John and His Life

Lois’s origins can be reasonably guessed at, but to do so requires making the assumption she came from the same background as some of the people she was surrounded by in adulthood. One of the few solid facts is that she was born in NY State -- this data is included in her entry in the censuses of 1850 and 1860. The 1860 census suggests a birthdate of 1779 or 1780 and this is consistent with nearly all other records. (One exception is the 1850 census. Her reported age in that source must be disregared as it shows her as too young to have been the mother of her known children.) Anything else about her parentage or childhood is not yet firmly known. Only when she became a wife did her life begin to leave the traces that have turned up so far. A number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, now all deceased, left correspondence in which they recalled that she had been married before she became Mrs. Warner, and that her first husband had been a Mr. White. We now know that this first husband was in fact Mayflower descendant George Chapman White, a son of Patience (Hamlin?) and George White, Jr. The latter had been a captain in the Revolutionary War. George Chapman White was the last-born of the many children that sprang from George, Jr. and Patience. He was born about 1779 -- meaning he and Lois were the same age, a somewhat unusual circumstance in that era when men tended to marry after they had shown themselves capable of supporting a wife, whereas women married in their mid-to-late teens, yielding many unions with a considerable disparity in age between spouses. Lois and George were wed in approximately 1798. They appear to have spent the entirety of their fifteen-year marriage -- which ended with George’s death in 1813 -- on a farm in Worcester, Otsego County, NY.

It is from the background of George C. White that we may know something of Lois’s origins. (We will only occasionally refer to him as George Chapman White, in keeping with the majority of the documentation about him, which drops the Chapman in favor of the middle initial.) George C. White spent his early years in Albany County, back when Albany County encompassed significantly more territory than it does now. His family had earlier come from what is now Dutchess County and Columbia County, a swath of territory to the east of the Hudson River where the eastern edge of New York state rubs up against both Massachusetts and Connecticut -- a tri-state conjunction. This zone, which incorporated large land grants such as the Beekman Patent of 1697, had drawn a substantial influx of settlers in the early 1700s. Patience Hamlin had been born in this region, and George White, Jr. had moved there early in his life from western Massachusetts. There is every reason to think Lois’s forebears were also among the settlers.

After the northern and western parts of New York colony opened up in the wake of the conclusion of the French & Indian War, many families spread beyond the Dutchess County/Columbia County region. The Whites were part of this mass migration. They moved to Albany County in the late 1770s and stayed for about fifteen years. In the early-to-mid 1890s, they shifted a bit farther west to Otsego County. They were among the pioneers of what was then a section of Cherry Valley Township, but which would become Worcester Township in the late 1890s. Though the Whites were farmers, they lived close enough to the site of what would become the village of Worcester that, for the sake of convenience, we can dispense with the “township” description and, for the rest of his essay, just say they lived in Worcester.

This Dutchess County-to-Worcester migration was matched by the Wickwire family. Specifically, this refers to John Wickwire and his wife Rhoda Hubbard and their fives sons and further descendants. This bunch of Wickwires would, over the first four decades of the 19th Century, move to the Mohawk Valley, then into eastern Ohio, and then arrive in Stephenson County, IL as pioneers in the very early 1840s, becoming co-founders of the community of Winslow at the very same time that the Whites and Warners were doing the same thing. There are Wickwires buried in close proximity to Warner and White graves at Rock Lily Cemetery in Winslow. This common pattern of migration, with a common destination, is a phenomenon often seen in the settling of America, but the number of moves combined with the timing, along with elbow-rubbing proximity in early 1800s Worcester and post-1840 Winslow, would appear to be more than coincidence. Lois might well have been a Wickwire herself. Alternately, she might have been a sister of Rhoda Hubbard, and therefore a Wickwire in-law. Thus far, the name Lois does not turn up in genealogies of the Wickwire and Hubbard families, but it is all too common for genealogies -- especially ones created in olden days -- to concentrate upon sons and leave off some or all of the daughters.

Regardless of whether Lois might have been a Wickwire or Hubbard, she must have been part of a family who chose to make their home in Worcester, and who arrived there before the close of the 1790s, in time for Lois to wed George C. White. (The 1798 date of the wedding is a guess, but a logical one based on the timing of the birth of the couple’s first child). Perhaps Lois had known George in childhood in Albany County, and they both ended up in Otsego County; perhaps they did not meet until both were living in Worcester. What is clear is that Worcester was their home throughout the whole span of their marriage. Documents recorded throughout the 1800-1813 time period consistently place them there, from the 1800 census to an 1802 deed transferring property from George White, Jr. to George C. (this document being the prime source of the middle name of Chapman), to the elder George’s 1804 last will and testament, to the 1810 census, and finally to the 1813 last will and testament of George C. White himself.

The latter document, George C. White’s will, was written in April, 1813. Though he was not even thirty-five years old, George must have had cause to believe he was dying, and that it was prudent to arrange for the disposition of his estate. He was correct in his assessment of his health. He passed away that year, probably no later than the end of June, and definitely by mid-October. In a sense, it is a lucky thing for those of us looking back that the Grim Reaper began swinging his scythe at George at that point. Had it been otherwise, we would not now have the key piece of evidence that allows us to have a reasonably clear picture of the family he sired. The will was among the many documents transcribed decades ago by genealogical researcher William A.D. Eardeley, who systematically went through original documents on file in various vital records offices in order to create an abstract of late 18th Century and early 19th Century New York state wills. The scans of his handwritten notes are now available at NewEnglandAncestors.org, the website of the New England Historic Genealogy Society. In the will, Lois is mentioned as George C. White’s widow-to-be and is designated as the primary heir. Their five surviving children are named, along with what their shares of the estate were to consist of. The estate attorney was Silas Crippen. The latter individual was a local miller and one of the heads of household who had come with the Whites from Albany County to Cherry Valley Township in the 1790s. He had also served as the estate attorney for George White, Jr. in 1804.

Eardeley is not the only early researcher whose work helps make clear the saga of the White family of Worcester. Another was Ethel Conger Heagler, author of the 1938 book, The History of Nathaniel White, Hannah Finch White and Their Descendants. Nathaniel (aka Nathanial) White was the oldest brother of George C. White. Page 53 of the Heagler book is devoted to George C. White. The text mentions Lois, son George C. White, Jr., and then goes on to describe the latter’s family and the fact that he settled in Winslow, IL.

It is good to have Heagler’s corroboration that there was a George Chapman White, Jr., because that is not one of the children mentioned in the will. That’s because he had not been born yet. When Lois’s husband composed his will in April, 1813, his final child had barely been conceived. Even if Lois and George were aware of she was expecting, there was no way to be sure the pregnancy would come to term. So when it came time to list heirs, George mentioned only the five children who already existed. These were were Seba (probably short for Sebastian, but written as Seba in every source), Isaiah M., Cynthia, Deborah, and Amos.

In December, 1813, Lois gave birth to George C. White, Jr., having managed not to let her grief jinx the pregnancy. She was now a single mother with a baby -- a single mother with five other kids as well, the eldest of whom was barely entering his teens. Naturally, she needed to reestablish a secure situation as soon as possible. And so, within eighteen months of becoming a widow, she married Aaron Warner.

Where did Aaron come from? That is not an easy question to answer. Aaron’s story was lost and it has only been possible to reconstruct a fragment of it, with only the period from the the mid-1810s to 1830 coming into somewhat clear focus. His given name was not even recalled by his great-grandchildren. The only reason we even have the name to go by is because knowledge of him was preserved among the descendants of his stepson Amos White. In particular, major thanks should go to Amos’s granddaughter Ethel Glen White. Ethel (shown at left in her youth) spent most of her adult life as a spinster Iowa schoolteacher. She retired to San Diego. In the late 1960s, as she was approaching eighty years of age, and having already joined the Daughters of the American Revolution by virtue of her descent from Solomon Willard, a Revolutionary War veteran in her maternal ancestry, she took it upon herself to distill the genealogical information contained in various mementoes and records she had preserved so as to establish George White, Jr. as a qualifying ancestor for any of her White kinfolk who might want to apply for membership in the D.A.R. She filed her report on the George White, Jr. clan to the D.A.R. archives in 1971. In more recent years, her work has been furthered by Dale Dean White, a great great grandson of Amos.

Alas, even Ethel did not know where Aaron came from, nor does her material provide a birthdate or a death date for him. The censuses of 1820 and 1830 permit us to know Aaron was born before 1770, making him a decade or so older than Lois. It is also safe to assume he was a member of one of the Warner clans who dwelled in upstate New York during the early decades of the 19th Century. These clans include Warners who drifted west from New England, and it is one of these that Aaron may have been part of. His parents may well have been John Warner and Sarah Temple. That couple produced most of their many children in the 1760s and 1770s while residing in Westmoreland, Cheshire County, NH. Their fourth child was an Aaron Warner, born 3 April 1768 in Westmoreland. While it is not yet possible to declare this son and “our” Aaron Warner were one and the same person, some of the circumstantial evidence is persuasive. Members of the John Warner-Sarah Temple family, including the eldest son, Cyrus Warner and Cyrus’s son Aaron Warner, finished their lives within a few miles of the place where “the” Aaron spent his final years.

