Book Shelf: Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian: A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion, 1773-1774

Philip Vickers Fithian was born in New Jersey in 1747 and graduated from the College of New Jersey in Princeton in 1772. The following year he accepted a post as tutor to the seven children and a nephew of Robert Carter III of Nomini Hall in the Northern Neck of Virginia.

Drawing of the exterior of Nomini Hall, the plantation belonging to the Carter family in Westmoreland County, Virginia. Historic American Buildings Survey, The Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.

During the year he spent in Virginia, Philip Fithian kept a journal and wrote letters home that describe life in Colonial Virginia which were first published in 1900. It's a fascinating view into the past.

My early Virginia ancestors were never as wealthy as the Carter family but I'm sure that was a style of life they hoped to achieve.

The Journal and Letters are available from Amazon, both as a print book and a free Kindle book. It's also available from Project Gutenberg. If you would like to see over 300 images of Fithian's writing, they are available here from the Journal of American History.

© 2014 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Hat Tip to Those Relatives Who Wrote Their Stories Down, Part 3

If you are lucky, you have a genealogist or two lurking in your family tree who has already done much of the heavy genealogical lifting for you.  I have three relatives whose written work helped me tremendously, each in their own way:

May (Tibbetts) Jarvis,
Esther (Moreland) Leithold, and
James Milo Nosler.

Today I'll cover James Milo Nosler.

[James Milo Nosler and his wife Sally Snyder, courtesy of Irving Blabon]

James Milo Nosler (1843-1886) is my 2nd great granduncle and the brother of my 2nd great grandfather, William "Will" Henry Nosler.  He is the author of the "J.M. Nosler Diary, 1861-1885."  James and William were the sons of John Nosler (1800-1864) and Nancy Hibbs (1800-1854).

Nosler descendants still own the original diary/diaries, but a typewritten copy is available at the Special Collections division of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.  There is also a microfilm copy at the JFK Library at the Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Spokane, Washington.

You can order a copy of the entire diary for $143.22 (that includes fees and shipping, as of 2014) by contacting the University of Washington in Seattle at this email photos@u.washington.edu,  and include the following information:
Accession Name: Nosler, James Milo
Accession Number: No. 0068-001
Box Number: v.f. 43
Folder Number: Diary, 1861-1886
It took them a week or so to get all the copies done.  You order first and then when they are done they send you the bill.

If you would be satisfied just seeing a sample of the diary for free you can visit the digital version at the University of Washington in Seattle.

The digital version description includes this summary in its notes:

Joe[?sic] Nosler was born in Indiana in 1843. He married Sally Snyder in 1864 and settled in Kansas where he was engaged in farming. Due to the reoccurrence of fever and ague, they decided to move west of the Mississippi Valley. Traveling on the Union Pacific Railroad, they left for Oregon in September 1870. The Oregon country had its drawbacks, and as Nosler phrased it "There were too many trees and too few relations". They had come to Oregon in October 1871, and by July 1871 they were on their way northward to the Willamette Valley. Deciding not to stop, they crossed the Cascades and continued through the dry central area to the Columbia River and arrived in Walla Walla on September 3, 1871. They pushed on to the Snake River, crossing at Angel's Ferry, and took a land claim not far from the present day Colfax. In July, he decided to sell his land claim and move to Colfax where he built a boarding house. He became the first sheriff of Whitman County in 1872. He was also a captain of a militia company, active in church affairs, and a deputy road supervisor. However, the settlers had little money and consequently, we find Nosler turning all his boarders out one at a time because times were so bad that they were unable to pay their board bills. Still, we find him Marshall of the Day, July 4, 1873, Deputy County treasurer and Postmaster in 1874. Times got better in 1874, and he sold the hotel and for a short time ran a drug and stationary store. He then sold his store and was agent for Philip Ritz, selling fruit trees. On account of the cold weather he made up his mind in the spring of 1875 to leave the Palouse and go back to southwestern Oregon where the difficulties that they had encountered when they first lived there were still in evidence. After many difficulties and the death of his daughter, Flora, he returned to his former home in the Palouse Country in October 10, 1877 where he remained one year. In October 1878, he settled in Spokane Falls and here the financial troubles that had beset him in the past largely disappeared. He entered the real estate business, bought tracts of land in and outside the growing city and became fairly well to do. He was able to pay up all his debts and when he died in 1886 he left a considerable amount of landed estate to his heirs. Nosler was unfortunate in his financial adventures until he came to Spokane Falls, but he was beset by a still greater trouble - ill health, which was with his most of his life. He would recover and after a few days complain again of various forms of sickness. The disease which finally caused his death in early middle age (43) was consumption.
The diary begins with some background information and his service in the Civil War (he was a private in Company D, 2nd Cavalry Regiment Iowa), as well his courtship with his wife Sarah Snyder.   It seems this was where his health problems really began, and he never fully recovered.  Much of the diary consists of short, daily entries, punctuated by the occasional longer passages.  This was the diary of an extremely busy man who faced many hardships while trying to make something of himself out in Washington.

