Much of the following information I also published a few months ago on my RootsWeb page. Probably only interesting to those in my own family, but if you feel compelled to read, be my guest. If you are a fellow researcher on this family, please feel free leave a comment telling me how to contact you so we can collaborate.
I have been working on the age-old mystery: who were the parents of Jeremiah Smith? Decades of effort by amateur and professional genealogists have been given in trying to crack this one.
Here are the facts I'm working with.
Jeremiah Smith (born about 1795 in NY, died 23 August 1842 in Bertrand, Berrien County, MI)
Jeremiah's wife was Abigail Demont (they married 1817 or 1818 in Seneca County, NY).
Abigail Demont's parents were named Mary Sasson and Richard Demont. Her maternal grandparents were named Martha Johnston and Thomas Sasson. Her paternal grandparents were named Abigail Roosa and Richard Demont.
The children of Jeremiah and Abigail were:
Thomas Sasson Smith (born 3 April 1818 in Junius, Seneca County, NY)
Polly Smith (born 17 July 1821 in Junius, Seneca County, NY)
Sarah Alice VanCleaf Smith (born 22 March 1822 in Junius, Seneca County, NY)
Jonathan Smith (born 24 November 1824 in Perry, Genesee County, NY)
Richard Demont Smith (born 10 July 1828 in Perry, Genesee County, NY)
George Edward Smith (born 17 August 1832 in Perry, Genesee County, NY)
Henry Smith (born 15 April 1834 in Monroe, Ashtabula County, OH)
Jesse Willard Smith (born 13 October 1836 in Monroe, Ashtabula County, OH)
Loretta Helen Smith (born 23 May 1840 in Bertrand, Berrien County, MI)
I'm descended from their fourth child, Jonathan.
Over the years I've seen two possible sets of parents proposed for Jeremiah Smith:
1. Job Smith and Lavinia/Lavina _______
2. Jeremiah Smith and Rachel Hathaway
I've recently contacted a professional researcher who has been working closely with the Jeremiah Smith Family Organization for decades, and it turns out there is no solid documentation for attaching the above Jeremiah Smith to either of these sets of parents, though my inquiries and research have helped me see how each of the sets of parents came to be proposed. If you are researching this family, please contact me to learn the reasons these two sets of parents were put forward over the years.
I have a bigger reason for questioning both of these sets of parents: none of Jeremiah's children were named Job, Lavinia, Jeremiah, or Rachel. It is clear that Jeremiah and Abigail named their sons Richard and Thomas for Abigail's father and grandfather (respectively) and I believe their second child, Polly was likely named for Abigail's mother, Mary Sasson Demont (Polly was a very common nickname for Mary in those days). Jeremiah and Abigail lived next door to Mary Sasson Demont until at least 1840, so it would be strange for them to name one of their sons after Mary's husband Richard, but not name a daughter after Mary.
So there are two children who were undoubtedly named after known grandparents (Thomas Sasson Smith and Richard Demont Smith) and a third (Polly) whom I suspect is also named after her grandparent. It's clear that their daughter Sarah's unusual middle name "VanCleaf" must be a tribute to someone, as other family researchers have surmised. I'm 90% sure that VanCleaf is a surname from Jeremiah's family. However, Jeremiah and Abigail didn't just insert ancestral surnames as middle names of their children as is often done even today in naming children – their sons Thomas and Richard were given the *full* names of those they were named for, with "Smith" tacked on the end, so it seems a fairly reasonable assumption that Sarah's middle *and* first names were tributes to a paternal grandmother who was named Sarah and/or Alice VanCleaf.
Similarly, it makes sense that Jonathan, who like Sarah was sandwiched between siblings who were named for known grandparents, was named after a grandparent. It doesn't make sense to skip over him for a "genealogical" name and then give his younger brother a "genealogical" name. I believe the surname of the person Jonathan was named for was also Smith, because unlike most of his brothers, Jonathan has no middle name. I'm guessing that Jonathan Smith was his paternal grandfather. I'm uncertain from my review of online research whether Jonathan's brother Henry did or did not have a middle name. If he didn't, I'd guess he's also named after a Smith family relative; perhaps a great-grandfather or an uncle.
