Vanishing Point: The Michiganers

The opening photo today, a nod to this week's Sepia Saturday theme, was taken from the front yard of my father's childhood home in Elm, Michigan, looking across the cow-strewn fields where a freight train smokes away down the Pere Marquette railroad...an example of the "vanishing point" effect.

Not all that far away from Elm was the town of Hudson. And Hudson marks a sort of vanishing point for much of my family tree, where the roots disappear back into a darkish history.

The family album has several photos that don't note the subject's name. However, the backs bear the imprint of two photographers in Hudson, Michigan: Fred D. Brown and D.H. Spencer. Members of both the Hale and, predominantly, the Daniels, clans lived in the Hudson area in the late 1800s. (The longtime American English Hales married into the lately arrived English Danielses, who then married into the Scots/Irish Orrs, who then married into the longtime American English Bentleys.)

George Daniels, my great-great-grandfather, first acquired land in Concord, Michigan, near Battle Creek, in 1848.

 The first photo below I am guessing is a contemporary of George Daniels: Lucretia (Johnson) Hale, who was the mother of George's daughter-in-law Martha (Hale) Daniels. I make this guess based on the fact that it's a tintype (this one has no photographer imprint), and the only other such photos like it in the album are of Martha's daughters Louise and Alice, around 1876.  That was two years after the death of Henry Daniels' mother, Ann Twidale Daniels, the other likely candidate for the photo.

Lucretia would have been about 69 that year. Her husband Hiram Hale (a melodious and oddly common name, as it turns out) had been dead since 1861.

I believe the next photo is the same woman a few years later; her snood or scarf seems identical. She looks about ten years older, so if it's now around 1888, Lucretia would be 80. The young Danielses had moved from Lansing to nearby Hudson, where Henry's parents were now living, in Lenawee County, between 1870 and 1880.

It was a goodly sized family living in Concord as of 1850. The following photos, probably taken 20 years later, are possibly Henry H. Daniels' siblings Mary, b. 1837; Robert, b. 1833 MI; Benjamin, b. 1835; and/or William b. 1846. But no solid evidence exists aside from the photographer's location (Hudson being quite nearby) .

This guy looks to be about the right age to be Robert or Benjamin if this was taken in 1876. On the other hand, he bears a resemblance, especially in the mouth, to Martha Hale Daniels. Like George, she had three brothers and a sister: Andrew (b. 1837),  Benjamin (b. 1835), John (b. 1845), and  Alice (b. 1848) ... Still, everyone looked so "down in the mouth" in these portraits, it's hard to tell!

The Captain and the Captain's Wife

Henry H. Daniels was my paternal grandmother's maternal grandfather -- that is, my father's mother's mother's father. There's a nice sort of symmetry about that. He was born in Michigan in 1840, of English immigrants George Daniels (Lincolnshire) and Ann Twidale (Yorkshire). At this point I know very little about his family, but I know the following, thanks to 2nd Michigan Volunteer Infantry web site:

• Henry H. Daniels was residing in Hudson at the outbreak of the Civil War.
• He enlisted, in Hudson, as Sergeant in Company B 2nd Michigan Infantry, on the 10th of May 1861. He was 21 years old at this time.
• He was promoted to Command Sgt. on 25 August 1862 (Acting Aide-de-camp to Colonel Fenton, 1st Brigade). He was transferred on the same day from Company B to Staff.
• He was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant on 17 September 1862. He was transferred on the same day from Staff to Company H.
• He was promoted to 1st Lieutenant on 24 February 1863 (Acting Aide-de-camp 1st Brigade, 1st Div., 9th Corps). He was transferred on the same day from Company H to Company D.
• He was transferred on 27 May 1863 from Company D to Company I.
• He was promoted to Captain on 12 March 1864 of Company C.
• Promoted to Adjutant on 26 March 1864. He was transferred on 29 March 1864 from Company I to Staff.
• He was transferred on 28 July 1864 from Staff to Company C.
• He was discharged for wounds on 05 November 1864 as Aide-de-camp on staff of Colonel Leasure. 