It is very interesting to compare the three different works I've covered in this Hat Tip series.  While May Tibbetts Jarvis dispassionately covered many generations of Tibbetts (and told her own story in the 3rd person), and Esther Leithold told the story of her maternal grandparents (and almost nothing about herself), James Milo Nosler gave a first-person view into pioneer life in the mid-1800's with only a passing mention here and there about his ancestry.

I had worked on my Nosler line for a few years before I read through this diary.  It was a real treat when James would mention "Will" (my ancestor), or Rube Rittgers (a cousin of mine through Will's future wife), or numerous other relations, and I would think, "ooh, I know who that is!  Was that person really like that?  So these were actual people, then, and not just names on a census?"



© 2014 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

The Census Takers: A Little Thursday Humor

Hannibal Lecter: 

"A census taker once tried to test me. 

I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti."

As someone who uses the American censuses regularly, I often think of census takers.  What was it like to do that job?  The job has always entailed weird and sometimes dangerous situations, but it must have also had it's share of humorous encounters.

The situation of asking perfect strangers questions about their household has always provided comedic fodder for fiction (much of it not politically correct BTW):

• this 2000 SNL "Census Taker" skit, 
• the 1940 Three Stooges "No Census, No Feeling,"  
• the short play "Taking the Census in Bingville" (published 1911),
• the poem "The Puzzled Census Taker" (published in 1883), 

The blog YesterYear Once More found this gem (1830).

The Census Bureau itself posted some humorous examples in the Census in Pop Culture Through the Decades.



© 2014 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Hat Tip to Those Relatives Who Wrote Their Stories Down, Part 2

If you are lucky, you have a genealogist or two lurking in your family tree who has already done much of the heavy genealogical lifting for you.  I have three relatives whose written work helped me tremendously, each in their own way:

• May (Tibbetts) Jarvis, 
• Esther (Moreland) Leithold, and 
• James Milo Nosler.

Today I'll cover Esther (Moreland) Leithold.

[From the online copy of "And This is Our Heritage", courtesy of the Hathi Trust Digital Library (original from University of Wisconsin).  Accessed 14 Oct 2014.]

Esther Moreland Leithold (1872-1959), daughter of of Alice (Biddle) and niece of my 3rd great grandmother Matilda (Biddle) Porter (and thus my 4th cousin 1x removed), is the author of "..And This Is Our Heritage," the saga of her maternal grandparents, Maria Evans (1814-1899) and Benjamin "B.R." Biddle (1808-1882).

You can access this work free online via the Hathi Trust Digital Library.

You can scan the web to see what specialty bookstores carry a copy or can print one out for you on demand.  Check WorldCat for libraries that hold a reference copy.

[The Foreward from "And This Is Our Heritage."]

This book is a colorful narrative based on the stories Esther grew up hearing.  I am also assuming it was backed up by the genealogical work she did on her Evans and Biddle ancestors, published as "Genealogy of the Evans' family, the "Virginia Biddles," and other related families.", a work I have not yet seen.  

I never would have known about my 4th great grandfather B. R. Biddle's issue with small-nosed men, and why my 3rd great grandmother's nickname was "Puggie," if not for passages like this: 

[see the original size at the following: page 84 from "..And This Is Our Heritage"]

B. R. Biddle was a tailor and businessman from Virginia.  Early in their marriage he and Maria (likely pronounced "Mariah," like Mariah Carey) lived in Springfield, Illinois in the 1840's, and counted among his friends and neighbors Abraham Lincoln.  B.R. went with a group of other Springfield residents out to California in the 1849 Gold Rush (writing a series of travel accounts that were published back in Springfield), where he and some business associates set up supplies for miners in Shasta.  In 1853 he went back to Illinois to bring Maria and the children to Oregon.  They later settled and died in Healdsburg, California.  

[Benjamin Robert Biddle, page 32, from "..And This Is Our Heritage]

[Maria Evans Biddle, page 12, from "..And This Is Our Heritage."]

B.R. and Maria Biddle raised their granddaughter Esther because her mother (their brilliant daughter Alice (Biddle) Moreland, also here) had not liked Esther's red hair, having an aversion to red-haired people (?!).  

[Alice Biddle, age 16, with fellow graduates Currin and Veach (not sure who is who), from the first graduating class in 1870 of Oregon Agricultural College (later Oregon State University).]

