Tombstone Tuesday- Elanathen Ives & Abigail Frisbe

On this past Sunday I attended a walking tour of the Downs St Cemetery here in Bristol Ct.. It's was  also known in the past as Bridge st and South Cemetery. The cemetery Assoc. showed off the new entrance gate, fence and a restored tombstone which for some reason I didn't photograph. 
It wasn't until I got home that I realized that I had taken a photo of my wife's 6th great grandfather and mother.After researching a little it seems the name I had (Elusthan Ives) may have been a typo some where along the way. The title of Deacon on the stone was also new to me. Will have to see where that leads us.
This cemetery had 37 Revolutionary War soldiers buried here and is the second oldest in the city.  

Gideon Barnes Came Home to Die

First a little background to this post and how things evolved with my discoveries. Last fall I discovered the picture of Gideon in our basement in a long forgotten treasure box of  Barnes family papers and photos. He is one of two GG Granduncles  of my wife, to die of wounds suffered in the Civil War.  The photo intrigued me since he looked like such a pleasant young man. He is descended from Thomas Barnes of New Haven¹ and many of his forbearers served in conflicts since the very beginning of this country.

His immediate family consisted of his mother Luianna Smith, his father Sherman , 3 sisters and 4 brothers. He also had been married 6 years to Lydia Ann Hall of Wallingford and they had no children²
His father and brothers were quite industrious being mechanically inclined and involved in the clock making industry in Bristol ³  and silverware in Meriden.⁴

When we had returned from Florida this spring , I found Gideon’s grave in the Forestville Cemetery in the Forestville section of Bristol. It was located adjacent to the very large family plot of his brother Rodney Barnes.  Not knowing any other details of Gideon's life I thought it was great he was next to family. In the previously mentioned Barnes box there were extensive notes , narratives and correspondence of my wife’s grandfather C.H.Barnes, there was no other information on Gideon. Given the amount of information he had gathered (mostly early 1900’s) I thought it strange
This is why today we are fortunate to have the internet and bloggers to help us to find clues and information. I had read a guest post on Bryna O’Sullivans  blog Explorations in Connecticut Genealogy by John Banks. I went to John Banks’ Civil War Blog and found he had written information on Gideon. I contacted him and offered the above picture and some background  on the family.  John  then did some further research  and shared it with me. This is how I found out about Gideon's wife and where she was buried. John then wrote a wonderful post about Gideon with this information. I can’t say enough about his kindness and his wonderful project.   John will be including a poster of Gideon at the 150 th  anniversary reenactment  of the Antietam battle to be held Sept 29-30 in Wickham Park, Manchester Ct
This is the home site of Sherman and his son Monroe, who had returned home from Meriden to help his father run the farm and machine shop⁴.
  Gideon returns home in early October. John Banks documents in the above mentioned post the following report : "Wounds and injuries received in the battle of Antietam by rifle ball through the thick portion of the thigh causing explosive separation with sloughing," Dr. T.W. Camp noted. "This in connection with an uncontrollable camp diarrhea accompanied with delirium and typhoid fever were more than sufficient to cause death." 
One can only imagine what life was like in that small home, for now it contained, Sherman with a less than pleasant temperament, Lieuanna credited as having a pleasant demeanor. ⁴ and of course  Gideon  and his wife Lydia. Gideon died Nov.17 1862 exactly two months after the battle. The family also lost the 5 year old son of Rodney a few weeks earlier on Nov, 3 1862.
Again thanks to John Banks I found Gideon wife Lydia had remarried and was buried in the same cemetery as Gideon ⁵. I returned to the cemetery and expected a long search,  I got out of the car next to Gideon's marker and low and behold Lydia’s marker was right in front of me. It turns out Gideon lies next to her second husband  and she is next in line.  It seems Gideon was never forgotten by his wife. I wonder if  he knew the  new husband as they were about the same age , a clock maker and also a veteran.
I’m so very glad that his story has been told. 

____________________________________________________________
1 The Barnes Family Year Book, Trescott C. Barnes, Riverton Ct.

