When the County Clerk Can't Spell
Or "Being dragged down the rabbit hole"
Our story today begins with the Bowen family. You may recall my September post on William Bowen:
The WikiTree pages for William’s siblings were not well-developed, and since researching William (Sr.) led to a very well-done NEGHR report on them at American Ancestors1, I decided to tidy up their pages by adding the information from the NEGHR report.
When I improve a WikiTree profile, I never want to copy someone else’s work without verifying their sources. Fortunately for me, Cherry Bamberg did an outstanding job, and it was easy for me to find the sources she cited. For most of William’s children, I just needed to take what she found and build a quick biography with the source citations I found in Ancestry.
I was working my way “up” from William’s youngest child (Lydia (Bowen) Brace) and fleshing out details along the way so they had as full a biography as possible with minimal effort on my part.
Then I got to Mercy Bowen.
Here’s her entry in Bamberg’s report (with bolding added by me):
(pg. 59) - "iv. MERCY BOWEN, b. N.Y. ca. 1794; d. after 1870 when counted in the census; m. ENOS ROGERS, b. N.Y. ca. 1795, d. of dysentery in Ripley Township, Huron Co., Ohio, in Sept. 1849 age 55.
"Enos Rogers and his large family lived in Ohio as early as about 1833 when a child was born there and in Ripley by the 1840 census. Enos left a will dated 6 April 1847, proved 1 Nov. 1849, mentioning one son, Leroy Rogers, and six daughters: Phidelia Graham, Laydean Wickam, Gennet Carl, and Girtrude, Celesta, and Lorada Rogers. One of the executors was Mercy Rogers, and the other was Merritt Ketchum, one of the witnessess. The 1850 census shows "Mersey" Rogers, 56, living in Ripley with Gertrude, 20, Selesta 18, and Lorada 17. In 1870 Mercy Rogers, 77, b. N.Y. was living in the house of John Davidson, 62, and Mary Davidson, 58, in Greenwich, Huron Co., Ohio."
Mercy (Bowen) Rogers disappeared after 1870, suggesting she died in the 1870s, probably in Huron County. I thought I could dig into her children to see if their records reveal any clues about Mercy. The NEGHR report was missing an 1860 Census record - maybe if I could find that, it would have some clues.
We are already two steps further down the rabbit hole than I had intended to go - but as Sherlock said, “Needs must when the devil drives.”
The Will of Enos Rogers
A record from the New York, U.S., Marriage Notices, 1800-1855 database shows Enos Rogers and Mercy Bowen were married in Sempronius, Cayuga County, New York, on 8 Dec 1818. His will, dated 1849, was recorded in Huron County, Ohio. Here is the bit where his daughters are named:
Sometimes you can attribute inaccurate spelling to transcribers, but in this case, you can see what the county clerk wrote down. I sometimes wonder whether the individuals who gave the information to the clerk knew how to spell, or if they would have corrected the spelling, had they been allowed to see what the clerk wrote. Either way, here’s what I learned about their names and lives, with varying degrees of difficulty.
Phidelia Rogers Graham
This case is pretty straightforward. We see her named as “Phidelia Graham” in her father’s will, and there is an 1838 Huron County marriage record for “Fedelia Rogers” and Elmer Graham. (No screenshot because it was too blurry.) Regardless, Phidelia died in 1855, and there is no evidence her mother lived with her family after that.
Laydean-Lydia Ann Wickham
The name “Laydean” seemed unusual, but I thought it would turn out to be something phonetically close to that - “Nadine,” perhaps. I struggled and ran several kinds of fuzzy searches before I came up with this record showing her real name: Lydia Ann:
It took some sleuthing, but William Wickham was a prominent physician who took his young bride to Goshen, Indiana, soon after their marriage. They had two daughters before Lydia Ann died in 1853. Dr. Wickham has an extensive obituary that tells us her name, that she died, and came from Ripley Township, Huron County.