Another possible reference to the right Aaron is contained in accounts of the history of Onondaga Academy. This educational institution was founded in Onondaga Hollow, also known as Onondaga Valley, where Aaron and Lois are known to have spent the early years of their marriage. The accounts say the trustees of Onondaga Academy -- the local area’s first non-religious college-level institution -- requisitioned the construction of a building in which to hold classes. The first instructional program had been initiated in 1812, but the faculty and students had to made do with temporary quarters. The contract for the new structure, which was to have stone walls, was awarded in 1813 to a pair of brothers, Moses and Aaron Warner. While this would not have been the same Aaron Warner who was a son of John Warner and Sarah Temple, he might have nonetheless have been “our” Aaron. The building took until 1816 to complete. By about that time, Lois and “the” Aaron are known to have been either living in Onondaga Valley, or were on the brink of arrival. It is not a stretch to assume “our” Aaron and the stone mason were one and the same man -- especially when we consider that two stepsons, Seba White and Amos White, worked as masons at various points in their adult lives. The problem is, that assumption is still an assumption. The name Aaron Warner was not unique in the area. It is easy to see from census records that three distinct individuals named Aaron Warner resided in Onondaga County in the 1820s, and there could have been others whose presence was not documented.

Let’s drop the speculation and focus on what is solidly known about Lois and Aaron’s life together. The wedding date was among the few stats saved by family members -- though by the 1960s, when the info was exchanged among Warner descendants, some thought it was John Warner’s birthdate. The wedding occurred 12 January 1815. The place is unknown. While it would make sense that Lois remained in Worcester in her early widowhood, and did not leave until married, there is no proof she did in fact stay. And while Worcester was home to its share of Warners, some of whom are enumerated on the same page of the 1810 census as George C. White and household, there is no way to confirm whether or not Aaron was connected to them genealogically. Unfortunately Warner is such a common name that Warners of completely separate lineages often end up living near one another. (An example is the 1870 census, where John Warner’s son John appears on the same census page with a totally unrelated John Warner from Pennsylvania.) The 1820 census shows Aaron and Lois and their household in Onondaga County, NY. When did they get there? Was Aaron already in the county in 1813? Was he the man who built Onondaga Academy? Did Lois move to the vicinity and marry him there? Those questions at this point cannot be definitively answered.

If the place where the wedding occurred is debatable, so too is the birthplace of John Warner, except that it seems reasonable to limit the choices to Worcester or Onondaga Valley. Happily, the date is firm as 13 November 1816. It should be pointed out, though, that this certainty was not always the case. When John’s descendants compared notes in the mid-20th Century, they did not have a concensus on that stat, one of the red herrings being the 1815 wedding date. However, the true date can be derived by calculating back from the age-at-death inscription on his gravestone at Rock Lily Cemetery, Winslow, IL. You can see this gravestone in the image at left. It was scanned from a photograph taken when the marker was already more than a hundred years old. This webpage jpg is a reduced, compressed version of the photo, so you may not be able to make out the details, but if you saw the original, you would see it confirms John died 5 January 1858 at age 41 years, one month, and 23 days. (A modern-day view of the gravemarker is shown below right. This is from a photograph taken in 2007 by Patricia Long Ruiz, a descendant of Marancy’s uncle Robert Alexander. Pat is also a relative through the Littlefield side. As you can see, the marker is no longer fully legible.)

John was one of two known children of Lois and Aaron. The other child was Albert Warner. John’s great-granddaughter Ruth Warner Gustafson of Sac City, IA supplied this detail in the 1960s in a genealogy chart she made. Ruth must have had some sort of record or correspondence to refer to. However, aside from the name, she had no real details about Albert. She speculated that contact with him was lost after he went to Nebraska. However, Albert never did move to Nebraska. It was John Warner’s sons Frederick (Ruth’s own grandfather), Clifford, and Charles who did so. Fortunately Ethel G. White’s material had more detail, including that he was Albert D. Warner, born about 1820, who was married and who fathered at least one child, a daughter named Eva. Ethel’s information turned out to be imprecise -- for example, the daughter’s name was Ella, not Eva -- but her clues, including that Albert lived out his life in New York, have made it possible to identify him as the Albert D. Warner who settled in Volney, Oswego County, NY, where he became a carriage and wagon maker.

Albert was born in 1819 or perhaps in early 1820, in time to be included in the 1820 census as a “male under five years old” in Aaron Warner household in Onondaga Township. What brought the Warner/Whites to that place? That part is easy to understand. During the late 1810s through the mid-1820s there was a great tropism in play in upstate New York, drawing all sorts of young families to the Mohawk Valley. It was the economic boom associated with the building of the Erie Canal. Not only could settlers find land on which to farm, but there were limestone formations suitable for quarrying in order to generate building materials of several types. There were brine springs that would go on to be the foundation of a robust salt industry. There were ample chances to earn income through hauling, construction, and selling of goods. Aaron and Lois found a spot they liked in an area south of where the city of Syracuse would rise. This was where John spent his early boyhood.

At some point in the 1820s, probably in the middle of the decade, the Warner/Whites moved on to Hastings Township, Oswego County, NY, a relocation some two dozen miles north of the farm in Onondaga Township. There may have been better land available there -- the Mohawk Valley region is noted for containing some areas not well suited to agriculture and Aaron may not have been able to obtain the sort of parcel he wanted back in Onondaga County. By the time of the relocation, Lois’s elder children were coming of age, or already were grown. Seba appears to have chosen to remain behind in Onondaga County, or even moved slightly east into Madison County. If Deborah and Isaiah were still alive -- there is reason to think they had died -- they departed to begin their independent lives and nothing more is known of them. Cynthia, though, came to Oswego County and took title to a Hastings Township farm in her own name in 1827, prior to becoming the wife of William B. Mack. By the time of the 1830 census, even Amos White had spread his wings. Judging by the census stats, the only kids remaining at home with Lois and Aaron appear to have been John and Albert Warner. George C. White, Jr., it would seem, was part of his sister Cynthia’s household.

Aaron probably died in the early 1830s. Early 1832 is a likely juncture. He does not appear in any public record after the 1830 census, and by the summer of 1832, signs indicate his absence. For example, in July of that year, Amos White purchased fifty-three acres of Hastings Township land from his brother Seba White. Amos may even have been purchasing the parcel that had belonged to Aaron and Lois; some of the $350 he paid for it may have come from his inheritance. Regardless of whether that particular transaction was a matter of the kids arranged who-got-what of the estate, the absence of the patriarch of the clan was apparent in the way the family split up over the course of the 1830s.

In the long term, the Mohawk Valley region remained the bevy of only two of the White/Warner kids (leaving aside Isaiah and Deborah because their fates are unknown). While even today there are a small number of descendants of Aaron and Lois living in the vicinity, of the original generation, only Amos White and Albert D. Warner finished their lives there. For the others, the bond with Oswego and Onondaga Counties dissipated. They heard the westward call that would eventually bring them to the spot that would become the community of Winslow, IL.

John Warner may have been the forerunner in coming to Winslow. Certainly, he is the one member of the clan whose name turns up in a Stephenson County, IL record earlier than any other. His marriage to Marancy Alexander occurred 17 May 1841. (The precise location of the wedding has not been discovered, but in order for it to have been noted in county records so early in the pioneer era, it may well have taken place at the courthouse in the county seat of Freeport.) There is good reason to think he arrived in tandem with his half-sister Cynthia White and her husband William B. Mack and their kids, with half-brother George C. White, Jr. as part of the package. If he did come west alone, he was joined by these same relatives in 1843.

John does not appear in Illinois in the 1840 census. This is an indication he did not arrive until later in that calendar year. Chances are he was there by the end of summer, though, or there would not have been much time to court Marancy and then marry her by the end of the following spring. So the obvious question is, where was John between coming of age in Oswego County in the mid-1830s and his arrival in Winslow at age twenty-three or so? Two clues suggest where he might have been. First, he does not seem to be part of any household of family members back in New York in 1840, so he must have moved on. The second clue comes from the birthplaces of the youngest three of his sister Cynthia’s five children. Her eldest two kids, Harvey and George Mack, were born in Oswego County, as confirmed by the nativity entry of their Civil War records. But the younger three, Robert Emmett, Catherine, and Harry, were born in Canada. Robert, the first of the trio, was born in 1834, and Harry, the last, was born in late 1839 or early 1840. Given how closely Cynthia, John, and George C. White, Jr. merged their lives from the early 1840s onward, it is extremely likely that John was with Cynthia during the second half of the 1830s as well. George was (apparently) part of Cynthia’s household as early as 1830; John must have chosen to follow suit in the wake of his father’s death. If John was in Canada through the first half of 1840, naturally this explains why he does not appear in a U.S. census that year.

