This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Phillips, Weld, Swift, Bucklin, Bacon, Roberts, Chambers, Maxon, Osborne, Purdy Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.families.aol.com/mbexec/msg/rw/nNABAIB/2114.1.1.2.1.1 Message Board Post: My apologies to other readers for this long chatty post. Peg wrote: > I heard about Laura from Cheryl (Phillips) LaVoy out in Napa, CA. > We wondered about Laura. Jeez. Small world. Yes, Cheryl and I exchanged a few emails a while back, and she sent me some family group sheets, I think. We were able to help each other with some other questions, but Laura E. P. is being coy about her origins. > Cheryl's relatives wouldn't tell her much about their > background, but I told her I'd recently found out why in the Ypsi > Historical Society Records. Wm. Hart had been accused of raping the > daughter of a man whose house he was building (he built about 3/4 of > the houses in Ypsi at the time) and was sued for $5000 in the 1870's > and paid it. Several years later he sued the man back for the same > amount, but died of a stroke before he could finish the suit. Hold on a minute. Either I have my notes messed up, or I need to come to the defense of William's reputation. I have, from Ypsilanti Hist Mus. Archives records (via Karen Nickels, GSWC, sent to me 3 Dec 1999): > "...Son Charles has been invalid all his life. Admitted violating > young daughter of Aaron P. Bucklin in 1869 while building a house > for Bucklin. Assigned $5,000.00 mortgage to pay. Phillips sued > Bucklin in 1876. Jury disagreed." Perhaps I mis-read the original article about Wm Hart- often a biographical article from this era hops around in referring to other family members, with pronouns, and one loses track. I read this as meaning that son Charles was the "perp". If Charles was "an invalid", would he have been on the construction site? In 1869 Wm would have been 55, and Charles would have been 15. It's unlikely that Bucklin would have been able to claim a $5000 fine against a 15 year old minor. Sad story! > [Wm and Olive] had about 8 boys. Cheryl comes down from George, > one of the twins. (Frank was the other.) And I come down from > Joseph Hart (called Hart) who was close to them in age. As you > noted, Delos also lived in Kalamazoo. Yes, because of the family letter mentioning Delos (among some other "hanging" Phillips names, such as Anna Maria Phillips marrying Jacob Nathaniel Bacon in 1863), I've gone off and learned quite a lot about ol' Delos. Don't have the names of his first two daughters, nor most of that family's birth and death dates. Delos certainly was an enterprising gent. Sad that he died so young, at 47. His eldest daughter would have been about 20, the youngest maybe 10. > Actually, we haven't found any descendants [of Delos] in > Kalamazoo where they all lived. The only lead I have on that is that Olive Blanche Phillips, middle dau of Delos and his second wife, Elizabeth "Lizzie" Bruen, m. 5 June 1901 Kalamazoo, Edwin Hughes Roberts; he 29y, she 27 y. That implies she was b. abt 1874. (Info from K’zoo Pub Lib VR file via Nancy Krohn at GSWC). > All we can do is surmise > that Laura's parents died and that one of her uncles, > probably Nathaniel or even James took her in. That's been my image, too. You referred to William Hart, James and Nathaniel as her "uncles", which got me all excited that we may have fixed Laura's position. Laura was not an unrecorded daughter of William and Olive: If my dates are right, William was 9 years old when Laura was born. By their ages, it looks like Laura was a younger sister: William Hart b. 1814, Nathaniel b. 20 Sep 1816, James b. abt 1822, Laura b. 1823 If Laura was 28 on 5 Jan 1854 (per marriage record, to Franklin), she would have been born around 1826. But if she was "ae 59.11.9" when she died 17 Feb 1882, this pegs her birth at 8 Mar 1823. If she's a niece of Wm, Nat and Jim, there's an unknown brother born much earlier than Wm. By the way, only Nat and Jim are mentioned in the wedding record (the minister's transcript that I got from MI VR, anyway). So either Wm wasn't there, or he wasn't an official witness. > Have you checked the censuses around the date of her > wedding? Nathaniel's household, (I think this is the one and only): m432 Roll 364 Ypsi Washtenaw Co. Mich 1850 Census 18 July 1850 p. 874 dwelling 340, family 340 Nathaniel Philips 35, M, Carriage Maker, $2000, NY Deborah 32, F, NY Alvira 5, F Mich. Emma E. 10/12 F Mich. Emma fits, (she's one of three of Nat and Deb's children who died before their third birthday(! :-( ). But I'm not sure who Alvira is. If she's a middle child, she doesn't appear clearly in my garbled notes on the 1860 census. I like to hope that the ?twins? Adell(?) and Nettie(?) who appeared in the 1860 census were theirs and survived to adulthood. There is no Laura, and she isn't in James' household in 1850, either: m432 Roll 364 Ypsi Washtenaw Co. Mich 1850 Census 18 July 1850 p. 873 (grease pencil, used in index), p.437 (stamped) dwelling 332, family 332 James(?) H. Philips 28, M, Shoemaker, $500, NY Caroline F. " 22, F, NY Jane Chambers 17, F, Unknown, attnd. school Harriet A. Maxon 11, F, Mich Those other surnames, Chambers and