Genealogy – My Origin Stories

Brick Wall: Rebecca Wright McBride Stanton

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.

Origin Stories: Jehial Stanton and Rebecca Stanton

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.

Origin Stories: Jehial Stanton Further Research

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.

Then I looked at books about the areas in Iowa where he lived, The History of Clinton County Iowa published by the Western Historical Company. No mention of Jehial. History of Scott County Iowa, published by Interstate Publishing Co., no mention of Jehial. History of Whiteside County, Illinois: From Its First Settlement to the Present Time edited by Charles Bent, no mention of Jehial. Historic Rock Island County published by Kramer & Co., no mention of Jehial.

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:

Born on the fourth.jpeg

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.

DNA: Updates

About a year ago, my fiance and I ordered the Ancestry DNA kit from Ancestry.com. I’m not sure how much it was, I think we got a deal so it was cheaper. The kit came in the mail and we spit in the tubes and a month or so later we got our information back. I was very excited when I got the email that my results were ready. They looked something like this:

Screen Shot 2018-11-05 at 6.46.33 PM

Most of the results were expected. I have Hungarian ancestry on both sides of my family, thus a large percentage in Europe East. The only thing that seemed strange was that the percentage for England, Wales and Northwestern Europe was so small. I know that my maternal grandfather’s family comes from England so I thought that this result would be larger.

I learned from doing this DNA kit is that I didn’t inherit an exact 50% of my parents’ DNA. This is, if my father is 50% Hungarian, I don’t automatically get 25%. I always thought that everything was split in half which, now that I’m thinking about it, doesn’t make sense. In actuality, I got a random half of my parents’ DNA. If my father is 50% Hungarian, I could get 10% or 40% or 27%. It is, however, more probable that I would get something around half their DNA (the 25%). So it’s possible that I didn’t a large amount of the English DNA from my mother but the probability would be low.

I didn’t second guess my results from Ancestry DNA because DNA can’t lie right? That was until I got an email from Ancestry saying that they had updated my DNA results. What?

Whoa! Big changes! Eastern Europe stayed mostly the same but Ireland went down by 12%. And England went up by by 26%! I also lost 10% from Scandinavia (I’m assuming it changed to Norway). Ancestry explained that the changes resulted from more reference samples. The first estimate used 3,000 reference samples but the update used 16,000 reference samples. More samples means that there can be more specific results for regions that are closer together. It seems like there will be more DNA updates in the future (based on the update FAQ) when this “cutting edge” science gets sharper.

Origin Story: Jehial Stanton and the Iowa State Census

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:

Screen Shot 2018-11-01 at 9.07.47 PM.png

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.

Screen Shot 2018-10-28 at 5.18.08 PM

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.

1905 Jehial Stanton - Population Schedule (1)

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.

Lewiston Snowshoe Convention

This is another new/real time post. Remember that picture I posted yesterday?

I was intrigued, so I googled Lewiston’s Ice Palace Snowshoe Convention and here’s what I found:

Lewiston is a town in Maine where in 1925 a large number of French Canadians who were part of snowshoe clubs came to the town and had a “New England Mardi Gras“, including winter sports and other various sorts of wintry fun, like building an ice palace. This picture in my collection is from the tenth anniversary of the Snowshoe Convention. There are some videos of the Snowshoe Convention in 1950. Sadly the last convention was in 2015 because Snowshoe Clubs had been slowly disappearing through the years.

I don’t know who from my family went to the 1935 Snowshoe Convention, but I’m sure they had fun.

Postcard I

Originally posted on September 9, 2015.

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.

Snow Pictures

This is a new post or a real time post? I’m not sure, but it’s not one of my old posts from my previous blog. Two days ago we had some crazy winter weather here in Philadelphia and in honor of that I wanted to post some snow pictures from my old photo collection. They are mostly pictures of dogs in the snow.

New/Old Information

First Published on September 7, 2015.

I still don’t have my computer but I was able to scan some more photographs and do a little more research. This was especially good because my parents brought me the rest of the contents of the box of old pictures. I found another tintype photograph. I’m not sure who is in the picture yet but here is a sneak peek:

In the box, there was also a large old photo album. I have no idea who the photo album belonged to originally, what side of the family. This means that I’ll get to do a lot more digging there are some real gems in the photo album. Here’s another sneak peek of those pictures:

Stay tuned for more exciting origin stories!

Origin Story: Michael D-?

First published on September 2, 2015.

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.