His wife was Martha L. Hale, born around 1842 in New York state.Bentley family lore had it that she was related to the famous American patriot Nathan Hale (1755-1776). However, records are very spotty and inconsistent; it appears that her father, Hiram (1805-1861), was the son of a Nathaniel Hale (b. 1758), and I so far can't get the dots to connect. Oh well! At any rate, she looks a bit dour, doesn't she? But obviously she was in Henry's heart during the war -- and he looks pretty wistful about it (I'm assuming he's getting ready to leave for duty, with his Sergeant's stripes).



This book briefly lists the actions of the 2d Infantry...

"This Regiment left Detroit on the 5th of June, 1861 — the first of the three years' Regiments in the field from this State — with an aggregate force on its muster rolls of 1,013, to which 102 had been added previous to the 1st of July. Its first engagement was at Blackburn's Ford, Va., July 18th, 1861. During the winter it lay near Alexandria, Va., and in March was moved under McClellan to the Virginia Peninsula. It took part in the siege of Yorktown; in engagements at Williamsburg, May 5th; at Pair Oaks, May 21st; at Charles City Cross Roads, June 30; at Malvern Hill, July 1; and at Chantilly, September 1. Its casualties at Williamsburg were 17 killed, 38 wounded, and 4 missing; at Fair Oaks, 10 killed and 47 wounded. Major General Israel B. Richardson, who entered the service in this war as commanding officer of the 2d, when it was organized, died in October last, of wounds received in the battle of Antietam, in which he commanded a division of Union forces. On the 30th of November the aggregate of the Second Infantry, present and absent, was 642. It is in Burns' Division off the ninth army corps of the army of the Potomac..."


Here are the Danielses some years later in Cripple Creek. Henry took his daughters Alice and Louise west and joined the mineral rush like his inlaws-to-be the Orrs, in the Colorado mining industry.

There are some great photos on MiningArtifacts.org.

Perhaps surprisingly Henry is buried in Oakland, California, but his grandson Hugh wound up as an Oakland attorney. So there you go.

Finally, I just discovered a distinguished-looking Henry in the gloriously titled "Representative Men of Colorado in the Nineteenth Century: A Portrait Gallery of Many of the Men who Have Been Instrumental in the Upbuilding of Colorado, Including Not Only the Pioneers, But Others Who, Coming Later, Have Added Their Quota, Until the Once Territory is Now the Splendid State." (Rowell Art Publishing Company, 1902 - Colorado - 272 pages) Outside of this honor I can't find evidence of what made him so "instrumental," but I'll take their word for it!

Reference sites include Michigan In the War, Find a Grave, and FamilySearch.

Sepia Lost Uncle #1

In keeping with the Sepia Saturday weekly theme, I present my late Uncle Paul Singer, when he was in the service in the Forties, featuring his "saucer cap."

What's that, you might ask?
From Wikipedia: "A peaked cap, forage cap, barracks cover, or combination cap is a form of headgear worn by the armed forces of many nations and also by many uniformed civilian organizations such as law enforcement agencies. In the United States military, they are commonly known as service caps, wheel caps, saucer caps, or combination covers in the Naval services."

Looking very serious indeed beside the staff cars

Paul was my mother's younger brother.
A relaxed and friendly soul, not to say devil-may-care, he took after his dad Arthur Singer.
Unlike Art, he never seemed to find his calling....

Looking like he has somewhere better to go

Paul was stationed, I believe, at Fort Bragg, California. He was a DJ at the Army base radio station...  

Somewhere I have a 78 RPM record he cut at the studio as a letter home.

Temporarily happy

Soon after his first marriage, his wife left him.  She took their 2-year-old daughter, who, when she was old enough to want to get in touch, was forbidden to contact the Singer family.

Paul with a decorated buddy who looks about 14!

The years passed.
He did this and that through the Fifties and Sixties...
In the early Seventies he tried to start a lobster ranch in Puerto Rico but the government funding failed to come through and he came back to the States disillusioned.
At one point he was selling meat, or possibly fish, from the back of a truck around Los Angeles.

Is that a flight suit? Looks too warm for California!

