"Of the builders and steerers of ships..."

Frederick Dillazone Ketchum (6 Apr 1811 - 21 Jan 1888), a maternal third great-grandfather, is one of my favorite ancestors, and one about whom I would love to learn more. He lived his entire life along the Great Lakes: born in Oswego, New York, then moving to Huron, Ohio, and finally retiring to Mackinac Island, Michigan. His origins are unclear, but he apparently began work as a ship's carpenter at an early age, then worked his way up to Master Shipbuilder, owning a shipyard, and receiving the honorarium "Captain."

O Captain, My Captain.

It is not known for certain who his parents are, although I believe his father was Elijah or Elisha Ketchum (abt 1871 - aft 1840). We know that Frederick was born in Oswego, New York; and Elisha appears on the U S Federal Censuses of Oswego prior to 1840. In 1840, both Frederick and Elisha appear on the same page of the US Federal Census for Huron, Ohio. Tracing Elisha's census information, it appears that Frederick had five siblings, but I have not been able to attach names to any of them.

Detail of the 1840 U S Federal Census of Huron, Erie, Ohio.
 Besides Elisha and Frederick Ketchum, other family names on this page who are
 (or would become) relatives of the Ketchums are Goodell, Cherry, Bennett, and King.

Since I have made the Elisha/Frederick connection, others have found a source that suggests that Frederick's mother might have been a much-married woman named Roxanna Billings (? - 13 Jan 1865), one of whose husbands was an Elisha Ketcham [sic]. Unfortunately, neither the dates nor locations of Roxanna's Ketcham match with the Elisha Ketchum who seems to be Frederick's father, so this--to me--has been satisfactorily disproved.

The question of Frederick's parents still unanswered, I am also fascinated by his middle name: Dillazone. I can only assume it is some sort of family name, but Google searches reveal no other Dillazones, not even as place names, or anything else. Another mystery. I am planning a Road Trip to visit the sites of Ketchum's life and attempt to learn more.

Although we do not know much about Frederick Dillazone Ketchum's antecedents, we do know a good deal about his career. He built schooners, and steamers, and brigs (oh my!), including Fashion and West Chester in 1846, Plymouth and Susquehanna in 1847, Charter in 1849, Sarah J Eason in 1851, and Aldebaran in 1852.



From the Sandusky [Ohio] Clarion, 2 Feb 1847
. Ketchum's "perfectly modeled" ship is probably the Plymouth.

Orion and Arcturus followed in 1853. Arcturus was notable for being one of the largest schooners on the Great Lakes for its time. Despite its size, its travails are typical of ships of the time. There is this, from the Buffalo Daily Republic, 9 Sep 1853:

     A GALE. - The Chicago Tribune of Wednesday says:- The wind commenced blowing a gale, accompanied with heavy rain, early yesterday morning. The white capped waves told plainly that the storm was felt on the lake, and a fleet of vessels from Buffalo and the timber ports were soon in sight and making for our harbor, like frightened birds. We notice the following disasters to the shipping:
Schooner ARCTURUS, from Buffalo, while endeavoring to make the piers at 3 P.M., struck on the south end of the bar, under full headway. The Captain let go his anchor, lowered his sails, and remained quiet until the tug SENECA went to his assistance at dusk, and towed the vessel into port. The ARCTURUS carried away her jib boom in St. Clair River, and was obliged to throw a locomotive overboard in a heavy gale on Lake Huron, to free her deck.

Yes, you read correctly: "throw a locomotive overboard." And that was just within Arcturus' first year. In December 1854, it collided with a propeller ship, Mayflower, and needed repairs. In 1859, "large repairs." Likewise in 1859, 1862, and 1876. By 1879 it was not insurable, and had changed hands numerous times. In 1881 it was repaired again, this time converted into a barge, which finally sank "wrecked, total loss," in 1888.

1854 saw Ketchum another ship of interest: Mount Vernon. 


Believed to be Mt Vernon.

Mt Vernon was one of the only propeller ships built by Ketchum, so consequently was through a partnership with an "itinerant" shipbuilder, Joseph Keating, about whom more later. Just a few years after its' completion, Mt Vernon, en route from Detroit to Buffalo:

exploded her boiler and became a total loss. Her stern was blown to pieces and she sank in 20 minutes, a total loss. The survivors of her crew climbed her rigging as she went down and were rescued by the schooners FOX and LOOKOUT.... Her wreckage was struck by several vessels in the months that followed, causing the loss of at least the scow OTTOCA of Saginaw.



Pages from a longer document about the Mt Vernon.
Left: Builders Ketchum & Keating ; right: Captain James Bennett was Ketchum's son in-law.

Last year, during a trip to Washington D C, I was glad I had already encountered (and remembered) Keating's name in conjunction with my ancestor. At the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History there was an exhibit, "On the Water," which went into great depth (you should pardon the pun) about the sinking of another of Keating's ships, Indiana. It was built in 1848, and sank in 1858, those dates book-ending the time of Keating's collaboration with Capt Ketchum on Mt Vernon. Although my third-great grandfather was not mentioned in the exhibit, it was still thrilling to see. You can take a virtual tour here: http://amhistory.si.edu/onthewater/exhibition/4_3.html

1855 brought Canopus, the apparently eponymous Ketchum ("masts carried away in a storm crossing Saginaw Bay," in 1860; capsized in 1861, sunk in 1864, rebuilt again in 1874, ultimately wrecked in 1883) and Live Oak. Shook and Clyde (again with Keating) were built in 1856.


