and just and you memorialize as in duty bound shall memorialize as in duty bound shall coc. (?) Pray. Dated in Connecticut this 5th day of May 1777 (Link)

Michael’s 7xGGF Israel Standish (1721-1802) was living in Preston, Connecticut when he was one of the 32 signatories to this petition. He was the great grandchild of Mayflower passenger Myles Standish, so he likely had at least some notoriety (not as much was we’d think today, but that’s for another day!), and he was an established farmer in his mid-50’s. His children lived in Preston as well, and he had at least 10 grandchildren under 5 years of age at the time living near him. Even a simple petition asking for something to be done to save the son’s of Connecticut from the horrors of British prisons was a deeply treasonous act. He had publicly attached himself to the cause of revolution, and he would have likely lost all that mattered to him, if not his life, had the rebellion failed.

Image of signature of Israel Standish
Israel Standish standing ten toes on principle and putting his name down on paper!

And at the time, the Americans (outside of Boston) hadn’t shown much capability of defeating the British. His farm was just to the East of New York (and just across the sound from Long Island, which was easily crossed) and it was firmly under the control of the enemy. He was influential and known enough to be included in joining the petition, and doing so left him no chance for him to deny where his loyalties lied, so this was a significant act of defiance even though on the face it seems like a simple enjoinder. We can guess there would have been an effect on his neighbors. Those loyal to the cause of freedom stood up and be known as such, and there was a group on one the other side equally loyal to England, however those in the middle would have likely felt swayed by their neighbors risking everything to publicly support a United States free of the crown.

So in someways these acts of Patriotic Service had impacts as strong as those who served militarily, which is why the DAR recognizes the “simple” act of signing a petition as worthy of veneration for having served the cause of liberty.

Chart showing Israel and Content Standish descendants
Israel and Content Standish’s descendants

In remembrance: Wesley and Isabella Gordon

In remembrance: Wesley and Isabella Gordon

For today’s “In Remembrance” we celebrate the marriage on 5 Apr 1866 of Wesley and Isabella (Odom) Gordon, Michael’s 4x GGP on his mother’s side of the family. “West” (as Wesley was known) was likely born in Virginia around 1838, but his birth location is listed as Mississippi and Tennessee in various records throughout his life. Isabella was born around 1850, also likely in Virginia, although she’s listed as being born in Mississippi in some records.

West and Isabella were married in DeSoto County Mississippi just under a year after they took their freedom once the Civil War ended, however they likely were betrothed prior to that as their oldest child Cora was born also enslaved about 1864. By 1870 West and Isabella are farming a sharecrop just North of Nesbit, MS in the extreme Northwest part of Mississippi. In-fact their farm was likely less than 10 miles from both Arkansas and Tennessee (Memphis was only 8 miles away). All records for the couple indicate they lived in this area, if not the same rented farm, for their entire lives. West had passed away by the time of the 1910 US Census and Isabella is listed as still living on a rented farm with many of the same neighbors.

They had 11 children (we know of), 5 boys and 6 girls. Many of them stayed in the NW Mississippi/Memphis area, but many of their grandchildren moved North in the Great Migration, including Cora’s son Ira White who moved to Hartford, Connecticut.

West passed away between 1900 and 1910, and Isabella survived until 1923. She passed away in DeSoto County, MS.

Chart showing Wesley and Isabella Gordon descendants
Wesley and Isabella Gordon descendants

Finding the Yeomans

2+ years of research on one of our stubborn bricks walls fell with the discovery of a single record

Finding the Yeomans <h4>2+ years of research on one of our stubborn bricks walls fell with the discovery of a single record</h3>

A few years ago it was time to tackle the brick wall of who were the parents of Andrew and Hannah (Yeomans) Place. The Place family history after they arrived in Wisconsin is well known to us. They were some of the first 50 or so Americans to arrive in the Wisconsin Territory during the summer of 1835, and their arrival and early experiences were documented years later by Charles Dyer in a 1871 speech to the for the Old Settlers Society of Racine County (Link). However, despite their Great-Granddaughter Myra (Tradewell) Morse (1870-1960) being the first great historian of our family, she never documented her Great-grandparents.

Family tree showing Hannah Yeomans descendants to Catherine (Morse) Leonard
Andrew and Hannah (Yeomans) Place’s descendants to Michael’s Great Grandmother Catherine (Morse) Leonard

Starting with Andrew Place’s parents

Andrew Thomas Place (1793-1837) was known to have traveled with his wife and 6 children by Ox cart from Greene County, NY, however not much before that has been documented. Searching for Place families and birth/marriage/death records for him produced no results.