And then shortly after the last time I saw him in 1979 he left his second wife.
In fact, he left town, without telling anyone where he was going.
We never saw him again.

Pondering his future

Only in the last few years was I able to trace Paul, to find he'd died in 2000, back in L.A., age 76.

I was also able to locate his daughter, now in her 60s, and provide her at last with photos of her long lost father and his parents.

Uncle Paul's daughter and our grandparents, around 1950

Sepia Saturday: Minsk to Minnesota

Welcome to another Sepia Saturday!

For decades, my family knew little about my mother’s paternal grandfather Isaac Singer (1857-1924). Her father Art, Isaac's only son to stay alive out of a dozen or so children, told us his father had been a furrier when he’d immigrated to the States in the 1880s, expertly matching mink pelts for color. My mother thought he been born in Odessa, Russia, and on some census forms he claims he was from Minsk. Art was hazy at 79, but thought his dad's surname had been "something like Yarminelsky" until the Ellis Island folks changed it willy-nilly, as they did so many other Jews with multisyllabic names, to Singer.

Fast-forward to the present. I was bopping around on Ancestry.com, as is my wont, this time looking up family trees for people descended from Arthur’s sisters, such as Nettie Singer. And bingo, there she was.

And her mother’s name was there too -- listed as (wait for it) “Nettie Jermelensky.” The Nettie part is wrong (it was Mollie), but AT LAST there was not only a reference to the pre-Singer surname, but it was a clear variant on the one we’d assumed was a wild guess up till now!

I attempted to get in touch with the person [I’ll call him Biff Y] who created the family tree, but received no response. Sleuthing a bit further I contacted some of the later names on the family tree -- and it panned out!

After introducing myself, the question I posed was whether "Jermelensky" was apocryphal, or was it perhaps written somewhere – say, in a family photo album? The reply was that there was no written confirmation of the original name “but I have always heard it as Yarmolinsky; perhaps different vowels?”

I visited JewishGen.org, and sure enough, the Ukraine (home to both Odessa and Minsk) is festooned with similar surnames:

YARMALINSKI
YARMOLINSKAYA
YARMOLINSKE
YARMOLINSKII
YARMOLINSKIY
YARMOLINSKY
YARMOLYNTSKI
(There was NADA for “YarmaNELski” or similar.)

I later went to the well-stocked King County library and looked up the name in a massive book of Russian genealogy, which told me that the family name of Yarmolinski "probably came from the village of Yarmolyntsi." It turns out, however, that there are three of those, relatively close to each other, between the general area of Minsk in the north and the general area of Odessa in the south.
Yarmolyntsi, Sums'ka
Yarmolyntsi, Vinnyts’ka
Yarmolyntsi, Khmel’hyts’ka

There are records of a couple of Isaac Singers (not an uncommon name -– perhaps all victims of unimaginative immigration officials) arriving in the States in 1886; they claim to be Austrian or German. Strangely, Isaac on occasion put down his nationality as German. His death certificate correctly says Russian.

Similar to his as-yet unknown in-law counterpart Ben-Zion Blumenfeld (their children would marry twenty years later), Isaac Yarmolinski seems to have come over the year preceding his family; at that time it consisted of his wife Molly (b.1860), and three daughters whose Americanized names were Sophie (b. 1876), Nettie (b.1878), and Annie (b. 1886).

I guessed that after Isaac’s name was changed in New York, when he sent for the family, he advised them to use Singer at the outset. I subsequently found this passenger list online, arriving in the U.S. 30 September, 1887. They steamed on the German Empire via Hamburg to West Hartlepool, to Liverpool, to New York.

Taube Singer (F) Born abt 1859
Scheine Singer (F) abt 1879
Chane Singer (F) abt 1880
Tulke Singer (F) abt 1886

An attached document showed them having last lived in Bobruisk, Ukraine.

Minsk is only about 80 miles from Bobruisk. My guess then is that these respectively are Molly, Sophie, Nettie, and Annie, before they changed their first names to go along with the new American surname. The birth years are pretty dang accurate, and it’s the right number of passengers.