2 http://john-banks.blogspot.com

3 Bristol,Connecticut: “in Olden Time New Cambridge” which includes Forestville  -By Eddy N. Smith, George Benton Smith, Allena J. Dates, Garret W. F. Blanchfield. Google Books copy

4 Family notes of C.H.Barnes

5 http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=77378150

 

1st post attempt in 9 Months & I Panic

I hadn't posted but a few times in the last two years and I thought I would attempt share some of my recent discoveries. First I discover the Blogger Dashboard has changed ! Not sure where I landed first but didn't see the new post button. I recently scanned about 100 photos and copied several hundred pages as PDFs.
Poor planning  as Adobe version I have wouldn't allow coping the text or convert to text. I had visions of having to type them out or rescan as JPG's . The idea for the PDF's  was to be able to share via e-mail to various relatives, which I am doing.
I had uploaded a few to Google Docs so I headed over there to see what I could do. No luck at first but I found references to an OCR feature. I finally found that I needed to re-upload the PDF and use the convert option that appears in order to save as a Google text format. It worked well on the first sample which was small in size which I will paste below, so all was not for naught.
The documents I scanned were written and typed by my wife's grandfather probably between 1915 and 1930.
They included hand written research notes, correspondence, reflections on his fathers life as well as his own.
He answered questions I had wondered about, such as where did his gg grandfather disappear to and where were his grandfather and mother were buried.
I'll have to use another post to explained why these documents sat in boxes in my basement while I scoured the internet and local history repositories.

Here is the first converted scan, it came out great  :

Celebrate the 4th of July with Sherman Barnes in 1838 in Whigville Ct.

Celebrate the 4th of July with Sherman Barnes in 1838 in Whigville Ct.
Whigville hasn't changed much since 1838 except that it's much more quite since being the center of commerce for the Town of Burlington. You no longer see much evidence of the myriad of small shops and mills that lined the two streams on either edge of the pictures included here. The white house shown in this blogs header is about 700 ft beyond the red barns and up the hill. The fields are mostly hay now, but if I interpret the excepts from the diary I will quote, they were filled with peas,corn and ruta begas. The photos are from right to left at the corner of Main and South Main Streets as I stood in front of the Grange Hall.

From the diary of Leavet Mills of Whigville:
"1838
Sunday July 1st cloudy and warm
2. Hot. hoed potatoes for J S Peck .
3 very warm. Mowed clover for J S peck in A.M. P. M.Plowed corn for Do

Independence Day Hot. 100 cartridges had been previously prepared to celebrate this day & the people of this vicinity repaired to the appointed place at an early hour joyfully and with glad hearts.
We had discharged the piece 8 times & at the 9th shocking to relate the cannon burst with an awful explosion. The owner of the gun Mr Sherman Barnes had his thigh badly broken & lacerated. The others about 15 in number & myself amidst the whiling pieces of iron and wood wonderful to relate escaped unhurt. I was standing about 1 rod in the rear of the cannon & the butt end of which came whirling by me very swiftly & very nearly; our escape can only be ascribed to an all wise Providence and we all have reason to thanks to the giver of all good that matters are no worse. For myself I sincerely do that our lives have been preserved when we were so near eternity.
In Canton one person was killed and several wounded.
Hoed Ruta Bagas the remainder of the day"

I've posted about Sherman before and the more I find , life in his house hold was by far not dull. Notes for Sherman Barnes and the above quoted diary are from the efforts of L. Alderman, the Burlington historian which he has left recorded at the Town Library.Some of his additional notes for Sherman are:
He held offices of justice of the peace, county surveyor, was grand juror. He was a pensioner of the war of 1812. he was a man of marked mechanical ability and was engaged for some time making telescopes. I had posted before how he enjoyed giving friends and family views of the heavens down in those meadows. He belonged to the local debating society and I bet he won most of them. There is another note that while attending a church meeting the wood stove was not working and late in that winter afternoon Sherman developed
frostbite in his feet. Sherman and his wife Luanna (Smith) were Universalist. He was born 05 Aug 1793 and died 21 Jan 1878.
Such was the life of a patriot in 1838

My wife Nancy, the GGG Grand Daughter of Sherman and Luanna, was born on the 4th of July and we have a good gathering. I think we'll raise one for old Sherman.

