Friday Find - Unnamed Batchelder Comes Home

A few years ago I traded a friend of mine some maple syrup for a box of Walton's Vermont Register books from the late 1800s. The original owner of the registers kept daily notes in the front of them. It was obvious that he was a farmer, and that he lived near where I grew up, based on some of his entries. There were mentions of "Went to S. Derry", "Went to Weston", "Went to Landgrove". I always thought it would be neat if he had been from Peru (where I grew up), but I never really thought much more about it.

Tonight, I started reading through the entries of the 1898 edition. In addition to place names, the names "S. Stiles" and "Simmonds" were frequently mentioned. Stiles and Simmonds were families in Peru way back when. I kept looking through the entries, till I got to October 31st. The entry was "Edmond Batchelder died." Edmund Batchelder was my great-grandfather's name, though he didn't die until the 1930s. I flipped the page. November 2nd, "Edmond Batchelder buried." November 3rd, "Fannie Cross buried."

Fannie Cross was my great-grandfather's first wife. I'd never found a death date for her. I checked FamilySearch for the date and place, and sure enough, there she was. Fannie Cross, wife of Edmund Batchelder died from "Shock after child birth" on 1 November, 1898. I checked my database. I had an unnamed baby girl, stillborn to Edmund and Fannie on 1 November, 1898. It appears that the unnamed baby girl may actually have been a boy, named after his father, and born late on October 31st or early on November 1st. Unfortunately mother and child didn't survive.

I've heard of ancestors finding us instead of us finding them, but I've never had it happen before. Not only did the writer of the daily entries live in Peru, he knew my great-grandfather's family. Weird how a penciled entry by someone who knew my great-grandfather found it's way out of Vermont, down to Connecticut to a friend of mine, then to me, taking 100+ years to travel.

Surname Saturday – Davis and the Snow Summers

I realized the other day that I haven’t blogged for a while.  For the past few days, I’ve been trying to think of a topic.  This afternoon, my wife called me from the top of Bromley Mountain in Peru.  “It’s snowing!” she said gleefully.  “The top of the mountain is white!”

Snow?  In May?  Memorial Day weekend?

I was instantly reminded of an event that I learned about in history class in junior-high.  The Year Without a Winter.

In 1816 the weather in Vermont was cold enough during the summer that crops failed and ponds froze over.  It snowed the first week of June, and the end of August saw frost hit, killing even more crops.  The cause of the strange weather was thought to be linked to the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia the year before, which spread dust and ash into the air, eventually leading to the lowered temperatures on this side of the world. [1]

What, I wondered, were my ancestors doing during that year?

Solomon Davis and his wife Hannah, who brought the family west from New Hampshire in 1803, would have been raising, along with their other children, their new baby daughter.  Hannah Davis, who shared her mother’s name, was born in May of 1816 in Londonderry, Vermont.  Solomon, his son, grandson, great-grandson, and so on were farmers.  The family remained in Londonderry until my grandfather, Solomon Wesley, passed away in 1996, one-hundred and ninety-three years after the family arrived in town.

I can only imagine what the farmers in 1816 must have been going through, planting crops to feed their families, only to see those crops freeze and die.  Then I was given a reminder of Vermont resilience.  My aunt, as I typed this post, posted a photo on Facebook.  The photo was taken in a town near Londonerry, on May 25^th, 1967, or exactly 46 years before today's snow.  The image shows snow-covered fields with snow-covered mountains in the background.  Her comment: “My dad planted potatoes the next day.”

Apparently both the first and last Davis men to live in Londonderry had something in common.

[1] http://www.virtualvermont.com/history/1816.html

Military Monday – Civil War Challenge

Grave site of Charles Wesley Jenkins

Bill West of West in New England offered a Civil War Challenge the other day that caught my eye.  Basically the challenge is to research and write about an ancestor that fought in the Civil War.

The reason this caught my eye is that I have one ancestor, Charles Wesley Jenkins, who has been a bit of a mystery to me.  He fought in the Civil War, but some of the details that I’ve found about him leave me scratching my head.

Here’s what I have documented about him so far:

He was born 3 November, 1839 to Amos and Rhoda Jenkins.¹

Puzzle #1: Was he born in Vermont² or Indiana³?  I have secondary documentation for both places.  If he was born in Indiana, why was the family (or at least his mother) there?  The rest of the family, both his ancestors and descendants, are in the Landgrove and Peru areas of Vermont.

On 2 August, 1862, Charles enlisted in Company L of the 33^rd Massachusetts Infantry.⁴

Puzzle #2: Why did he enlist in Massachusetts instead of Vermont?  Again, all of the family that I’ve documented so far was in Vermont.  It also appears that his brother and father may have enlisted in Vermont.⁵

On 4 May, 1865 he married Laura Ann Derby.⁶

In September of that same year, he was discharged from the military.⁷

Puzzle #3: Where did he travel while in the military?  What battles was he in?  This isn’t so much as a puzzle as it is an opportunity for more research.  I know that he was transferred from the Infantry to the Veteran Reserve Corps (also known as the Invalid Corps).  I’m not sure what he did while there though.  This needs more research.