Not pictured: later clippings describing Canopus' collisions with the brig
 Champion in 1857,  propeller Globe in 1858, schooner Collingwood
 in 1861;  nor running aground in 1863 and sinking in 1865.

The last known ship of Capt Ketchum's was La Petite, built in 1866, although the 1870 U S Federal Census still lists his occupation as "shipbuilder." A few years later, he retired to Mackinac Island, Michigan, where he lived with a daughter and son-in-law until his death in 1888, at age 76.



La Petite
Photo courtesy of Historical Collection of the Great Lakes,
Bowling Green [Ohio] State University.

Unfortunately, none of the ships designed or built by F D Ketchum have survived, at least above water.... (In researching my ancestor, I have learned there is an entire underwater underworld--so to speak--of shipwreck aficionados, who research, locate, dive for, and study sunken ships on the Great Lakes, whose fervor and attention to detail rival that of any genealogist; see links.) Typical of his era, all of Capt Ketchum's ships were lost to storms, sinking, collisions, and explosions. Happily, the eight children he fathered during those years fared better. But more about them next time....



1. Frederick Dillazone Ketchum (6 Apr 1811 - 21 Jan 1888), son of Elisha Ketchum and ?, married Mary Ann Cherry (17 Dec 1813 - 11 Nov 1853), daughter of John Wallace Cherry and Clarissa Adams, on 13 Feb 1835, in Huron, Erie, Ohio.

2. Caroline Clarissa Ketchum (30 Sep 1848 - 7 Feb 1920) married Phillip Jacob Runser (30 May 1845 - 22 Mar 1921), son on Philippe Jacob Runser and Anna Marie Brunner, on 19 Feb 1871, in Black River Falls, Jackson, Wisconsin.

3. Isabelle "Belle" Runser (21 Oct 1881 - 30 Mar 1960) married John Jacob "Jack" Severin (11Jul 1878 - 2 Jan 1965), son of Jacob S Severin and Anna Margaretha "Annie" Nissen, on 13 Feb 1903, probably in South Dakota.

4. Myrna Margaret Severin (6 Nov 1907 - 12 Jan 1997) married Dana Earl Brown (26 Jan 1910 - 10 Sep 1984), son of Clarence Edgar Brown and Cora Mabel Kinman, on 21 Oct 1933, in Minneapolis, Hennepin, Minnesota.

5. Beverly Alane Brown (8 Aug 1934 - 7 Mar 2010) married [Living] Burnett, son of Leroy Stanley Burnett and Hazel Lucille Erickson, on 4 Mar 1961, in Long Beach, Los Angeles, California.

6. Your humble blogger.


"...stuff'd with the stuff that is fine"

Alfred Nathaniel Burnett (19 Aug 1883 - 31 Jul 1959), a paternal great grandfather, was by all accounts a very average man. His World War I Draft Registration card states that he was of medium height and medium build, with blue eyes and brown hair. The third of six children, he attended school, worked on his father's farm, and for most of his life lived just a few hours away from where he was born. His mother died when he was fifteen; he was not married until he was twenty-six, to Jennie Arleta Eaton (14 Mar 1891 - 15 Apr 1979).

Jennie Arleta Eaton Burnett & Alfred Nathaniel Burnett,
probably in the late 'forties or early 'fifties.
 It is the only picture I have of him.

He was hard-working all his life. After his marriage, he worked variously as a liveryman, machinist, farmer, and gasoline salesman. It was not until his forties that he could afford to buy, rather than rent, a home for his family. Even into his fifties, he was working sixty hours a week. His final job was as a night watchman.

He was the father of eight children. Like many of his generation, he lost one child, Irvin Claire Burnett (1919- 29 Apr 1922), very young; another son, Charles Victor Burnett (27 Oct 1914 - 7 Feb 1945) was killed in active duty in the Philippines.


Hewitt Cemetery; Hewitt, Todd, Minnesota.
 Photo by Phyllis.

Fort Snelling National Cemetery;
Minneapolis, Hennepin, Minnesota.
Photo by Steve Edquist

Not particularly well-off, not especially educated, his life was not exactly exceptional. There was, at least, one bit of minor glory: his daughter Ella Jane Burnett (1 Jan 1927 - 15 Oct 2012) was the first baby born in 1927 in Todd County, Minnesota, although perhaps some of the credit show go to my great-grandmother....

Researching my great-grandfather, I did not find anything especially compelling about him. He was no doubt a fine and good man, but there was nothing that stood out; nothing, certainly, that would make him an interesting blog post subject. (Although that in itself might make for an interesting rumination; there are, by definition, far more mundane people and stories out there than otherwise: the quotidian as exemplar.... But I digress.)

So poor, ordinary Alf seemed unlikely to ever make it to this blog. Then just a few days ago, with the help of a cousin (thanks, Caralee!), I was able to knock through one of those brick walls that too often occur (especially in my Burnett line), and was able to push past one of his paternal second great grandmothers, Mary Polly Lombard (11 Feb 1774 - Jun 1822).

The key.

And that is when Alfred Nathaniel Burnett became interesting. Knowing who Mary Polly Lombard's parents were led me back several more generations, deep into Maine, then Massachusetts. Soon I was discovering Hamblins, Dunhams, Linnells.... But wait!--these names were already oddly familiar. As well they should be: they were surnames I already knew from Alfred's maternal side. Some (seated) legwork, lots of scribbling and flipping between pages, and at last it all became clear. Sort of.

