John Redfern.....My Wandering Ancestor Part 2

So let's recap our story as of 1850-- So by 1850, John Redfern, his second wife, Mary Hagen, and their children Barnabas, Margaret, Alice, Francis and May A, as well as John's 2 sons William John and James Redfern by his deceased first wife are all in Bedford County PA.

Sarah Redfern is married to Robert Spencer Bowman back in Ireland and they have a 1 year old son, Matthew Bowman.

The next federal census in 1860 finds the Redfern family is no longer living in Bedford, PA.
They are in Richland township, Jackson County, Iowa!
Richland is 20 miles south of Dubuque Iowa right near the Mississippi River.
Today you can travel between these places by car in about 12 hours.  But back in 1860 it would have taken a lot longer to cover that 775 miles in a wagon with a horse and with some people walking alongside on primitive roads or paths.

The Iowa territory was established in 1838 and achieved statehood in 1846.
In 1858 according to a Redfern family narrative, John and his family pulled up stakes and set off west ward again and headed for Jackson County, Iowa.  1858 was about 18 years after Iowa became a state.

The Redfern clan settled near Farmer's Creek in Jackson County.  I don't know if John bought land there or not as no land documents have been found yet.  As he lists farming as his occupation in this 1860 Census it's assumed he either was farming his own land or someone else's land.
 I found a land grant for a John Redfern, signed by Ulysses S. Grant for 80 acres in Plymouth County(which is by Sioux City Iowa on the western edge of the state and nowhere near Jackson County near the Mississippi River)dated 1875.  Perhaps John moved further west between arriving in Iowa in 1858/59 and 1875?  It is only speculation at this point.

This is the sort of land speculation poster(from Wikipedia)that circulated out East to try to entice people out to the now open states of Iowa and Nebraska.  Buy land for no money down.

When John Redfern moved to Iowa he was not a young man, being 48 or 49 years old when they arrived.  His wife, Mary, was about 43-44 years old.
The 1860 Federal census gives us a snapshot of the family and their ages in that year.......

John 50
Mary 45
Alice 14
Francis 12
Peter 9
Anna 9

No longer listed with the family are the oldest sons by John's first wife, William John and James, as well as Barnabas, Margaret, and May A.
New children, born since the 1850 Census are Peter and Anna,both listed as 9 years old, most probably were twins.

Also now living with the Redferns is a Patrick Redfern who is 40 years old.  He is possibly John's younger brother or a cousin of some sort.  I believe this census is erroneous in listing Patrick's birth place as Pennsylvania(unless he is a cousin and his Redfern parents were from Ireland and immigrated).  He is listed as a stone mason just like John's occupation in the 1850 Census.


So how about my ancestor, John Redfern's oldest daughter, Sarah Redfern Bowman.....where is she and how is she doing?

The next record we find for her is the 1860 US Census.  Yes, her and her husband, Robert Spencer Bowman and their children are living in Montgomery, Orange County, NY at the time of the 1860 Federal Census. As for the children....Matthew is now 11 years old and he has younger siblings named John aged 8, Robert aged 6, Adeline aged 4 and Anna aged 1.

So when did Robert and Sarah come to America exactly?
Well in this 1860 Census we can narrow down the immigration year as the younger two Adeline and Anna are listed as being born in New York and the two boys, John and Robert, are listed as being born in Ireland. The last child born in Ireland is Robert, born 1854 and the first child born in NY is Adeline, born 1856.
So that gives us a time frame of late 1854-early 1856.

I found a record of arrival for a Robert Bowman on board the ship "West Point", in NY harbor on April 17, 1855.

An example of a clipper ship from that era courteous of Wikipedia.