Eventually I was contacted by a direct descendant of Nettie Singer, who said “I am quite sure that you are correct about the group who came together to the USA... I remember Grandma [Nettie] telling me that she was about 8 years old when she came, but she did not tell about her life in Russia and, unfortunately, we kids didn't ask. Back then, the future was important and the past more or less forgotten.”

In the foreground, Arthur's sisters Annie, in the striped dress, and Sophie in the black dress, with his wife, my grandmother Helen. Riva, a daughter of Annie, is standing with Arthur. Late 1940s.

Sepia Saturday: Gettysburg

Yet another relative of mine was named George Nelson Bentley. The brother of my great-grandfather John Bentley, he was named for his father who had come west from New York in 1835. Born in 1838 in Livonia Michigan, George Jr. "enlisted in Company I, 24th Michigan Infantry, on August 4, 1862 at Detroit." The Civil War was in full swing. He was 24. Most of the following is excerpted from the resources I list at the end.

The descriptive roster indicates that George was 5'1" tall with a brown complexion, gray eyes, and brown hair. History of the Twenty-Fourth Michigan of the Iron Brigade, known as the Detroit and Wayne County Regiment (O. B. Curtis, 1891 [1988 Reprint, Old Soldier Books, Gaithersburg MD]) indicates that George was working as farmer in Redford at the time of his enlistment, while the State Adjutant General has him in Livonia. ...Although detail of his service are scant, George was promoted to Corporal, an indication of good service.

Company I was a late addition to the famous “Iron Brigade,” which was part of The Army of the Potomac -- in turn one of the three units of First Corp of the Union Army. The Iron Brigade, also known as the Black Hat Brigade, fought entirely in the Eastern Theater, although composed of regiments from Western states (states that are today considered Midwestern). "Noted for its strong discipline, its unique uniform appearance, and its tenacious fighting ability, the Iron Brigade suffered the highest percentage of casualties [almost 80%] tof any brigade in the war." (Italics mine.)


In I Corps’ last major battle, the Battle of Gettysburg, General John F. Reynolds [“arguably the best Union corps commander in the Eastern Theater”] was killed just as the first troops arrived on the field, and command was inherited by Major General Abner Doubleday. Although putting up a ferocious fight, the I Corps was overwhelmed by the Confederate Third Corps and a division of Second Corps. It was forced to retreat through the town of Gettysburg, taking up defensive positions on Cemetery Hill.

Abner Doubleday
The First Day of the Battle of Gettysburg took place on July 1, 1863, and began as an engagement between isolated units of the Army of Northern Virginia under Confederate General Robert E. Lee and the Army of the Potomac under Union Maj. Gen. George G. Meade.

In the morning, two brigades of Confederate Maj. Gen. Henry Heth's division of Third Corps were delayed by dismounted Union cavalrymen under Brig. Gen. John Buford. As infantry reinforcements [including George Bentley] arrived under Maj. Gen. John F. Reynolds of the Union I Corps, the Confederate assaults down the Chambersburg Pike were repulsed, although Gen. Reynolds was killed. By early afternoon, the Union XI Corps had arrived, and the Union position was in a semicircle from west to north of the town.

The Confederate Second Corps began a massive assault from the north, with one division attacking from Oak Hill and another attacking across the open fields north of town. The Union lines generally held under extremely heavy pressure, although the salient at Barlow's Knoll was overrun.

With a renewed assault from the north, Heth contributed with his entire division from the west, accompanied by the division of Maj. Gen. W. Dorsey Pender. Heavy fighting in Herbst's Woods and on Oak Ridge finally caused the Union line to collapse. Some of the Federals conducted a fighting withdrawal through the town, suffering heavy casualties and losing many prisoners; others simply retreated. They took up good defensive positions on Cemetery Hill and waited for additional attacks.



Sometime during that long day, George Nelson Bentley, Jr. was killed.

Union dead, Gettysburg

His gravesite is not currently known. When the Union Dead were moved to the National Cemetery, he was not among those identified. He may rest there in a grave marked "UNKNOWN". It is possible that his temporary gravesite was noted and the body exhumed and returned to Michigan, as were many. ...The Company I descriptive book indicates "Final statement sent September 9, 1863. He was a noble soldier."