Take a look: the first group of names are ten generations of Alfred's newly-discovered ancestors on his father's side; the next grouping shows ten generations on his mother's side.
                                                                                        
10. Robert Linnell & Jemimah Howse   James Hamblin & Ann Scott    John Dunham & Dorothy Day   James Hamblin & Ann Scott
9.  John Davis & Hannah Linnell           James Hamblin &                   Mary Dunham                          John Hamblin & Sarah Bearse
8.  Joseph Davis & Mary Claghorn         Jonathan Hamblen &                                                            Esther Hamblin
7.  Capt Simon Davis &                         Priscilla Hamblen
6.  Zephaniah Harding & Mary Davis
5.  John Lombard & Priscilla Harding
4.  Aaron Colman & Mary Polley Lombard
3.  Samuel Squire & Lovina Colman
2.  Nathaniel Burnett & Rachel Squire
1.  Charles Burnett & Ella Swarts (see #1 below)

10. John Dunham & Dorothy Day
9.   John Dunham & Mary Smith               James Hamblin & Ann Scott                    Robert Linnell & Jemimah Howse
8.   Ebenezeer Dunham & Anne Ford        Eleazer Hamlin & Mehitabel Jenkins       Henry Atkins & Bethiah Linnell  
7.   John Doty & Lydia Dunham                Joseph Hamlin & Mercy Howland            Sam'l Atkins & Emmeline Newcomb
6.   Ebenezeer Doty & Mercy Whiton        Southworth Hamlin &                             Tabitha Atkins
5.   Amaziah Doty &                                Bethiah Hamlin
4.   Stephen S Doty & Polly Holmes
3.   Stephen Addison Davenport & Alma Holmes Doty
2.   Charles Swarts & Henrietta Davenport
1.   Ella Swarts & Charles Burnett

As we can see from the admittedly somewhat confusing chart above, Hannah (♂ side) and Bethiah Linnell (♀ side) are sisters; James (♂), John (♂), and Eleazer Hamlin (♀) are brothers; and Mary (♂) and John Dunham (♀) are siblings as well. Alfred has three couples who do double duty as his seventh or eighth great grandparents twice over.

Almost four hundred hundred years ago in Barnstable, Massachusetts--before the U S was even a nation--these various English families married and had children. Over two hundred years--and nine or so generations--later, with no apparent connection in between, two of their descendants met, fell in love, and had children of their own in Minnesota, not long after it became our thirty-second state. One of those kids was my great-grandfather. Wow.

Alfred Nathaniel Burnett: farmer, father, American... and a very special man.


Charles A Burnett (Feb 1856 - 17 Jan 1930) married Ella Swarts (1 Sep 1861 - Apr 1899) on 1 Sep 1879 (her eighteenth birthday!), at Spring Lake, Minnesota.

Alfred Nathaniel Burnett (19 Aug 1883 - 31 Jul 1959) married Jennie Arleta Eaton (14 Mar 1891- 15 Apr 1979), daughter of Dor Henry Eaton (May 1869 - 31 Dec 1945) and Anna B A Miller (Jan 1867 - aft 1920), in 1909 in Minnesota.

Leroy Stanley Burnett (31 Aug 1910 - 11 May 1980) married Hazel Lucille Erickson (6 Sep 1910 - 6 May 2002), daughter of Erick Albert Erickson (28 Aug 1864 - 27 Nov 1948) and Johanna Maria "Marie" Svard (5 Feb 1875 - 28 Apr 1914), on 21 Jun 1933 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Curtis Wayne Burnett (30 Dec 1938 - 3 Aug 2021) married Beverly Alane Brown (8 Aug 1934 - 7 Mar 2010), daughter of Dana Earl Brown (26 Jan 1910 - 10 Sep 1984) and Myrna Margaret Severin (6 Nov 1907 - 12 Jun 1997), on 4 Mar 1961 in Long Beach, California.

Your humble blogger.

"Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago"

In April I attended my first Genealogy conference. It was only my second family history event, the previous one being a family reunion I attended in 2011, about which I have posted elsewhere. Stephen had given me a membership to the Ohio Genealogical Society for Christmas, as well as registering me for the conference, held in nearby Cincinnati. Three days of learning, networking, and--perhaps--not feeling like the biggest genealogical bore in the room (appearing boring to non-genealogical friends and family being a recurring joke at the convention).

The big day came, Day One, and I really had no idea what to expect. I had pored over the syllabus, and chosen the sessions I thought would be of most interest to me. This year's theme was "Expanding Your Ancestry Through Technology," so there were--aptly--a couple of classes on blogging. Needless to say, I glommed onto those. And--from at least one class--learned that, apparently, I do very little right; something about my style. Nonetheless, I find digressive and discursive writing highly entertaining, and have no plans to change merely due to one instructor's opinion, albeit a famous and successful instructor.

Anyway. As it turned out, most of the folks leading the sessions were famous and successful, at least within the relatively small world of ancestral research. [Big leaves on a small family tree? There is a joke here, but it eludes me at present.] I recognized many of their names from bylines in Family Tree Magazine (I renewed); the founder of Roots Magic was there (I bought it), as well as the delightful fellow who runs Geneablogger.com (see badge to left). After a run through the vendor displays (stupefied by the seemingly endless array of tomes of minutiae with their inversely proportioned prices), I also bought a t-shirt that says "Genealogy: Life in the Past Lane," one of any number of whimsically phrased items from which to choose.