The later children's names (from George on) could also be tributes to family names, but apparently not for people important enough that they adopted those people's full names – the middle names of the later children do not appear to be surnames adopted as middle names.
So here's what I'm proposing based on the names of the children of Jeremiah and Abigail Demont Smith, listed here in order of birth:
Thomas Sasson Smith -- known "genealogical" name (maternal great-grandfather)
Polly Smith -- probable "genealogical" name (maternal grandmother)
Sarah Alice Van Cleaf Smith -- I believe this is a "genealogical" name (paternal family)
Jonathan Smith -- I believe this is a "genealogical" name (paternal family)
Richard Demont Smith -- known "genealogical" name (maternal grandfather)
George Edward Smith -- not clear whether it's "genealogical" name or not (i.e., he has a middle name and it does not appear to be a surname)
Henry Smith -- possibly a paternal "genealogical" name (some research says he had a middle initial "S"; if he didn't have a middle name, this is likely a paternal "genealogical" name)
Jesse Willard Smith -- not clear whether it's "genealogical" name or not (i.e., he has a middle name and it does not appear to be a surname)
Loretta Helen Smith -- not clear whether it's "genealogical" name or not (i.e., she has a middle name and it does not appear to be a surname)
My theory about the origins of the names of the first five children was further strengthened awhile back when I happened upon an explanation of traditional Dutch child-naming patterns. It's clear from Sarah's middle name (VanCleaf) and Abigail's paternal grandmother's maiden name (Roosa) that the family had at least some connection to Dutch culture, so it's possible Jeremiah and Abigail were following the traditional Dutch naming pattern, which, as I just learned, is as follows:
First son: named after paternal grandfather
Second son: named after maternal grandfather
First daughter: named after maternal grandmother
Second daughter: named after paternal grandmother
They named their first child, a son, after Abigail's grandfather, Thomas Sasson, who was a widower, and who lived next to them at the time. It doesn't seem strange that they might break with a naming pattern to honor him while he was still alive and then follow the pattern after that. If you cut their first son Thomas out of the picture as an exception to the pattern, then (if my theory about Jeremiah's parents' names is correct) the next four children, Polly, Sarah, Jonathan, and Richard, follow the traditional Dutch naming pattern precisely.
I have contacted an acquaintance whom I recently discovered is a descendant of Sarah Alice VanCleaf Smith, with the hope that someone in that branch of the family will have inherited stories or documents that might indicate the origin of Sarah's name and prove my theory. I'm also looking at a couple of VanCleaf families (common variant spellings: VanCleef, VanClief, VanCliff, VanCleve) who moved to Seneca County NY before 1800 with the hope that I can determine whether they had any daughters named Sarah or Alice who could be Jeremiah's mother. At the moment I'm particularly interested in Isaac VanCleef, married to a Phebe Quick, with children Tunis, Uriah, Peter, Isaac, James, possibly a Clarissa, and a few other daughters whose names I have yet to learn.
Conclusively tracing the possible Jonathan Smith is harder because of the common surname. My survey of censuses in and around Seneca County, NY show the names Jonathan Smith and Jeremiah Smith popping up at the right time in neighboring Ontario County, in and around the Quaker settlement of Farmington NY. My current working theory is that Jeremiah's father was part of this Quaker settlement or at least his father's extended Smith family was, hence the presence of the names I'm looking for in that area. There is a Jonathan Smith among the small group that founded Farmington NY in 1790. I found his exact date of death: 16 October 1830 in Farmington, NY (he was crushed while helping to build a house and the notice of his death stated that he was the same Jonathan who was among the first settlers). There are a few different families proposed for the Jonathan who died on that date; my task at the moment is trying to find documentation (if any exists) for conclusively linking him to any of those different families. So until I can learn for sure the reasons for linking that Jonathan to families named online, I will consider the identities of the wife/wives and children of this Jonathan to be open for debate. Histories of Farmington that I've read state that in 1823 this Jonathan Smith lost a son about 12 years old in a house fire, but the histories don't give the son's name. There were some other nearby Quaker congregations ("meetings") that were ecclesiastically under the group at Farmington (Farmington was the site of Quaker Quarterly Meetings) that also had residents named Jonathan Smith.