George Gordon
According to a letter written by Capt. George Gordon, a month prior to the Battle of Gettysburg, Bentley narrowly missed being wounded at Fitzhugh Crossing. A bullet apparently passed through the seat of his pants.

Here is the letter, which gives a good picture of the situation.


Camp on battlefield of Fredericksburg No. 2 May 1st, 1863
My dear Carrie

Once more after the strife of battle I am spared, by the blessing of God, to write a few lines to you. I am writing this upon my knee, and so I do not write very well, but I guess you can make out to read it.

I wrote you before about the Port Royal afair. On Tuesday the 28th ult. we left camp at Belle Plain about noon, and to near our old crossing place, and lay there until about 11 oclock at night, when we commenced moving down to the river. We moved so slow that we did not get down to the bank of the river until nearly daylight, and we had got about half the pontoons in the water when it began to get light and the rebels opened a sharp fire upon us from their intrenchments on the oposite side of the river. Your Pa will know what kind of things they were. He will know the spot where we finally crossed. It was below the old crossing place a mile or so, just above the woods that we charged on in the other battle.

Well as I was saying, they opened fire upon our engineers laying the pontoons and sent them flying to the rear. Our regiment of course had to be one of those sent forward to try and drive them back but we could not displace them from our side of the river. Our reg't in this lost one, Co. F. and some wounded.

We could not get the pontoons across at that rate and so there was a forlorn hope ordered our to the river, take the pontoon back, cross over and drive the rebels out of their intrenchments - and if successful we could then lay the bridges. The 24th Mich. [including George Bentley] and 6th Wis. were the ones ordered to do this. So we formed battalion front, came down to the river with yells like demons or something else, rushed into the boats and went over, bullets flying like hail stones. The 7th Wis. and 14th Brooklyn were to cover us with their fire, but after we got across and were going up the bank, their bullets flew into and around us about as fast as the rebels. But the most of us got up the hill and made the rebs skeddadle out of that double quick. We all then did the tallest kind of running after them.

We took in all about 250 prisoners. Co. I took 36 in all. Your humble servant had, with the squad with him the honor of having 22 surrender in a body to him, one Lieut., Lieut. Hutton and Corp. Haskell and Henry Viley five. Sergt. Murray shot one through the head, dead, he wouldn't stop. John Dubois shot another. These two we know who shot, there was some 25 or 30 killed in all. The Reg't have lost in all so far as near as we can tell 5 killed and about 20 wounded. Co. I only had one seriously wounded. Stringham shot in the head, and followed the scalp around, but he is doing well. Murray had the blood drawn from his upper lip, came near shortening his nose. A. Johnson had a shot through his coat sleeve. Earnshaw and G. N. Bentley through the pants. [Italics mine] Myself an extra buttonhole in my coat just back of the lower button, no damage, only to clothing. We have had it both ways now in the other better by shot and shell, and this time shot and shell and the natural way, bullets as they would say by smallpox.

They gave us a pretty good shelling yesterday, but we held our ground, and gave them as good as they sent. Last night we worked pretty much all night tearing down log houses, and building fortifications, and now I think we are all right and will hold this as that is all that is now wanted of us, as Gen. Hooker has corps above and is now with 3 or 4 corps on their left flank. I think they will have to fight or run this time. Our company all stood up like men, except Lieut. Wheeler. He failed to cross the river and I have not seen him since the morning we crossed over.

They are waiting for this letter and I will have to bring this to a close, so good bye

Yours affectionately
Best regards to all
Write often



Thanks to these resources:

Battle_of_Gettysburg,_First_Day

Iron_Brigade

michiganinthewar.org

24th_michigan: letters

24th_michigan: G. Gordon

Civil War Photos


And thanks to the Sepia Saturday meme for the excuse to post this stuff.

Sepia Saturday: Fathers' Day

Well, it's a few weeks early officially, but to give equal time, this week's sepia focuses (if you'll pardon the pun) on the hoary patriarchs of my family.

