The silver lining

I just returned from a pleasant walk through my lovely neighborhood. I mentioned in my last posting that, as of last Monday, April 21st, spring still had not really arrived in Maine. However, by the time I returned home Wednesday evening -- or more precisely, by the next morning, when I looked out my window -- the grass had turned a deep emerald green, trees and shrubbery were budding, some flowering bushes were even in bloom. And this weekend we at last had warm, sunny days, and now the smiling, sunny faces of daffodils are appearing in many flower beds. At last, at last.

So, some of the positive aspects of my trip to New York. Breakfast the next morning, which just about made up for the disappointing dinner the night before. Especially since it was free. This was because the young people who had checked me in, besides misleading me about the caliber of the cafe, had convinced me to sign up for the Priority Club. "It doesn't cost anything," they said, "and you get all these neat coupons." One of those coupons was for a free breakfast. So I had an excellent breakfast "skillet" -- diced potatoes, green peppers, onions, sausage and bacon bits, topped with scrambled eggs -- along with a pot of hot tea, for nothing. And because there was so much left over, I had the waitress box it up for me; and into my travel cooler it went. That tasty mixture livened up my scrambled eggs next morning, when I made my own breakfast at my friends' house where I had stayed the night, and again on the morning after I returned home. Not bad, for no cost.

Then there was the pleasant, sunny drive from Oneonta to the little town of Gilbertsville, fifteen miles away, where I would again be doing genealogical research at the tiny, adorable stone library there. [See Note of July 16 2010 for my experiences at this library on my last trip.] I was reminded as I drove how much I love this part of the country. I love my Maine, love living there, but bucolic Otsego County, New York has second place in my heart. The tree-covered hills, the little valleys with their fields, the handsome, well-kept farms, the pretty little towns with the big old trees and the big old houses. It never ceases to amaze me that my great-great grandfather, William Cole, left this place, and his family, which was apparently quite close, to live in steamy hot south Texas.

And my research turned up some fascinating new infor-mation about William. I spent most of my time reading through the diary of William's mother, which I discovered last trip. This time what I found was that William (called Willie by his mother) was there, in Gilbertsville -- or more accurately on his parents' farm, out in the country -- May-Sept. 1871. Well, his daughter, my great-grandmother, Ann Willie Cole, was born in April of that year! And not in New York, but in Refugio Co., TX. So it would seem there were problems in the relationship of the young married couple. They had been married for only two years, and there William is, back at home. He returned to Texas in Sept., after he had "packed the big trunk," and gone to pay a goodbye visit to all his married sisters. His mother reports, on Sept. 13: "R [her husband] took Willie to the stage this morning. O how hard to part with him again." And that was the last time she saw him; the following March she received a letter from "Willie's wife" that he had died. He was only 25. Everyone's life is a story.

A big positive of the trip was being able to spend the evening visiting with my friends, Kathy and Bona, an hour up the road from Gilbertsville in Binghamton. Kathy was one of my three roommates in college, and we have remained in touch over the years. I always feel so comfortable at their house -- which i refer to as the K&B Bed & Breakfast -- and it is such a pleasure to be able to enjoy interesting, stimulating conversation with like-minded people, who don't necessarily share all of your opinions, but are able to disagree with civility and good humor. This was one of the things I badly needed, in getting away. The absence of friends in my day-to-day life has become a real drag on my spirits. We all need somebody.

The trip cost more than I expected it to, and was terribly short, and tiring, but I was glad I made it. I needed it.

A window on the past

[Note that this continues the two previous posts.]The next morning I'd planned to drive on to Binghamton, but since I hadn't had time to search out the Prentiss Cemetery, where members of the Rockwell side of the family were buried, I made the decision to try to find that first. After all, when was I likely to be in this neck of the woods again? That's a long drive from central Maine...

But once again, I got lost. Part of the problem is that the maps will refer to County Rd 4 or Guy Beardsley Rd., but the roads themselves are completely without signage. I was again pulled over, puzzling over my maps, when I saw a woman up ahead pull into her driveway, and decided to go ask her if she knew where Prentiss Cemetery was. She didn't, but assured me that one of the librarians at the public library would undoubtedly be able to help me. This kind lady was named Pat, as I saw from her mailbox, and she insisted on leading me back into town, and to the library, and introducing me to (as I was later to learn) the archivist, Leigh Eckmair. Not only was Leigh able to direct me to Prentiss Cemetery, but when she learned what families I was interested in, she started pulling out all these published genealogies, and notebooks, and boxes of records. Turns out the Coles and the Rockwells were among the major families of the area throughout the 1800s, and this little library is stuffed to the gills with information on them.