Along with the sessions on blogging, I attended one on using Facebook as a genealogical tool (versus simply a place to document one's every move, or forward "clever" memes about Jesus, wine, dogs/cats, or factually dubious political screeds....). So, being one with the zeitgeist, I posted comments on Facebook in "real time," as the kids say. Here are some samples:

    Thoroughly enjoyed the keynote speaker, but occasionally got distracted by the elderly woman in front of me: her continual tremors made me afraid she was going to shake off her wig. 

    DNA... it's not just for cheesy cop shows anymore.

    As interesting as the content is, I am realizing I like neither ballroom chairs nor fluorescent lights.

   You know you're a nerd when you get excited by a session about source citation formats at 8 a.m. on the third day...

   I (unfairly) think of cousin Moe and giggle every time one of the more pretentious speakers says "Jenny illogical."

And, in keeping with the theme of self-reflexivity:

I wanted to post on Facebook that my first session today is about posting on Facebook...

While hardly Nabokovian, it got a fair number of "Likes," and that must be worth something. And although I may be only so-so at tossing off terse quips, I am becoming something like a master at throwing out "Cousin Bait." For you non-bores out there (although, if so, I cannot conceive why you would be reading this) who wish to pick up some of the jargon, "cousin bait" is a term used by bloggers and others who pepper their blogs, Facebook posts, forum comments, and other such outlets with as many names, dates, and factoids as they can, hoping to snare other family members who may be doing an online search for family information. 

Providing one example of my success at cousin-baiting also means sharing a failure. In a previous post, I had conjectured that one of my fourth great-grandfathers, Eliakim Eaton (1800- 24 May 1881), had been married twice: first to Elizabeth Hart (9 Jul 1803 - 28 Oct 1874); next, to a woman known as Betsy E. I was quite proud of this theory, having based it on several things:

The photograph below, showing Eliakim's wife with different birth and death dates than Elizabeth Hart;


The troublesome monument.
Ludington Cemetery; Ludington, Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Photo by Terri Woodford.

That Eliakim Eaton was shown as a widower on the 1880 U S Federal Census;

And that Elizabeth Hart was never listed as Betsy on any documents, and likewise, there was no evidence of a middle initial E.

Alas, it was totally wrong. But it made for excellent Cousin Bait. Two cousins independently came forward, Judy and Tom, to clarify a number of things, specifically that Eliakim had just one wife. Tom even provided sources and proof (although--ironically--one of the key pieces of evidence had its own mistake, an obituary referring to Eliakim as "Eliphalet").

The troublesome obituary.

Apparently the cemetery monument has been baffling Eaton scholars for years; astute readers will note that not only are Elizabeth's dates wrong, but so is Elipahlet's Eliakim's death date. Is there a cousin out there with an explanation?

Although providing helpful answers, Judy and Tom also brought up further questions. Tom pointed out that although Eliakim is understood to be the son of Nathaniel Eaton (22 Jan 1772 - 22  Sep 1860), there is no DAR/SAR-approved evidence that he is; nor that he is the brother of Elijah Eaton (22 Jan 1796 - 22 Feb 1877), Elisha Eaton (1798 - 12 Jan 1893), or Nathaniel Eaton (16 May 1803 -27 Mar 1884), all of whom are well-(and apparently accurately) documented. Anyone?

Judy's information was the more startling. Although I have written about the Eatons and Harts intermarriages elsewhere (a common occurrence of that period), I did not assume it led to any consequences other than general genealogical confusion. In an email, Judy casually mentioned that "[t]he 1870 census showed that Betsy [Elizabeth Hart] was insane. Also, Elizabeth Hart's sister is listed on the 1855 New York census as insane." Okay then!

Verifying this, I saw that the U S Federal Census for 1870 does indeed list Elizabeth Hart thus: "Eats opium. Insane." Her sister, Mary Polly Hart (9 Nov 1800 - 16 Dec 1891), who married Nathaniel Eaton--brother of Eliakim, Elizabeth's husband, is "insane" in 1855, but apparently back to normal by 1860. Perhaps she had laid off the opium by then.... I like to believe it was the drug use rather than any in-breeding that led to the insanity, temporary or otherwise, for obvious reasons....

Judy also offhandedly offered another provocative line of investigation, which I long to research further:

I have often wondered what went on in the hills of Ludington. My grandmother... did not like the idea of her boys growing up around the Eatons because she thought they were hellions. Her parents were very respected in Polk Co, Wisconsin. She went to her father and begged him to get them away from Ludington.

Hellions, drug abuse, insanity....

Genealogy may be many things, but boring?  

"...they were alive and did the work of their days"

To recognize Memorial Day, and in response to my fellow blogger (and multiple distant cousin) Heather Rojo, I am proud to be participating in the Honor Roll Project, which she began in 2010 on her award-winning site Nutfield Genealogy. Heather's hope is to compile photos and transcriptions of war memorials and honor rolls from across the U S of A, to allow both family members and family historians to be able to find them through Internet searches.

My modest contribution is the World War II memorial here in the village of Greenhills, Ohio, which is celebrating an honor of its own this year: its 75th anniversary. Greenhills is one of the three historic "greenbelt communities" that were designed and built by the United States Resettlement Administration, as part of President Roosevelt's New Deal.

Our village was dedicated in 1938, the second of the three completed greenbelt communities out of a planned twenty-five. (The others being Greenbelt, Maryland and Greendale, Wisconsin; all of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.) The ambitious project was stopped in part by the outbreak of World War II. Just six years after its founding, the village erected its war memorial, an obelisk on the village commons.