There is a slight chance John may have been acquainted with Marancy Alexander as a minor back in Oswego County. Hastings Township is only about twenty miles south of the spot where Marancy is known to have been living as a small child in 1830. But this proximity was probably just coincidence. John and Marancy appear to have ended up in Winslow as part of separate personal journeys, as described in more detail in her section of this essay. It is almost certain they met as neighbors in Illinois in late 1840 or early 1841. Given that they were married by 17 May 1841, they must have taken an immediate liking to one another.

Winslow was very much a frontier community in the first half of the 1840s. Stephenson County had only been created in 1837. Winslow Township -- named in honor of Governor Edward Winslow of early colonial Massachusetts -- had come into being as part of that process, but things were in flux for a few more years to such a degree that the 1840 census describes the locality as Brewster Precinct, after Lyman Brewster, who had been the first permanent white settler in 1833. Brewster had built the area’s first mill and store and established the first ferry on the Pecatonica River. The following year an early attempt at a village, under the name Ransomburg, was initiated, but it failed to thrive. The actual town of Winslow was not formed until it was platted by land speculator Cyrus Woodman in 1844. A few public buildings -- storehouses, a hotel, a blacksmith shop, a wheelwright shop, and so forth, had been thrown up in the late 1830s, but the first frame house was not erected until the early 1840s. Until that house, owned by the Bradford family, came into being, log cabins were about the best a family could hope to live in. There wasn’t even a formal church until the Presbyterians of the area built the so-called “brick church” in 1855; until then, the community hall -- Wright Hall -- served all faiths as well as being a place where government functions, such as voting, could be carried out. The first schoolhouse, consisting of one room, was not built until 1847.

Given all the hard work necessary to establish farms out of virgin woodlands and build the initial infrastructure of the community, prosperity was in short supply and the prospect of better times ahead was still only a hope. This uncertainty may be why John and Marancy did not have children during the first three and a half years of their union. Or at least, they do not seem to have had any. It is possible Marancy suffered a miscarriage or two that subsequently went unmentioned in family lore. It was not until late 1844 they welcomed their first child into the world -- their only daughter, Araminta.

Meanwhile, John’s siblings and mother went through a similar period of transition. Cynthia was widowed in 1846. Husband William B. Mack was among the first people buried in the main town graveyard, now known as Rock Lily Cemetery. Cynthia still had young children in tow, yet she chose to remain single for more than two decades, not remarrying until well into her sixties. Her son Robert Emmett Mack managed the farm for her and helped support her and his younger siblings as a blacksmith -- he would put off founding his own family until this obligation had ended. Cynthia had ceased having kids with Harry Mack’s birth, before ever reaching Winslow, which meant Cynthia was done producing kids before her brothers even started siring theirs. (Some of that is a natural consequence of them being eight to twelve years younger than she.) George C. White, Jr. married Hannah Hammond 28 June 1846; the couple produced several sons -- Albert White, George C. White III, Frederick White, and John Benton White. John Warner, Cynthia Mack, and George C. White, Jr. had separate households and acreage, but they all lived in close proximity to one another.

John supplemented the family’s crop income by working as a miller. This may have meant he eventually came to be associated with Nathaniel Martin, whose huge grist mill on the Pecatonica River just north of Winslow -- at the site that would become the village of Martintown, WI -- began operating in 1854. If this professional connection existed, it would have marked the beginning of an acquaintance between the families that would in 1869 result in a marriage between John’s eldest son and namesake and Nathaniel’s eldest daughter Eleanor Amelia “Nellie” Martin. Robert Emmett Mack was also associated with Nathaniel Martin and probably worked on the mill’s equipment and probably helped found Martintown’s first blacksmith shop, which is believed to have first opened in 1869. Cynthia’s eldest son Harvey B. Mack lived right in Martintown in the early 1870s and served as the justice of the peace who married two of Nellie’s siblings to their spouses.

By 1853 John and Marancy’s family was complete at five children -- Araminta, John, Frederick, Clifford, and Charles A. Warner -- the births, once they began, coming approximately every two years. Throughout this phase from the mid-1840s to the mid-1850s, all indications are that the household was stable and relatively secure, though as mentioned above, the pioneer nature of the environment did not allow for luxury. A venture as ambitious as Nathaniel Martin’s mills was a big deal at the time. The real key to the success of the Warner family was that they had arrived in the region when land was empty and could be had essentially for the price of agreeing to homestead it.

Marancy’s mother Olive Littlefield was widowed in 1843 and thereafter lived in John and Marancy’s home. So did Lois Warner, having arrived some time during the 1840s -- the 1840 census indicates she was not part of the initial migration west, instead spending the early part of her widowhood in the household of her son Amos White in Oswego County. Both Olive and Lois had other children residing locally that they might have taken shelter with. The fact that they chose to stay with John and Marancy is an indication the young couple were prospering at least to some degree. In 1853, when final child Charles was born, John was still short of forty years old, Marancy was shy of thirty, and both were no doubt anticipating a long, happy life in Winslow, during which they would get to watch their fine, healthy brood of children come of age. It was not to be. John died 5 January 1858. It is not clear if his health declined over time -- the lack of births during the mid-1850s is a hint this might have been the case -- or if he perished suddenly. Either way, he was gone. His remains were buried at Rock Lily Cemetery in Winslow, probably not far from his parents-in-law Joseph Alexander and Olive Littlefield. (Olive had died in 1853.)

Lois outlived her son by at least eight years, a demonstration of notable vitality given she was nearly eighty at the time of his death. She appears in the 1860 census as a resident in Cynthia’s home in Winslow. In the 1865 Illinois state census, Cynthia’s household includes an unnamed female whose age is a match for Lois. Her son Amos White’s last will and testament mentions her as an heir and grants her a bequest of one hundred fifty dollars (in the mid-1860s, this was enough to live on for a couple of years). It is assumed Amos was in regular contact with his mother despite the Illinois-to-New York separation. Amos must have had cause to assume she was alive as of 22 June 1866, the date his will was created. Since Lois does not appear in the 1870 census, she is assumed to have died in the late 1860s. (She lived long enough that a photograph of her was taken -- this being a sort of thing that was not routine among frontier families until the 1860s. Ethel G. White’s notes confirm that in the 1970s, Ethel was still in possession of such a photograph. Alas, the photo Ethel referred to has since been misplaced.)

The fates of John’s brother and half-siblings are as follows:

Albert D. Warner was about twelve years old when his father died. He was still a bit too young to go along with the siblings who headed to Canada in the mid-1830s, so he -- along with his mother -- is almost certain to have spent the late 1830s within the home of Amos White. Albert’s middle name may have been Dedenia. His nephew Albert D. White, son of Amos White, had the middle name Dedenia, and may have been named in honor of his uncle Albert. The 1840 census indicates Albert was no longer under Amos’s roof by that year, but his bond to Oswego County had become cemented, and he ended up only five miles to the north in Volney. He wed his wife, Margaret, some time in the 1840s, probably toward the end of that decade. Ethel G. White’s notes do not provide Margaret’s first name, but do state her maiden family name was Babcock. This does not agree with public sources, which strongly imply she was Margaret K. Carrier. Perhaps Margaret married Albert as the young widow of a Mr. Babcock. Albert and Margaret remained in Volney, at first on a farm and then in the town itself, until he passed away some time in the 1870s. As mentioned above, he became a wagon and carriage maker.

Albert and Margaret’s only child was Ella Glendorah Warner, born in April, 1851. Ella, often known by her middle name and sometimes simply as Glen, married Charles Hewitt, son of a clergyman from England who had brought his family to Oswego County in the late 1840s. The wedding occurred in about 1876. Ella Glendorah and Charles raised their two sons while living in Fulton, Oswego County, NY, not far from Volney. Charles was a stone mason, and later a landscape gardener. Margaret Warner, who remained a widow for over thirty years, spent the 1880s and some of the 1890s residing with her daughter and son-in-law.

Charles Hewitt and Ella Glendorah Warner had two sons, Harvey Carrier Hewitt and Roy Louis Hewitt. Some time in the 1890s, Charles and Ella Glendorah and younger son Roy moved to Colorado Springs. This was a permanent relocation -- all three of these family members are buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs and do not seem to have ever left that general part of the state, except for Roy’s military service in World War I. Charles Hewitt died in 1932, Ella Glendorah in 1939, and Roy in 1968. Roy and his wife Nellie Catherine (died 1970) do not appear to have ever had children. Harvey Carrier Hewitt stayed put in Volney and Fulton into the late 1910s, working a gardener while caring for his grandmother until her death 14 June 1910. Harvey briefly became a farmer after his 1912 marriage to Zelah E. Loomis -- a change of career made possible by the money and property he had inherited as Margaret’s main heir, and no doubt influenced toward that occupation by his father-in-law Willard R. Loomis, who farmed in Ingalls Crossing (rural Volney) his whole working life. But this sort of lifestyle does not seem to have been to Harvey’s liking. By 1916 at the latest, he went to Chester, PA, just south of Philadelphia, and became a steelworker. His marriage did not withstand the separation (or perhaps the separation was a symptom of a troubled marriage). After the divorce, Harvey continued to reside far from his ex-wife and their two daughters -- he was still in place in the southern Philadelphia area when he filled out his draft card in 1942, at age sixty-three. Zelah married George A. Donaldson in 1921. Zelah, born in 1896, lived out her life in Oswego County and died in 1981. The two daughters Harvey and Zelah produced during the relatively brief time they were together were Viola E. Hewitt and Ruth Glendorah Hewitt. The surviving descendants of Albert Warner all flow from these two great-granddaughters, both of whom were raised in Oswego County, including chunks of time spent on their Loomis grandparents’ farm. Ruth, who married and had kids with Elden Cook, remained local to the Oswego County region her whole life, dying in 1981 (slightly predeceasing her mother). Viola came west to join her relatives in Colorado Springs. She married and had offspring with Dallas Larson, and seems to have resided in Colorado Springs continually from early adulthood through her death in 1995.