The West Point  was built in 1847 by Westervelt and McKay, a company that acquired renown by constructing streamlined clipper ships and fast steamships.  The West Point was built of southern oak in a time when using iron and copper was on the rise.  10 years later, in 1857, it was refitted with iron to keep up with the times.
The West Point was a full rigged vessel for the Robert Kermit Red Star Line, which carried goods, mail and passengers on a route between Liverpool England to NYC and was in service until 1863.
The Ship's Master on that 1855 voyage was William R. Mullins.
The West Point would have disembarked her passengers at Castle Garden, the first official American Immigration Center which was located at the tip of Manhattan in the Battery area.  This is where all immigrants into NYC were processed from mid 1855 to 1890, before the Ellis Island complex was constructed.
Unfortunately a fire at Ellis Island in 1897 consumed all the Castle Garden administrative records to 1890 so if you an ancestor who arrived during this time frame you may never find their arrival date, unless they are listed among the Customs Office passengers lists that were stored in D.C. rather than on Ellis Island.
Let me add that prior to August of 1855 passengers did not have to be processed through Customs and many just walked off the ship into the streets of Manhattan and beyond.  Since my Redferns arrived in April of 1855 the record for Robert Bowman may be the only one I ever find.

Years later on the 1900 Federal Census participants were asked, if they were born outside of American shores, what year they had arrived in the US.  Robert Bowman had self-reported that he arrived in 1852 and Sarah his wife reported that 1855 was the year.  Now it's highly possible that Robert had come over in 1852 as that was often the case with married couples, the husband would come over before his family/wife, establish a home and employment and then send for the family at a later date once he had earned enough money for the passage(s).
But as there were children born to this couple in 1852 and 1854 in Ireland, Robert would have had to have left in 1852 after making his wife pregnant and would have had to have returned in either 1853 or early 1854 to "knock up" Sarah again to be both children's father and then have left for America again with his wife and the, at this point, five children.
Something tells me we will never know if Robert traveled to America by boat from Ireland once or twice.
We do know that he arrived in Spring of 1855 at NY harbor and thus my Redfern/Bowman American story begins.

In 1860, after 5 years living in America the Bowman clan are settled in upstate New York, in the town of Montgomery, Orange County(which is situated along the banks of the Wallkill River) to be exact and Robert is working as a Day Laborer and Sarah is keeping house and rearing, their now, five children.

What changes would the coming War Between the States and the 1870 Federal Census bring to our Redfern/Bowman families?  Will John Redfern get the itch to move yet again?

Stay tuned for the next installment of our saga.

Sluggy

Long Boring Genealogy Stuff...But with Pictures!

Ok, not so long really....but still boring. lol

There are two genealogy areas I work on.

First there is the "near" ancestors....the ones I remember being alive and the 6 or so generations before them.  These 6 immediately previous generations are the ancestors that I hope to be able to link up to genetically when the results come back from my DNA samples I sent off recently into the bowels of a Texas lab.
I got confirmation that they received my "material" last week.
So now I wait, if not very patiently, for the results.

6 generations before my time takes me back to the late 1700's.
In some of my family blood lines, that is far enough removed to transport my ancestral lines to the far off continent of Europe.  In other of my blood lines(mostly on my mother's side), the late 1700's finds these 6 generations already removed to the New World.  Some of that number having been removed to the Americas more than 100 years before that time!

One of my earliest ancestors that has been traced arrived in the Virginia Colony in 1635 with his wife and 1 servant.  So as some of my ancestors were making their way across the sea from Europe, I had 2 blood lines already here for about 160 years.
It boggles the mind sometimes.

And then there are the "far" ancestors.
The ones many MANY generations removed from me and known, stretching back into the Middle Ages in some cases.  I can't possibly live long enough at this point in my life, to research every last person others have "put" into my lines.  I hope that whoever added these folks had some source material to back up their claims but I don't have the time, funds or resources to prove every leaf on the tree of our family.  So I add ancestors who other's claim to be legit to our tree for now.

While the paper trail and quality of research can be spotty at best in this very long chain of ancestors, I take it at it's face value and work to substantiate the claims when I can.  There are many questions and holes but I keep them on the tree until I find enough evidence to counter the claim that their branch belongs on my tree.  Once it's clear the facts don't fit and the blood doesn't match, I perform some pruning and cut them loose.

Which brings me to my Vassar ancestors.
A couple of years ago, at the beginning of my "where did I come from?" quest I found a relative I never knew existed by the name of Reginald Vassar.  He is my 2nd cousin and was, at that time, 90+ years old.  He had been doing Vassar genealogy for many years and had amassed a great file on many generations of our Vassar ancestors.