Of course, it could easily be that I'm barking up the wrong tree with the Farmington connection. But for now I'm using Farmington NY as the starting place of my search for Jeremiah's father.
I'll post further information on my search for Jeremiah's parents as I have it. As I said before, if you'd like to collaborate or know more about the details of my research, please leave a comment with your contact info.
NOTE: For the record, I've also been able to determine that the Jonathan Smith who lived in nearby East Bloomfield NY (born 1776, died 1858) was likely *not* Jeremiah's father, though he was married to a Sarah. I found a history that said this Jonathan was from CT and was passing through Ontario County NY on a business trip in 1813 selling clocks, liked the Bloomfield area, bought land, and went back to CT get his family. I could see no real evidence of VanCleafs in Connecticut around the time this Jonathan Smith would have been getting married, and his wife Sarah's middle initial was "W" (likely the first letter of her maiden name). I've not ruled him out 100% as a possible father of Jeremiah, but I'm pretty sure he's not my guy.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Lumpy skeletons.
A woman in my congregation recently lost her mother, suddenly. She’s been remarkably stoic about it -- philosophical, even. Possibly in denial. Probably some of both. And of course it’s easier to handle any loss when you know it’s not a permanent one.
At any rate, now that her mother has been claimed by the Other Team, she’s got the itch for family history research. Not an uncommon phenomenon, and rather therapeutic. She spent a whole day at the Family History Library taking classes on Swedish research so that she could hit the ground running. She’s a woman with a mission -- but first we have to hop her peeps back across the pond.
To that end, several weeks ago we spent a few hours at the FHL searching for naturalizations and other records that might point to the ship or to the Swedish ancestral village or to the names of the great-great-great grandparents who stayed behind in the old country. In the process of digging through U.S. records we learned that one of her great-great uncles fought in the Union Army. She was delighted with this connection because, she said, she had been 100% sure all her family were a sad and uninspired lot back to the beginning of time. She clearly wasn’t joking -- this was how she saw her clan, and it had become her personal myth. Finding great-great Uncle Andrew doing noble things back in the 1860s was meaningful to her and gave her hope for the rest of the family story that she was soon to uncover and that part she will go on to live herself.
Let no one say that a tortured family history is an imaginary obstacle. Not insurmountable, but very real.
We didn’t find what she’d been looking for on that research outing and she’s been crazy-busy lately. Because I have time (and obsession) I did some index searches to see if there was an obituary for her great-great grandfather, with the thought that it could be traveling to us through the mail while we wait for her schedule to clear again. Maybe the obituary, if one existed, would have some clues in it that would help us in our next library expedition.
A couple weeks ago I did find an obituary listed in an index. Or rather, I found not an obituary reference, but a reference to a regular news article.
Her great-great-grandfather committed suicide.
No
No
NO!
I haven’t yet mustered the nerve to tell her that her immigrant ancestor killed himself. Maybe I’ll wait to see what exactly the article says. Maybe I should show it to her if it contains information that could direct her research back to Sweden, but hide it from her otherwise? That’s research blasphemy, of course. Or maybe I should hide it from her until the sting of her mother’s death is a bit more muted? Or hide it from her until she’s found a few more uplifting family stories to balance it out?
I’ve known people who have triumphed over generations of inherited pain and can look back on their dark family stories with compassion and hope rather than anxiety or disgust. But does timing also need to be considered as we approach difficult truths? And even if that’s the case, who am I to set the pace?
What if there had been no record of his suicide left behind? (His death record doesn’t mention how he died.) Would he, wherever he is, have been happier letting his great-great-granddaughter believe incorrectly that he’d led a normal happy-sad life and died a natural death? It is quite possible that he’s now worked through his turmoil and would like to put his death behind him. And if he’d been a few generations more distant he would have died before the era of widespread newspapers and so the details surviving about his death would likely have been blissfully boring -- little more than a date and place on a pedigree chart. Sometimes adding flesh to the skeletons is exciting, and sometimes we wish we could turn them back into skeletons. I wish for her sake that I could turn her great-great grandfather back into a skeleton.
