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So I am in the process of planning our genealogy vacation for later this year. We plan, if my husband’s work schedule allows, to head up into New York state to visit some of the places his ancestors lived.

I have written about some of these ancestors in previous blog posts:

https://myfamgen.com/2017/04/07/who-was-miles-coopers-father

https://myfamgen.com/2017/05/05/peter-doxtater-and-the-french-and-indian-warrevolutionary-war

https://myfamgen.com/2017/06/02/the-mysteries-of-vincent-doran

https://myfamgen.com/2017/07/07/barnet-bond-war-of-1812

https://myfamgen.com/2017/07/21/the-miller-family-from-kingsbury-ny

https://myfamgen.com/2017/08/11/the-kelly-sisters-had-good-genes.

In the course of my planning I discovered the route that Peter Doxtater, his wife, and 6 children took to get from German Flats, Herkimer County, New York to Adams, Jefferson County, New York.

From the booklet Revolutionary War Veterans who settled in the Sixtown Area of Southern Jefferson County – “He came to Adams in 1802 with his wife and six children. They came up the Mohawk River in a flat boat, thence to Oneida lake, through Wood’s Creek to the Oswego River, to Lake Ontario to Big Sandy Creek and inland 2 miles.”

I mapped out the route as best as I could using roads that go along the water path that they took. It would take 3 1/2 hours driving. Can you imagine how long it took a family of eight going on the water and through the woods in 1802? The children weren’t necessarily children. The youngest was 8, but there were ones in their 20s. But I still can’t imagine making a trip like that!

 

I also mapped out a more direct route that could be taken today, now that roads exist. It’s only 88 miles instead of 154 or more miles. Driving in a car is definitely a lot quicker than taking an unmotorized boat. I wonder how long the trip actually did take them?

 

My husband’s great-grandmother Anna Kelly and most of her sisters all had long lives. Anna lived to be 88. Her sister Mary lived to be 83, Katherine 95, Margaret 93, and Nora possibly 104! There were two who didn’t live as long, Ellen was 59 and Alice died before she was 54. And two brothers Michael who died before age 51 and John who was 66.

When I started researching this branch of my husband’s family I only knew about Anna, Margaret, and Nora. I found the other siblings in newspaper articles and then tracked them down on census records.

As was often the case on census records, people’s ages were not consistent. That’s why I say Nora was possibly 104 because her birthdate is inconsistent on various records.

Here’s Nora’s info

1892 census – age 14 – Calculated birth year 1878

1900 census – age 20 – Birthdate June 1879 (calculated birth year would be 1880)

1910 census – age 31 – Calculated birth year 1879

1915 census – age 31 – Calculated birth year 1884

1920 census – age 37 – Calculated birth year 1883

1925 census – age 35 – Calculated birth year 1890 (this one probably should have had her age listed as 45, then the birth year would be calculated as 1880)

1930 census – age 48 – Calculated birth year 1882

1940 census – age 62 – Calculated birth year 1878

Social Security Death Index says born August 14, 1877

Oswego Palladium Times, Saturday August 16, 1980 says she celebrated her 103th birthday on Wednesday August 13 – Calculated birth year 1877

Oswego County Messenger, Friday Aug. 14, 1981 says it was her 104th birthday – Calculated birth year 1877

As you can see she got younger in her 30s and then got older again later in life. It certainly looks like 1877 or 1878 were the most likely candidates for the correct year. I haven’t yet, but I would like to try to find her birth certificate in Savannah, New York to see if I can nail down the correct date. I wonder if she even knew exactly what year she was born.

 

Anna’s age varied greatly over the different census records too with her birth year ranging from 1868 to 1881. That’s quite a range! But I assume that the oldest one from when she was 2 years old would be correct, which would have made her 88 when she died in 1956.

Here’s Anna’s info

1870 census – age 2 – Calculated birth year 1868

1900 census – age 32 – Birthdate February 1868

1910 census – age 38 – Calculated birth year 1872

1915 census – age 39 – Calculated birth year 1876

1920 census – age 44 – Calculated birth year 1876

1925 census – age 45 – Calculated birth year 1880

1930 census – age 49 – Calculated birth year 1881

1940 census – age 65 – Calculated birth year 1875

 

Mary’s age was consistent over the census records so her age at her death seems to have definitely been 83.

