Barnet Bond(born 1786-died 1862), my husband’s 3 times great-grandfather, is the oldest person on the Bond line that we are certain of. We believe his father’s name was William and that William’s father’s name was also possibly Barnet. He was born in Kinderhook, Columbia County, New York. His family then moved to Kingsbury, Washington County, New York about 1799. Between 1857 and 1860 Barnet moved to Oswego, Oswego County, New York to join his son Ozro’s family. Ozro had moved there between 1850 and 1855.
Barnet was in the War of 1812. A few years ago, on a visit to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., my daughter and I got to see the originals of his muster and payroll records. I believe he also received bounty land for his service. The land was located in Wisconsin, so I think he sold it, since we know he never moved there. One of the things on my genealogy to-do list is to obtain the paperwork related to his bounty land.
I have found newspaper announcements from March and April 1817 that list Barnet as an insolvent debtor. It’s a notice to his creditors to appear before a judge. I assume this means he was bankrupt. This is another thing that I need to investigate further.
In the Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York Fifty-Fourth session in 1831 Barnet Bond petitioned the New York State Assembly requesting reparations for damage to his boat on the Champlain Canal. Here is what the petition said: In April 1828, the petitioner was navigating the Champlain canal with a boat called the Bee, which he secured in the night time, in the basin below Fort-Miller. In the course of the night, the water in the basin fell, in consequence of the wicket gates, at the guard gates above, being closed, while the water was drawn off by boats passing through the locks below. The lock-tender appears to have done his duty, but it is supposed that some persons passed in the night who left the wicket gates closed. In consequence of the fall in the water, the boat of the petitioner sunk upon the ground, and in some manner, not perfectly understood by your committee, the cargo of the boat, which seems to have consisted chiefly of lime, took fire in coming in contact with the water, and the boat and cargo were lost. The petition was denied because the state wasn’t responsible for the person who left the gates closed.
Barnet filed another petition in the Sixty-Fourth session in 1842. This was a refiling of the petition from 1831. He had also apparently filed again in 1838. This petition gives a little more detail about how the boat hit a rock when the water dropped which caused a leak in the boat which let the water in which then came in contact with the lime and caused the fire. The petition was denied again. Also in that same session, he filed another unrelated petition which states: In the year 1837, he was the owner and master of the canal boat Constellation of Sandy Hill and was engaged in transporting lime in said boat, on the Champlain canal to Troy and Albany; that on the 29th October of that year, as petitioner was on his way to market with his boat, on the Champlain canal laden with 700 bushels of lime, a short distance from the village of Stillwater, his boat ran upon a stone which lay in the bottom of the canal, thereby causing a leak, which by admitting the water upon the unslacked lime, in a few minutes occasioned the entire destruction of the cargo, and rendered the boat of little or no value. The petitioner estimates his damages to boat and cargo at five hundred dollars. In today’s money that’s around $12,000. This petition was denied too for the same reason that the state was not at fault.
Barnet’s son Ozro is listed on his marriage certificate as being a Lime Burner and apparently Barnet’s boats carried lime. We believe they owned a farm where they harvested the lime. There is a small stream called Bond’s Creek that flows south from Kingsbury into Fort Edward that we think may have been near where we think their farm was by the canal, and hence may have been named for their family. I’ll be writing a future blog post about Ozro. Here’s some info on lime burning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_kiln and http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/09/lime-kilns.html. It sounds like it was a rather dangerous way to make money.
Barnet married Lovina Miller sometime before 1816. They had 5 children. Lovina died in May 1850. That was all we knew about Barnet’s married life until I wrote away to the Washington County Historian last year. Turns out he remarried. That is where the story gets interesting. On the 1850 US Census from July, Fanny Gillis is listed as living in the house next door to where Ozro was living, but her youngest daughter Caroline who was 8 years old was living with Fanny’s father. On the 1850 US Census from August, Barnet is living with his some of his other children. (Lovina is still listed, but I know from her tombstone that she had died in May. I think she was just listed on the census because she had been living there at some point in the year.) So did Barnet meet Fanny because she was his son Ozro’s neighbor? Gillis is the surname of Fanny’s first husband. Her maiden name was Johnston. By the 1855 US Census in June 1855, Ozro and his family had moved to Oswego, New York. Barnet was still living in Kingsbury with his other children. Fanny(listed as Eliza) was now living with her father, her daughter Caroline, and other family members in Kingsbury. Two of Lovina’s brothers lived nearby. So did Lovina’s family know Fanny? By August 1855 she was listed as Frances Eliza Gillis and Widow Gillis in her father’s will. He left her more than her other siblings, $1000 and all his household furniture. Then on Christmas Day 1855 Fanny Eliza Gillis and Barnet Bond were married in Kingsbury. He was 69, she was 50, with a 13 year old daughter Caroline from her previous marriage. Not sure when she would have gotten her inheritance from her father since her sister Catherine was still contesting the will in 1857. Fast forward to the 1860 US Census in June. Barnet is now living in Oswego with Ozro and his family. (Ozro’s first wife Phebe had passed away in 1856 and he had remarried.) I am not sure when Barnet moved to Oswego. I have found a mention of Barnet listed as participating in a political meeting in Kingsbury in September 1857, so he moved to Oswego sometime between then and June 1860. Fanny is listed on the 1860 Census as Fanny E Bond still living in Kingsbury, back with the family she was living with in 1850. Her daughter Carrie(Caroline) is living there too. So what happened to Barnet and Fanny’s marriage? It certainly didn’t last long. Did they get divorced or did he just leave? He died a few years later in 1862 in Oswego and is buried there. I don’t know whatever happened to Fanny. Caroline eventually moved to Vermont.
Here is the link to the Bond family tree https://myfamgen.com/bond-family/.