Apparently there was some controversy about the memorial at the time: the powers that be decided to have the monument made of concrete, rather than the more usual granite or marble. The dedication itself must have been splendid and moving; John McCrae's iconic poem "In Flanders Field" was read by a member of the Ladies Auxiliary of the V F W, and a soprano sang the 1922 standard "My Buddy," by Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson. And of course, it must have been even more poignant still as the seven honorees were all from original "Pioneer" families who had moved into Greenhills just a few years earlier, and would have been known to everyone in this still-neighborly village of just a few thousand residents.

"IN MEMORIAM"

WORLD WAR II

 

JACK MOLLOY

STANLEY GAY

FRANK WARNER, JR.

EDWARD PFIRRMANN

DAN JOY

FRED PHILLIPS

PETER MEINKING

To this day, there are third and fourth generation "Pioneers" living in Greenhills, some descended from or related to our fallen. Some of their descendants will be participating in our annual Memorial Day parade.

Greenhills' only other war-related monument is "Shadows of Freedom," a sundial-like spire at the other end of the commons that casts a shadow upon discs set into a winding  path, on dates commemorating historic events such as the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and--appropriately--Memorial Day.

"Shadows of Freedom"

 

 

SHADOWS OF FREEDOM

DEDICATED JULY 2, 1988

TO
THE COMMUNITY
COMMEMORATING

THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY

OF

GREENHILLS

BY

HUGH WATSON POST 530

AMERICAN LEGION

FOUNDED NOV. 9, 1938

Usually for this blog I contrive some theme or idea as a springboard to jump into my own family's stories, but already having written elsewhere about members of my family who fought--and died--in wars, town foundings, and even my oblique connection to the Roosevelts, I am having a difficult time coming up with another tie-in. But perhaps that is best. There should be no "me" in Memorial Day; it is a time we set aside to honor far too many others.

"stucco'd with quadrapeds"

In Delmar R Lowell's indispensable (if you are a Lowell) The Historic Genealogy of the Lowells of America from 1639 to 1899, he bemoans the fact that so few people are aware of their own lineage, yet--but I will let him tell it:

I have found a few who could not tell with certainty their parent's names--quite a number who could not give birth, dates, or marriage dates of their parents. A larger number who stumble at their grandparents, and a multitude totally ignorant of ancestry further back.

This seems pitiful when contrasted with the expense, study and labor used by some to secure and record the ancestry of their horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, cats, etc. I have heard these persons rattle off the ancestry of these animals, when, if life depended upon it, they could not name their grandparents.

Such an exhibition is indeed pitiable.

"Indeed" indeed. And perhaps a little of the Lowell hyperbole has found its way to me. It certainly seems that personality traits, if you will, rather than just looks and other genetic data, do go from generation to generation. Researching my family, there are certain motifs that recur which I find in myself, although I did not inherit--to pick just two--religious mania or a desire to go prospecting....

But I do have a love of dogs, so perhaps that came from some one or more of my ancestors. But whom? And how could I find out? For although Mr Lowell, above, appears to be discussing purebreds, whose heritage indeed can be well-documented (although the American Kennel Club itself dates from only 1884, a mere few generations of human-time, although Dog knows how long in "dog years..."), what about our beloved mutts?

To double back a bit, when I approach each of these bloggaries (a portmanteau of blog and vagary I just coined), I begin with a person or theme in mind. This time: our canine companions. Check!

Next, I riffle through Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1856 edition) for a suitable quotation to use as the title of the post. Now Walt loved his animals nearly as much as his fellow man: "The sharp-hoof'd moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the chickadee, the prairie dog...."  From mastodon to pismire, they're all here. This is a man who does "not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else." Yet in all of Whitman's thousand-plus lines, there is not one mention of a dog. Well, strictly speaking, there is one, in the tenth poem: "Falling asleep on the gather'd leaves with my dog and gun by my side." One of my self-created rules, however, is that I only use one excerpt from each poem, and I already have used a line from Leaf number ten on a previous post. Hence the near dada-esque header for this post. And how fortunate I am not to be descend'd from Whitman, from whom I might have acquir'd the habit of the dropp'd final "e."

Anyway. It seems Whitman had a dog, although biographers cannot say for certain. Biographers do tell us that a housekeeper, Mary Oakes Davis, moved in with the bed-ridden Whitman in 1885, bringing with her a dog, cat, two turtledoves, and other animals, but the dog's name is unrecorded. Which leads me back to my point: that however much they are considered part of the family, pets are not well-documented. (Although just today there was an article in the paper about a well-known casket company that is branching out to make pet urns for your four-legged loved ones, and one can find several websites devoted to the dog cemeteries of Paris). I have yet to see a pet on a family tree; they do not appear in any of the usual genealogical documents (except perhaps in the possibly apocryphal wills of elderly ladies who leave their millions to their cats, but no such feline beneficiary exists in my family, at least). 

The closest sources I have found are the U S Federal Non-Population Schedules for Agriculture, but even those include only livestock rather than pets.

An excerpt from the 1850 Schedule 4 Census.

On line 5 of the example above is a maternal fourth great-grandfather: John Wallace Cherry (27 May 1788 - 10 Feb 1857). Although somewhat modest in acreage compared to his neighbors, he seemed to be doing fairly well if we look at the cash value. Moving across the columns, we can see that he had four horses, five heads of cattle, thirteen sheep, and three swine, before moving onto the agricultural items. Yet there is no evidence of a Fido or Tabby....

We can learn a great deal about Cherry and his (human) family. He was born in Londonderry, New Hampshire, the sixth of eleven children. The Cherry family, including young John Wallace, moved to Oneida County, New York, in the early 1800s. We know he married in 1808, and fought in the War of 1812.