Deborah White, though she was still alive in 1813, is believed to have died before adulthood. Isaiah M. White has not been tracked. In general, these two are only known from being mentioned in the 1813 will.

Seba White (probably named for “Sebee” White, one of his father’s brothers) was the eldest of the family, born in late 1799 or in early 1800. Because he was so much older than the other kids, he had the chance to become closely acquainted with the overall group of families who were neighbors in Worcester and then migrated more or less en masse to Onondaga Township in the 1810s. These families included the Marbles, the Capels, the Olmsteds, and the Lowers. The bonds lingered. Coming of age about 1820, Seba probably acquired his wife Sarah from among those families, the wedding date being unknown but probably being some time early in the decade. At this point, it is looking like his bride may have been Sarah Lower, daughter of Richard Lower and Rachel Beeman, but this so far has been impossible to verify. Sarah’s middle initial -- presumably the first letter of her maiden name -- was “L.” Seba and Sarah began life together in Onondaga County. There is a hint they came along with the rest of the family to Oswego County, but this may be a false impression. The hint is the aforementioned July 1832 deed transaction, which transferred the fifty-three acre Hastings Township parcel from Seba and Sarah L. White to Amos White. The natural inference is that the parcel was home to Seba and Sarah, but there is no way to be certain of that. Seba could have acquired legal control over the parcel as part of the dispersal of the estate of Aaron Warner, perhaps having title to it mostly as a function of being the executor. Other indications suggest Seba spent his twenties, thirties, and forties among the Marbles and Lowers, a group that could be found in the 1820s in Manlius, Onondaga County and helped found Sullivan, Madison County, NY -- these communities both being slightly east of Syracuse. Seba appears as the head-of-household in the 1840 census essentially in the latter locale, designated as Lenox Township, Madison County. Unfortunately the names of the other occupants of that home were not recorded. They consisted of a woman under thirty (if this was Sarah, she was younger than supposed), a girl under five, and a girl between five and ten years old.

Some of the Lower clan, including Leander Lower, who may have been Seba’s brother-in-law, moved to Raymond Township, Racine County, WI in the mid-1840s. Seba went with them. He appears among them on the same page of the 1850 census enumerated simply as “S. White.” He is the only White in the household. The logical assumption is that he was a widower. Inasmuch as marital status was not one of the stats collected in the 1850 census, this must remain a guess. The fate of any children is unknown. Seba’s occupation is mason, a trade he may have picked up as apprentice to his stepfather Aaron.

Some time in the 1850s Seba finally gave in to the lure of Winslow and joined his siblings there. The timing of his arrival is not precisely known. Ethel G. White’s material mentions that Seba lived in Winslow but gives no details. He was there in time to marry second wife Hannah Womeldorf in late 1859. A daughter of (John) Frederick Womeldorf and Barbara Bierly, Hannah had been born 6 April 1818 in Brush Valley, Centre County, PA. With her first husband Oratia N. (aka Horatio Nelson) Ballenger, she had lived in Clarno, Green County, WI, just a few miles north of Winslow, during the late 1840s into the 1850s. At least four children had sprung from the union before Oratia passed away, including three who were still alive at the time Hannah married Seba. One of these was Aquilla Nelson Ballenger, who at not quite seventeen years old in May, 1864, would run off along with Seba’s nephew John Warner to join the 142nd Illinois Regiment and serve in the Civil War. Both boys had to lie about their age in order to be recruited. Such documentation as the boys’ Civil War files is proof that Seba remained in Winslow through the first half of the 1860s, but strangely, his household is not enumerated there in the 1860 census. This is probably just an error on the part of the local censustaker, whose submitted pages leave much to be desired. (In addition to atrocious penmanship, he would only indicate first names by initials if he could get away with it.) Seba does appear as a head-of-household in Winslow in the 1865 Illinois state census, on the same page as his sister Cynthia.

In the second half of the 1860s, Aquilla Ballenger settled permanently in Schuyler County, MO, a place where he would spend the next sixty years and more, finally passing away in early 1930 at nearly eighty-three years of age. Seba and Hannah came along. Seba undoubtedly spent the final fragment of his life in Schuyler County. He and Hannah are enumerated there in the 1870 census in Salt River Township, as part of Aquilla’s household. By then, Seba was seventy. He did not live long enough to appear in the 1880 census. An on-line genealogy of the Womeldorf clan suggests that Hannah survived to 12 February 1900 and was buried in Cedarville, Stephenson County, IL where her parents had passed away nearly fifty years earlier. If true, this would imply Hannah moved in with her sister Barbara Yeagle toward the end of her life, though the Illinois Death Index shows she died at the county poor house.

Cynthia White Mack, as mentioned above, acquired Oswego County land in her own name in 1827. Her marriage to William B. Mack probably occurred in 1828. As newlyweds, the couple set themselves up near the farms of her kinfolk -- an Oswego County bill-of-sale confirms that William B. Mack sold grain to his brother-in-law Amos White in May, 1833. By that date, Cynthia had recently given birth to -- or was just about to give birth to -- the second of her known children, George C. Mack. (Undoubtedly his middle initial stood for Chapman). Before Robert Emmett Mack was born on 24 September 1834, Cynthia and William moved to Canada. This must surely mean just over the border in Ontario Province. From there, probably in late 1840 or early 1841, it was on to Winslow. Or at least, that’s one theory. They may have gone from Canada back to Oswego County for a few years. Amos White bought seventy acres of Hastings Township land from William and Cynthia in August, 1843. However, this transaction may mean that by 1843, William and Cynthia were confident that Winslow would remain their long-term home, and they chose to liquidate property they had held on to, but not personally farmed, for ten years. Assuming they did not handle the paperwork by mail, their trip to Oswego County to take care of the transaction, and their return trip to Winslow, might have been the occasion when Lois came west.

Cynthia was widowed in 1846 and forged on as a single woman -- albeit with most of her sons and her mother in her household -- for many years. But finally she married again. It may be that the precipitating factor in her decision was that she no longer had to worry about her mother, who must have finally passed away. Cynthia’s new husband was Harvey Bancroft, whom she wed 5 February 1868. Cynthia became part of his household, which included three of his adult or near-adult children from his previous marriage. The couple’s home and farm was in the Clarno/Jordan part of Green County, several miles north of Winslow and Martintown. Harvey Bancroft would survive until 1888, but Cynthia was not so fortunate. She perished 27 July 1870. She was buried with her first husband William B. Mack and other close family members at Rock Lily Cemetery. Because she had been a Bancroft only a short time, her name appears in the cemetery records under both Mack and Bancroft.