This unfortunate beginning allowed Esther to become intimately acquainted with her grandparents, and she was thus able to pass on stories and information that are so often lost from one generation to the next.  

Esther does an amazing job bringing B.R. and Maria, and their world, to life.    Because of her work I feel as if I know these people, flaws and all, which I can't say for any of my other ancestors (except those I knew myself, like grandparents).  

© 2014 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Ralph Shepard, Tailor

One of my paternal 8th great grandfathers, Ralph Shepard (or Sheaphearde, Shepheard, Sheppard, etc.) was born about 1606 in Stepney, Middlesex, east of the City of London. Tradition says he was baptized at St Dunstan's which was severely damaged in the Great Fire of 1666, rebuilt by Wren, and bombed by the Germans during World War II.

St Dunstan's on a map from 1615 

http://spitalfieldslife.com/2011/08/05/vera-hullyer-parishioner-of-st-dunstans/

On May 21, 1632, he married Thankslord Perkins at St. Bride's, Fleet Street. Their daughter Sara was baptized in St. Dunstan's on August 9, 1633 and her father's occupation is given as tailor. (In the church record below, Sarah's entry is the third from the bottom of the left hand page.)

Source Information: Ancestry.com. London, England, Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: Church of England Parish Registers, 1538-1812. London, England: London Metropolitan Archives. Images produced by permission of the City of London Corporation Libraries, Archives. 

However, in the spring of 1634 "Ralph Shepard, of Limehouse, tailor" came to the attention of the Court of High Commission, an ecclesiastical body prosecuting non-conformists, and he was called before them several times to answer questions about his religious beliefs.

What the final decision of the Court of High Commissionwas isn't known but in June/July of the next year Ralph Sheppard, age 29, his wife Thankes Sheppard, age 23, and their daughter Sara, age 2, embarked on the ship Abigail in London, bound for New England and a completely different life.

In Massachusetts, Ralph became a land owner, buying and selling property as he moved a number of times before settling in Concord sometime before 1666. He continued to be described as a tailor in deeds and he and his wife were able to sign their names to those documents.

He died in Charlestown (now part of Boston) on August 20, 1693, Thankslord having predeceased him. There is a gravestone for him in Bell Rock Cemetery in Malden, Middlesex County, Massachusetts.

Source: findagrave.com; photo posted by Wendy Roberts (#46939433)

I'm related to him and Thankslord through two of their seven children, their oldest son Thomas and their daughter Trial.

For more information about Ralph Shepard see: The Great Migration, Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635, Volume VI, R-S, by Robert Charles Anderson. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2009, pages 262-269. It's available online to members of New England Historic Genealogical Society.

© 2014 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Tuesday Tip: Maine Genealogy

["Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.", 1873, from the David Rumsey Map Collection.  Accessed 14 Oct 2014]

Here are some nice guides to Maine genealogy:

• New State Research Guide: Welcome to Maine, The “Pine Tree State” (.pdf) from Ancestry.com Blog
• Finding local genealogy records of Maine ancestors from FamilySearch.org (also Maine Genealogy)
• Maine Family History Research from the Ancestry.com wiki

TIP: Don't forget to look at Massachusetts and New Hampshire records and archives for early Maine genealogy.   Maine used to be a part of Massachusetts.  And most populated areas in early Maine were by water, either by the ocean or rivers. For example, I had ancestors who lived on both the New Hampshire and Maine side of the Salmon Falls river.  Try:

• Massachusetts Archives Collection
• AmericanAncestors.org (NEHGS*)
• Roland Rhoades' compilation of New Hampshire and Maine collections at NEHGS (.pdf)

*New England Historic Genealogical Society is a must if you have any New England ancestry.  Most of their databases are for members, although they rotate a number of databases for free for non-members.




© 2014 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Hat Tip to Those Relatives Who Wrote Their Stories Down, Part 1

If you are lucky, you have a genealogist or two lurking in your family tree who has already done much of the heavy genealogical lifting for you.  I have three relatives whose written work helped me tremendously, each in their own way:

• May (Tibbetts) Jarvis, 
• Esther (Moreland) Leithold, and 
• James Milo Nosler.

Today I'll cover May (Tibbetts) Jarvis.

[Smartphone image of May Tibbetts Jarvis, her portrait from 1916 in Indianapolis, Indiana, taken from my copy of "The Tibbetts Family, 1636-1940."]

May (Tibbetts) Jarvis (1864-1958), sister of my 2nd great grandmother Mary Jane (Tibbetts) Hartley and my 2nd great grand aunt, was the author/compiler of the enormous and detailed "Henry Tibbetts of Dover, New Hampshire and Some of His Descendants."

