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.
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.
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