The Hudson River valley in New York between the end of the Revolutionary War and the beginning of the Civil War is a well known dead zone for genealogical records (Suffering the Black Hole of Hudson River Valley Genealogy). For whatever reason(s) collection of church records are spotty at best, governmental records weren’t kept until later, and the Morman Church’s microfilm projects capturing this area’s civil records has large holes. Combine that with this area being very transitory over a few generations, with families moving in from Massachusetts and Connecticut soon after the Revolution, and their children/grandchildren moving West as they reached adulthood. Our ancestors didn’t leave as much of a paper trail in this region, and few of those papers have been digitized and indexed compared to other parts of the country.

Using Greene County as a jumping off point we built a table of each of the Place family entries in the 1790 US Census for there and the surrounding counties. Repeating the same process for the 1800-1830 census’ built a decent map of the original Place settlers and their children who stayed in the area.

The first item that popped out was an entry in the 1820 Census, in Greenville, Greene County, NY for Andrew T Place. The known birthdates of Hannah and their children matched the 1820 entry for Andrew, which was a strong lead that he was from the Greenville area. Assuming he might have bought his farm near his parents, we found a Thomas Place in Greenville, and these were the only 2 Places listed in Greene County. Searching the 1810 Census there was no entry for any Place family, but going manually through the entries for Greenville we found Thomas Place indexed under the wrong last name.

There is that 3 minutes of bliss when you realize all those years of research just paid off, out of the blue, and you just made a link that no one has ever made before…But very quickly the bliss fades and you ask the inevitable question: “I wonder who THEIR parents were?”

Now that we had a good lead that Andrew’s father was Thomas and they resided in Greenville, NY we searched Ancestry for records that match him. There were several hits for various parts of Thomas’ Will/Probate in 1848, but nothing that spelled out his children other than his son and executor, Jeramiah Place. Using those records, we went to FamilySearch and browsed the Probate records for Greene Co. We found his Will, but his wife and 2 surviving children were the only ones listed. It’s not surprising, but frustrating nonetheless!

Given that Thomas is a much more common name than Jeremiah, we tried a newspaper search on his name, narrowing down to 1848, and we hit paydirt! As a part of Thomas’ Probate process Jeremiah published a Notice of Hearing for the commissioner, calling out the heirs of Thomas specifically which included: “children of Andrew Place, a deceased son, all of Racine, Wisconsin Territory”. It also listed the other siblings of Andrew, which we’d established previously. With that we’d firmly proven that Thomas and Phoebe Place from Greenville, NY were Andrew’s parents.

It was on next to establish Hannah (Yeomans) Place’s parents, and while it took just a few weeks for Andrew, it would take over 2 years to break through and find hers.

Finding Hannah’s parents

Since we now knew that Andrew as raised and likely married in Greenville, NY, we started searching for Hannah’s parents in Greene County. There were 3 Yeomans registered in the 1810 US Census for Greene Co., and all 3 had a daughter Hannah’s age listed in the census. Next, as we did with Andrew, we built out tables for the 1790-1820 Census for every Yeoman in the counties bordering Greene, and tried to establish patterns of which children might be associated with which parents, and from that built 9 working trees to flesh out the people and families we were discovering.

Excel spreadsheet cells listing values from the 1790-1830 US Census and the Yeoman family names that match each value
Our makeshift pre-1850 US Census tables, used to align the generic numbers from the census to the known family members we’re researching, to visually identify the gaps and narrow down if there’s a match. Green means the census value matches a known family member, Yellow means the value is within 2 years of a known family member

Right away we hit that Hudson Valley wall and kept running into dead ends as we searched Ancestry and accepted as many shaky leaf hints as we could. We started searching for any Greene Co. Yeomans in member trees, and in a Public tree we found Elisha B Yeoman (1814-1850). The person didn’t have any facts attached in the tree but when we searched we found an index page for Greene County Probate Records from 1850, and we could see his probate was recorded on page 55. We switched over to FamilySearch, which had the Probate books microfilmed, and guessed which book to check based on his death year.