Around 1840, Cherry and his wife, Clarissa Adams (31 Jan 1791 - 7 Feb 1872) along with their eleven children, moved to Marysville, Union, Ohio.  We can surmise that he was a patriotic man: not only the son of a Revolutionary War captain himself, among his sons are the jingoistically named George Washington Cherry (10 Sep 1809 - 17 Jan 1890) and John Adams Cherry (23 Apr 1816 - 28 Aug 1817). The family zeal for liberty continued: his son Samuel Alonzo Cherry (16 Dec 1811 - 27 Apr 1897) was involved with the Underground Railroad, his home being a "station" in Marysville.

In fact, we know a great deal about all of John Wallace Cherry's children: Charles Henry Cherry (7 Jun 1837 - 16 Mar 1908) died after a three-day bout with pneumonia; the aforementioned George was a postmaster (one of those recurring family motifs I mentioned); William Hopkins Cherry (8 Oct 1823 - 23 Jun 1864) was killed in the Civil War.... Yet not a thing about the no-doubt beloved Cherry pets.

But wait!  There are those thirteen sheep.... And where there are sheep, it seems only natural there must be a dog to herd and protect them. I want to call him Towser. I can see him now, racing around those forty-three acres, playing fetch with the Cherry young'uns, guarding the thirteen sheep....

Yet rather than share a fictional biography of the imagined (or --as I'm going to believe--only undocumented) Towser, I will share the history of a genuine canine family member, our Maisie, the first dog we had.

We adopted Maisie for my  40th  birthday, after an outing to the recently-opened local animal shelter "just to look" (in the same way we were going "just to look" at flat screen televisions, airfares to Walt Disney World, and houses in Ohio, to give just three examples). The landlord of the duplex we were living in did not want us to have pets, but he was nice--and generally absent-- and we thought a small dog wouldn't be a problem. And there she was, an adorable little "terrier mix," as the shelter's tag described her. So cute! It would be like having Toto.

Baby Maisie.

Of course, as we later learned from our vet, shelters have good intentions, but not the best eye for distinguishing between families (not unlike some genealogists). As she said: "The big ones are always 'lab mix,' the little ones 'dachshund mix' and the furry ones 'terrier mix.''' Our "terrier mix" puppy ended up being mostly bearded collie and weighed in at over sixty pounds. Toto she ain't.

Like others of her (almost) breed, she has the bearded collie's distinctive run, and instinctive desire to herd other animals, as we learned the hard way on an early trip to the dog park.


Go, dog, go.

Maisie was born 10 Jun 2001, and as I said, she was meant as my present for my birthday that September. After choosing her, we had to pick her up a few days later, so that she could be checked by the vet and spayed, a condition of the shelter with which we were happy to comply. As it turned out, her pick-up day was September 11th. The September 11th. Like everyone else that horrible day, we were so caught up in the news that we completely forgot about our new charge. Around eleven a.m., the vet's office called to remind us, asking if we were coming in, so that the employees could go home to be with their families. We zoomed over and brought dear Maisie home. It was cheering to have something so loving and alive to hold while we watched the developments of that terrible day. My patriotism being nearly as evolved as my ancestor's, we still try to find joy on the anniversary of the attacks by celebrating "Maisie Day," and our Miss Mu, as we have somehow come to call her.

The many moods of Maisie-mu.

Beyond being the catalyst for her own holiday, Maisie also was the instigator of a new business venture. Looking at various commercial dog treats, we found they were either costly, unhealthy, or most often both. My other half being a crafty sort, he began trying out different recipes for dog treats, finally landing on a variety of wholesome flavors our dogs (Rosie and Coco being added to the menagerie in the meantime) loved. We shared the treats with friends' and neighbors' companions, who kept suggesting (the F and N, not the companions, although I'm sure they would have if they could) that we start a dog treat business. Which we did (plug, plug): MaiRo & Co Dog Treat Bakery, link to which conveniently located to your right.



From left: Rosie, Maisie, and Coco.

As our business grew (we've been featured in Pup Culture magazine, and have four-legged clients from California to New York; as I write this, in fact, I am sitting at the MaiRo & Co Dog Treat Bakery booth at a benefit for the Greenhills Fire Department), we began to grow more of our own ingredients. Not usually found among the trendy (cf. genealogy), I have somehow joined the ranks of urban farmer. In fact, a couple years back we even began to raise chickens to provide fresh eggs. Which reminds me that I did not see chickens on that Agricultural Census either....

All this talk of farming and patriotism at last brings me back to my ostensible human subject, John Wallace Cherry, and inherited family traits. Thanks, "Grandpa John," for the love of dogs!

John Wallace Cherry's marker.
 It is adjacent to a larger memorial to several members of the family.
Oak Grove Cemetery, Delaware Ohio. Photo: Robert Burnett

And Rest in Peace, Towser, wherever you are.

[Special thanks to Hidden Genealogy Nuggets' blog: Genealogy by the States for the prompt!]

1. John Wallace Cherry (27 May 1788 - 10 Feb 1857) married Clarissa Adams (31 Jan 1791 - 7 Feb 1872), parents unknown, on 11 October 1808 in Paris, Oneida, New York.

2. Mary Ann Cherry (17 Dec 1813 - 11 Nov 1853) married Frederick Dillazone Ketchum (6 Apr 1811 - 21 Jan 1888), son of Elisha Ketchum and ?, on 13 February 1835, in Huron, Erie, Ohio.