One of the ineffable pleasures of genealogy is considering the lives, the careers, that one's ansestors had. When photos exist that show them "in action," that's a very rare treat.

This photo was on the wall in my grandmother Helen's house (you may remember "Salome" from an earlier Sepia Saturday of mine). Moshe Loss was her maternal great-grandfather. He was Lithuanian, probably born around 1800, so I estimate this portrait (painting, or a heavily retouched photograph?) shows him around 1870. I know little about him except reportedly he was a rabbi. Here he looks quite rabbinical indeed.



My great-grandfather, David Blumenfeld (b. 1863, Latvia), married Moshe Loss's grand-daughter, Lena (b. 1865, Lithuania). David, son of an unfortunately ne'er-do-well peddler father, had a varied and colorful series of careers; he immigrated to the States in 1884 and eventually became a successful tailor and haberdasher in South St. Paul, Minnesota. Here he is in his store, featured in the local paper around 1955, shortly before his death at 97.



David's daughter Helen ("Salome") married Arthur Singer, whose father was a furrier born in Russia in 1857. Singer obviously was a name given to the Jewish family upon arriving in the States in 1887; I do not know for sure what their original surname was. After a stint selling dental equipment, Arthur wound up as a traveling Paris-fashion dress salesman, serving I. Magnin, Frederick & Nelson, and other department stores. He always had a bottle of Scotch, a box of chocolates, and a Playboy in his hotel room for his clients and fellow salesmen. Here he is showing off a sample Tricot suit. He too worked until hs was too old, half-blind, and ill to drive anymore.



Meanwhile, my father's father alternated between shopkeeping and teaching. He was a Michigan native of English/Irish extraction; some of his forebears had arrived in the States in the 1640s. A mere three hundred years later, a high school was named for him in Livona, Michigan. Here he is in earlier days.



So now the lines converge. Arthur's daughter Beth (last week's subject) married George's son, Nelson. Nelson wound up teaching English and Creative Writing -- virtually nonstop from 1952 until his death in 1990. Here he is in his element -- his University of Washington office -- behind several decades of student papers. Don't be fooled, he could easily put his hands on any document in there that you happened to want.



Music by the Klezmonauts (and yes, authorities, I bought it, off of ITunes).

Sepia Saturday: The Irish Side

I was amazed a couple of years ago to discover that my paternal grandmother Jessie Orr Bentley was descended from a family of rabid Irish (Country Antrim) nationalists, including William "Remember" Orr (1766-1797 -- hanged by the English in 1797 for swearing two soldiers as members of the United Irishmen) and his nephew William "Rebel" Orr, both of whom are well known in story and song. Google 'em!

The Orrs eventually migrated to a slightly less English New Brunswick in the 1820s or so, and thence steadily westward through Nebraska until they safely hit Cripple Creek, Colorado, where my grandmother was born in 1887, her father having gotten involved in the local industry, mining.

Here is the first known photo I have of Jessie, in high school, looking placidly angelic in the back between two young men. All the girls' hair is well put-up and prim!




This portrait was taken probably around the same time, which would have been around 1905. Rather "Gibson Girl"!




In this, the next chronological photo I have of Jessie, quite a bit of time seems to have passed. Assuming this is one of her own children, that would place this between 1911 and 1921. If closer to the latter, she would have been about 34 years old. The baby does not appear to be amused by the photographic process.




Here are a couple of Jessie on the farm in Livonia with my father and his younger sister, circa 1923.



Those are big plants, whatever they are! Sunflowers?




A matronly Jessie and natty husband George (who'd taught her in high school) some years later, gussied up beside their house, with The Marmon in the background.




Here are a couple of shots from the early Forties. Unfortunately she suffered for many years with TB and died in 1946.







Only recently my cousin unexpectedly provided me with this postwar shot of Jessie's mother, Louise "Muvver" Orr, looking rather ancient (born 1867) with another grandson, Ken.

Apocryphally Louise was related somehow to Nathan "one life to live for my country" Hale, who was also executed by the English, on American soil this time around; alas, I have been unable to substantiate it, but it would nicely round out the patriotic fervor in which my heritage seems to be steeped.