Oh, frabjous day. Talk about serendipity. Even though I had told my friend Kathy to expect me between 10 and 11 -- and it was 10 o'clock now -- I knew I had to take advantage of this unexpected golden opportunity. And I was pretty sure my being a couple of hours late would not upset my friends unduly; they're not the kind of people to get bent out of shape with worry or irritation in such a situation. So I spent about an hour looking through "stuff' -- with Leigh kindly photocopying a number of things for me -- then made a mad dash for the cemetery, which is very small, and old (1795), and where a 20-minute search produced Amos Rockwell's large gravestone. Then I was on my way, though determined to return, on my trip back to Maine the following Tuesday. Especially because, just as I was leaving, Leigh had produced a diary belonging to William Cole's mother. Imagine! A chance to read about an ancestor's life, in her own words!

I spent about an hour and a half the following Tuesday morning pouring over that diary, which was really more a day book than a diary. Elizabeth Rockwell Cole tended to be succinct. Most entries began with a weather report ("Pleasant but cold," or "Very cold", etc.) then most often it was "R. [Richard, her husband] went hunting," or "R. went to town," or "R. did chores." There was a lot more of what R. was doing each day than she herself. One day, though, she "finished throughing the wood in the wood shed" [it took Leigh's assistance to figure out Elizabeth meant "throwing" -- her spelling was not always the best]. Another day she and R. "cleaned out the stables;" on another they "moved the manure." This was a hardworking farm woman, for sure.

I was hoping to find some reference to Elizabeth and Richard's son William, my great-great grandfather. Since the earliest entries (that I saw) were from 1870, by which time William was living in Texas, I was hoping to find at least some reference to his death, perhaps some mention of bringing him back to be buried in the family plot. When I was just about to give up -- I really had to get back on the road, for that long drive to Maine -- there it was, on March 15, 1872 (William died in Feb.). On this day Elizabeth did go to town, to "the office" (how she always referred to the post office) where she "found the letter with the sad news of dear William's death." And her next sentence was, "Oh can he be dead."

The next day she and R. "took the sad news to [their married daughters] Emma and Jennie. Emma took it real hard." (Emma was just a year younger than William, and apparently they were close.) The day after that Richard and Elizabeth saw Emma again and "she cannot let go of her brother."

This was affecting. I was seeing the past. I was seeing the real people who were my ancestors, dealing with what real life was throwing at them. I wanted to read and read that diary...but I had to head on back home.

But you may be sure, I shall return.

Adventures in cemetery hunting

[Note that this continues the two previous postings.] Something I couldn't help wondering, as I drove through the area where my great-great-grandfather grew up, was how he could have exchanged this beautiful country for steamy hot south Texas. The two-lane roads I was driving on wound through green valleys sprinkled with healthy-looking farms, a number of them good-sized dairy farms, lying among hills completely covered with trees. But of course in winter it isn't green. It's frequently white, and it's cold. Perhaps William Cole disliked cold and snow. And maybe he was madly in love with Mary Jane Casterline, and willing to live wherever she wanted. This is the kind of thing you really want to know about your ancestors, more than when and where they were born.

Gilbertsville, which contains the town hall for Butternuts Township, is a very small (population 375 as of 2000 census), pretty town, lots of big old trees, attractive old houses. Not the white-with-black-shutters kind you see so much of in New England, but Victorian two-stories of different colors, many with front porches for sitting and watching the world go by. In 1983 the whole village won status as a Historic District recognized by the National Register of Historic Places, a real triumph for local citizens and people concerned with historical preservation, as they had been fighting for many years to keep a dam from being built on Butternuts Creek, which would have resulted in the entire village being flooded.

There's hardly any business at all -- I saw a quilt shop, an ice cream shop, a hardware store that at first I thought had gone out of business, it was so beat up. The cutest little library you could ever hope to see, even cuter than my little library in Hallowell, which was built to look like an English country church. The Gilbertsville Free Library looks like a small, overturned stone boat. Originally built as a school in 1818, it has served as the library since 1888. Inside it's all dark wood, with the bookcases built into the walls. This library was to prove an absolute gold mine of information, but more about that in a moment.

First, I had to get to the town from Oneonta, seventeen miles away, where I'd stop to have a quick meal, and buy batteries for my camera, since I'd discovered, as I was getting ready to leave Maine, that the batteries on said camera were dead (there's always something). I was trying to follow a map I'd pulled off the Internet, but those little back roads simply didn't run the way the map indicated they should. At one point I was idling at a stop sign, pouring over that map and my regular New York state map, when a car pulled up behind me (practically the only traffic I'd encountered since I left the highway 10 minutes before). I ran back to ask if they could direct me to the town of Gilbertsville. It turned out they lived on the edge of same, and suggested I follow them. When we reached their house the male half of the couple came back to my car and told me where he and his wife thought I would be able to find Brookside Cemetery, where various ancestors were buried.

Ah, yes what would we do without the "kindness of strangers."

Brookside is a very pretty country cemetery, with lots of the local "big, old trees." It isn't that large, but large enough for me to spend over an hour walking and driving around it, trying to find the Coles. I was just about to give up -- it was almost seven p.m., the sun was all but gone, I was getting hungry again, and knew I had to go find someplace to spend the night -- when I spotted a very tall, imposing monument across from where I was. I had visited virtually every other area in the cemetery, some of them more than once, but not that one. I was thinking, "No, it couldn't be that." But of course, it was.