3. Caroline Clarissa Ketchum (30 Sep 1848 - 7 Feb 1920) married Phillip Jacob Runser (30 May 1845 - 22 Mar 1921), son on Philippe Jacob Runser and Anna Marie Brunner, on 19 February 1871, in Black River Falls, Jackson, Wisconsin.

4. Isabelle "Belle" Runser (21 Oct 1881 - 30 Mar 1960) married John Jacob "Jack" Severin (11Jul 1878 - 2 Jan 1965), son of Jacob S Severin and Anna Margaretha Tiedjens, on 13 February 1903, probably in South Dakota.

5. Myrna Margaret Severin (6 Nov 1907 - 12 Jan 1997) married Dana Earl Brown (26 Jan 1910 - 10 Sep 1984), son of Clarence Edgar Brown and Cora Mabel Kinman, on 21 October 1933, in Minneapolis, Hennepin, Minnesota.

6. Beverly Alane Brown (8 Aug 1934 - 7 Mar 2010) married [Living] Burnett, son of Leroy Stanley Burnett and Hazel Lucille Erickson, on 4 March 1961, in Long Beach, Los Angeles, California.

7. Your humble blogger.

"If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing?"

In her massive The Making of Americans (in itself a not-bad title for a genealogy blog...), the equally massive Gertrude Stein wrote: "I am writing for myself and strangers." I sometimes feel like that as well, although many of the strangers who come to this blog turn out to be cousins, happily, albeit distant ones. And there must be a fair number of you strangers out there: my total hits for March at this blog was over four hundred, a new record that almost doubled the previous month's, itself the brief all-time high. Thanks! 



Miss Stein, during her college years; a typical page from The Making of Americans.

This post, like several others, concerns New England, which is inevitable if one can go back far enough in one's family tree in this country, to the time and place of the Making of America. When I began this blog, it had not occurred to me I would be spending so much time Down East, or on the Cape, or in Beantown. It was one of those momentary, late-night mental lapses, like when I was so pleased I was fortunate enough to be descended from Mayflower passengers who survived....

Anyway. Boston makes me think of Harvard, which school Miss Stein attended; correctly, she attended the Harvard Annex, now Radcliffe, due to her gender. She studied psychology and philosophy under William James, among others, although she did not receive a degree.

     It was a very lovely spring day, Gertrude Stein had been going to the opera every night and going also to the opera in the afternoon and had been otherwise engrossed and it was the period of the final examinations, and there was the examination in William James' course. She sat down with the examination paper before her and she just could not. Dear Professor James, she wrote at the top of her paper. I am so sorry but really I do not feel a bit like an examination paper in philosophy to-day, and left.
     The next day she had a postal card from William James saying, Dear Miss Stein, I understand perfectly how you feel I often feel that myself. And underneath it he gave her work the highest mark in his course.

This famous anecdote is from The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, written--tellingly--by Miss Stein herself. She later dropped out of Johns Hopkins medical school, stating simply that she was "bored." Harvard, of course, has produced many writers (well-known--and otherwise) who did graduate, among them John Collins Bossidy ("otherwise"), whose sole remembered literary legacy is the toast he gave in 1910 at one of his alumni dinners:

"And this is good old Boston,

The home of the bean and the cod,

Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,

And the Cabots talk only to God."

I uncovered this bit of doggerel shortly after I discovered I was a Lowell, or rather, a Lowell descendant, from Percival Lowle (or Lowell), the first of the American Lowells. And what is behind Bossidy's toast? The Lowells (along with the Cabots, and--I suppose--others), were considered Boston Brahmins, an upper-class elite that constituted the "first families" of New England, and who, according to Wikipedia, "form an integral part of the historic core of the East Coast Establishment." Well then. Among the other forty-or-so Brahmin families are such familiar presidential names as Adams, Coolidge, Delano, and Quincy; other noted families like the Cabots, Forbes, Peabodys, Putnams, and such; and even a few that connote nothing (to me at least), like Saltonstall, Tarbox, and Wigglesworth, who, presumably, did talk to each other, if not to the rarefied Lowells.

In his seminal (if self-published) work, The Historic Genealogy of the Lowells of America 1639 - 1899, the author, the Rev Delmar R Lowell (with perhaps a bit of bias) wrote:

To do justice to the name of Lowell would require more than a moderate sized volume; a name not only distinguished in literature, theology and jurisprudence, but in all the relations of life.

In the words of another noted--if fictional--WASP: La di da, la di da, la la. But Rev Lowell has a point. A later Percival Lowell founded the Lowell Observatory; his brother Abbott was president of Harvard, his sister Amy was a Pulitzer Prize winning poet.

Like cousin Delmar, I will not attempt a "full history," but at least tell a little about the Lowell who got the whole ball rolling in the not-yet United States: Percival Lowle.

Percival was born in Somerset, England in 1571, where his Lowle forebears had lived for at least four hundred years. The family was well-to-do; there is believed to have been aristocracy on both sides. At any rate, by 1597 Percival was the Assessor in the village of Kingston-Seymour. He married his wife, Rebecca (whose last name has been lost to time) about 1599 (although records differ). Within a few years he was a prominent merchant in Bristol, running the firm Percival Lowle & Co. with his son John, and other family members. Then a remarkable thing happened:

In the year 1639 he cut asunder from all connections with England, and with his family, consisting of his wife, Rebecca, his two sons, John and Richard, his daughter Joane, and their respective families, and came to the Massachusetts colony and in June of 1639 settled at Newbury. 

