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 Serendipity: First Look at a Great Grandfather

Today for Sepia Saturday I offer the only known photos of a man I believe is my father's grandfather, John J. Bentley.  However, since the theme for the week involves bicycles, I'll open with this one of my father Nelson with his father George and sister Dorothy, circa 1920.  There - that's out of the way!  Now:

The memory of my mother, 90, has been getting worse for a couple of years now. About a year ago when we went to the bank to see what was in her safety deposit box, because she couldn't remember, we realized that she had misplaced the key. Rather than having them expensively drill out the lock, we decided opening it wasn't a priority.

Last weekend, as we moved her into an assisted living apartment, I by chance decided to pack one of her jewelry display cases. This necessitated removing and wrapping the knick-knacks within it; I happened to open one of these, a silver box I remember being fascinated by as a child. Inside the box along with some special edition quarters and foreign coins was the missing key. The following day we returned to the bank.

In the safety deposit box, along with various legal and financial papers, was a motley collection of memorabilia only a mother could love: my sister's and my own baby hair in tiny envelopes; everyone's birth certificates; my grandfather's death certificate; my parents' high school and college diplomas... and (jackpot!) several envelopes of old photos of my mother's and father's families - most of which I had never seen.

I am astounded that even though I have been rabidly researching our family for nearly ten years, my mother never mentioned that these photos existed. And at this point neither she nor I know where she got them or how long they were in her possession.

I place this photo also at 1919-1920; the nipper gripping the steering wheel is my father, the girl his sister Dorothy, who would have been about 8, and despite the dubious quality of the photo I think I can make out the features of my grandmother Jessie Bentley.  The vehicle may well have been the delivery truck for the Bentley General Store; note the roll-down sides and what look like oval isinglass wing-windows.

I don't know much about John Bentley. He was born in 1850, and it's not unlikely he was born in the same house we see here in Elm, Michigan, a very rural suburb of Detroit. His father, George Nelson Bentley, from Saratoga, New York, had settled in the area in 1835.

A fat, happy baby Nelson enjoying the view from the front porch.

In 1869 John married Margaret Bredin, whose family had arrived in 1864 from the Londonderry area of Ireland. (I have a separate Sepia Saturday post about her and the fairies that accompanied her on the voyage.)

This shot, alas with no captions, demands a few guesses... first, that this was taken a few years earlier than the others (say 1913) because the young child (age 3-4?) looks more like Dorothy than baby Nelson, who was born when Dorothy was seven. Secondly, I'm not sure who the middle couple is: my guess is Aunt Gladys and Uncle Clyde, older brother to my grandfather George, on the left behind his wife Jessie, who's wearing a peculiar smirk. Thirdly, I'm assuming that that's Grandma Margaret Bredin. Everyone's all dolled up for this shot; Gladys (if it's Gladys) looks poised to take the next one, with her accordion-style camera.

And here's John with Nelson again, this time on what looks like the back stoop. I can't tell what's up with the back door...it looks like a rug is sticking out the bottom (keeping out the sand?)...

Here Grampa John hoes, with my father (age 2-3?) apparently helping to weed.  Were it not fore the caption "Nelson," I might have thought this was his sister because of the fetching sundress and hat. This does not look like my father's house, so must be John's.  This may have been the last time my dad did any gardening.

John Bentley died in 1922 when my father was about four, not long after this photo was taken.

Sepia Saturday: The Family Fairies

My father told me how his grandmother, Maggie Bredin Bentley, insisted that Irish fairies had come over with her family on the boat to America and now lived in the barn out back.

Alas, this is not a family photo.

My Bredin ancestors hailed from the village of Ballymagroarty, near Derry. They included my great-grandmother Margaret; her father William; grandparents Ezekiel (born ~1795) and Margaret Laird Bredin; great-grandfather Edward (born ~1775); and great-great-grandfather James (born ~1755).

I don’t know where the family originally came from: possibly Scotland. Reportedly, Bredin (sometimes spelled Braden) dates back to the 8th or 9th century, appearing in the Domesday Book. “It is supposed to represent the Danish form of the pronunciation of ‘Breton,’ which was originally ‘Brayton.’”

Her father William was a farmer. Here he appears in a landholdings document.

Margaret (Maggie) was born 1851. In 1865 at the age of 14 she travelled from Ireland to Philadelphia PA with her parents (and 3 younger siblings) on the Lady Emily Peel (853 tons, built in Canada in 1864). Here's her sister ship, the Minnehaha.

Here the family appears on the ship's passenger list.

