Month: April 2018

Eliza Beebe (1805-1878)

Consider Eliza Beebe: bearer of children, granddaughter of the American shipbuilder George Claghorn, born in Salem, and holder of a quintessential 19th-century American name—Eliza Beebe. Awesome. Hmm, maybe her mom was friends with Felicity Merriman….

At 17 Eliza married Channing Smith in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where Channing worked as a woolen dyer. Two years later, they lived in the vicinity of Blackstone, Massachusetts, and they stayed there until Eliza and Channing both died in 1878. That gives her over 50 years in one place—not bad.

Eliza started having babies at 18 and kept at it until she was 43.  She seems to have had in the neighborhood of 13 children, including twins Henry and Hiram in 1846, though it’s hard to get an exact count at this distance in time, especially if you consider the possibility of infant mortality and miscarriages. However you look at it, she spent a lot of time pregnant.

Eliza’s fourth child was my 2nd great-grandfather James Arnold Smith.

Eliza Beebe (1805-1878)
. James Arnold Smith (1830-1894)
. . Bert Laraway Smith (1863-1922)
. . . Bert Laraway Smith Jr.

Eliza was the granddaughter of George Claghorn, master shipbuilder of the U.S.S. Constitution. Eliza pops up as a hastily typed aside in some applications for membership in the American Sons of the Revolution; for example, the photo above shows the application of Oscar Smith (my 2nd great-uncle), applying for membership by way of his father’s mother’s mother’s father, the aforementioned George Claghorn. Eliza is named in passing.

George Claghorn is one of my 5th great-grandfathers. (In theory I have 64 of these, but that far back in the past there might be some repeats, which would mean I have fewer than 64 of them.) Lots of George Claghorn’s papers are preserved in the National Archives; here’s a sample of his handwriting and signature.

What’s the deal with Fannie Fisher?

Obituary for Fannie Fisher Downey, Laramie Daily Sentinel, May 9, 1870

Fannie Fisher was Bert Jr.’s grandmother, making her one of my eight 2nd great-grandmothers. She married a man who became famous, and she died young.

She was born Sept. 27, 1842, but where?
Was it in Maryland, as stated in her obituary? Pennsylvania, as stated in the U.S. Federal Census Mortality Schedules Index of 1850-1880? West Virginia, as stated on her daughter Fanchon’s death certificate?

Was Fannie a nanny?
The 1860 U.S. Federal Census for Cumberland, Maryland, shows an 18-year-old “Fanny Fisher” living with James Morgan, Elizabeth Morgan, and their two young children.

Fannie married Stephen Wheeler Downey: a catch
Did this happen in 1861 in Maryland, as some random ancestry.com person’s tree tells me? Maryland is believable, because Downey enlisted in the Union army in Maryland in the fall 1861, which can be deduced from his Wikipedia page…which I will not link to, because this post is about FANNIE! And 1861 is believable because their first child, Buelah, was born in 1862, possibly in December.

Another source put the wedding on the 13th of Sept., 1862, in Laramie, Wyoming, but Stephen Wheeler Downey didn’t move to Wyoming until 1869, so let’s stick with Maryland. He was in the Battle of Harpers Ferry, which spanned Sept. 12-15, 1862. Who knows, maybe on the first day of the battle he was wounded and sent back to Maryland, and on the second day of the battle he married a very pregnant Fannie? It’s a better story that way! 🙂

Fannie and Stephen had two children
> Beulah (1862-1910)
> My great-grandmother Mary Fanchon (1865-1946), aka Fanchon Downey Smith, aka Bert Jr.’s mother.

Fannie died in May of 1870
She was 28, and her daughters were 5 and 8. Her obituary and the Mortality Index both list her cause of death as consumption, now known as tuberculosis. The obituary in the Laramie Daily Sentinel says, “She came to this city last fall, an invalid in the last stages of consumption, and though the salubrity of the climate here probably prolonged her life some months, her disease was too far advanced to make recovery possible.”

Maybe the family moved to Wyoming in part because of her health? But that’s not the official story. A Wyoming history website puts it like this:

In 1869, [Downey] followed his brother, William O. Downey, a surveyor, to Laramie, Wyo. The move came at a steep price, however, because Stephen’s wife died shortly after they arrived.

Looks like Fannie’s obituary was published one day after her death, so one imagines it was already written. Maybe she helped write it.

