I’ve found out so much about Jehial Stanton but I’ve run into a brick wall with his wife Rebecca Stanton, meaning I don’t have the name of her father or mother. I recently found her obituary, detailed in my last post, and from there I’m going to try to work through this brick wall. Jehial is also still a brick wall but I think I’ve gone as far as I can right now with the information that I have for him.
One of the most interesting pieces of information from the obituary was that at the time of Rebecca’s death, her mother was still alive at 94 years old, but her name is not mentioned in the obituary.
I know that the Stantons moved to the Iowa area from New York around 1847. I know that Rebecca was born in New York to a father from Ireland and a mother from Massachusetts. Unfortunately I couldn’t find anything about their marriage in 1846.
I also don’t know her mother’s name nor where she lived or died, so I think for now this brick wall will have to stay there.
I thought my last post about Jehial would have been the last post about Jehial but I found some new information! I searched through newspapers.com again for information about Jehial and his wife Rebecca Stanton. I’m sure I had done this before but there are probably more newspapers added since then.
I had narrowed down Rebecca’s death year to between 1885 and 1895 through census data and Jehial’s between 1908 and 1909 from city directories and census data. So I used those estimates to browse the last name “Stanton” in newspapers from Davenport, Iowa. The only speed bump was that the Secretary of War during the Civil War was Edwin McMasters Stanton, so I had more results to sift through than I had hoped.
I think I have said before that obituaries offer a wealth of information and luckily I found an obituary for both Rebecca and Jehial and information about Jehial’s funeral. Here is Rebecca’s from May 2, 1887:
I still am not certain of her maiden name, she was married once before she married Jehial Stanton. But now I have a good lead on information about her mother. I also may be able to find out more information about her through her children listed here.
Here is Jehial’s obituary from March 29, 1910:
I knew most of the information in this obituary besides his exact date of birth and where he was born. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any information about Boone, New York. There are some misspellings in this obituary so maybe it was misspelled, I will have to do some digging later.
I also found this funeral announcement from March 30, 1910:
I re-searched the records and found that Jehial was buried there (his name was spelled wrong and there were more than one list) right near Sarah, although there was no information about his death and burial date.
My next steps are to continue with the clues I have about Rebecca Stanton.
Wow, have I done a lot of work to figure out more about Jehial Stanton. I thought it was important to take a minute and acknowledge all of the leads that have fizzled into nothing. I have some major information missing from Jehial; where specifically he was born, the names of his parents, the day and place he died and where he was buried.
I mainly used books about the areas where he lived and his family name to see if I could find out more information about him. First I looked in some Stanton Genealogies, there are few because there have been some famous Stantons throughout the years. I searched through A Book Called Our Ancestors the Stantons by William Henry Stanton. I couldn’t find any mention of Jehial in this book, there is some talk of Iowa and some interesting anecdotes about life there in the middle of the 19th century. I also found the Stanton Family Lineage by William Austin Macy, but again no luck.
The next place I looked was the cemetery where his daughter Sarah J. Stanton Husted was buried, Pine Hill Cemetery in Davenport, Iowa. The website for the cemetery has a genealogy section with a lot of information. I looked through their burial records and found where Sarah was buried and used the maps to see if perhaps Jehial or any other family was buried near Sarah, but I did not find anything.
The last thing I did was google Jehial’s name, I figured that maybe it would turn up something and it did, albeit a small piece of information. I have this clipping among my pictures:
It is just the clipping so I have no idea the date (although that’s easy to find out from the clipping) nor the newspaper where it is from. Through the Google search I found this on Newspapers.com. Now I know that this comes from The Daily Times of Davenport, Iowa and was published on July 3, 1905.
I think I will search again on Newspapers.com in case there have been any more newspapers added since the last time I searched.
Wow, it is amazing to look back at work I was doing two years ago and pick up where I left off. My last post about Jehial was featured the Federal Census. I was able to find him in the Federal Census up until 1880, most of 1890 Federal Census was lost in a fire. Try as I might, I could not find him in the 1900 Federal Census. His daughter, Sarah J Stanton Husted is there, living at the address where Jehial would eventually live, but no Jehial. I know that he was alive in 1900 however because there is data about him in the 1905 Iowa State Census. I was also able to find information about him in the 1885 and 1895 Iowa State Census.