I took pictures, but really could not determine if William Cole was, indeed, buried there. There were a number of small stones around the monument, which might very well have marked the actual graves of the several people listed on the monument, but they were sunk so low in the earth they couldn't be read.

At last I tore myself away, made the 20 minute drive to a town with the unlikely name of Unadilla, where I found the old-fashioned Country Motel, with a little old lady in a knick-knack cluttered office, complete with yapping small dog, running it. Was amused when I moved my stuff into my room and discovered I had to plug in all the electric amenities -- microwave, small refrigerator, air conditioner. Then I discovered that even plugged in the ac wouldn't work because there were no knobs on it. When i went back to the office to report this situation the LOL said, "Oh, yes, I'd forgotten about that. The last person, I just gave him a screwdriver, but of course he was a man..." And she gave me another room, into which I had to move all my stuff from the original room, and where I again had to plug everything in. But at least the ac had knobs on it.

Next: Serendipity

Roots

[Note that this continues the previous post.] Nearly 30 years ago I became interested in tracing my family tree. This activity was helped along enormously by stumbling on a published genealogy of the Camp family, which enabled me to trace my father's paternal lineage as far back as the Thomas Camp, originally of Virginia, who pretty much supplied the South with its Camps. The man had two wives who each produced twelve children, all but three of whom were boys, who all went on to have a whole slew of children, most of whom were boys.

The maternal side of my father's family has been harder to trace. His mother's father, Robert Terence Quinn, was from Liverpool, of Irish parents -- my only ancestor to immigrate to the US. later than the 1600s -- and to this day I have been unable to learn anything more about his family. He came to this country alone, at a very young age, and did not enter at New York or Boston, as did so many Irish immigrants, but at Galveston, Texas. During the 1880s the ships that landed at Galveston were almost all German; hence the large number of Germans to be found, rather surprisingly, in Spanish-flavored San Antonio. Although some of those ships could have stopped at Liverpool, Robert Quinn is not on the passenger lists (now available online) of any of them. My father believed young Robert stowed away one of these ships when it was docked at Liverpool, was probably put to work when he was discovered by the crew, but was never on any official list. One of the family mysteries, hopefully to be solved one day.

Then there's my fraternal grandmother's great-grandfather, Jonas Casterline, born, according to his army papers, in Seneca County, New York in about 1815. He served in the U.S. army in the early 1840s, fighting Seminoles in Florida. He married a young army widow whose husband had been killed by said Indians. He finished up his service in Corpus Christi, Texas, where he was mustered out in 1845, and a few of his descendents are to be found in south Texas to this day. But I have been able to learn nothing about his parentage, or the rest of his ancestors.

For many years Jonas was one of only two Yankees this girl with a very southern heritage had been able to find in the family tree. The other, William R. Cole, married Jonas's daughter, Mary Jane Caster-line, in about 1869. I knew from the 1870 census (for Refugio County, TX) that William was from New York, but never knew where in New York, or how he came to be married to a Texas belle.

Several years ago I had posted queries on some of the online genealogical forums (e.g., Genforum.com) about William, but never got any response. Last fall I tried again, and this time received two responses that opened a floodgate of information about William, his parents, and their ancestors. All of a sudden the Camp family had a very substantial Yankee heritage indeed, going all the way back to a Miles Morgan who immigrated to Plymouth Colony from Wales in about 1636.

But of all the fascinating information I was suddenly discovering, the most amazing, to me, was that my great-great-grandfather, William R. Cole, was born and grew up in the same county as, and just a few miles from, the small town where this girl from Texas had chosen to go to college, Oneonta, New York. Is this a heluva coincidence or what? At the time I went to school there I didn't even know I had an ancestor named William Cole, since my interest in genealogy did not develop until several years later.

At any rate, I decided this trip to Binghamton to see my friends provided the perfect opportunity to take a look at the little communities associated with the Coles and the Rockwells (William's mother was a Rockwell). There is a web site with the rather macabre name of Findagrave.com. There I had found pictures of a grave marker for William's father Richard, as well as for his grandfather, also Richard. I wanted to see these graves for myself, and also, hopefully, solve a mystery that had arisen. On this same web site, when I did a search for William R. Cole, I came up with the same grave marker (which is actually a big, impressive monument). Could William be buried there? I knew he had died in Texas (according to family tradition, he stepped on a rusty nail and died of blood poisoning, at the tender age of 25), but it occurred to me that perhaps his body had been shipped back home. I wanted to see if I could find out. I did know that I had never been able to find a grave for him in Fulton, TX, where his wife Mary Jane is buried.

So now that I've bored you with my family history -- which was the motivation for my little side trip -- I will tell you what I found in the beautiful, bucolic countryside of Butternuts Township, Otsego County, New York.