And I fear that this is how hardened genealogical criminals begin -- manipulating the facts to make life seem rosier.
I'll give her the obituary. Eventually.
At any rate, now that her mother has been claimed by the Other Team, she’s got the itch for family history research. Not an uncommon phenomenon, and rather therapeutic. She spent a whole day at the Family History Library taking classes on Swedish research so that she could hit the ground running. She’s a woman with a mission -- but first we have to hop her peeps back across the pond.
To that end, several weeks ago we spent a few hours at the FHL searching for naturalizations and other records that might point to the ship or to the Swedish ancestral village or to the names of the great-great-great grandparents who stayed behind in the old country. In the process of digging through U.S. records we learned that one of her great-great uncles fought in the Union Army. She was delighted with this connection because, she said, she had been 100% sure all her family were a sad and uninspired lot back to the beginning of time. She clearly wasn’t joking -- this was how she saw her clan, and it had become her personal myth. Finding great-great Uncle Andrew doing noble things back in the 1860s was meaningful to her and gave her hope for the rest of the family story that she was soon to uncover and that part she will go on to live herself.
Let no one say that a tortured family history is an imaginary obstacle. Not insurmountable, but very real.
We didn’t find what she’d been looking for on that research outing and she’s been crazy-busy lately. Because I have time (and obsession) I did some index searches to see if there was an obituary for her great-great grandfather, with the thought that it could be traveling to us through the mail while we wait for her schedule to clear again. Maybe the obituary, if one existed, would have some clues in it that would help us in our next library expedition.
A couple weeks ago I did find an obituary listed in an index. Or rather, I found not an obituary reference, but a reference to a regular news article.
Her great-great-grandfather committed suicide.
No
No
NO!
I haven’t yet mustered the nerve to tell her that her immigrant ancestor killed himself. Maybe I’ll wait to see what exactly the article says. Maybe I should show it to her if it contains information that could direct her research back to Sweden, but hide it from her otherwise? That’s research blasphemy, of course. Or maybe I should hide it from her until the sting of her mother’s death is a bit more muted? Or hide it from her until she’s found a few more uplifting family stories to balance it out?
I’ve known people who have triumphed over generations of inherited pain and can look back on their dark family stories with compassion and hope rather than anxiety or disgust. But does timing also need to be considered as we approach difficult truths? And even if that’s the case, who am I to set the pace?
What if there had been no record of his suicide left behind? (His death record doesn’t mention how he died.) Would he, wherever he is, have been happier letting his great-great-granddaughter believe incorrectly that he’d led a normal happy-sad life and died a natural death? It is quite possible that he’s now worked through his turmoil and would like to put his death behind him. And if he’d been a few generations more distant he would have died before the era of widespread newspapers and so the details surviving about his death would likely have been blissfully boring -- little more than a date and place on a pedigree chart. Sometimes adding flesh to the skeletons is exciting, and sometimes we wish we could turn them back into skeletons. I wish for her sake that I could turn her great-great grandfather back into a skeleton.
And I fear that this is how hardened genealogical criminals begin -- manipulating the facts to make life seem rosier.
I'll give her the obituary. Eventually.
What is the purpose of this blog?
Short answer:
To yammer giddily about all things genealogy.
Long answer:
Some of the most exciting things that have happened to me as a result of blogging have been genealogy encounters -- Google searches that bring me together with people who have fascinating stories to tell me about my family. As a Latter-day Saint I believe that while the Internet has many powerful positive uses, one of its main reasons for being is to facilitate family history research by reuniting fragments of stories. And of course in the process of introducing us to our dead it also re-unites the living, and both of these developments further the larger goal, which is to help us each see our place in the human drama and foster in us a compassion for our fellow humans. Families -- good, bad, and (most of them) in between -- are the most intimate and potent manifestation of the larger challenge God presents us with in making us citizens of the world: the challenge of being thrown together with a group of Others (some more other than others) in a dimension characterized by limited time and resources and vision, and managing to love them and hope good things for them in spite of knowing them very well. Mormons believe that this knowledge and compassion is to culminate in actual acts of proxy religious ordinance that lift each individual and then connect each to each other, beginning with our primary responsibility -- our immediate family -- and radiating from there, generation by generation, to everyone who ever lived. This means that in addition to the fascinating journey of historical discovery we are given the privilege of doing something concrete to thank those who came before us for their worthy sacrifices and also to offer our forgiveness for any pain that they might have passed down to us through the generations. We get to be thankers and demi-saviors all at once. We get to catch glimpses of who they were in this life and play a small but crucial role in determining whom they can become in the next.