THE PEOPLE IN THE BARNES' BOX PART 2

Browsing though the Bristol history book from the library, I found over a page of info on Rodney Barnes who I posted on a few days ago . Included was a photo of him in his old age. It also gave a clue to where the family lived before the Bradley St home. It mentions a Monce trout pond which could be located on Monce Rd. just around the corner from our house. For those of you unfamiliar with the area the town of Farmington was the mother town of Bristol and Burlington.The Bristol and Burlington area was called the "West Woods" and later "New Cambridge" and "West Briton". Bristol became a town and still contained Burlington until the early 1800's. Other areas I mention in the blog are the villages of Forestville (Bristol) and Whigville (Burlington).
It looks like Sherman Barnes' had at least 3 sons that followed him in the machinist trade, Monroe (our line) Bainebridge and Rodney. Brainbride and Rodney worked for the Hubbell Co.in Forestville. The most famous product been the Hubbell Marine Clock. While looking that up I found the History of Bristol on line at Google Books. Who knew!
Smith, Eddy N., and George B. Smith, comps. Bristol, Connecticut ("In Olden Time New Cambridge") Which Includes Forestville. Hartford,Conn.: City Printing Co., 1907.

People from the Barnes' Box Part I

Portraits of Rodney Barnes, Mrs. Rodney Barnes, and two children Emerson and Darwin were in the Barnes box of pictures. They were all labeled with narrow strips of paper with their names in the same script. I had no idea for their relationship (although tonight I did find him and his wife Roxanna Horton in my piles of paper).. I felt he may have been a brother to Monroe Barnes my wife Nancy's GG Grandfather. I suspect another unlabeled photo maybe Monroe and his wife Ann. I'll be posting the others along with a photo of Ann in another post.
Rodney Barnes


Roxanna(Horton) Barnes

Emerson Barnes


Darwin Barnes

Emerson Barnes
So not knowing who Rodney was, I e-mailed Mr. Alderman the Burlington Town Historian (an a distant Barnes cousin). He was kind enough to send the following info about Sherman Barnes . Last year he had told me that Sherman and Monroe families were "Universalists" and that Sherman built telescopes. I later found that Monroe lived in Meriden Ct. for a while and was a founder of the Universalist Church there. What Mr. Alderman sent appears to be from a history and gives a glimpse into life in the mid 1800's.

With many enjoyable things in the life of the village, not the least was the astronomical "observation given by Sherman Barnes with the aid of a telescope" of his own make. This later became the property of Yale college, Mr. Barnes replacing it with another still better. He was at all times interested and pleased when people came to his home, to show them what could best be seen at the time in the heavens. When the planets and stars or moon were showing at their best he would invite his company to meet on the school house lawn or street to study the skies. He was son of Joel of Wise, and lived west of Caleb N. Matthews. He married Luana Smith, daughter of Gideon. The children were Rodney, Cyrus, Banebridge, Juliette, Hannah, Monroe, Gideon and Amelia.

Mr. Barnes had a machine shop on the brook near His Home, the old house place of Gideon Smith his father-in-law, opposite and beyond was in the now almost deserted district of Falls brook and the "Nigger Bridge," Mr. Schriver lives northward from the bridge. Southwest from Norman Matthews lived Josiah Barnes, father of the twins Elias and Eliada Barnes and a younger brother, Austin. The house is a ruin and the sons gone.
I would say life in the "Barnes" home was interesting to say the least. At the bottom of this blog is a photo of the brook his and Monroe's shop was on.
I should make a photo of "Whigville" as it has changed little since Sherman held those sky viewings.

Maine, Indian Land and Witches

I know it's too late for Halloween, so whats with the witch you might ask.( You might also ask if I wander around the Internet just a little too much).

I came across this excerpt from a Maine history included in a Nathanial Hawthorn in Salem web site.

Maine, Indian Land Speculation, and the Essex County Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692

http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/ScholarsForum/MMD1705.html

I think Genealogy becomes much more interesting if we can put our early ancestors lives in the context of the times they lived in. This article covers many aspects of the early Larrabee families. Some facts of my research that fits with the story line:Home base was Lynn and Malden Ma.; members were killed in both the King Phillips and King Williams wars; were probably considered refugees mentioned returning to Lynn Ma.; bought land from the Indians only to purchase again when they returned or find it taken by others. As a side story our Stephen Larrabee's brother William was married to Elizabeth Felt. Williams father in law was George Felt who had land stolen from him and lost his fortune only to die a "ward" of the town of Lynn; I've seen no mention of religious affiliation so they may have been non-puritan protestants referred to by Increase Mather . Remember many genealogists feel the family were French Huguenots (French Protestants).

So take a look at the times they lived (WAR,intrigue,real estate bubbles,poverty and WITCHES), It makes the next 4 years look like a cake walk.