Cynthia had at least five children. The relatively low number may mean she lost offspring in childhood whose names are undiscovered. The five are the ones who survived to adulthood and left a paper trail. The five were Harvey B., George C., Robert Emmett, Catherine L., and Harry A. Mack. The younger four appear in her household in the 1850 and 1860 censuses. Harvey, the eldest, was already grown by 1850 and was not even in Winslow -- he may have been off chasing gold in California. Harvey did soon return to Winslow, though, and married a local gal, Aurelia Celestia Tyler, in 1853. They had four children, including two born in Winslow and one in Martintown. Harvey served in the Union Army through most of the Civil War, but was unique in the family in that he survived to resume his civilian existence. Some time in the late 1860s he and Aurelia moved to Martintown. His main occupation was carpenter, though while in Green County in the 1870s, he supplemented that income by serving as a justice of the peace. It was he who signed the marriage records of two of John Warner the younger’s siblings-in-law, Elias Martin and Emma Ann Martin. (Harvey often went by H.B. Mack, and it must be noted that he is not the same person as W.B. Mack, also a Green County justice of the peace in the 1870s. It can be an easy mistake to make. Wescott B. Mack, a Green County pioneer profiled in the famous 1884 history of the county, had a wife named Ophelia, whose name, age, and birthplace are all strikingly close to those of Aurelia Tyler Mack.) By the end of the 1870s, Harvey and Aurelia moved to Kansas, then on to Saguache, CO, where he passed away in 1893. His descendants were associated with southern California through the 20th Century, including San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino. Cynthia’s blacksmith son Robert Emmett Mack -- the only one of her sons not to become a soldier -- remained a prominent part of Winslow and Martintown until relocating to Iowa in the 1880s. His clan and members of his uncle Amos White’s clan continued to associate in Iowa for decades. George C. Mack joined the 92nd Illinois Infantry in the late summer of 1862 (signing up two days after Harvey, and about a year after his kid brother Harry) and died in February, 1865 in Aiken, SC. His passing was the second such blow Cynthia endured during the war. Her youngest son, Harry, died in 1862 of an illness contracted while in the army. He is one of the relatives whose grave is near Cynthia’s at Rock Lily Cemetery, Harry having died in Winslow despite having been a soldier for nine months. (It may have been his passing that inspired two of his older brothers to head for the recruiting station, which they did as soon as the 1862 harvest was dealt with.). Catherine L. (for Lois?) Mack married Josiah Hilliard, a tailor and farmer, in about 1854. They had three children, but this tally includes a baby who died young. The two kids who survived were Charles O. Hilliard, born in the mid-1850s, and Hattie, born at the end of the 1860s. Catherine and Josiah lived in Winslow until the early 1880s, then they and their kids moved to Sioux City, Woodbury County, IA, where Catherine passed away in 1902, and Josiah in 1912. Hattie was a lifelong spinster, remaining in the Sioux City home with her widower father and mother’s cousin Loren White until her death in 1911. Charles and his wife Josephine Steadworthy, with their daughters Elsie Olivia Hilliard and Charlotte G. Hilliard, spent a good quarter-century or more in Sioux City, but then in the 1910s became pioneers of the town of Winner, Tripp County, SD, where Charles was the proprietor of that town’s first tin shop, and Charlotte (Lottie) was one of the first school teachers. The Hilliards settled in Winner about the same time that his second cousin Clifford Warner showed up. Lottie may have taught some of Clifford’s grandchildren.

Amos White looms large in the family history because Ethel G. White was in a position to preserve many of the essential facts about him and his life, something that cannot be said to the same degree of the rest of Lois’s offspring. For example, whereas Seba, Cynthia, John, and George, Jr. probably all lost offspring at birth or in early childhood, it is only with Amos that we have some names to go with those sad occurrences.

Like Seba, Amos appears to have picked up the trade of stone mason from his stepfather, and it would appear he headed out in his late teens to build up his nest egg plying that trade in the construction boom going on in the Syracuse area as the Erie Canal was completed and began to support a robust merchantile corridor. (The salt industry also surged.) Amos appears to have done well for himself. Various land purchases, and the value of his holdings as shown in censuses, demonstrate that he became a well-to-do man, reaching a level of prosperity his siblings did not match. The money he accumulated in his early career surely was his means to buy the fifty-three acres in 1832, though some of the $350 may have come to him as part of his inheritance.

The purchase of the Hastings Township land was the beginning the life Amos would establish for himself as an adult. He may not have lived there full-time at first. He probably continued to work many months out of the year in the urban areas of Onondaga County, while his mother and other kinfolk lived on the farm. His presence would have become more year-round upon his 28 April 1836 marriage to Catharine Britton, whom he brought back with him from the village of Onondaga.

Catharine was one of eight known children of Israel Britton and his wife Magdalene. The latter couple spent the initial portion of their married life in the border area of Dutchess County and Columbia County, including an interval on acreage near Pine Plains, where Catharine was born 23 July 1816. The family moved to a home on what would become South Salina Street in the village of Onondaga in the mid-1820s. The family would retain the same house for the rest of the century -- it became the home of Catharine’s younger brother Matthias Britton with the death of Israel Britton at the end of 1849.

The fifty-three acres bought in 1832 may have been the Aaron Warner estate. It is described as Hastings Township land. But later in 1832, Hastings Township was rearranged and much of its territory became part of the new Schroeppel Township. (Pronounced like the word scruple, as in a concern of morality or conscience.) It would seem that the fifty-three acre parcel was in the new township and ceased to be Hastings Township land. Amos’s home is described in all later records as being in Schroeppel Township. The nearest village was Caughdenoy. In 1835, Amos purchased another, smaller property near Caughdenoy, and then in 1843, bought the seventy-acre Hastings Township farm of his sister Cynthia. However, these latter purchases appear to represent investments, not places Amos and Catharine moved to. In fact, the former Mack farm may have soon been sold to Catharine’s brother Darius Britton, and would stay in the hands of Darius, his widow, and then his niece/adopted daughter Alice Britton Matteson until the 1920s. As near as can be determined, the original fifty-three acre property was where Amos and his wife Catharine chose to make their home throughout the whole of their marriage.

Amos and Catharine became parents of a daughter, Amanda Malvina White, in November, 1838. Her identity is known thanks to Ethel G. White’s material. She was one of three children lost young. However, surely there were other, unknown siblings. The next known child was Henry Anson White, not born until 4 August 1844. A seven-year-gap in births for a young couple who later demonstrated ample fecundity, as well as a span of nearly two years between the wedding and the conception of Amanda? It isn’t likely that these years were entirely bereft of pregnancies. A number of babies must have been lost at birth or in early infancy. Ethel’s material does not address the matter. She includes only two children who passed away in early childhood. Amanda survived to 1845, dying at just short of seven years old. Richard White would be born in late 1850 and live five months. Another child, Mina White, is not mentioned by Ethel but is shown at age one in the 1855 state census, not to reappear in the 1860 census.

The four children who grew to adulthood were the aforementioned Henry Anson White, Albert Dedenia White, born 7 January 1847, and twins Loren, a male, and Lois, born 11 November 1857.

By 1860, other than the lingering grief from the loss of children, circumstances were good with Amos and his family. The 1860 census paints a portrait of a prosperous middle-aged couple with four healthy children, at home on land they had lived on for decades. Amos was well thought-of in his community and served on the local school board. But the 1860s brought one ordeal after another. Catharine passed away 11 August 1862 at only forty-six years of age, of causes not recorded. Amos was left to try to raise two young children left motherless at less than five years of age. Amos had to attempt this while coping with a son, Albert, who was not well-behaved and failed to make much of himself, and while worrying about eldest son Henry, a soldier in the Civil War.

Coming to the rescue in 1864 was Catharine’s sister Margaret Keeler, who had come back to the region as a widow, having spent over fifteen years in Wisconsin and Illinois with husband Kendrick Keeler and their kids. Margaret became surrogate mother to Lois and Loren, even as she was completing the raising of her own youngest daughter, Linda, who was just entering her teens in 1864.

The 1865 census shows Amos on his farm with his kids (one of whom, Henry, was actually not there, but off serving as a soldier) and Margaret and her son Heman (another soldier, and like Henry almost sure to not actually have been present in the home). Within a short time after that census was taken, Amos bought a farm on South Salina Street near the homes of his brothers-in-law Matthias Britton and Almond Britton, and moved his household there. Amos must have decided to take advantage of the prospect of childcare help from his in-laws, and perhaps was thinking the more urban circumstances might give the twins a better chance for an education. And, too, he might have decided to reinvent himself, perhaps envisioning the resumption of is stone mason career closer to the places where major contracts could be obtained. Unfortunately, he personally did not get to fulfill whatever plans he had. He was deprived of that potential chapter of his story by the kick of a horse.

The kicking occurred 14 June 1866. Amos was not killed outright, but must have received internal injuries that resulted in sepsis. Had he lived in an age of modern surgery and antibiotics, he surely could have been saved, but as it was, he was doomed, and he knew it. He made out his last will and testament on the 22nd of June. He died on the 26th.

Amos made his brother-in-law Matthias Britton his executor, charged with the responsibility for using the estate resources to the benefit of young orphans Lois and Loren until they came of age, and then bequeathing what value remained among all four surviving kids. Matthias was a steady sort of person, a leading citizen of the village of Onondaga, and was probably the ideal choice, but it is probably no coincidence that it was the year 1867 in which Matthias suddenly bought a stone quarry and installed a lime kiln (for the processing of limestone into cement). In so doing, he created the firm that would soon be known as Britton & Son, which he owned and operated with his only son, Israel E. Britton. Matthias and Israel would spent the rest of their lives deriving the bulk of their wealth from this venture. It was surely Amos’s money that made it possible to buy the quarry and to erect the kiln. Giving Matthias the benefit of the doubt, he probably saw this investment as the natural way to do his fiduciary duty and ensure that funds were available for the care of Lois and Loren White. However, it must be noted that it was Brittons, not Whites, who derived the longest-term benefit from the creation of the business. The White siblings may have found this development unsatisfactory, which would help explain why they eventually departed New York and let the bonds with the Britton side of their heritage fade, even though it was their Britton relatives with whom they had been raised. Instead, they got to know their Warner/White relatives, whom they must have barely known during their father’s lifetime.