“In the 1860s the McCorkell Line demonstrated that first-class sailing ships could compete with steam on the North American passenger run. They had five ships plying between Derry and the US cities of New York and Philadelphia: the Mohongo; Minnehaha, Stadacona, Village Belle and Lady Emily Peel. 'The Song of Hiawatha' by Henry Wandsworth Longfellow was a source of inspiration in the naming of many of the McCorkell ships... By the 1870s sailing ships could no longer compete with the speed, comfort and reliability of the transatlantic passenger steamers. In 1873 the Minnehaha made the last passenger voyage by a Derry-owned ship to New York.” [www.londonderryport.com]

Currently I have no photos of my direct–line Bredins, but here are the brother of William M. Bredin, Ezekiel (1803-1895), and his wife Jane Bredin (b. 1820, she was their cousin). They lived in Drumcorn, on the other, east, side of the river that runs into Lough Foyle.



It’s not clear why the Bredins travelled on to Michigan, if it was their final destination all along. Early settlers in Livonia, which was organized in 1835, included James Grace; Margaret Bredin first stayed with the Graces when she arrived.

Livonia circa 1860

In 1869 Maggie, now 18, married John Bentley (born 1850 in Livonia MI, died 1922). Alas I have no known picture of John. They had two children, George (1885-1955) and Clyde (1888-1962).

Here’s a 1915 plat map of Livonia, showing William Bredin’s long rectangular parcel and John and Margaret Bentley’s irregular one nearby.

Margaret died in 1919, a year after her grandson, my father George Nelson, was born. He had no report of the fate of the fairies.

Sources include:
http://livonia.lib.mi.us/Livonia/middlebelt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cottingley_Fairies_1.jpg
http://www.mccorkellline.com/
and thanks to Lynne Bredin of Cookstown, Northern Ireland, for the family photos!

Sepia Bureaucracy

Crawling back through the centuries via offical documents.

1893: The Parcel Map

This Wayne County, Michigan, parcel map shows the land holdings of my great-grandfather John Bentley, as well as those of familes who would marry into the Bentleys (and vice versa), including Chillson, Rohde, and Bredin. Many of these names are familiar to me through the humorous autobiographical poems of my dad's, as his school friends and neighbors.


1865: The Ship's Log

Great-great-grandfather William Bredin arrives from Ballymagroarty, Ireland, with his family.


The Census

Great-great grandfather George Bentley's family appears in the Livonia, Michigan, census. In nine years, son John will marry immigrant Maggie Bredin.


1843: The Deed

Great-great-grandfather Nelson had moved about 1835 to Livonia from New York, preceding his brothers and parents. (His forebears had arrived in Rhode Island in the mid-1600s following the Puritans.) George met his wife-to-be, Elizabeth Blindberry (from Ireland), in Detroit, and purchased this land west of Detroit.

Now the paperwork fades away for a couple of long centuries...until...

The Will

In 2005 my son and I visited Elstow and Ampthill, Bedfordshire -- the ancestral home of my Bentleys (at least as far back as anyone can trace via definitive records). In the County Archives I amazingly managed to find the Last Will of Mary Bentley (d. 1632), grandmother of the famous religious writer John Bunyan. Here's a copy.

Dictionary of National Biography,” London: Smith, Elder, & Co,, 1886:

“The will of John Bunyan's maternal grandmother, Mary Bentley (d. 1632), with its "Dutch-like picture of an Elstow cottage interior two hundred and fifty years ago," proves (J. Brown, Biography of John Bunyan, to which we are indebted for all these family details) that his mother "came not of the very squalid poor, but of people who, though humble in station, were yet decent and worthy in their ways."

In the name of God, Amen. This 27th day of June 1632 I, Mary Bentley,
of Elvestoe (Elstow) in the county of Bedford, widow but being sick in body but of perfect mind and memory I thank my heavenly father. I do make this my last will and testament in manner and form following that is to say first I bequeathe my soul unto almightyGod my Maker in whom I hope to be saved through Jesus Christ my Savior and my Body be buried in the churchyard of Elstow aforesaid.
Item, I give and bequeath to John Bentley, my son one brass pot, one little table, and all painted cloths about the house and the standing bed in the loft.
Item, I give to my daughter Margaret the joined stool in the chamber and my little [???]
Item, I give to my daughter Rosse the joined form in the chamber and a hogshead and the tumblestole.
Item, I give to my daughter Elizabeth the little kettle and the big platter, a flaxin sheet and a flaxin pillowbeare, a trundle bed and a copper in the chamber and the [???].
Item, I give to my daughter Annie my best [???], my best cuffe, my gowne, my best petticoat, the presse in the chamber, the best bolster and blanket and the coffer above and the kettle, the mortar and pestle, platter, and the other trundle bed, a harden sheet and pillow beare.
Item, all my other goods and chattels whatsoever I unbequeathed I give and bequeath to my daughter Mary whom I appointed to be soul executrix of this my last Will and testament whom I will se honestly buried and my burial discharged in witness whereof I have hereunto set my and and seal the day and year above written.
In presence of John Welle, Clerk The Mark of Mary Bentley The Mark of Margerie Jaques, widow (Latin) The Will proved Oct. 6, 1632

More of my genealogy, FWIW