Post Script: I should also note that a branch of the Barnes Family (IVES) also lived in the Lynn area before moving to the New Haven Colony. And my sister in-law Ellie reports that some of her ancestors were involved with the Salem Witch Trials. Its a "small world" as they say but was especially small back then. They had all come to the Boston area (IE. Massachusetts Bay Company) before settling Hartford, New Haven and Maine. They would often travel in family groups having in common either the same pastor or the same village in England. Also after Cromwell defeated King Charles, the Puritans no longer came to the Americas as when they were under the reign of King Charles. So any increase in population was from the same gene pool until the mid 1800's when the next influx began.

Tracing Ida Allen Barnes

Here's the web site I mentioned earlier that had info on Ida. It shows her linked to the Raynor family in Long Island going back to the 16th century in England.
I'll be able to add several more surnames to the family tree thanks to this site.
http://longislandgenealogy.com/raynor/ghtindex.htm

More Pieces to the Barnes Puzzle

I must say the Barnes family can be Linked to many prominent early families of Connecticut. I found this on line the other day and it not only helped to fill in some dates I didn't have, but added to some stories that I had come across earlier.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~khokkanen/hall/ives.htm
Take time to read about William,John and Gideon Ives. Gideon's son Elanthan
(spelled at least 3 ways so far) married our Abigail Frisbie whom I've mentioned
earlier.

I have one story about Gideon, related in a History of Bristol, being a great hunter and came to the Bristol area (then known as the West Woods) often.

His hunting companion was Capt. Jesse Gaylord (another name of our area) They were being stalked by an Indian who was taken aim one of them and the other man shot the Indian, who they buried in a swamp. The two families have different stories as to who shot the Indian. The story was never told until old age as not to cause an Indian attack. I think the real reason was they were from the New Haven colony and The west woods were part of Farmington.
I also found a great site that I need to explore, but haven't had time yet. It has info on Grandmother Ida Allen Barnes family. I have so many directions to go, but am fascinated by this local history.

Back to Litchfield,Milton and Washington, Connecticut

Today we traveled up to visit sites in Litchfield and Milton which is small village within Litchfield. We stopped first at a home Nancy had visited often as a little girl.The Morgans lived at the home which was dated 1882 and had the names Frank and Anne Barnes as the original owners. Now this will bear additional investigation as Nancy's GGrandfather was a Frank and his Mother was an Ann.

We traveled up the back roads to find the Milton village where Frank Monroe Barnes ran a store for a period in the late 1880's. it was his first venture from the Bristol/Burlington area. It was like stepping back in time, as it was very rural with very old authentic homes. I asked a local man (yes men do ask directions) about a possible store and he directed us back to the building shown. Its being lived in probably by rich out of staters. I would say by the style it was a feed and grain store with living quarters. It is listed with the National Registor of Historic Places. Its dated 1756.

We then traveled down to Washinton, Ct. to visit the gravesites there to verify dates and names. There are at least 4 generations there. I believe the Barnes are there though Katherine whose mother and father (Watts) are buried next to them.
The geo-tag for the Milton home of David Welch is Potash and Milton Rds.
41°46′13″N 73°15′59″W

Edward Frisbe Home Branford Ct.

Today we traveled to Branford, Ct to investagate another name in the Barnes line. Abigal Frisbie was the Great-granddaughter of Edward Frisbie. She married an Ives and their daughter married Wise Barnes and so that how we are connected. Its a great big puzzle that has not an edge nor a corner. This home is on U.S Rt 1 must have seen much since 1685. Edward's story is a long one as he is purported to have been born in Jamestown Virginia. I have much info if interested. We also were invited into a Capt. Frisbie's home down the street in Stonybrook, which I had gone to first and found it was the wrong home. He is probably indirectly related to us. Ben asked the lady "do you have any boys?" He's so charming I think that's how we got in.

Sherman & Monroe Barnes Home and Shop

Today I stopped by the site of the home and machine shop of Sherman (1793-1878) and Monroe (1823- a.1880) Barnes on Bradley St. in Burlington.
The remains of the shop are across the street from the home. You can see below the dam (not the original) large boulders along the stream and to the right that formed the foundation for the shop. The home across the street dates from about 1812. The section on the right being the original section.
The site is marked S.Barnes and Barnes Machine Shop on a 1855 map of Burlington, located at the town web site in the Library section under history. http://www.munic.state.ct.us/Burlington/burlington.htm
A later map from 1867 labels the home as Monroe Barnes. The home still stands in the Whigville section of Burlington. The village is so named after the Whig political party (later to become the Republican Party), because at one time all the households except one belonged to that party.