The book is available in a number of ways.

May placed a copy of the full two-volume work at the following libraries, where they can be referenced:

• the New England Historical Society library in Boston, Massachusetts, 
• in the Jefferson and Adams Reading Rooms at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.,
• the National Library at the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in Washington, D.C.,
• the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois,
• the Central Library of the Los Angeles Public Library in Los Angeles, California,
• the Sutro Library in San Francisco (a branch of the California State Library) (they also have a microfiche version). 

It is available online.  Ancestry.com members can access it here.  If you have access to databases via The University of California, San Diego (UCSD), you can view the work electronically through their subscription to HeritageQuest (actually this is probably viewable by anyone who can access HeritageQuest).  It is also available at Internet Archive and Open Library (although it may not be immediately available as you may have to wait in line to "borrow" it on those services).

The Genealogical Society of Utah microfilmed the DAR Library's copy in 1971, and those microfilm copies are available to view at the Family History Center and the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University, both in Salt Lake City, Utah.

You can usually purchase a physical copy, and occasionally a CD version, on Amazon.com and eBay.

To get an idea of her style and presentation see this page describing herself:

[Section: Vol. II. 9th generation. Jarvis, May Tibbetts,. Henry Tibbetts of Dover, New Hampshire, and some of his descendants. San Diego, Calif.,: unknown, 1934-1939. Accessed from Ancestry.com on 12 Oct 2014.  NOTE: she had two sons, Van Buren Jarvis and George Tibbals Jarvis.]

May began her Tibbetts genealogical work in 1918.  She used the work of distant cousin Charles Wesley Tibbetts, Esq. (1846-1928), for much of the Tibbetts information (he lived his life in Dover, New Hampshire and Moody, Wells, Maine, and was thus close to where his Tibbetts ancestors had originally settled).  She also compiled tons of genealogical information on collateral lines outside of New England, and would make custom versions of this work to give to various relatives.  She traveled to places like Maine, New Hampshire, Indiana, Iowa, and California to gather information.  It is my understanding that her sister Olive Renah (Tibbetts) Puryear helped with the gathering and typing out of information for the work.  I have yet to list all the people who were principal informants (that's for a future blog post, apparently).

I inherited three versions of her work, each in one volume.  The first, called "The Tibbetts Family, 1636-1940," dedicated to "Dr. George Hartley" (my grandfather and May's grand nephew) which has the most amount of Tibbetts info of my copies (although not as much as the "official" version of this work). The second is entitled simply "The Hartley Family," which was likely done for her sister Mary Jane, whose husband was a Hartley.  (I have seen, but do not possess, another, larger, Hartley version, which has much more information on the extended Hartley clan.)  The third version, "The Tibbetts Family" is a much abridged lineage, made from a Glencoe Loose-Leaf Note book cover and filled with typed pages and photostat images, and just shows May Jarvis's direct Tibbetts lineage.

May had a "just the facts" approach to her subject, following the Register style (more on Register style).  It is a wonderful source of facts and dates on the Tibbetts and related families, names which include Jarvis, Messinger, Burnight, and Worrell (at least in my copies these names are included anyway, and there are many, many more I have not mentioned here).  As was common at the time, she would list the many accomplishments and positive attributes of her subjects, and tended to leave out the more unsavory aspects of the black sheep members of the family, including the folks who got divorced, went insane, or got in trouble with the law.  This is not the place to discover juicy gossip!

She does cover Hannah (Snow) Tibbetts' family, but I believe she traced up the wrong Snow tree on that one (see my post concerning Hannah Snow's disputed parentage).

A number of us Tibbetts descendants have faithfully used her work, including her own descendants, as you might notice if you look at some of the trees on Ancestry and on the open web.  May left many blank pages in her books (at least in my copies), no doubt to encourage later family historians to continue her work.  I will leave my pages blank, as the personal computer and cloud computing have replaced those blank pages.

There is one later Tibbetts/Hartley researcher who deserves a special mention, Richard "Dick" Stanley Dunlop (1931-2011), great grand nephew of May Tibbetts Jarvis, great grandson of Mary Jane (Tibbetts) Hartley, and my 2nd cousin 1x removed.  Following May Tibbetts Jarvis, he produced a number of updated versions of her work in the 1980's and 1990's.  Unlike May, he infused much chatty commentary and humor into his versions.  I don't think he ever officially published his works, but he did distribute a large stack of copies to various Tibbetts/Hartley relatives.  I plan to include a few of his selections from time to time.  To get a feel for his style you can read his obituary, which I am certain he wrote.





© 2014 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.