In Book H of the Greene County “Record of Wills” we found Elisha’s will recorded and it listed his location as Greenville, which puts him in the same town/time as Andrew Place…and likely Hannah. Unusually, his heirs weren’t just his wife and children. Elisha also listed 4 siblings as back-ups in-case his children didn’t survive to adulthood to collect their share: Leonard, William I, George C, and Catherine. We added the siblings to our tree and searched for birth/marriage/death records for each helped flesh out the tree, and it gave us more data points to track as we compared various Yeomans in the area to the families in the 1790-1820 US Census.

Still focusing on the 1810 US Census (knowing it should list Hannah in her father’s home for the last time), and breaking out all of Yeoman/Youman/Yumans in Greene and surrounding counties, 3 families came into focus: James and Jeremiah Yumans in Coeymans, Albany County and William Yeoman in Greenville. William would seem the most likely patriarch, being in Greene County, however the Coeymans and Greenville townships (Greenville is in New Baltimore) abut each other separated by the country border. The areas both families lived in were likely less than 10 miles from each other, which makes it reasonable Hannah could have been a part of any of them.

Old map of Albany and Greene County New York
Map from 1875 showing the proximity of Coeyman’s Hollow and Green Ville, where our 3 target Yeomans/Yumans families were located

During this time we also found a cluster of Yeomans that could have been the father and siblings of Hannah, except they were in Delaware County, NY (about 55 miles west of Greenville/Coeymans). William Yeomans (1773-1857) census info matched what we knew for the most part, but it wasn’t a complete match. We found Delaware County William’s Probate and it listed 7 of his children. Those children didn’t overlap Hannah’s known siblings, but we couldn’t rule him out because at this time we only knew of a cluster of 5 siblings in Greene County that didn’t even include Hannah. FindaGrave had a record in Delaware for “William” that seemed to match William I, but that was the only record to go on.

All attempts to research the James and Jeremiah families in Albany County were a dead end. The few Albany County land and probate records are almost entirely unindexed, and most of them are missing from any online microfilm collections.

From Dead Ends to Breadcrumbs

Since we had run into dead-ends in Albany, Greene and Delaware counties we expanded our search for any Yeomans to surrounding counties, which is where we hit our next big breakthrough. We found the will of an unmarried woman, Emaline Yeomans (1806-1849), who died in Union Vale, Dutchess County, NY which is 75 miles from Greenville and across the Hudson River. She died with no heirs, but a substantial estate. Since she had no heirs-in-law she left her estate to her 8 siblings, including the 5 Yeoman siblings in Elisha B’s will, also Hannah (positively identified as “Hannah Place, wife of the late Andrew Place of Wisconsin”) and 2 new sisters: Lucinda and Annis.

Emaline’s will is probably our favorite probate document we’ve found! You can only glean hints at personality and family dynamics from dry vital records documents, but her will speaks volumes. First, she had 3 nieces name Emaline, and she bequeathed each $50 to be paid on their 21st birthday. To her 4 brothers (Leonard, Elisha, George and Williams) and her sister (Catherine, also listed in Elisha B’s will) she bequeathed to each of them one of her rocking chairs (their choice) worth between $12 and $15 each. The remainder of her estate was to be split between the 3 other sisters (Hannah, Lucinda and Annis), who each received about $250. There clearly was a schism between the two groups of siblings, as Elisha would pass away only a year later and leave nothing to the sisters who received the bulk of Emaline’s estate while rewarding all those who received rocking chairs. She also must have been beloved, with 3 of her sisters naming children after her…at least amongst one faction.

Diagram showing the siblings of Hannah Yeomans and which were mentioned in each others' wills

Armed with the entire, confirmed list of Yeoman siblings, we were able to confirm that both the Coeymans and Greenville patriarch’s 1810 Census entries still matched the ages of these 9 children. However, we were then able to eliminate the Delaware William as a potential father.

The trail went completely cold after this. Searching for the Probate records of each sibling lead to no new leads on their parentage. Even more frustratingly, even with a known death date for William I we could not find his probate/will.

This stalemate lasted for almost a year, and while we found more information to flesh out the spouses and children of the 8 of the 9 siblings (William I was still a mystery), there was nothing on the 3 possible patriarchs of these families.

Breakthrough!

Our focus had turned entirely to researching William I Yeoman, as he was the one sibling we had no records for. While searching for anything William Yeomans related in Ancestry one Saturday we found an image attached as a profile picture in a Public Tree that came from one of the vanity books published around the first Centennial that listed important people in a county. These books were largely self-sourced, where the subjects would pay a fee to be listed, so they often are nearly first-person family/history descriptions even if it overestimates the subject’s “importance”. Reviewing the image for William listed his wife as Mary and a son Henry J who lived in Dutchess County.