Henry Anson White was the first to be lured to join his paternal kinfolk. This occurred no later than 1868. Perhaps his grandmother Lois was still alive to plead with him to come see her. Perhaps it was his aunt Cynthia and uncle George C. White, Jr. who extended the invitation. So to Winslow he came. Though he made at least one extended visit back to New York, Winslow was otherwise his home until 1879, and his bride, Ellen Amelia Gamber, daughter of James Hunt Gamber and Mary Cox, was a Winslow girl who had grown up as a close neighbor of the Whites, Warners, and Macks. The wedding occurred 17 November 1875.

Lois and Loren White were probably on-hand for that wedding, but not before having been raised back in Onondaga. Matthias Britton’s solution to the twins’ welfare was to leave them in place in the home (and farm) Amos had established on S. Salina Street. Margaret Britton Keeler continued to be their surrogate mother, with her daughter Linda, six years the twins’ elder, sharing the residence. Technically, Margaret and Linda were boarders in Lois and Loren’s home, but it was Lois and Loren who left in the 1870s to join their brother Henry in Winslow, and it was Margaret and Linda who stayed. The 1880 census shows Margaret and Linda still in place, the household headed by Linda’s husband Thomas Davis, and home to Linda and Thomas’s four offspring.

Loren got to know the tinsmithing trade in Winslow at the side of Charles O. Hillard, son of Cynthia White Mack’s daughter Katharine L. Mack and her husband Josiah Hilliard. Lois got started on married life on schedule, marrying a young man of Winslow, Floyd Fowler Peters, son of Orasmus and Susan Peters, on 12 June 1878. The 1880 census shows both of the twins in Winslow, Loren with the Hilliards and Lois with Floyd and their newborn baby Ena. Ironically, at this point, their brother Henry was back in Onondaga. Henry had decided to return home in the spring of 1879. He and Ella and their growing family remained there for four to five years. Henry worked for his uncle Matthias. Perhaps he was trying to position himself as the eventual boss of Britton & Son. If so, he must have eventually conceded that his cousin Israel was the heir apparent. Henry gave up his experiment and came back west, probably in 1883 or 1884.

But not to Winslow. Henry and Ella became part of a large migration of Winslow folk into Iowa. This exodus seems to have been a case of the “Manifest Destiny” urge taking hold. The pioneers of Stephenson County had arrived in the period from the late 1830s to the early 1850s; now their kids wanted to find their own empty spaces. The Macks and the Gambers were among the families who headed off in the early 1880s, so it was only natural that Henry and Ella followed suit as soon as they had given up on Onondaga. By the mid-1880s they had reached Wright County, IA, where they would stay until the kids were grown. In their mature years, they went on to greater Oskaloosa, Mahaska County, IA, where Henry passed away 20 February 1945 at one hundred years of age.

Henry and Ella had four kids -- Charles, Arthur, Albert, and Ethel, the latter being the genealogist, Ethel Glen White. The greater portion of the descendants of Charles, Arthur, and Albert (Ethel had no children) lived their lives -- or are still living their lives -- in the Upper Plains states, including Iowa, Minnesota, both the Dakotas, and Colorado. Some settled in San Diego, CA. The latter group includes Ethel Glen White at the very end of her life -- but only in retirement. Before that retirement, much of Ethel’s long career as an educator was spent in Storm Lake, Buena Vista County, IA, where much of the family of her father’s cousin Robert Emmett Mack could be found.

Henry Anson White and Ellen Amelia Gamber and their clan, a family group shot taken in the couple’s twilight years. The venue is probably their home in the Oskaloosa suburb of University Park, where the couple finished their lives, or it is possibly the home of their son Arthur. Ethel Glen White is the middle-aged woman in the center with her elbow on her father’s chair.

Loren White practically became an honorary Hilliard. When Catherine and Josiah moved to Sioux City, IA in the early 1880s, Loren came along. He lived with them and their spinster daughter Hattie until he was the only one left, Catharine passing away in 1902, Hattie in 1911, and Josiah in 1912. About the time Josiah passed away, Lois White Peters showed up, having been widowed, and the twins shared the Sioux City residence, Loren essentially being their heir, inasmuch as the only surviving Hilliard was Charles, who was firmly ensconced in Winner, SD.

During the thiry-five years Lois lived apart from her twin, she and Floyd Peters roamed considerably more than her Loren had. Floyd had become an ostepath and it would seem that he and Lois went where his career opportunities led them. For example, the 1900 census shows the household in Kirksville, Adair County, MO. The roaming phase came to a close just after the turn of the century when Lois and Floyd moved to Monroe, Green County, WI, where Floyd’s parents had settled in their old age. Floyd died in late 1911, whereupon Lois soon joined her twin brother in Sioux City, arriving about the time of Josiah Hilliard’s death and keeping Loren from having to live alone. They stayed together for good.

By the time Lois got to Sioux City, all three of her kids -- Ena, Lola, and Bessie -- were grown and on their own, though Ena, still unmarried in her late forties, came back “home to Mother” in the late 1920s, about the time Loren suffered a paralyzing stroke. As a result of that stroke, Loren’s final five years of life were an ordeal. He passed away 30 November 1932. By dying in his mid-seventies, he fell far short of the mark that would be set by his surviving siblings. Henry, as mentioned, reached a hundred years of age. Lois White Peters lingered until 23 April 1962, finally going to her grave at Graceland Park Cemetery in Sioux City (where Loren had been buried thirty years earlier, and where the various Hilliards are also buried) at the age of one hundred four. Lois actually outlived two of her three daughters. As for those daughters, all did become wives, even Ena, but only Lola had kids, both of whom eventually finished their lives in California.

Albert Dedenia White does not seem to have associated with his siblings much, and it is not known what he did with himself after leaving the Onondaga home in the 1860s. Ethel G. White’s notes have nothing about his later life except his death date of 24 December 1902.

George Chapman White, Jr. was the long-lived one of the original family. He passed away 7 September 1900, a few months after he and wife Hannah Hammond White had been recorded in the 1900 census, still at home in Winslow. Hannah went to stay with son Fred White in Minneapolis, where she passed away 5 September 1902. By the time of their deaths, the couple had survived a number of descendants, including son George C. White III, who had passed away in 1878 at the age of twenty-six. Both Georges are buried in the same section of Rock Lily Cemetery, as is Hannah and George III’s daughter Nellie White, who died as a teenager in the early 1890s. Cemetery records describe George as George, Sr., and his son George III as George, Jr. -- the “real” George, Sr. had never been a presence in Winslow and so he was not “counted.” Not all of George and Hannah’s descendants were so unlucky, and the family line has expanded down through the years. For example, George III’s other daughter Edna Belle White was taken in as a foster child by Marancy’s sister Mary Alexander Francis and grew up to marry August Welt and raise a family in Stephenson County.

Marancy and Her Life

Marancy was born 7 February 1824. Her given name was a rare one in her era, generally turning up only in upstate New York and upper New England, likely as a relic of the days of the French fur trappers. It is even less common today. Because of its rarity, it was not well recalled by all of Marancy’s grandchildren, and some of them were left unsure how to spell it. Census enumerators and county clerks had trouble coping with it as well, and this in turn caused mis-transcriptions when public genealogical databases were created. A case in point are two Illinois Marriages indices, which list her as “Muraney Elexander” and “Morency Elexandre.”

Marancy was the sixth of the eight children of Joseph Alexander and Olive Littlefield. In birth order, the eight children were Leander Joseph, Mary Ann, Gorham, Martha Jane, Almeda, Marancy, Sophronia, and Ozias. The births began in 1816 and ended in 1829.

Marancy was probably born in Henderson, Jefferson County, NY. Her uncle Robert Alexander had been one of the original settlers who founded Henderson in 1802. Marancy’s father Joseph had probably reached the community later, probably in 1808 when his father, Jonathan Sartle Alexander, arrived. Jonathan’s arrival date is documented in a description of his life preserved in his Revolutionary War veteran’s pension application of 1832. The pension-file biography goes on to say that Jonathan left Henderson in 1824, moving to the village of Mexico, Oswego County, NY. Joseph and Olive are also known to have moved to Oswego County. Their household appears in the 1830 census in Richland, about fifteen miles northeast of Mexico, closer to the boundary with Jefferson County. The precise timing of this relocation is unknown, nor is it known whether Joseph and family might have first gone to Mexico before establishing the home in Richland. Historical within-the-family notes do say that Marancy was born in Jefferson County, so the odds seem good that the family was still in Henderson when she arrived in the world.

Marancy was an Oswego County girl for at least some of her childhood, but probably not a lengthy span. According to an 1882 history of Greenfield Township, LaGrange County, IN, Marancy’s uncle Edmund Littlefield moved to Greenfield Township in 1832. Joseph Alexander appears there in the 1840 census. Perhaps Joseph was only temporarily there that year, but it is far more likely that he and Olive and their kids had arrived there as part of the same trip that brought Edmund and his family in 1832. If this assumption is correct, Marancy actually spent almost as much of her childhood in LaGrange County as she did in Oswego County. Possibly more.