Here’s Mary’s info

1870 census – age 11 – Calculated birth year 1859

1880 census – age 21 – Calculated birth year 1859

1892 census – age 34 – Calculated birth year 1858

1900 census – age 41 – Calculated birth year 1859

1905 census – age 46 – Calculated birth year 1859

1910 census – age 51 – Calculated birth year 1859

1915 census – age 56 – Calculated birth year 1859

1920 census – age 61 – Calculated birth year 1859

1925 census – age 66 – Calculated birth year 1859

1930 census – age 71 – Calculated birth year 1859

 

I don’t have a lot of info about Katherine. Here’s what little I do have. If the 1870 census was correct she actually would have been 96, not 95 when she died.

Here’s Katherine’s info

1870 census – age 7 – Calculated birth year 1863

Obituary #1 in 1960 – Says she was born October 17, 1864

Obituary #2 in 1960 – Says she was 95 – Calculated birth year 1864, because she died in January, so she hadn’t had her birthday yet that year

 

I don’t have a ton of info about Margaret either. She lived to be somewhere between 91 and 94.

Here’s Margaret’s info

1910 census – age 35 – Calculated birth year 1875

1930 census – age 52 – Calculated birth year 1878

1940 census – age 64 – Calculated birth year 1876

 

The Kelly sisters must have gotten those longevity genes from their father Michael Kelly.

Here’s his info

1863 Civil War Draft Record – age 38 – Calculated birth year 1825

1870 census – age 47 – Calculated birth year 1823

1892 census – age 68 – Calculated birth year 1824

1900 census – age 73 – Birthdate October 1826 (would not have had birthday yet that year, so age 73 is correct)

1905 census – age 81 – Calculated birth year 1824

1910 census – age 78 – Calculate birth year 1832 (think this is a mistake)

1915 census – age 90 – Calculated birth year 1825

It is possible that his death date was January 24, 1917. I still need to verify that. If that is correct then he was somewhere between 91 and 94, just like his daughter Margaret, when he died.

 

The link to the Kelly family can be found here https://myfamgen.com/kelly-family/.

There is a 2 volume book set, Genealogy of the Cowles Families in America, written about the Cowles family. I own a copy of the books. According to the books the earliest known ancestor on this line was John Cowles who was from Gloucestershire, England. He came to the US in 1634 and first settled in Farmington, CT. He moved to Hartford, CT in 1656. He then moved to Hadley, MA/Hatfield, MA in the summer of 1664. He was one of the founding members of the town of Hatfield, MA. It does seem odd though that he would have moved to Massachusetts, since it seems like all of his children stayed in Connecticut.  John Cowles arrived in the US around the same time as many other early Connecticut families. More about the Hart, Porter, and Stanley lines in a future blog post.

According to some other sources John Cowles’ name was really John Cole and he changed it to Cowles when another John Cole also moved to Farmington. That story says that the name Cowles didn’t exist prior to that time and that everyone with the surname Cowles in the US is descended from him. However the Genealogy of the Cowles Family book disputes that theory. The author of the book found that there were people with the surname Cowles in England and that not all the Cowles families in the US were descended from this John Cowles. So it seems likely that he did not change his name.

There is a famous Cowles family descendant, Gideon Welles, Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy. Gideon was my husband’s 4^th cousin 5 times removed (my kids’ 4^th cousin 6 times removed). Being as my younger daughter is a big fan of Lincoln’s this was a pretty cool find. Gideon was descended from Timothy Cowles. My husband is descended from Samuel Cowles. Timothy and Samuel were brothers. Their parents were Samuel Cowles and Abigail Stanley.