The causes that led to the abandonment of his nativity, and to exile himself from the associations of a lifetime — the island home of a long line of distinguished ancestry — is a study of interest. He was then sixty-eight years of age. He had been successful even to opulence, and his age and circumstances would seem to have invited him to ease and retirement befitting his surroundings at Bristol.

Although accounts differ (boredom, money, a distaste for Charles I) as to what caused him to make this drastic and potentially dangerous change, most agree that John Winthrop, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was looking for dependable, reputable people to settle in this troubled area and was able to persuade Lowell and family to make the voyage on the ship Jonathan. Certainly, the men were friends. Upon Winthrop's death, Percival wrote a lengthy poem, A Funeral Elegie, just two verses of which follow.

You English Mattachusians all
Forebear some time from sleeping.
Let everyone both great and small
Prepare themselves for weeping.

He was New England's Pelican
New England's Gubernator
He was New England's Solomon
New England's Conservator.

Although I have nowhere near the accomplishments of the varied Lowells (whose other descendants include everyone from T S Eliot to Tuesday Weld), perhaps there was one small legacy: it seems it is from poet Percival--a tenth great-grandfather--that I inherit my love of italics, which I use nearly as much as he did.



First Burying Ground, Newbury, Essex, Massachusetts.
The image at the top is a portion of the Lowell coat of arms.

Gertrude Stein again: "I love it and I write it. I want readers so strangers must do it." Don't be a stranger. Feel free to "Follow" this blog, or leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you.

Even if you're not a Cabot--or God.


1. Percival Lowle or Lowell (1571 - 8 Jan 1664) was born in Somerset, England, and married Rebecca LKU (1575- 28 Dec 1645), possibly in 1598 or 1599. They emigrated to the Massachusetts Colony in 1639, where they were among the founders of the town of Newbury.

2. John Lowell (? - 10 Jul 1647) emigrated with his parents, and once at Newbury, married Elizabeth Goodale (1620- 23 Apr 1651), daughter of John Goodale (1582- 7 Jul 1625) and Elizabeth Parlett (1584 -  8 Apr 1647), sometime between 1639 and 1641.

3. Benjamin Lowell (12 Sep 1642 - 22 Oct 1714) was, with his twin brother John (12 Sep 1642 - 25 Jul 1672), born in Newbury, Essex, Massachusetts, where he married Ruth Woodman (28 Mar 1646 - 22 Oct 1714), daughter of Edward Woodman (27 Dec 1606 - 17 May 1670) and Joanna Salway (1614 - 1687), on 17 October 1666.

4. Joseph Lowell (12 Sep 1680 - 8 Apr 1753) was also born, and died, in Newbury. It was also there that he married Mary Hardy (2 Feb 1693 - 4 Nov 1747), daughter of George Hardy (1660 - 6 Nov 1694) and Mary Fogg (1 May 1662 - 6 Nov 1694), on 6 December 1707.

5. Joseph Lowell (20 Feb 1720 - aft 1769) married Mary Jones (5 Feb 1726 - ?), daughter of Joseph Jones (1 Oct 1702 - ?) and Mary Prowse (26 Nov 1703 - 1783), on 11 January 1745, in Newbury, Essex, Massachusetts.

6. Hannah Lowell (23 Jan 1759 - Sep 1802) married Reuben Grindle (20 Mar 1757 - 15 Jul 1835), son of John Grindle (1 Aug 1714 - 1794) and Elizabeth Dorr (1727 - 12 Apr 1761), on 6 October 1777, in Penobscot, Hancock, Maine.

7. Deborah Grindle (25 Feb 1784 - aft 1860), married Isaac Burnett (1780 - May 1860), parents unknown, on 23 December 1802, in Hancock County, Maine.

8. Nathaniel S Burnett (12 Mar 1826 - 10 Oct 1885) married Rachel Elizabeth Squire (28 Jan 1829 - 21 Apr 1902), daughter of Samuel Squire (13 Apr 1797 - 26 Jul 1871) and Lovina Coleman (27 Oct 1806 - 2 Jul 1901), on 26 December 1850, in Hancock County, Maine.

9. Charles A Burnett (Feb 1856 - 17 Jan 1930) married Ella Swarts (1 Sep 1861 - Apr 1899), daughter of Charles Swarts (12 Feb 1835 - 8 Jan 1909) and Henrietta Davenport (Jan 1836 - May 1904), on 1 September 1879 (her eighteenth birthday), at Spring Lake, Minnesota.

10. Alfred Nathaniel Burnett (19 Aug 1883 - 31 Jul 1959) married Jennie Arleta Eaton (14 Mar 1891 - 15 Apr 1979), daughter of Dor Henry Eaton (May 1869 - 31 Dec 1945) and Anna B Miller (Jan 1867 - aft 1920), in 1909 in Minnesota.

11. Leroy Stanley Burnett (31 Aug 1910 - 11 May 1980) married Hazel Lucille Erickson (6 Sep 1910 - 6 May 2002), daughter of Erick Albert Erickson (28 Aug 1864 - 27 Nov 1948) and Johanna Maria "Marie" Svard (5 Feb 1875 - 28 Apr 1914),on 21 June 1933 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

12. [Living] Burnett married Beverly Alane Brown (8 Aug 1934 - 7 Mar 2010), daughter of Dana Earl Brown (26 Jan 1910 - 10 Sep 1984) and Myrna Margaret Severin (6 Nov 1907 - 12 Jun 1997), on 4 March 1961 in Long Beach, California.

13. Your humble blogger.