Searching Ancestry trees for Henry J Yeomans of Dutchess County, NY broke the brick wall down completely. Again, someone had attached an image to their Public tree as a profile pic for Henry J. It was an entry in another vanity book where Henry J was the subject, and it was a gold mine. It was much longer than most such entries, and it described details about his father Henry Ira who was born in Greene County and was a lifelong resident of Greenville. Just like that we’d gathered William Ira’s birth date, place, and marriage details!

Paragraph detailing the life of Henry J Yeomans

But even more amazingly the write-up (which usually wouldn’t include parents information) went further and detailed William Ira’s parents! William Yeomans (1782-) and Lucinda (Blackmer) Yeomans (1762-1819) were William I’s parents, and through the transitive properties Emaline’s, and thus Hannah’s, parents was well!

Just like that, the wall was gone. We knew the identity of Hannah’s parents! 2+ years of research had paid off and we’d moved her tree back one generation.

There is that 3 minutes of bliss when you realize all those years of research just paid off, out of the blue, and you just made a link that no one has ever made before, even your ancestor genealogists who were researching 100+ years ago. But very quickly the bliss fades and you ask the inevitable question: “I wonder who THEIR parents were?”

We can report we have no idea who their parents were…yet. It’s the same issue as when we started: there are very few records from that area, fewer are indexed, and other researchers haven’t made the links we’d build off of yet. We searched on the text of Henry J’s write up, so we could properly identify and cite it, make sure we had all of the facts of what was a working tree cited and proper, and then attached it to our main tree so that anyone else who’s been struggling with this line can now build off our research.

Family tree diagram showing Andrew and Hannah (Yeomans) Place's parents
Our final family tree after researching back one generation

Food and Family History

Emily's Casserole and Culinary Genealogy

Food and Family History <h4>Emily's Casserole and Culinary Genealogy</h3>

Quite some time ago I was a guest on the podcast for Ancestor’s Alive’s (AncestorsAlive!) “From Paper to People” podcast, discussing the connection we can establish with our family tree by cooking our ancestor’s recipes (Episode 26: Emily’s Casserole). It was a pleasure to discuss culinary genealogy, and if you’re not listening to Carolynn’s show you should be (subscribe in all the usual places) as she’s one of the few genealogy podcasts that’s really caught our attention.

She came to our attention with a previous episode on a family recipe that helped tell a story from her family’s history (Episode 23: Johnny Mazetti, or is it Marzetti?), at the end of which she put out a call for others who had similar stories. While ours doesn’t trace actual family history, and in fact technically doesn’t come from our direct family per se, it really does tell a story, so we reached out and Carolynn invited us on.

The episode discusses a casserole that was made by family “friend” Emeline “Emily” Ott (1908-1992). Emily was “adopted” by Michael’s 2x great grandparents E.A. and Myra (Tradewell) Morse in Antigo, as told by family lore. Apparently E.A. owned rental properties and happened to see the conditions she was being raised in and brought her home to live with his family. She’s listed as as servant in the 1930 US Census and she would continue that role when E.A. and Myra’s only child Catherine (1911-1991) married, took over the Morse home, and have 5 sons. Emily was a key presence in Catherine’s home, essentially serving as a nanny for the 5 boys. She lived with Catherine long after the children moved out, and we all grew up with Emily as a constant in Catherine’s home. Each of the boys were deeply attached to her and we all visited her in assisted living apartment after Catherine sold the home and moved to her lake cottage in the 1980’s.

Emily’s Casserole
3 lbs. thin sliced potatoes
1 bad of carrots, sliced
1 medium-large sliced onion
1 ½ lbs. ground beef, browned*
1 can Cream of Celery soup
1 can of milk
Directions:
Butter dutch oven, and layer in potatoes, carrots, onions and ground beef. Mix soup with milk, and pour over top. Cover and bake at 350 degrees for an hour and a half.

Emily’s casserole was a staple for Michael’s dad growing up. It was a favorite of his father’s and mom got the recipe from Emily knowing it was always enjoyed, and easy to make. It became a part of his comfort food repertoire, just like it had been for his father, and it’s now a part of his children’s. (Editor’s Note: In the interest of transparency, the subject of this blog is not a big fan of this casserole and it’s not as regular in our family dinner rotation as it once was…but it we keep trying!)

