Another pilgrimage

4 days in May, 2010.

CALL ME CRAZY

In May a friend and I are planning a whirlwind road trip through Michigan.  She’s driving and lives in Columbus OH so that’s our jumping-off point.

The destination for the first day is Cadillac.  On the way there are three cemetery stops: Battle Creek, Martin & Wayland.  In Battle Creek are graves of descendants of Rensselaer Gideon and Mary Elizabeth (Bradley) Smith, aunt and uncle of Mary C (Smith) Moulton.  East Martin Cemetery hold many ancestors.  Wayland holds the remains of Harriet Newell (Moulton) Carpenter, her husband Asa Alton Carpenter, and their three children.  Harriet was a daughter of Belah Gray Moulton, aka Belah the elder, grandfather of Mary C Smith’s husband Belah Gray Moulton.

Moulton plot at Maple Hill Cemetery

In Cadillac we’re to meet with Mark’s father’s second cousin; their grandfathers were brothers.  I need to hit the Cadillac library to photograph some obituaries.  And we’re visiting two cemeteries: Maple Hill for many Moultons and Huckles and Karchers; Mt Carmel for Communals.

On the way BACK to Columbus I really want to stop at Oakwood Cemetery in New Baltimore to photograph the grave of Othelbert Smith’s first wife, Charlotte Jane Chase Westfall Smith Van Akin.  Charlotte was a widow with two small children when they married in 1875.  Though they divorced in 1879, her presence in his life and the conditions under which they married, figure into Othelbert’s life story….. which I’ve yet to tell.

After New Baltimore, on to Oak Hill Cemetery in Owosso in Shiawassee county; the Gillett family plot is there, and the graves of Forest Ray Moulton’s first wife and two of his children.

Then I’m hoping to be able to stop in to see Ralph Moulton, who Mark and I visited on our 2008 pilgrimage.  If he’s up for a visit, I’ll be there!

The next day we stop at Greenwood Cemetery in Aurelius and the grave of Vern Valentine Moulton, brother of Forest, and uncle of Ralph.  Vern’s wife Effie Louise (Campbell) Moulton is likely also there but I’ll have to see.

On to Grass Lake West Cemetery in Jackson county for six gravestones in the Tucker family.  Mary Clarissa Smith Moulton was born of Cortland Brown Smith and Clarissa Snyder.  Cortland’s sister Ranavalina and Clarissa’s sister Cleopatra both married Tuckers and they’re both buried there, along with Ranavalina’s husband’s parents and two of their children.

Then we head straight back to Columbus.  A very long, action-packed four days.  I ask you again: AM I CRAZY?  Mark thinks so…….

Connectors

This is another example of two families, the Snyders and the Fords, being connected by a third family, the Aldriches.

These connections were learned by piecing together information from different sources: Denise Powell’s Aldrich tree, Stacy Cronk’s family tree and a chance “out-of-the-corner-of-the-eye” glimpse on a census.  Those glimpses will get me every time, initiating a hunt to fill in as much information as possible and construct a coherent picture (such as it is) of how they all relate.

The connectors: two sons of Ariel Aldrich:

Lorenzo Aldrich (born 1800 in Vermont) and Fanny Fisher (born 1809 in Massachusetts) were married 1829 in Quebec.  All their children (nine we know of) were born in Canada.  Fanny Fisher Aldrich died in Jan 1851, when her youngest was 11 days old.  Lorenzo remarried a year later but then died in Dec 1853, leaving seven orphaned minor children, and a young wife (age 22), pregnant with their child.  Many of his children found their way to Michigan.

Peter Aldrich (born 1821 in New York) and Louisa Ford (born 1824 in Canada) were most likely married in Michigan; her younger brother, David Sylvanus Ford, was born there when she was nearly 18.

• Othelbert Smith married Lizzie Haslebacher, a woman with two little girls, and they had two more daughters.  Othelbert’s wife died of TB when their daughters were 4yr 6mo and 2yr 4mo old.  Othelbert gave up custody of all the girls.
• His two step-daughters, Sarah (9) & Gertrude (7-1/2), were sent to live outside the family.  Gertrude’s father was never known.
• His own daughters, Clarissa and Leah Smith, were “fostered” for many years by Edmond B and Fanny Tucker.

The twist:

• Clarissa & Leah’s half-sister Gertrude married a man named Leonard Gordon Davis Jr., who was 24 years her senior.
• Leonard’s first wife was Louisa Ford.  (She and Leonard divorced and she remarried Clarence Cronk.)

The history of mankind – Part 1

It has just occurred to me that trudging is at the crux of all human history.

Yeah, there were beasts of burden drawing carts back into the BCs, but there were also a lot of hand-drawn carts. And, yeah, horses were being ridden but  mostly by the upper classes and by warriors. It took a lot of years before riding in a carriage or cart or on horseback became commonplace. In the overall scheme of things, Adam and Eve having been born with feet and no carriages, humans have done (and in vast places on this globe, still do) a LOT of trudging.

So what does the word mean?  Because it is a simple verb, without nuance, all the online dictionaries offer definitions that were substantively the same: “to walk or march steadily and usually laboriously”. There is only one citation that put it any better:

“The slow, weary, depressing yet determined walk of a man who had nothing left in his life except the impulse to simply soldier on.”

Actor Paul Bettany spoke those words as Geoffrey Chaucer in the 2001 film A Knights Tale and seeing his performance, his body language, his delivery, adds depth to the words he utters.  Having just finished my first (and, swear to God, my only) reading of War and Peace, that definition is hauntingly descriptive.

Courtesy of Jeremy Dover

Here’s another take on trudging, that makes it more personal. It’s about great-great-grandmother Moulton’s aunt Angelina, which I found two days ago:

“Angelina Snyder left Indiana, escaping the Civil War, in 1863. She took her four daughters, their husbands, her ex-husband (husband number two) and her third husband to California in a wagon train. They settled in Solano county. The hardships of walking half way across the continent, in the dust raised by numerous wagons, did not end at the Pacific Ocean. Daughters died, grandchildren died. Strong men broke down with the grief of loss, temporarily abandonned (sic) their children, then moved what was left of their families to Washington…..” *

In 1863, Angelina (nee Snyder) was 49 and her daughters were between 20 and 29 years of age. Information is incomplete.  I don’t know anything about the first two daughters’ husbands, if they had children, when and where they died; all I have are their names and dates of birth: Lucinda, born 1834 and Ann, born 1837. Daughter #3, Hannah, born 1841, died in 1867 while they were still in Solano. Daughter #4, Helen, born 1843, died  in 1874 in Ashland, Oregon, during their trudge to Washington;  her own daughters, Alice and Carrie, were 3 and 4 years old.  Carrie lived to be 14 and Alice 50, dying in 1914. Angelina herself died in 1870 at the age of 56.

Were they victims of the Civil War? They didn’t die from battle wounds but if they had not feared the war, these people would not have left their homes. Trudged, like weary soldiers, dying of the elements, of injury, disease or simple illness for want of modern medicine, of starvation and the frailties of the body. They could have stayed put and lived. Instead they suffered and many died.

* from http://www.tribalpages.com/family-tree/bepb. I would like to give credit to the author by name but have been unable to learn who owns the site.