He had two daughters, Ida Abbie⁸ and Minnie Laura Jenkins.⁹

He died 17 April, 1883, and was buried in Landgrove, Vermont in the New Cemetery.¹⁰

My mission, which I’ve chosen to accept, is to look into the life of Charles Jenkins some more, and to write a blog post about him after April 30^th.  If I’m successful, a link to that post and others will be placed on the West in New England blog on May 6^th.

¹ The Weston Historical Society, Genealogies of The Early Settlers of Weston, Vermont, Second Edition (Weston, VT: The Weston Historical Society, 2006), 224.

² Minnie Laura Davis, Death Record Londonderry, VT (1918), Ancestry.com

³ Charles W. Jenkins household, 1870 U.S. census, Bennington County, Vermont, population schedule, town of Peru, sheet 10, dwelling 79, family 69 ; digital image, Ancestry.com (accessed 24 Dec 2012).

⁴ Laura A. Jenkins, 1890 U.S. census, Windham County, Vermont,  veterans schedule, town of Londonderry, enumeration district [ED] 233 (penned), supervisor's district [SD] Vt. (penned), sheet 3 (penned), dwelling 137, family 143 line 33; digital image, Ancestry.com (accessed 25 Dec 2012).

⁵ I have some information that mentions both Charles’s father and brother enlisting.  I have not analyzed and documented this information at this time.  This will be part of my research over the next few weeks.

⁶ Charles Jenkins household, 1880 U.S. census, Bennington County, Vermont, population schedule, town of Peru, enumeration district [ED] 31 (penned), supervisor's district [SD] "of Vt" (penned), sheet 2 (penned), dwelling 15, family 16 ; digital image, Ancestry.com (accessed 30 Mar 2012).

⁷ Laura A. Jenkins, 1890 U.S. census, Windham County, Vermont,  veterans schedule, town of Londonderry, enumeration district [ED] 233 (penned), supervisor's district [SD] Vt. (penned), sheet 3 (penned), dwelling 137, family 143 line 33; digital image, Ancestry.com (accessed 25 Dec 2012).

⁸ Charles Jenkins household, 1880 U.S. census, Bennington County, Vermont, population schedule, town of Peru, enumeration district [ED] 31 (penned), supervisor's district [SD] "of Vt" (penned), sheet 2 (penned), dwelling 15, family 16 ; digital image, Ancestry.com (accessed 30 Mar 2012).

⁹ Minnie Laura Davis, Death Record Londonderry, VT (1918), Ancestry.com

¹⁰ The Weston Historical Society, Genealogies of The Early Settlers of Weston, Vermont, Second Edition (Weston, VT: The Weston Historical Society, 2006), 224.

Sentimental Sunday – Road Trips

Amos Batchelder with his 6th-great-grandaughter in 2009.

First, I’d like to thank the Geneabloggers for the warm welcome.  Originally I was going to post about my Davis line next, but a few people mentioned their own Batchelder lines, which made me think back to the research I’ve done on that side of my family.

For those familiar with the Batchelder, Batcheller Genealogy by Frederick Clifton Pierce[1], my line is the one listed in the second half of the book, those descended from the brothers Joseph, Henry, Joshua and John.  The family came from England in 1636, settling in the area of Salem, Massachusetts.  They lived in the Salem/Wenham area until the time of the American Revolution when the family migrated to Mont Vernon, New Hampshire.  In the 1800s, the family moved again, this time to Peru, Vermont, where Batchelders lived until my great uncle, the last Batchelder in town, passed away in 2006.

The Batchelders were the first family that I began researching with my mother when I was a child.  I have memories of walking the two town cemeteries while she pointed out the gravestones of various family members.  I also recall visiting a cemetery in another state, though I didn’t realize until many years later that it was the cemetery where her father was buried in New York.

Road trips like that to the cemetery were a constant when I was growing up.  I remember many trips to see family, and to visit old homestead sites, or even road trips just for the sake of taking a road trip.

As an adult, I still enjoy road trips, and I still enjoy going to cemeteries, visiting my ancestors.  Like many genealogists, visiting the burial sites of my ancestors gives me a sense of their lives and their communities.  Small towns seem to be in my bloodlines.  Most of the towns that I’ve visited haven’t changed much since my ancestors lived there.

One example of such a place is Wenham, Massachusetts.  Several years ago my wife and I decided to visit the Wenham Museum.  While we were in town, we took a tour of the cemetery, looking for Batchelder headstones.  We found the grave site of my ancestor Amos Batchelder.  About a year later my daughter and I took another road trip, again passing through Wenham.  As we drove past the cemetery, I said, “Hey, let’s go visit Grandpa Amos.”  Though not interested in genealogy, my daughter was a good sport, letting me capture the above photo of ancestor and descendant together.

Every time I see this photo now, I think of all the road trips I’ve been on;  visiting Washington, D.C. with my oldest daughter, or going to Stephentown, New York with my mother, or those solo road trips that I’ve taken to places like Mont Vernon, New Hampshire.

[1] Frederick Clifton Pierce, Batchelder, Batcheller Genealogy (Chicago, IL: W.B. Conkey Company, 1898).