Here he is in the 1885 Iowa State Census:
Taken in 1885 in Olive, Iowa
Name looks like Josiah Stanton
Age is 55, making year of birth 1930
No occupation listed
Born in NY
Blind
Wife age 66 named Rebecca Stanton, born in NY, Occupation listed as housewife
The 1895 Iowa Census has no images just information:
Taken in 1895 in Calamees, Clinton IA
Name listed as Jehial Stanton
Age 70 making year of birth 1825
Birthplace is NY
The 1905 Iowa Census has no images of the census data but images of the index.
Information from both of those sources:
Taken in 1905 in Scott, IA
Name listed as Jehial Stanton
Age 82 making year of birth 1923
Widowed
Father’s and Mother’s birthplace NY
Lives with Sarah J. Husted and Jas E. Husted
Lastly in 1905 there is a population schedule. I’m not sure if this is different but it has the same information above, so it’s probably the same.
The only additional information on this population schedule is that Jehial had been in Iowa for 39 years, making his arrival in Iowa around 1866.
This is one of my favorite postcards from my collection. It was sent or post marked from Litchfield, Connecticut on April 11, 1913 at 6:30pm. It’s amazing that I can get that close with the date and time. It was sent to Mrs. Lyman M. Husted, also known as Lucy Lamb Husted. Lucy is my great-great-grandmother and this postcard was written by her mother Adella Bunnell Lamb. This post card also looks beautiful, it has a ridged texture. Here’s a picture of both sides of the postcard and a transcription of the writing:
Dear Luci (?)
Not receiving a letter from you this week as yet, will drop you a card instead of a latter. Naturally you are disappointed in not seeing Roy. He thought when we went away he couldn’t afford to go to both places. I think the experience has showed him some things. He is at home + at work again. All are well, Mamma
In all of the letters that I have from Adella to her daughter, Adella always talks about how Lucy doesn’t write. Even Lucy mentions it in her letter to Adella. Maybe Lucy didn’t like to write letters, or perhaps she was to busy to write, as she explains in her letter. When Adella wrote this postcard, Lucy was 23 years-old with one child and another on the way.
The Roy in the letter is most likely Leroy W. Lamb. He was born in 1894 so at the time of this post card, he was around 19 years-old. In a 1917 military census Leroy was still living at home and worked as a farm hand. He lists that he has a serious disability, “Breack”. I have no idea what that means.
I don’t know why Roy was traveling or where he went instead of visiting his sister, maybe other correspondence will shine the light on Roy’s travels.
Most of this information in this post comes from The True Genealogy of the Dunnel and Dwinnell Family of New England…, by Henry Gale Dunnel (I have no idea why this is an ellipsis on at the end of the title). While you can look at this book online, you can also order it from Amazon, which I did so that I could show people the book that was written about my ancestors.
So who was Michael D-? This was Michael Dunnel, Doniel, Donell, Dunwell, Dwenell, Duenell, Doenell or Dwinill. It was noted that Michael did not usually spell his name, instead affixing his seal to legal documents. Believe or not there are some legal documents that mention Michael, but lets start from the beginning.
Based on an American Genealogical-Biographical Index (AGBI) with is a large database of names that have been printed in genealogies, searchable on ancestry.com, Michael was born in 1640, in Massachusetts, which I feel like is slightly wrong information. Michael was probably born in 1640 but not in Massachusetts where he lived earlier. Henry Gale Dunnel writes that there’s some family historical discussion about the origins of the family, whether it is France or Ireland. Growing up I heard the same thing, the gist of the story was that my ancestor was French nobility who fled France and moved to Scotland or Ireland, changed the name a little, then moved to America and changed the name a little. I’m not sure how much of this true, I haven’t branched my research out into Europe yet.
Michael was married by 1668 to Mary Read in Massachusetts, so he was in America by that time. They had their first child Mary that same year. They had their second child, Michael in 1670, he would go on to be the first doctor in Topsfield, Massachusetts. In 1672, Michael and Mary had another child Thomas, and Michael bought ten acres of land from the Pabody’s. Mary and Michael had a lot of children, besides Mary, Michael and Thomas they had, John in 1674, Elizabeth in 1677, Maudlin in 1679, Joseph in 1682, Susannah in 1685 and Johanna in 1688. Joseph born in 1682 is my direct descendent.