At some point, Joseph and Olive and their children reached Stephenson County, IL. A possible exception is Gorham, who may have gone straight to Grant County, WI. Leander would follow Gorham by 1842, but thanks to the census he can be pinpointed in 1840 in Stephenson County as the head of the household in Brewster Precinct. The household included all of Leander’s siblings except Sophronia, who was deceased, Gorham, who was apparently in Grant County, and Martha Jane, who was by then married and had moved to a nearby house with husband Abraham Johnson. Olive was with Leander and the main group of kids. Joseph, as mentioned, was still back in Indiana, perhaps having to tend to business matters regarding the old property before he could be reunited with his family. The Alexanders clearly must have given in to the same urge as the Warners and so many others, and were part of the great influx of homesteaders from various parts of the East and the Ohio Valley who settled in Stephenson County during the end of the 1830s and the dawn of the 1840s. The marriage record of Marancy’s sister Martha Jane to Abraham M. Johnson in early January, 1840 suggests the big move took place in 1839. Another possibility is 1837-1838 because this is when the largest flow of settlers came out of Indiana.

Once in Stephenson County, with the exception of Leander and Gorham, the Alexanders as a whole treated the area as their home base for the next thirty to fifty years. A number of descendants are there to this day.

The nature of Marancy’s life as a married woman can be easily inferred from the account of those years in John’s portion of this essay. With her widowhood, things changed radically for her. Suddenly she was left with five small children. Her mother was dead. Her mother-in-law was too elderly to be much help. In fact, Lois was in need of care to the degree that she represented an additional burden, and she moved into the home of her daughter Cynthia. While the farm provided some of the basic needs -- space for a milk cow and some poultry, hay for the livestock, vegetables from the garden plot -- it was probably not a cash-producing venture. Marancy was not in a position to hire a laborer to work the fields and then depend on whatever money she cleared from the sale of crops. The backbone of the household prosperity must have been John’s income as a miller. As a woman, Marancy had no comparable opportunity to obtain a job. So within a year of John’s death, John, Jr. went to work at the age of twelve to help support his mother and siblings.

Marancy must have considered remarriage as soon as she finished mourning. But Winslow being lightly settled, she did not find anyone suitable at hand for a few years. Finally after a neighbor, Nicholas Balliet, lost his wife, Marancy was met with a proposal to her liking. She and Nicholas were wed 7 August 1862, creating a large combined brood of children -- the five Warner kids and up to five Balliet ones. The eldest of the latter group was David M. Balliet, sixteen at the time of the wedding. The youngest was Stephen Balliet, then only a matter of weeks or months old, his birth perhaps having been the reason the previous Mrs. Balliet (Leah, second wife of Nicholas) was dead.

The marriage resolved certain domestic challenges, but these years were not untroubled, thanks to the Civil War. The greatest concern for Marancy and Nicholas were their eldest boys, who were both eager to join the fighting. In May of 1864 John became tired of waiting and ran off, along with Seba White’s stepson Aquilla Ballenger, to join the Union Army. This no doubt made Marancy frantic, no matter how proud she may have been at John’s bravery. It helped that John and Aquilla only signed up for the 100-day hitch, rather than the standard three-year option. As a result, they were mustered out that October, and came home safe. However, a couple of weeks before John received his discharge, David Balliet “filled his place,” as it were. David at least was already eighteen, and did not have to lie about his age to enlist, as John and Aquilla had done.

Nicholas Balliet was just past fifty years old when he married Marancy and he appears to have died in the second half of the 1860s. (He appears in the 1865 Illinois state census, but Marancy is a widow again in the 1870 census.) Given the brevity of the marriage, Marancy would seldom be referred to under the name Balliet in subsequent public records, the only known exceptions being an 1875 land transaction and the 1900 census. She would not marry a third time. As the decade wound down, the need for her to be a mother wound down as well. The oldest of her Balliet step-children (offspring of Nicholas’s first wife, Catherine) headed out on their own. For example, David, who had married Nancy Reber a year after his return from the war, departed for Waterloo, IA. The younger pair (offspring of Nicholas and Leah) were taken in by blood relatives. As for Marancy’s own kids, John and Fred both married in 1869 and immediately became the heads of their own households. Minta found work as a domestic servant in a nearby home. Charles, despite being only a teenager, accompanied neighbor Charles McOmber (aka Macomber, McComber, McCumber) and family to Washington County, NE. By the time the 1870 census was recorded, the only person residing in the house besides Marancy herself was her son Clifford.

In 1872, Fred Warner and his wife Penina Shreckengost, who had been farming only a little to the southwest of Winslow near the village of Lena, moved much farther away. Along with Penina’s parents and siblings, they went to Butler County, NE, where they founded homesteads. Clifford Warner apparently went along or else joined them within a year or two. In 1875 Clifford would marry Ella Shreckengost. The couple would raise their children in Nebraska. Once Clifford was no longer in Winslow, it is not entirely clear what Marancy did with herself. The most likely scenario is that she moved in with her daughter Minta, who had married John Ladd in 1872 and settled a bit north of Winslow in Green County, WI. Minta gave birth to two children in the period from 1873-1875 and Marancy’s assistance caring for the babies would have been welcome. Alternately, it could be that Marancy stayed in the Winslow house, kept company by hired help or by no one at all. If so, she gave up this situation fairly quickly. In 1875, she sold out to Charles McOmber. The McOmbers had apparently decided they didn’t like Nebraska and wanted to come back to their old stomping grounds. Charles Warner, however, had the opposite reaction and remained out west; the real estate transaction may, in fact, have been some sort of trade between the two families that allowed Marancy’s youngest boy to acquire a farm of his own. Marancy may at this point have gone to Nebraska to be with Charles -- or she may have gone to be with Fred or Clifford. However, again, the most likely scenario is that she stayed with Minta. Marancy would, however, eventually end up in Nebraska. Minta and John decided to join Charles Warner in 1879. They bought land adjacent to his in Washington County. At this point Charles had just married Mary Elizabeth Maurer, a young woman he had grown up with in Winslow, and the couple were launching their family. Marancy is known to have been on hand to see this all unfold.

For a span of five years, 1879 to 1884, Charles and Mary Warner and Minta and John Ladd and their two households farmed side by side in Washington County. Their parcels were somewhat in the vicinity of the town of Blair, and lay not far west of the Missouri River. Minta lodged with Minta and John at first. The 1880 census lists her as a member of their household. On any given day, however, she was likely to have been found next door with Charles and Mary, because that couple produced three daughters in rapid succession during those five years and Marancy was surely needed as a grandma nanny figure, and was happy to oblige. She is likely to have moved in with them some time during the early 1880s, though her presence in their household cannot be documented until her name appears with theirs in the 1885 Nebraska state census.

Though Winslow had been her home for the better part of forty years, Marancy does not seem to have been tempted to go back. The only one of her children remaining behind in Green County/Stephenson County was John. By 1880 all her siblings except Mary Ann were dead. By going to Nebraska, she was able to be a daily part of the lives of at least two of her offspring. For the rest of her days she would maintain the connection to Minta and Charles and their families. Winslow would be part of her past as New York and Indiana had become part of her past.

In 1884, Charles and Mary and Minta and John pulled up stakes. There are no surviving documents that explain why Washington County had lost its appeal. Perhaps by relocating, they were able to expand their holdings at low cost. For whatever reason, they chose to homestead in Miller Township, Knox County, NE, at a spot about eight miles west of the hamlet of Creighton. Once again, the farms were side by side. And once again, Marancy’s contribution to the childcare was a prime asset. Minta gave birth one last time that year, and in the next few years Charles and Mary would become parents twice more (sadly, the last baby died at only a few months old).

Once settled in Knox County, Marancy did not move again for the remaining seventeen years of her life, not even after the death of Charles in 1898. In the census of 1900, she is listed as a member of the household of her widowed daughter-in-law Mary Maurer Warner. Marancy passed away just three years after Charles’s untimely demise. Her date of death was 11 June 1901. She was buried in what would later come to be called Olcott Cemetery. This little graveyard, originally created by neighbors, the Ausman family, in order to bury a small child of their family, was situated in close proximity to the Warner and Ladd properties -- probably at the conjuction of the four homesteads that made up that section of Miller Township. Olcott Cemetery is where Marancy’s little granddaughter had been buried in 1888. Unlike the baby, Marancy’s grave -- like that of Charles -- was not supplied with a headstone, and so its location within the grounds can only be approximated.

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In brief, here is what happened to Marancy’s brothers and sisters:

Leander Joseph Alexander, born 5 August 1816, is surely the “L. Alexandria” mentioned in the 1840 census in Stephenson County. He moved on to Grant County by no later than 1842. He lived the prime of his life as a farmer in southwest Wisconsin, farming near Patch Grove, Grant County and, toward the end of his life, just north of Grant County near Marietta, Crawford County. His grand niece Mabel Duncalf Waldmann indicated in a 1968 letter (when she was elderly) that Leander had never married, and it does appear true he was a bachelor most of his days, and did not have offspring. However, an 1857 Grant County marriage record between an “L.J. Alexander” and widow Mrs. S. Menhenet suggests he may not have spent all his life unmarried. Mabel’s notes also specify the cause of Leander’s death was malaria -- something virtually unknown in America today but a disease that killed many thousands on the American frontier in the 1800s. Leander was nursed during this final episode by his sister-in-law Emily Ward Alexander. He succumbed 13 December 1871. His body was interred at Dyer Cemetery in Lancaster, Grant County, WI. It was later reburied in Hillside Cemetery in the section that contains the graves of Emily Ward Alexander and many of the offspring of Emily and her husband Gorham Alexander. (The picture at left was probably taken only a few years before his death.)