John Little Vassar and his wife, Lucy Ellen Baker Vassar were my great grandparents on my mother's side.
Reginald Vassar and I share Hugh Wiley & Sarah Anne "Sally" Smith Vassar (my 3 x GGs)as common ancestors. 

Hugh & Sally had a son, John Alfred "Jack" Vassar.  Hugh & Sally had another son, Richard Levi Douglas Vassar.  John is my 2 x GG and Richard is Reggie's GG.

And this is our most "famous" current relative......

I'm not sure exactly how we are related(I need to do the research on that)but we are cousins (X number of times removed), of some kind.  My brother has told me that my mother's cousin Dean has partied with Phil on occasion.
The fact that she is related to Phil Vassar has pleased my daughter to no end, as she is a BIG country music fan. 8-)

And no, we are not related to the folks who founded this......

Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY

But then again, Matthew Vassar's line came over from England in 1796, so we might be connected back in the Old Country. ;-)

But I digress......

Through the work of Reginald, another ancestor Lyndal G. Vessar(who wrote one of the comprehensive books on Vassar genealogy many years ago)and countless others through the years, I have my Vassar line nailed down back to 1595 for specific individuals.  There is general Vassar/Vessar family genealogy going back further to France in the 12 century. 

The surname springs from the Lorraine region of France and came from a landed ranking-Feudal Vassals(one level below a Baron or Viscount).  Variations of the name include VaVassour, LaVasseur, Vossier, etc.
Here is how James Vassar, a poster on an Ancestry dotcom message board, explains the origin of the surname better than myself.....
""Vassar" is a derivative of an Old French military title and an old ancient roman military legionary title. The old french title is "vavassour", which translates as "Vassal of Vassals", comparable to the phrase "king of kings". The ancient roman word is "vavasorrium" (or something like that), roughly equivalent to a captain or a lieutenant, maybe. The vavassour is equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon military-political position of "thane," that is why Vassar is sometimes spelled "Vassal." Essentially and for all intents and purposes a vavassour is a landed feudal knight, or a knight that had land granted to him by his feudal lord. All landed knights were vassals or military servants to their feudal lord, but they were not peasants as some snobs have told me. So, a vavassour is a "knight of knights." I have read a few references were he is referred to as the old wise and senior knight that is in semi-retirement and still gives advise to the younger knights."


Everything was going well for us until 1599, when the Reformed Protestant church, of which these ancestors were supporters, was founded in France. These French Protestants became known as Huguenots.

  Painting,  " An Eyewitness Account of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre" by Francois Dubois


Long story short, this led to the "War of the Three Henrys" and the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in which Catholics killed thousands of Huguenots in Paris and massacres of Protestants swept across France after that, which led to a massive exodus of Protestants out of France into neighboring countries like Holland, Denmark, Switzerland, Prussia and England.  Though no one knows the true number, I've read the extermination of French Protestants amounted to half a million souls.  That's a whole lot of people by 1572 standards.

Eventually, the Huguenots who remained were forced to convert to Catholicism but about 200,000 chose instead to leave France.


My direct line of ancestors chose to emigrate to England during the reign of Elizabeth I.  Elizabeth, being Henry VIII's daughter(Henry who had founded the Anglican/Protestant Church in England and driven out or killed Catholics and burned and looted their monasteries) was a Protestant herself and welcomed these religious refugees into her kingdom.  She was generous with financial help throughout her reign. 
My direct ancestor was one John Vassar/Vesser.  His parents had fled France after the St. Bartholomew's massacre for England though we have no record of their names as of yet. John was born in Gravesend, England in 1595.  He married an English bred woman named Elizabeth Dowe/Dew.

But there was religious unrest in England after the death of Elizabeth in 1603.   John applied for permission to sail to the New World and signed an oath of allegiance to the Crown & the Anglican Church. The Church of England was the official religion of the Virginia Colony and anyone sailing there to settle had to be certified and promise to conform to the Church's doctrine and practices.  Even Quakers who removed to Virginia from England had to have their children baptized and recorded in the CofE.

According to the ship's manifest, in the spring of 1635, John Vasser, his wife Elizabeth, and their
indentured servant, Wm. Baker, sailed aboard the barque "Alice" with Richard Blake as Master of
the Ship. They departed from Gravesend, County Kent, England. This port was the embarking point
of the London Company émigrés headed to the Va. Colony at Jamestown. (Though the London Company had been disbanded in 1624 and Virginia became a royal province, ships bound for Virginia still embarked at Gravesend.)