Here’s some info about Gideon from the FindAGrave Website, https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=5993736. “Born in Glastonbury, Connecticut, to an old family of the state, he completed studies at Norwich Academy in Vermont and turned to journalism and politics. By 1826 he had become part owner and editor of the “Hartford Times”. That same year he was elected to his state’s legislature, serving there till 1835. A Jeffersonian in his emphasis on individual freedoms and states’ rights, he became an early supporter of Andrew Jackson and then was a personal adviser to President Jackson. Although he failed in his first tries at national office, he built up a reputation among a wide circle of influential Americans through his writings and travels. In 1856 he left the Democratic Party to help organize the new Republican Party, all the while promoting a more moderate view as the nation moved toward confrontation. After Abraham Lincoln was elected United States President in 1860, he knew his cabinet had to include at least one New England Republican, so Welles was appointed Secretary of the Navy, and if he had no experience as a naval man, his able and energetic assistant, Gustavus V. Fox, was a navy man. Together they revitalized a Navy Department. He was known not to get along all that well with some of his fellow cabinet officers such as Secretary of War Edward M. Stanton and Secretary of State William Seward, and he would sometimes make policy beyond his naval concerns; as early as July 1861, he was ordering Union naval officers to protect runaway slaves and by that September he was allowing former slaves to enlist in the Navy. The same moderation that led him to support President Lincoln’s announced plans for reconstruction led him to support President Andrew Johnson even through the impeachment crisis and in opposition to many of his former Republican colleagues. He stayed through President Johnson’s administration, working for the modernization of the Navy. After retirement, he continued speaking out on public issues and wrote articles and a book about the Lincoln administration. His most lasting contribution to historians is the 3 volume “Diary of Gideon Welles”. The diary is considered by many historians to be an opinionated, brilliant insider’s account and analysis of events and personalities of the war years, but was edited by him to reflect favorably on himself.” Not too happy that he liked Andrew Jackson because my kids definitely consider him to have been one of the worst US Presidents for the way he treated Native Americans with the Trail of Tears.

The Cowles family tree can be found here https://myfamgen.com/cowles-family/.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about Barnet Bond. Barnet’s first wife was Lovina Miller. I didn’t know much about her family until I found a newspaper announcement about the reading of her father John Miller’s will in 1837. The announcement mentioned his widow’s name and the names of all of their children.  As was often the case during that time period women were not mentioned in their own right. Their husbands were included. But that’s a good thing for genealogy research. All of John’s daughters’ names were listed along with their husband’s names. That’s how I found the announcement because I had been searching in newspapers for Barnet Bond and his name was there. It also listed John’s sons names, but not their wives. I did eventually find some of their wives names through other research.

According to the 1850 US Census, Lovina’s mother Elizabeth(Betsey) Hicks Miller was born in Rhode Island. Betsey was living with her son Sidney in 1850. I haven’t done any research in Rhode Island yet to see if I can trace her family.

While researching this part of my husband’s family I learned about Agricultural Census records. In addition to the population census records that we are all familiar with there also exist census records about land, livestock, produce, etc that farmers owned. I have found the 1850 Ag Census from Kingsbury, New York with Barnet Bond and Lovina’s brothers John Jr, Sidney, and Nelson Miller all on the same page. Categories listed on the Ag Census are Acres of Land (Improved and Unimproved), Cash Value of Farm, Value of Farm Implements and Machinery, Live Stock (Horses, Asses and Mules, Milch Cows[assume these are dairy cows], Working Oxen, Other Cattle, Sheep, Swine, Value of Live Stock), Produce (Bushels of Wheat, Bushels of Rye, Bushels of Indian Corn, Bushels of Oats, Pounds of Rice, Pounds of Tobacco, Ginned Cotton Bales of 400 Pounds Each, Pounds of Wool, Bushels of Peas and Beans, Bushels of Irish Potatoes, Bushels of Sweet Potatoes, Bushels of Barley, Bushels of Buckwheat, Value of Orchard Products in Dollars, Gallons of Wine, Value of Produce of Market Gardens, Pounds of Butter, Pounds of Cheese, Tons of Hay, Bushels of Clover Seeds, Bushels of Other Grass Seeds, Pounds of Hops, Hemp(Tons of Dew Rotted, Tons of Water Rotted), Pounds of Flax, Bushels of Flaxseed, Pounds of Silk Cocoons, Pounds of Maple Sugar, Hhds of 1000 Pounds of Sugar Cane [I don’t know what hhds means], Gallons of Molasses, Pounds of Beeswax and Honey, Value of Home-Made Manufactures), Value of Animals Slaughtered. Obviously not all of these categories applied to them. They weren’t growing rice, tobacco, and cotton in New York State. I also have the 1860 Ag Census for Ozro Bond after he had moved to Scriba, Oswego County, New York, and the 1860 and 1870 Ag Census records for John Jr, Sidney, and Nelson Miller still in Kingsbury, and Nelson in the 1880 Ag Census.

Here’s the link to the Miller family tree https://myfamgen.com/miller-family/

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 29^th 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/.