There is no evidence that Mercy (Bowen) Rogers or Lydia Ann’s sisters lived in the Wickham household, in 1860 or at any time.
Gennet-Jeanette Carl
With this daughter, I think her full name was “Ann Jeannette” but nobody knew how to spell “Jeannette” - so we have several examples of how different clerks rendered her name.
In her marriage record, she is “Annette”:
In 1850, she is “Ann”:
By 1860, they managed “Jenett” (and they turned “Carl” into “Cardell”):
And in 1870, she became “Ann Genett”:
Ann Jenett/Genett/Jeannette died in 1874, and none of these records indicate that her mother or any siblings lived in her household.
Lorada-Lauretta Butler
While appearing as “Lorada” in both the will and the 1850 Census, I think this marriage record showing “Lauretta A Rogers” from 1852 is probably Mercy’s youngest daughter. She and Erastus were married in Huron County, where I would expect to see Mercy’s child married. That said, all of the records for Lauretta Butler give her birthdate as “abt. 1826 in Pennsylvania” - so this could be a different person.
If Lauretta Butler is the daughter of Mercy (Bowen) Rogers, there is no evidence that Mercy or any siblings lived in the Butler household in 1860, 1870, or 1880.
Selesta-Celestia Rogers
A record in the Ohio, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1786-1998 dated 15 Dec 1853 tells us that Celestia died in Ripley Township, Huron County, Ohio, and left whatever she owned to her mother, Mercy Rogers.
Of course, I only learned this after finding an 1868 Delaware County marriage record and spending time tracing the family of Celestia Rogers and Alonzo Van Tassel - unlike our Celestia, however, Celestia (Rogers) Van Tassel appeared in the 1860 Census with her parents, Elisha and Jane. Time lost chasing that rabbit: about ninety minutes.
Girtrude-Gertrude Rogers…???
We know that Mercy lived with Celestia, Lauretta, and Gertrude in 1850. Celestia died in 1853, and if we assume that we are correct about Lauretta getting married in 1852, then we should be looking for evidence of Gertrude’s wedding in the 1850s to see if Mercy shows up in the home of Gertrude and a yet-unknown son-in-law in 1860.
We see Mercy Rogers (77) and Gertrude Rogers (41) listed in the Davidson household in Greenwich, Huron County, Ohio, in 1870. And if I zero in my search for either of those ladies in 1860 in Huron County, I find a Gertrude Rodgers (30) listed in Ripley Township, Huron County - right where I expect to see her. But this Gertrude is listed as a widow with two children: Alice (8) and Josephine (11). I would rule her out, except that this household is at the top of the page, and the household at the bottom of the previous page is that of Orel and Miranda Smith - and it includes a “Mercena Rodgers” (67).
There is a marriage record for Gertrude Rogers and Milton Brown in Huron County on 25 Dec 1850. It is possible that they had two daughters, and that Milton died around 1853, and it is possible that the census taker got her name from “Mercena Rodgers” - if she told them, “That household is my daughter, Gertrude, and her two children” I could see them getting recorded as “Rodgers” instead of “Brown”…but none of these theories led to any documents.
By 1880, Gertrude (with no attendant children) became the fourth wife of Robert Patterson Fauver (1826–1896) of Ridgeville Corners, Huron County. She died in 1910.
Conclusion: Where is the Rabbit?
For all of that effort, you might think I would be upset that I didn’t learn more about Mercy Rogers’s life. But I’m not.
While I don’t plan to take the time to add profiles for all of Mercy’s children and -in-laws, I do have a list of their full names and birth/death dates to add to her profile. That’s not nothing.
And perhaps all of this work will save another researcher some time down the road.
Bamberg, Cherry Fletcher, "Nathaniel and Esther (Carpenter) (Bardeen) Bowen and Their Family," ''The New England Historical and Genealogical Register'', Boston, MA; <https://www.americanancestors.org/DB202/i/12636/53/24451527> Vol 165 (2011), pp. 53-61.
*chuckle* been there, my friend, with the Duserne family in my mother's line.