Michael also had a will, in which he gave his sons parts of his land. He ordered (his words) John and Joseph to keep “Two cows, a horse and ten sheep” for Mary Read. It also says that Joseph will have no power to sell the land he was given without the agreement of his mother or counsel. It seems that John and Joseph were to split Michael’s homestead with their mother.
Michael’s will was “proved” on March 3, 1717, meaning he died around that time, either in 1717 or 1716. Mary, his wife and his sons, Michael, Thomas, John and Joseph, all signed that they were present when the will was presented. Even though they signed one after the other, the spellings of their last names differ between Dunnel, Dunnil and Dunnill.
Michael was a farmer, and the land he had served such a purpose. When The True Genealogy of the Dunnel and Dwinnell Family of New England… was written in 1862, the author remarked that this land was still being tended by Michael’s descendants, I wonder if that is still true today. This is about all the information I know about Michael for now. Maybe as I do more digging, I’ll find more stories about him.
I’ve been focusing lately on my Husted lineage, partially because that’s the most recent research that I’ve been doing and partially because I have a treasure trove of pictures from that side of the family. However, I started my research, maybe two years ago, by following my last name, Dwinells as far back as a could.
You would think that this would be easy because my last name is unique, but because my last name is different, it was spelled so many different ways: Dwinell, Dwinnell, Dwinels, Dwinnells. You get the picture. Some of these variations in spellings are caused by error on the part of the census taker, transcriber or even the part of my ancestors. If they weren’t literate, it might be hard to spell your last name. However some of the variations are due to different parts of the family estranging themselves. I remember by grandmother saying that some parts of the family moved away and changed the spelling of our last name to even further distance themselves from relatives that they didn’t like.
Although this created a lot of confusion for me, I was able to uncover a wealth of information about the Dwinells family that goes as far back in America as the Husteds. While doing my research, I found that there was a book out there about my family genalogy, The True Genealogy of the Dunnel and Dwinnell Family of New England… by Henry Gale Dunnel, written in 1862. (I also want to mention that Internet Archive is amazing). In his introduction, Henry Gale Dunnel writes that he started his research because of the discrepancies between his father’s last, Dunnel, name and the last names of his uncles, Dwinnell.
Henry finds that his ancestor, who also happens to be my ancestor came to Topsfield, Massachusetts in the 17th century. His name was Michael and his last name varied. You can see on the genealogy that I posted, how many different spellings of his last name there are. There is some more information about Michael that I will talk about in a later post. Michael is my eight-times great-grandfather and when I discovered him, as with most of my discoveries, I was amazed. I knew the name of my eight-times great-grandfather. I knew where he lived and some of what he did. For me, that’s a big deal.
To lay the ground work for the Dwinells side of my family, I made a quick tree:
Here’s another letter that I found among the pictures left by my great-grandmother. At first I had trouble figuring out who this letter is from and who it was written for. The letter starts off with “Dear Ones” and is signed from L.H. I had originally thought this letter was to Lucy Lamb Husted, my great-great-grandmother but after further review I think that this letter is from Lucy to her children, thus the “Dear Ones”.
There are some other people mentioned in this letter, the first is Nate, who I haven’t been able to identify. I’m assuming that Lucy when to visit her mother, Adella Lamb, who she mentions later in the letter, up in Litchfield, Connecticut. I will look more into who this Nate is because I also have many unidentified pictures taken in Litchfield and Nate might be in them.
Lucy also mentions a letter from Aunt Kate. This can be Lucy’s sister, Kate Lamb Osborn or Lucy’s Aunt, Kate Lamb Fuller. Seeing as this is a letter to her children “Aunt Kate” is probably Lucy’s sister.
Here is a scan of the letter, but I will also transcribe it below
6-11-23
Dear ones
Just a line I expected a line from you today but it was Aunt Kate’s in stead. I some times wish you were here there is lots of things toshow you & shure you will never know or rather never relise if I do tell you. I have my mind made up & that is pure & simple.