While much of my time had been devoted to double checking the facts I could on the Vassar line, recently my attention turned to the line of John Vassar's wife, Elizabeth of the Dowe or Dew family.
I began to trace back the path that has been laid out for Elizabeth's ancestors and it led me into the realm of English royalty.
Now any time I find my ancestors hooked up to famous or infamous characters in history I become suspicious of the motives.

Many amateur genealogists do genealogy to connect to their actual roots.
And then there are the others, who only do this to find famous relations, so they can show off to their friends and somehow feel important since they can claim a link to somebody "Fabulous".

One of my earliest friends in life recently told me she is descended from Lady Godiva.  Of course I didn't ask her for proof or shake my head at her claim but I do wonder where she got this information and if her assertion is valid.

When a fellow Ancestry user who shares ancestors with me, notified me recently about some information that has just come to light about our Baker line, I used this occasion to reach out to a number of other Baker researchers/members on Ancestry to let them know and to invite them to be guests on my family tree and perhaps share information.

Only 1 of these fellow genealogists replied to me so far.
His response.......I will copy it in it's entirety....

"Hi, my Bakers go way back to Sir John "Bloody" Baker who I believe was first Chancellor of the Exchequer for UK. See Bramhall Castle."

Now a person really interested in history and genealogy would have replied either "Yes, let's get together and work on this stuff." or "No thanks....I don't care to communicate with you."

But I got someone who used this opening to brag about his infamous ancestor who did some really dastardly and horrid things.
Add in that this person claims kinship through a supposed Christopher Baker, a son of Sir John Baker.  John Baker and his wives had 2 sons, neither of which was named Christopher.  Perhaps he has information I don't but I am skeptical about his claim, especially in light of the context in which he shared it.

I just get the feeling that this guy does genealogy for all the wrong reasons.

And the rest, they say, is history.
And "it" can wait to be explored another day.





Sluggy


 

Are You Smart Enough To Become An American?

As I started working on the genealogy stuff for my father's side of the family, I got to thinking about being an immigrant.

This half of my family tree is full of relatively new comers to the shores of America.  I am hard pressed to find an ancestor on this side that arrived before 1850. 
This is a very different story from my mother's side, where most all of the branches have deeper roots in America....deeper by 200+ years and such.

My paternal immigrants came over, mostly from Ireland, in the latter part of the 19th century, the earliest that I can find so far, having arrived in 1850. 
From those immigrants came my paternal families' 1st American born ancestors.  On my father's paternal side, my 2 x Great Grandmother was born in 1854, her future husband in 1861 and a Great Grandmother  on the other branch in 1885.  On my father's maternal side, my paternal grandmother was her family's first member born on American soil in 1909.  That's barely 100 years ago!

But I digress.....
I noticed while going through the census information that not all my paternal ancestors elected to become full fledged citizens.  Or rather, there is no evidence in the census rolls of them becoming naturalized.  Granted many of them were older and may have died before getting around to it.  Just staying alive and earning a living wage was a much more pressing need in those earlier times.
And my ancestors didn't have the added obstacle of learning a new language once they arrived too.
 
This got me thinking about what an immigrant coming to our shores 100 or 150 years ago had to do to become a citizen.  It has turned out to be very interesting reading how the laws have changed(or not changed)over time.
If you arrived before 1790(the date of the first legislation dealing with immigration), there was little required of you. 

Part of the process of becoming a naturalized citizen of the USA now, involves passing a written test about our country and government.  Anyone who's passed a high school Civics course should be able to pass this test.
It's been 35 years since I left high school so I was curious to see how difficult the test was and how much I had retained from my time in my Government course in 11th grade.

Except for misreading 1 question and getting it wrong(it is something I do know...honest!lol), I passed with flying colors.

Could you pass the United States citizenship test? » create exams

I must say that taking this test orally before an Immigration Officer and NOT having it be multiple choices based would actually be a bit harder.

If you are brave enough, you can try the same test below.  Just imput your name and hit
START.

 Good Luck!




Sluggy Smartypants