I’m sure that even those not of my faith can appreciate how psychologically satisfying this is, as doctrines go, both for those who can envision no happy existence without their families and for those whose experiences with family were marred by discord, neglect, cruelty, despair. It places family at the center of eternal sociality, and offers the means by which the imperfections in families (not just in individuals) can be purged.
But whatever our motivations for wanting to know ancestors’ stories, there remains the research. The delightful, maddening research.
I will attempt to make most posts appealing to a general audience -- more narrative than technical. Some postings will be about my research on my own family and I may include more dry details in those as one of my primary hopes is that Google searches on specific names and dates will bring distant family members to my blog so we can collaborate in our research. I will also post about research I’m doing for or with non-family members and anything from the realm of the dead that I think might be of interest. I’m not going to hold myself to any strict format -- the only constant will be my desire to get non-addicts addicted and current addicts overdosed.
Thus creating more dead people for me to chase.
Welcome to the chase, all you not-yet-dead folks! And please -- if you decide to go and die on us, be sure to leave a decent paper trail so we can track you down again with minimal agony.
Thank you for your cooperation.
To yammer giddily about all things genealogy.
Long answer:
Some of the most exciting things that have happened to me as a result of blogging have been genealogy encounters -- Google searches that bring me together with people who have fascinating stories to tell me about my family. As a Latter-day Saint I believe that while the Internet has many powerful positive uses, one of its main reasons for being is to facilitate family history research by reuniting fragments of stories. And of course in the process of introducing us to our dead it also re-unites the living, and both of these developments further the larger goal, which is to help us each see our place in the human drama and foster in us a compassion for our fellow humans. Families -- good, bad, and (most of them) in between -- are the most intimate and potent manifestation of the larger challenge God presents us with in making us citizens of the world: the challenge of being thrown together with a group of Others (some more other than others) in a dimension characterized by limited time and resources and vision, and managing to love them and hope good things for them in spite of knowing them very well. Mormons believe that this knowledge and compassion is to culminate in actual acts of proxy religious ordinance that lift each individual and then connect each to each other, beginning with our primary responsibility -- our immediate family -- and radiating from there, generation by generation, to everyone who ever lived. This means that in addition to the fascinating journey of historical discovery we are given the privilege of doing something concrete to thank those who came before us for their worthy sacrifices and also to offer our forgiveness for any pain that they might have passed down to us through the generations. We get to be thankers and demi-saviors all at once. We get to catch glimpses of who they were in this life and play a small but crucial role in determining whom they can become in the next.
I’m sure that even those not of my faith can appreciate how psychologically satisfying this is, as doctrines go, both for those who can envision no happy existence without their families and for those whose experiences with family were marred by discord, neglect, cruelty, despair. It places family at the center of eternal sociality, and offers the means by which the imperfections in families (not just in individuals) can be purged.
But whatever our motivations for wanting to know ancestors’ stories, there remains the research. The delightful, maddening research.
I will attempt to make most posts appealing to a general audience -- more narrative than technical. Some postings will be about my research on my own family and I may include more dry details in those as one of my primary hopes is that Google searches on specific names and dates will bring distant family members to my blog so we can collaborate in our research. I will also post about research I’m doing for or with non-family members and anything from the realm of the dead that I think might be of interest. I’m not going to hold myself to any strict format -- the only constant will be my desire to get non-addicts addicted and current addicts overdosed.
Thus creating more dead people for me to chase.
Welcome to the chase, all you not-yet-dead folks! And please -- if you decide to go and die on us, be sure to leave a decent paper trail so we can track you down again with minimal agony.
Thank you for your cooperation.
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