Nate is working today & I am alone here inthe house. If it has not rained by this time water the grass onthe lawn & the hedge yong ones
I suppose you have sprayed the patatoes by this time one – heaping table spoon full to every quart of water
How many chickens have you & do you change them 2 times a day dontput them on the new lawn
The sour cheries here are almost ripe. grapes are in blosomhere
I went over to the little church last night the one you have apicture of. It is now 4pm & Nate will be home for super at 5:30 will stop for to do the chores. Don’t you wish you were to ride fancy water & fed hur
Nate has only got 3 hens is or wants to set &another is blind with one eye
I made a cake yestuday & it urned out fine
Mama spoke of waren & North Ave I think she is mistaken Waren St does not go to North Ave. What did Mr Gill say about old lumber
Well I have bento see Mother once more I stayed with her about theee forts of an hour she did not talk much tonight she sed she felt like sleaping she told Me not to be mad but asked Me if I would gohome & let her sleap. She seam real good one day & them worse the next Well no for that report card of final report What shall it bewho has the best who is pasing this time
I canot dooall of the work Nate told Will look again tomorow & see what I can find. I will not say that I am geting fat but I am feeling fairely good but I am not satis fied Now May you hug Louise forme & be a good girl that is the kind that dady likes
Robert do you have much time after you get the hoeing done wellwe will all take a day of when I get home & have a ridee in the car to If itseams hot for that [?] let mr Brenon have it ask what they think of it
Ihave sed all for this time
Love to all hug Louise forrme
L.H.
This letter was hard for me to transcribe. It was much lighter than the other letter, making it hard to read. There are some words that I could not figure out some of the words, even by increasing the contrast on the letter. The grammar and spelling mistakes make this a hard letter to read and understand.
I like the part of this letter that is clearly a mother making sure her children take care of their home. She gives instructions on how to spray the potatoes and to make sure that the chickens don’t go on the new lawn. She tells them that if it hasn’t rained, to water the grass.
I also find it interesting that Lucy asks to “hug Louise for me”. In 1923, Louise would have been just a year old. I feel like it would have been hard for a mother to leave her infant for a length of time. That’s what makes me think that Lucy went to see her mother because her mother was ill. Adella does make a comeback from whatever illness that she has because she lived at least until 1957 and the age of 94.
My great-grandmother Mae or in this letter “May” would have been nine years old and her brother Robert, thirteen. Lucy never mentions their father until the very end of this letter “be a good girl that is the kind dady likes”. I imagine a thirteen-year-old and a nine-year-old and a baby running a small farm but that is not likely. Lyman M., Mort as he is called in other letters, Lucy’s husband, probably was home tending to their farm.
I would like to know how long Lucy was away from her home, some of the things she talks about makes it seem like she was away for awhile, like how she baked a cake. I also don’t know how long letters took but I’m assuming they weren’t too fast.
Overall I think that this letter is an amazing thing to find. I love the fact that my great-great-grandmother sat down at a typewriter and I can hold in my hand the letter that she wrote. I think that feeling connected to my ancestors is one of the main reasons that I love doing this research. Even though Lucy never knew me, I can still feel like her granddaughter, even if it is her great-great-granddaughter.
Because my last post was so long and took me the entire weekend to research, here’s a small little bit of my family history. Following my Husted ancestry back, I encountered John Mead, who is my nine-times-great-grandfather. He lived in the middle of the 17th century, as far as I know his birthday is unknown, but he died in 1699. John was one of the early settlers of Greenwich, Connecticut. While researching Greenwich, I came across a book called Ye Historie of Ye Town of Greenwich by Samuel Mead. The title sounds like it was written in the middle ages, but it was written in 1863. Not only does it have a good history of the early town, it also includes a genealogy of many families in Greenwich.
John Mead is a character in this book, part of a chapter is dedicated to him. There’s also an anecdote which “shows” his character. I’ve linked to the page it is on here, but I will also transcribe it below:
One day when he was quite an old man, as he was going for his grist on horseback to the mill at Dumpling Pond, before he reached the Mianus River he overtook an old Quaker jogging slowly along loaded with a heavy budget. In a real spirit of kindness he offered to take the Quaker’s load upon his horse, and thus give him a lift on his journey. “No,” replied the Quaker, “thee don’t get my bundle, for I can read men’s thoughts. Thee wants to get my bundle, and then thee’ll run off. Thee don’t get my bundle.” “Very well,” was the simple reply, and so they went slowly on together. At last they came to the brink of the Mianus River. Here the Quaker was really in trouble. How to cross a river, two or three feet deep, dry shot, was quite a puzzle. But he gladly accepted a second offer of assistance from the horseman. The bundle was mounted in front, John in the middle and the Quaker behind. Arriving at the centre of the river, in pretending to adjust his stirrup, John caught the Quaker by the heal and gave him a gratuitous bath. Such treatment was too much, even for Quaker forbearance, and the victim, with his hands full of pebbles, would have taken summary vengeance, had not the other party threatened to put the bundle under a similar course of treatment. This threat, and the lecture following it, gradually cooled off the Quaker’s anger. John informed him that all had been done for his good, to teach him a lesson, and the lecturer said he hoped the stranger would never again profess to read men’s thoughts. “For,” said he, “I asked you to ride, kindly in the first place, when you refused; but at the second time of asking, I really intended to do as I have just done.” So saying, and tossing the bundle back, he rode on, leaving his companion to apply the moral as he thought best.