Another historical recipe, taken from the boxes of recipe cards inherited when Michael’s Grandmother Mandy passed away, detailing her grandmother’s sourdough starter…with potatoes!

That a dish named for Emily was one of the comfort foods for Michael’s grandfather and great uncles when they were children tells us a lot about our family history. Emily was like a sister to Grandma Leonard, but never too much like a sister. She was always an employee from her first day in the household, first for the Morse family, and then for their daughter who was very close in-age. It was an interesting dynamic that wasn’t fully apparent to the grandchildren of Catherine, but it runs deeply through the fabric of today. She had a deep, emotional impact on us, but she wasn’t family…but she was, even if she was an employee.

We’ll feature Emily in more detail in a future post, but today take a listen to Carolynn’s amazing podcast, where she helps pull the details of this story out…and shows how sometimes a casserole isn’t just a casserole!

Suffering the Black Hole of Hudson River Valley Genealogy

A Bermuda Triangle of Genealogical Research

Suffering the Black Hole of Hudson River Valley Genealogy <h4>A Bermuda Triangle of Genealogical Research</h3>

We’re willing to bet every family historian and genealogist has stories of areas where there isn’t the level of documents you’d find in other areas. Sometimes it’s a County where there was a devastating fire at the courthouse that destroyed every Vital Record and Probate/Property record before a certain date. Or it’s societal like if you’re searching for African American Vital Records in the South before 1905 or so, there was a concerted effort post-Reconstruction to focus on white records only. Other times it can be the “Manifest Destiny” states had European settlers long before any Federal/State government was established, and then when the States were formed formal Vital Record collection often lagged. 

For our family there is no area in the United States that’s a more pernicious, more complete, black hole than the Upper Hudson River valley of New York from 1780-1840. When you’re looking for records in Greene, Ulster, Dutchess, Columbia, Albany, Rensselaer, Schoharie and Delaware County, every one found can feel like a miracle. 

as Grandpa Ken Mandy the Charter Captain would always say, “That’s why they call it fishing not catching”. We guess this is fun because it’s not easy!

Contributing factors 

There’s not a lot of empirical research on what causes this gap. It’s known to other researchers, but there’s no consensus on why. In our experience, there seems to be several unique factors that created this void of information: 

Late collection of Vital Records on the County/State level 

While the area was partially settled by Europeans going back to the 1600’s, when the Dutch left and Americans started their migration around the Revolutionary War. Migration picked up with the Mohawk Wars pushing Native residents off their land in the late 1700’s, but you see counties like Greene not collecting birth and death information until it becomes a statewide requirement in 1880. That’s true for most of these counties, and they didn’t capture all “required” records until 20-30 years after that. By then they had over 100 years of settlement with no centralized record collection. By comparison, our home county of Racine in Wisconsin was first settled in 1835 and Marriage records were collected by 1837, Deaths by 1853, and Births by 1876. 

The area was often a migration waypoint 

A pattern we see repeatedly is a family born in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Downstate New York migrate to the region around 1780-1800, establish a farm and then several of their children (or Grandchildren) migrate further West to Ohio, Michigan, or Wisconsin and establish their family histories in the new location. Almost invariably their records like oral histories, family bibles, etc. omit details of their Eastern families and the few church records, etc. will maybe list a birth/baptism record in an area in New York, but nothing further because marriages and deaths occur in other states. 

Churches were numerous, and consolidation of records seems rare 

New York in the late 18th and early 19th Century was a hotbed for the Second Great Awakening in American religion (Link), and while it doesn’t seem that “new” churches/denominations were as prevalent in this area as Western New York, it does appear that every village had it’s own congregation of each of the more established faiths (Dutch Reformed, Congregationalist, Methodist, etc.) but as these communities grew and contracted, the local church seems more likely to end than to merge with a neighboring congregation. This leaves a lot of records that were lost to history, or which were locally held and not collected in larger Church records. The Family Search library is full of these small congregational records, often collected by amateur family historians and published locally…which limits their availability. 