Mary Ann Alexander was born 15 December 1817. Though she was the oldest of the girls, she was third to become a wife. She and Thomas Francis were wed 29 April 1843 in Stephenson County. Judging by the censuses of 1850 through 1880 -- and as confirmed by family notes -- she and Thomas never had biological children. However, they are known to have alleviated their loneliness by repeatedly taking in fosterlings. There is, in fact, a young child of one sort or another in their household for several censuses running. In 1850, it was Morris Johnson, Mary Ann’s nephew, son of her late sister Martha Jane, who must have been handed off to her and Thomas while his stepmother coped with a new baby. One instance of near adoption cited by Mabel Duncalf Waldmann is that after Gorham died in the Civil War, leaving his widow Emily with a home chock full of young children, Mary Ann and Thomas accepted custody of Gorham and Emily’s eldest daughter Josephine, then eleven years old (1863). Several months or a year later Emily made a horse-and-wagon trip from Lancaster, WI to Winslow to see her daughter, who expressed homesickness to the degree that Emily took her back. Mary Ann and Thomas moved from Winslow in the late 1860s, but they stayed within Stephenson County, making a new home in the town of Lena, where they survived until at least 1880. They are shown in Lena in the 1880 census. In their household that year was what must have been the last of their fosterlings, Edna Belle White, orphan granddaughter of Marancy’s brother-in-law George C. White, Jr.

Gorham Alexander was born 19 August 1818. If that date and the birthdate of Mary Ann are to be trusted, he came into the world precisely nine months after his older sister. This is possible -- particularly if Gorham was a bit premature -- but probably means the records have been confused and the date is wrong for either Mary Ann, Gorham, or both. Gorham, whether he took a detour through Stephenson County or not, ended up Beetown, Grant County, WI by the early 1840s. (He appears in western Grant County in an 1842 state census.) He married Emily Sheldon Ward 28 April 1848 in Grant County. Emily, born 4 May 1827 in Underhill, Chittendam County, VT, was an even earlier pioneer of southwest Wisconsin than Gorham -- her father Salmon Ward had been one of the soldiers of the Black Hawk Wars of the early 1830s that cleared the last Indian tribes from the region. Gorham and Emily met because his farm was next to that of her sister Clarinda Day. (Clarinda and Emily were two of the eighteen children of Salmon Ward and Susannah Proctor.) Gorham and Emily rapidly produced nine children -- Charles Gorham, Albert Gordon, Josephine Clarinda, Katherine Matilda, Phedora Emily, Almeda Julia, Joel Littlefield, George Washington, and Eleanor Amy Alexander. (Joel and George were twins. Among Emily’s many siblings were two sets of twins.) In September, 1861, Gorham joined the 10th Wisconsin Regiment of the Union Army and left to serve in the Civil War. Final child Eleanor was conceived the month of his enlistment and it is not clear he ever got to hold her in his arms. He contracted dysentery and perished in a military hospital at Louisville, KY 3 January 1863. His grave is located at Cave Hill National Cemetery, the resting place of many Civil War dead.

Emily spent the next forty years in Lancaster as a widow. Most of the children and many of the grandchildren went on to farm and/or reside in Grant County for the whole of their lives. This groundedness in one place, along with the interest this branch of the clan maintained in their Alexander-surname heritage, eventually proved critical to helping Marancy’s descendants confirm where she had come from. The Ward family had an appreciation of genealogy, and Emily inherited this trait. The information Emily recorded in her carefully-maintained family Bible about Gorham’s forebears and siblings allowed her son Charles Gorham Alexander to write an essay about the Alexander family history in 1891, in which he spoke of Joseph’s service in the War of 1812, Jonathan’s participation in the Revolutionary War, and even how Jonathan’s father (John Alexander, but unnamed in the document) had been killed by Indians during the French and Indian War. A copy of this essay was passed along in the 1960s to some of Marancy’s descendants when they came calling in search of tales about her and her heritage.

Martha Jane Alexander, born 17 March 1820, was the first of the family to marry. She wed Abraham M. Johnson 2 January 1840 in Stephenson County. They immediately became parents of a girl who was named after her mother. (In some family notes, such as those of Mabel Duncalf Waldmann, the daughter, Martha Jane Johnson, has been confused with her mother Martha Jane Alexander Johnson.) A son followed, but died young, then a second son, the aforementioned Morris Johnson, in about 1844.

Martha Jane Alexander Johnson died at only twenty-eight years of age 19 August 1848. The family was probably then residing in Silver Creek, Stephenson County, where the survivors would linger for another twenty years or so. Abraham spent only a short period as a widower before he married a woman named Harriett. She came to the union with two children from her own previous marriage. Together, she and Abraham had two more children together, creating a mixed brood of step, full, and half siblings. Harriett passed away before 1860.

Martha Jane Johnson married Owen Lindaman 14 November 1860 in Stephenson County. The couple moved to Charles City, Floyd County, IA, taking her widower father Abraham with them. They had five children, as well as caring for an adopted child and then also raising two orphanned grandchildren. The Lindaman clan remained firmly rooted in the Charles City area for many decades as local farmers. Some descendants may still be there.

Almeda Alexander, born 6 November 1822, married John Boynton 12 November 1848 in Stephenson County. (The surname tends to appear as Boyington in many records through 1870.) They spent the bulk of their marriage -- probably all of it -- farming near the village of Lena in a locality then known as Waddam after an early settler. The place was also known as Waddams with an “s” and today is known as Waddams Grove. Almeda and John had five known children, Mary, Benjamin, Martha, Joseph, and Henry. Benjamin died as a small infant, possibly the same day he was born. (Almeda is shown at left, picture probably taken during the 1860s, when she was in her forties. Her sons Joseph and Henry are shown below right as juveniles, in a photo possibly taken the same year.) Almeda passed away 24 September 1875. Soon after her death, John moved to Hamilton County, IA, where he resided with his daughter Martha and her family. He died 9 June 1892 in or near Webster City, Hamilton County, IA.

Martha M. Boynton married James W. Shinkle 21 January 1875 in Stephenson County. The couple made their moved to Hamilton County while they were still newlyweds. They had four children during the first decade of their union and then a fifth, Clara, in the early 1890s. James passed away 13 August 1893. A year and a half later Martha married John Knudson. By then she was past childbearing age and did not have further offspring with him, but thanks to her five Shinkle children she stands at the top of an impressively long list of descendants. For example, her eldest daughter, Almeda Mae Shinkle, had eleven kids with her husband Robert Jackson Hefling after they settled in Reno County, KS, northwest of Wichita. John Knudson died in the early 1900s. Even during the marriage, Martha had worked as a teacher, and after being widowed, supported herself as an artist in Ames, Story County, IA.

Joseph Oliver Boynton married Rosa Ann Stocks 3 December 1879 in Stephenson County. They farmed at first near Waddams Grove. Brother Henry was briefly part of their household. In the very early 1880s Joseph and Rosa moved to Iowa. They farmed near Clarion, Wright County, IA -- whether by coincidence or not, John Warner, Sr.’s nephew Henry Anson White soon came to Wright County, perhaps because his wife Ellen Amelia Gamber, a Stephenson County girl, wanted to go to a place where the neighbors would include people she had grown up with. (Henry and Ellen had tried living back in the Syracuse area where he had grown up, and this must have left Ellen feeling isolated from her childhood companions.) Joseph and Rosa had six children before he met an early demise in his mid-forties, passing away 11 February 1900. His remains were buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Clarion. Rosa, who was better known as Rose Ann in her later years, finished raising the children in Wright County. She survived Joseph by many years.

When his brother departed for Iowa, Henry Burt Boynton stayed behind in Stephenson County, where he wed Edith Ellen Slothower 24 September 1884. Within a few years the couple moved to Adams, Gage County, NE and raised a family there. Henry died before 1920; his widow and at least one daughter lingered in Gage County past 1930.

Sophronia Alexander only survived two and a half years, all of it spent in New York in either Jefferson County or Oswego County or both. She was born 27 March 1826 and died 19 October 1828.

Ozias Alexander also had a short life, though considerably longer than that of Sophronia. Ozias was part of the big westward jaunts from New York to Indiana and then from Indiana to Illinois. He was born 21 January 1829. He drowned 29 June 1843 at the age of fourteen. Charles Gorham Alexander’s 1891 history states the tragedy occurred “near Freeport.” This was probably Charles’s way of describing Winslow.

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