Maxon, are interesting, as I've seen echoes of them in a few other places. > I don't have the full details I just know there was a > wedding announcement of some kind in the paper, and I've > never been in the Eastern MI library long enough to try to > trace her. I'd love to see a newspaper announcement, if it exists, since it might provide other details not recorded in the MI VR. I'd never hoped to find a newspaper that early. Wish there was a similar article about Franklin's dad, "mystery William", who died in 1844 at Plymouth. But that's another sob story... > It might tell in the census before she was married who she > was living with. In the days when I was looking at the 1850 and 1860 census, I only knew to look for Nat and James, not Wm Hart. She doesn't appear to have been with the first two. On the other hand, she may have stayed in or near Buffalo/Hamburg until her parents died, then came west. Looks like I need to find Wm Hart's household in the 1850 census... > If her parents died, they might have died around Buffalo and > Hamburg since the other brothers apparently came from there. > But how you'd identify them I don't know. Right; NY's early records are *soo* detailed </sarcasm>. Yes, Laura's death record says she was born in Buffalo; Delos was born in Hamburg. Since death record informants are generally less closely connected to the original facts, Hamburg and Buffalo may have become blurred. But the general neighborhood, anyway. > I have a brick wall there too --I'm unable to find any > trace of Olive Weld Phillip's father Josiah or any trace > of Wm., James and Nathaniel's parents. This is a long shot, but what do you think of this: Nathaniel's grave record (Highland Cem., Ypsilanti, MI; Lot 1 Blk81#5) also has #12 Joseph Phillips 1809-1868, and #11 Laura Phillips Osborn 1791-1870 (in W1/2 Lot 1, Block 81 of Highland Cem., Ypsilanti.) Is it possible that Laura is the mother of Nathaniel (and therefore James and William H and...)? Death certificate record (in ) spells last name Osborne -TJS 23 Jan 2000. This looks to me as though Joseph would have been an older brother of Nat, James, and Wm H, with Laura being the mother who lived long enough to come west. The names echo conveniently, too: Laura perhaps having a daughter Laura, Joseph having a nephew Joseph. It would be so very cool if this fits, because these little scraps have been sitting in my notes for years, and it would be great if they helped us break through the brick wall. ON THE OTHER HAND: Quote from one of my spies at GSWC (?Nancy?, Karen?): "Wm [Hart] seems to have married twice: Olive, wife of W.H. Phillips (no dates); and Laura, widow of WHP and wife of Israel(?)." Karen Nickel’s typed slip stapled with Highland Cem. records has "Laura Phillips Osborn 2nd wife of Nathaniel - married Israel Osborn", no dates given, b.1791 d. 1870. This Laura is too old to be WHP's wife, but is perhaps his mother, buried in Nathaniel’s plot. These are a lot of vague clues and leads, and things are getting less clear rather than more. But could the parents of Wm Hart, Nat, James (and Laura) be a Nathaniel Phillips and Laura _____? If Laura remarried, to Israel Osborn(e), you'd think she would have been buried with him. But I've seen at least one other case of a woman remarrying, but being buried with her first husband and respective kids. > I had to give up census searches... That would be my > only chance. I may go to the Mormon geneology room here > in town and look at some of their stuff. Yes, many of us have heard NY called "the black hole of genealogy" :-(. But in addition to the census, there may be individual church and land records. Getting into the Mormon film catalog might uncover something, though from your local branch library, you'll have to wait a while for the films to come from SLC. > I'm glad to have heard from you since Cheryl told me > about you some time ago. Where do you live now? Well, I'm flattered. I'm in Davis, CA, a ways east of Cheryl in Napa. I'm trying to finish a dissertation. As you can see, I'm not in a very good postion to "be on the ground" in SE MI. Then, neither are Cheryl (in Napa) or you (in western WI) :-(. > Did Laura stay in s. eastern MI all her life? Yes, the family lived in Ann Arbor, where she d. 17 Feb 1882, apparently of a stroke. Two of her three step-kids by Franklin's first wife (Harriet Purdy) stayed near Ann Arbor and Detroit; they're all buried at Forest Hill Cem in AA. Step daughter Lucy (Swift) Bournes married a Methodist minister and ended up in Seattle WA. Laura's own daughter, Lodorsca, met a nice young man majoring in organic chem at U of M, the son of German immigrants in Louisville. They married a few years before Laura's death, so she lived to see them all happily on their way. Lodorsca and Theodore (Yes, I'm named for him) traveled relatively widely, finally settling in Berkeley, CA. Lodorsca's my dad's dad's mom. > You're only the second Phillips cousin I've found-- > or who has found me! Same here: I've only found you and Cheryl, though I've certainly made friends with several pen-pals around Ann Arbor. I was able to uncover some cousins among the children of Harriet Purdy and Franklin, but that's another whole saga.