In any case, she had to know she was dying. How did she handle it? Did she talk to the girls about it? Or did she hide it from them? Leave things vague? Even if they didn’t know for sure that their mother was dying, they had to know she was sick.

Eventually, liquid replaces the lungs, the suffering patients cannot get enough oxygen, and respiratory failure occurs, they can no longer breathe and they drown. It’s painful, it’s drawn out. It’s an awful way to die. But before any of this happens the disease weakens you, diminishes your capacity for work, and puts your family and friends, and anyone else you come into contact with, at risk.
— From McMillen, Christian W., “Discovering Tuberculosis,” Yale University, 2015, as quoted on tbfacts.org

And if she hadn’t lived as long as she did, I might not be here!

Fannie Fisher (1842? -1870)
. Fanchon Downey (1865-1946)
. . Bert Laraway Smith Jr.

I wonder many things about Fannie. I want a photo! Was her real name Francis, Frances, Fanny, Fannie? What were her parents’ names?  Was Fannie a nanny? How did she meet Stephen Wheeler Downey? How would she have felt if she’d known that her husband would go on to remarry and have a lot more children??

The Strothers

Emily was a Strother, and The William Strother Society  has a database that lists almost 77,000 Strother-connected individuals. The photo shows the Strother family in 1896 at Duck Creek near Garland, Texas. Emily’s father, E. B. Strother, is sitting on the porch on the far right, with his back to a post. He is 23 years old and has been married to my great-grandmother Lena Hill Snead for two years at this point, but Lena isn’t in the photo.

The matriarch in the chair on the porch is my 2nd great-grandmother Emily McCullough Strother, who grew up on a farm in Kentucky. If you squint just right, doesn’t that look like a pistol she’s holding in her right hand? Okay, maybe not…but I bet she knew how to use one, even if she didn’t carry at family reunions.

The dog in the foreground is not identified.

I’m not sure which of the Williams the Strother Society focuses on, but here’s how Emily is apparently descended from William Strother IV (1630-1702, b. Northumberland, England):

William Strother IV
. Jeremiah Strother (1655-1740, b. Virginia)
. . Christopher Strother (1715-1785, b. Virginia)
. . . James Strother (1763-1843, b. Virginia)
. . . . Green Bower Strother (1804-1872, b. N. Carolina)
. . . . . Joseph Sale Strother (1836-1903, b. Alabama)
. . . . . . Edwin Bower Strother (1873-1958, b. Dallas, Texas)
. . . . . . . Emily Harriet Strother

Channing Smith, blue dyer

I looked more deeply into Channing Smith because I love that name, and he turned out to be quite interesting! Channing was one of my 3rd great-grandfathers:

Channing Smith (1797-1878, b. Massachusetts)
. James Arnold Smith (1830-1894, b. Connecticut)
. . Bert Laraway Smith (1863-1922, b. New York)
. . . Bert Laraway Smith Jr.

In 1811, at age 14, Channing was “bound out” as an apprentice to learn the trade of the woolen dyer. His apprenticeship lasted until he was 21, and then he practiced his trade until he retired at age 68.

I learned all this and more in an article that his grandson, also named Channing Smith, wrote in 1917. It’s called “Textile Manufacturing in Retrospect,” and it’s available here: https://books.google.com/books?id=6C8wAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA144

The elder Channing’s father, Joel Smith (1770-1800, b. Connecticut), died when Channing was three. I wonder if that led to Channing’s need to learn a trade so young, at 14? Or maybe 14 wasn’t young by the standards of the day?

The photo above shows a snippet of the 1850 U.S. Census in Blackstone, Worcester County, Massachusetts. Channing’s wife was Eliza Beebe (1805-1878). Listed below Eliza on the census page are four of their children; six more children are listed on the next page, which I couldn’t fit into the screenshot.

The census shows that Channing and Eliza’s sons John and James and James were also dyers. James, as shown above, was my 2nd great-grandfather.

Stensele kyrka, 1933

All my recent Swedish ancestors are from the area around Stensele, home of Sweden’s largest (? or oldest?) wooden church. I found this 1933 photo of the church on to https://www.svenskakyrkan.se/stensele/historia.

In more recent photos, tall trees stand alongside the church—this is the only photo I saw that shows the whole church.

In 1933 Fritz was 40 years old, and Lilly was 39 and had given birth to four of her five children. Her father, Anders August Johannson Ljung, had been dead for 11 years.