Preserving Family Legacies, No. 1, Part 6

Letters from Aunt Helen, Part 6

O P Q contained the PARKER family letters. Alright, now we've departed from tracing the Gertrude Ellen (WALTER) lineage and have gone back to her husband's NEWTON ancestors. Let's take a look at the NEWTON generations to see where Aunt Helen may have been going with this:

George Ulysses (8) Newton md. Gertrude Ellen WALTER, 1 July 1895 in Binghamton, NY

Francis Louis (7) Newton md. Elizabeth Mary RILEY, 5 Nov. 1854 in Maine, NY

Nahum (6) Newton md. Thankful PARKER, 22 Oct 1818 in poss. Worcester County, MA

Nahum (5) Newton Jr. md. Damaris BRIGHAM, 6 May 1778 in Marlborogh, Middlesex, MA

Nahum (4) Newton Sr. md. Tabitha SANDERSON, 30 Feb 1741 in Leicester, Worcester, MA

Joseph (3) Newton Jr. md. Abigail ----

Deacon Joseph (2) Newton md. Katharin WOODS, abt. 1670 in Marlborough, Middlesex, MA

Richard (1) Newton md. Amy LOKER, 9 Aug 1636 in Bures, Essex, England

R held the RILEY family history letters.

W provided letters relating to WALTER/DUDLEY/FIELD/SCRANTON/HOWARD, all of Guilford and Norfolk, CT. An interesting letter from the War Department, dated July 13, 1931, states:

There are no military records in this Department of a date prior to the War of the Revolution. Such Colonial War records are in existence, except those in the possession of the British Government, are most likely to be found in the custody of the various states that sent troops to those wars or, in some instances, of historical societies. . . . Signed, C. H. Bridges, Major General, The Adjutant General.

 Aunt Helen generally did not preserve copies of her outgoing correspondence, except in this case, where the War Dept. stamped it and returned it to her.

 

X & Z preserved a variety of documents. First is a blank fan chart from the Media Research Bureau, 1110 F. Street, Washington, DC, measuring 22" x 15". Following is an advertisement brochure for The Story of Connecticut, published by The Hartford Times. . . . "Every Home Should Have a Set" it boasts. "Original Price $3.00 for 3 Volumes. Now On Sale: $1.50. As you can see, a used copy now costs $30.00...ten times the original price!

American Library Services , 117 W 48th St., NY, NY

Much of the rest of my aunt's correspondence seems to be with a company where she was seeking to purchase genealogical volumes: The History of Chenango and Madison Counties, NY, by James H. Smith; The British Invasion of New Haven, Connecticut, by Charles Henry Townsend; The Morse Genealogy; The Newton Genealogy; History of Enfield; History of Madison County, NY, by Mrs. L. M. Hammond; History of the Colony of New Haven, by Edward E. Atwater; various other histories of Ridgefield, Wallingford, Simsbury, New Haven, Putnum, Connecticut, and various published genealogies on family surnames already mentioned. 

Tucked away in the very back of the file, however, was a real treasure: 

Letters from Mrs. Bertha Davey of Binghamton, NY.

She was my aunt's first cousin, the daughter of Charles Philetus WALTER and Ellen Adell DARLING, the sister of my great grandmother Gertrude Ellen (WALTER) NEWTON. Pages and pages of typewritten transcriptions from the CURTIS, SCRANTON, DUDLEY, MINOR, DARLING, and HOWARD genealogies, were held together by paperclips, and loosely rolled up at the bottom, revealing a multitude of abstracted family history.

It could take months and months just to process this information into my genealogical database, but this is nothing compared to the years of research and correspondence that went into this small letters file. 

Many thanks to all our family historians before us 

who left us a well-worn path through prior generations!

Preserving Family Legacies, No. 1, Part 5

Letters from Aunt Helen, Part 5

Attempting to reconstruct a genealogist ancestor's research path can be quite a challenge, but the more time I spend with Aunt Helen's letter file, the more I am beginning to see the course she had chosen.

Tracing allied ancestral families

The next file, H I J, revealed the HOWARD family ancestry, tracing back to Thomas HOWARD of Lynn, MA. A pattern began to emerge. Looking at a fan chart of my great grandmother's family, I realized that this is my aunt's research on her grandmother's family and collateral lines.

Ancestors of Gertrude Ellen (WALTER) NEWTON

 If this theory is correct, then I should also be able to find the surnames KINGSLEY, MORSE, WARD and CHAPMAN. 

The K  L file revealed responses to KINGSLEY queries for Sarah KINGSLEY in CT; Nathan and Warren KINGSLEY in Franklinville, Machias, Rushford and Ellicottville, NY; and, a letter from Mrs. M.L. Palmerlee of Detroit, MI, the granddaughter of Warren KINGSLEY, daughter of Avery KINGSLEY. Electa Ann KINGSLEY, the wife of Smyrna DARLING, was Mrs. Palmerlee's aunt.

M certainly held the letters pertaining to the MORSE family. On my fan chart you can see that Phebe Morse married my 4th great grandfather, Horace Walter. In an unclaimed, returned letter, Aunt Helen asked of J. Howard Morse, who evidently wrote the Morse Genealogy, for she states, 

I recently acquired a copy of the Morse Genealogy and found a note asking that corrections and additional records be sent to you. Would say that I have found four cases in which your book does not agree with family records I have. . . . Have considerable data of this Walter family and a small amount on other daughters of Asaph Morse should you care to have them.

Revolutionary War Song by Capt. Asaph Morse

 I will certainly keep her corrections in mind when consulting the Morse Genealogy in the future. The only other envelope in this file contained letters from War Department: The Adjutant General's Office, Veterans Administration Bureau of Pensions, and The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Office of the Secretary (Archives Division). It appears that she was looking for the Revolutionary War record of Asaph Morse, a certificate of his service was available from the latter office for payment of $1.80 on April 22, 1931. I'm sure the cost has changed since then. But one other piece, tucked into this letter was of great interest, and shown to the right.

N held the NEWTON family letters . . . but what will I find in O through Z?

Preserving Family Legacies, No. 1, Part 2

Letters from Aunt Helen, Part 2

Genealogical research was a whole different world in the 1930s and 40s. Behind my aunt's baptismal record was this letter dated March 12, 1941, addressed to the Hartford Times:

Whenever correspondence was communicated through the genealogical section of a newspaper, each researcher was identified by an assigned number and their initials. In this case, Dorothy A. Y_____ requested to communicate with my uncle, R. L. B. [Ralph Loren Beers], who had answered Query 8010 on the Howard family on March 8, 1941.  A portion of my Aunt Helen's legacy was a binder with the original genealogical newspaper clippings attached to paper with cellophane tape, which had yellowed and become brittle. The pages smelled musty, so I photocopied them to acid-free paper and placed them in archival presentation sleeves in a new binder. 

 

As I paged through the HOWARD section of the clippings, I found the original query dated 12-21-1940 and it's reply, dated 3-8-1941. As you can see, it took nearly three months to get a response. I don't know if I could wait that long! The age of email has certainly benefited genealogists tremendously!

My HOWARD connection looks like this:

Debra Ann (10), Richard Allen (9), Francis Allyn (8) NEWTON; Gertrude Ellen (7), Charles Philetus (6) WALTER; Betsey Elizabeth (5), Amos (4), Nathan(3), Nathan (2), Thomas (1) HOWARD, emigrant.