Cover page of a collection of church records from the Gilboa Reformed and Blenheim Reformed Churches in Schoharie County, NY c. 1918
An example of the fragmented church records from the Hudson River Valley: a list of Vital Records from two Schoharie County, NY churches, collected in 1918, typed and indexed in 1999, and only available at the LDS FamilySearch library in Salt Lake City, Utah

The interest in genealogy by the public at-large started a Generation after the children/Grandchildren of the original European settlers in this area had moved on 

Many of the self-published Family Histories that become more common in the mid-1870’s (tying in with the US Centennial) and remained a Genealogy staple into the 1940’s. These were compiled long after many of the children/grandchildren of the late 1700’s settlers had moved out of the area. The popularization of Genealogy as a hobby really kicked off with the ubiquitous “vanity” publications that became a staple starting around 1876. You start to see books like “History of Greene County, New York : with biographical sketches of prominent men” (published in 1884) which were collections of publicly available Vital/Historical records, knitted together as a narrative (often by local historians hired by the publisher), and included biographies of any “notable” family that paid the requisite fee to have their family history published (that they themselves drafted and submitted to the publisher). Because the biographies were self-submitted, they are often a wonderful almost first-hand listing of parents, marriages, and children but only for the families of means that stayed in that area. Similar books were published in the locations these New York children/grandchildren migrated to, but they rarely list more than the county of their birth (at best) and we’ve never found one that listed details on their parents of siblings back home. 

Another way this manifested is that during this rise in interest of family histories, there’s numerous examples of individuals who dedicated years to collecting various local records into what now might be the only surviving data on birth/marriage/deaths. Lists like the Barbour Collection and James Arnold’s 21 volume “Vital records of Rhode Island 1636-1850″ largely don’t exist for this region. Part of that is because there are no central collections to reference, part of that is because by 1880 most County local historians don’t have the experience or people to provide pre-1840 information about the area. Additionally Vital Records were just starting to be gathered by governments. 

An example 

Many of our most stubborn brick walls are related to families that migrated to Wisconsin from this area of New York, and we have little to no information on them before the migration. Our Tradewell, Yeoman, Place, and Blackmar lines all dead-end in the Mohawk Valley and have resisted our best efforts.  

Our most recent example is the Blackmar line, which we discovered after we were able to prove our Yeoman line back one generation after 2 years of research (story coming soon!)  

Once we broke through the Yeoman brick wall and first identified William and Lucinda (Blackmar) Yeoman from Greene County, New York as our 6th GGP we celebrated for about 3 minutes before we wondered “who are their parents?”.  

Screen cap of Lucinda Blackmar and her siblings, but no parent listed

Given the pain we had on the Yeoman line, we knew breaking down William’s parents was going to be a major challenge, but we decided that “Blackmar” was unique enough of a last name to take a quick look and see if we could identify her lineage. But, we’re searching in the Hudson River Valley Black Hole so of course we found literally nothing.  

The only Blackmar from New York in right timeframe was Cain Blackmar who is in the 1790 US Census living in Dutchess County. We found Cain in the 1800 US Census, as well as the Federal tax records for 1801 and 1802 and that’s it. There is no records of his family, his wife, or his children in New York. It’s a hot lead that Lucinda likely is Cain’s daughter, but it can be nothing but a guess.  

Searching Ancestry for Cain Blackmar immediately brought up one of the self-published family histories that, as we mentioned above, were pretty common in New England. We eventually found two, both published in the early 1930’s, whose authors both traveled the region and found 1000’s of local records from Massachusetts and Rhode Island then published detailed (but unsourced) family trees. Just like that we were able to back from Cain to his ancestors going back to arrivals in 1630. We can go back 6 generations from Cain in Rhode Island, but we have essentially nothing on Cain or his children in New York.  

Screen cap of Cain Blackmar's ancestors

We had a complete line back to Hannah Yeoman (1796-1865) as soon we started charting our family tree. But getting from Hannah to her mom took 10 years, including 2 years of intensive research given the limited resources from the Hudson River Valley. After another 6 months of research we have only a guess on her father. There are zero records relating to that father’s wife (FamilySearch’s global, single Family Tree has his spouse listed as “Mrs. Cain Blackmar”), but since he’s from Rhode Island we can effortlessly trace him back to his English ancestors in the 1590’s.  

Screen cap showing Cain Blackmar and Mrs. Cain Blackmar from the FamilySearch global family tree
This does not meet the Genealogical Proof Standard

This leaves us with a new brick wall merely because this family was in the Hudson River Valley in the early 1800’s. Just one generation in upstate New York and this branch became impenetrable. But, as Grandpa Mandy the Charter Captain would always say, “That’s why they call it fishing not catching”. We guess this is fun because it’s not easy!