I’m not sure how I feel about that story. It makes it seem like Quakers were the worst, especially Quakers who thought they were telepaths. On the other hand, John did dunk the Quaker into the river, but he didn’t end up stealing the Quaker’s bundle. This story does makes John seem like a really cool guy.
While researching the last photo that I wrote about, I started thinking about a family portrait that I had.
This picture was taken in Davenport, Iowa, so I assumed that it pictured my great-great-great-grandmother on the left, Sarah J. Husted, and her husband, Lyman B. Husted in the middle of the picture. The man in the back of the picture, who looks a lot like my father, I thought was my great-great-grandfather Lyman M. Husted. I figured the children were those of the woman on the right, who was a sister of Lyman M.
However, going through the steps to date Lyman B.’s previous photograph got me thinking that my initial assumptions were wrong. This sent me on a crazy chase to figure out who these people were in this picture.
I found some old newspapers from Davenport, Iowa that showed a divorce between Sarah J. and Lyman B. I’m not sure if this divorce went through but she shows up in later newspaper articles remarried as Sarah J. Owens. However by 1900 she was going by Sarah J. Husted again. This might be because of inheritance money that was discovered in Connecticut (I’ll talk more about this in another post). Anyway, Lyman B. was 67 when he died and I do not think that this man in this photograph is 67.
I think that Sarah J. is still the woman pictured to the left, however I think the man sitting in the middle is Jehial (or Jehral as I have previously misspelled his name) Stanton her father. In my collection of photographs, I came across a small newspaper clipping (sorry that it is crooked):
This indicates that her father was living with her at some point when he was older. He is also blind, and I might be reading too much into the picture, but he is not looking at the camera the way the other adults are. My next question to answer was: What year was Jehial Stanton born?
This question actually took me awhile to figure out, probably because I had some wrong information. I originally thought his name was Jehral Staton, which I believe I acquired from an obituary of Sarah J. Husted. This made it hard to find any information, but once I started digging I found his correct name. Jehial Stanton was born July 4th, 1823 (based on this clipping and census data). That means that this newspaper clipping was from July 3rd, 1906. So by 1906 he was living with his daughter in Davenport.
I had a difficult time dating the fashion in this photo, but based on the women’s dresses, I think that it was taken sometime between 1900 and 1910. My next question to answer was: Who are the other people in the picture?
The younger man standing up in the middle of the picture is not my great-great-grandfather Lyman M. If this picture was taken between 1900 and 1910, he might have already moved back to his extended family in Connecticut. He does show up in the 1900 Federal Census living with his mother and brother (Sarah J.’s name shows up at the bottom of a page):
However, I no longer think that the young man in this photo is Lyman M. Husted but rather his brother James Elnathan Husted, called Elnathan (also listed in this census). If both sons lived with Sarah J. at the time of this photo, I would think that they would both be in the photo.
Finally, who is the woman and the children? Sarah J. Husted had no female children so my previous theory was wrong. I do not think that this woman is Elnathan’s wife, Lola Husted. On his World War I draft card Elnathan listed that his address was the same as his mother’s and his mother was his next of kin whereas on his World War II draft application, his address was in another state and his next of kin was Lola and this photograph was definitely take before World War I.
Looking back at the 1900 Federal Census, an Effie M. Williams, Sarah J.’s niece, and her children, Charlie O. Williams and Effie B. Williams, are listed as living with Sarah J. The children in this photo, if it was taken between 1900 and 1904, would be about the same age as Charlie O. and Effie B. and the woman on the right of the photo looks to be in her mid twenties, as Effie M. would be. Although I tried, I could not figure out who Effie M.’s parents were.
So my conclusions at this point are that the people in this photo are Sarah J. Husted, James Elnathan Husted, Effie M. Williams, Jehial Stanton, Charlie O. Williams and Effie B. Williams.
My Origin Stories 