Summer Reading Challenge Book Review 5

I have finished reading another book, and like the previous four books I read, this book was also on my reading list for my fall history class. This time, I read A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 by Paul E. Johnson (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004).

As you tell from the title, the book is about the social history of the early years of Rochester, New York and the Evangelical revivals that occurred in Rochester in the early 1830s. The author explores the formation of political parties in Rochester, and examines which classes made up the parties. He also explores the Temperance and Anti-Masonic movements, and how those movements and the political parties created a climate that made the Evangelical revivals successful in Rochester.

The book is fairly short - under 200 pages - so it is a quick read. I enjoyed reading the book, and I found the information to be quite interesting. Obviously, if a genealogist has an ancestor who lived in Rochester in this time, he or she would probably find this book useful in trying to understand the society of Rochester at this time. I would recommend this book to others. I hope someone enjoys this book as I did.

Madness Monday - Irene Havens, Part 6

As you may remember from my previous post, I ended the article before I revealed the information I learned about Clarissa's marriages from Jim just before Christmas.


So, what did Jim uncover for me? Well, he uncovered the dates of Clarissa's marriages to Archibald Mandigo and Darwin Havens and who the official was at the weddings. For Clarissa's first marriage, which was to Darwin Havens, a Rochester city alderman was the official at the wedding, and thus, if I want to uncover any further information on the wedding, I'll have to look and see if there were any civil records created by the city for that marriage. (Does anyone know where I can find marriage records from the late-1840s for Rochester or Monroe County?) As for Clarissa's second marriage, Jim uncovered the name of the pastor and the church where the marriage occurred. So, now that I have a possible religious belief for Clarissa, I'll have to order the records from the church and see if I can find more information on my Havens ancestors.

Now that I have a more solid connection between the Havens and Mandigos through Clarissa, I need to do more research in Saint Joseph County, Michigan to see if I can uncover more information on my ancestor and Clarissa. I'll have to find out when Clarissa died and if Archibald Mandigo left anything to Clarissa's step-children in a will or probate record.

Of course, I still have several questions that I need to answer about the Havens and Mandigo families, not only in Michigan but also in Rochester? Is this Darwin Havens my ancestor's father? At the moment, I do not know, but in my next post, I'll write about some other records that I took a second look at recently. Stay tuned ...

New Records Added to FamilySearch's Record Search

I forgot to mention this earlier, but over the past week, FamilySearch's Record Search has added a couple databases to their site. The records added were the 1892 New York State census, church records for a parish in Jamaica, and some more records for a diocese in Spain. I hope these new databases will help you with your research. Enjoy!

Madness Monday - More on Irene Havens, Part Five ...

I've noticed that several genea-bloggers are taking part in a meme started by Amy Crooks, and I thought I would participate in this meme.

For this edition of the Madness Monday, I've decided to focus on my mysterious ancestor, Irene Havens, and post another article in my series on her. In my previous post, I mentioned the discovery that I made about Rhoda's parents. What I did not add at the time of that post was that I had also some additional information the mysterious Clarissa Mandigo that I recently mentioned in another post.

After looking up Rhoda's death record, I only came to the conclusion that the 1850 Rochester, New York census that included a Clarissa, Rhoda and Hirena Havens was the correct census when another genealogists suggested that the Hirena might be my ancestor in response to my request for help in finding Irene Havens in the 1850 census. (Up to that point, I wasn't sure if that census was the correct one as I have found an 1860 census that included a Rhoda Havens family living in Clinton county, New York. That family, that I mentioned in a previous post, happened to be the wrong family, and it was only Rhoda (Havens) Lang's death registration that revealed how incorrect my assumption was.)

Once I came to the conclusion that my Havens ancestor lived in Rochester, New York before coming to Michigan, I decided to figure out why I could not find the right Rhoda Havens in the 1860 Census. (I could find Irene, but Irene was living with a different family.) This time, I decided to look in Saint Joseph county, Michigan for the Mandigo family, and I came across the household of Archibald Mandigo. Archibald's household included a Clarissa and Rhoda Mandigo, and I began to suspect that Rhoda was listed under the Mandigo name instead of her own name. I also suspected that Clarissa Havens had remarried after the 1850 census to Archibald Mandigo. At the same time, the same genealogist who helped me, pointed out a biography of a Robert Mandigo as a source I should look at, and after viewing the biography, I decided to look for Archibald Mandigo's family in the 1850 census to prove or disprove my speculations. I found Archibald Mandigo and his sons living in Webster, Monroe county, New York in the census, and noticed that a female was not present in the household. This suggested to me that Archibald was probably a widower at the time of the census, and that Archibald might have married Clarissa. To further solidify my suspicions, I decided to go through the Rochester City Directories for 1849 and 1851. In the 1849 city directory, I found a Clarissa Havens mentioned, and in the 1851 city directory, I found a Clarissa Mandigo listed. Again, I suspected that these Clarissas were the one and same person, but until the Rochester, New York newspaper indexes were put online, I did not have a way to confirm my suspicions.

After going through the newspaper indexes, I discovered that Archibald Mandigo did marry a Mrs. Clarissa Novens (I suspect that her surname was misspelled), and that a Darwin Havens had married a Miss Clarissa Howe a few years earlier. I also discovered that Archibald had married a woman previous in the 1830s, and I suspect this woman had died before the 1850 census. To confirm my hypothesis, I needed to find out what the newspaper announcements said, and I put a look-up request on the Monroe County, New York Rootsweb message board, and a few days later, I received an e-mail from an man named Jim, who offered to do the look-up for me.

Due to the fact that this post is getting quite long, I will, for next week's Monday Madness, continue with the research into Irene Havens, and I'll mention the information that Jim uncovered. Eventually, I do plan on posting the sources I have used in my research so far, and I'll try to include my sources at the end of the next part. Stay tuned ...

Family History Center Visit 1 for 2009

Earlier today I paid a visit to the local Family History Center, and I ordered three microfilms. I order a microfilm of Catholic church records that one of my ancestors attended, and I hope I'll find his confirmation record. I also ordered a microfilm of death records from Trippstadt, Germany and ordered a microfilm of tax records from Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. Hopefully, the records will all come in a couple of weeks, and I'll be able to find out more information on my ancestors. Wish me luck!

And More On Irene Havens: Part Four

In my previous post on my Havens ancestor, I left off with the mistakes I made in trying to establish who were the parents of Irene and Rhoda Havens. For this post, I want to continue writing about my search for my ancestor's parents. (Although I stated I that I was going to list my sources at the end of this article, I am unsure if I will be able to finish with my analysis in this post due to the possible length. Therefore, I will post the sources at the end of my analysis post.)

Until I viewed Rhoda's death record, I did not know if I was right or wrong about who Gordon and Salinda. Well, during the summer of 2007, I finally was able to view Rhoda's death record when I visited the local Family History Center near my home. This Family History Center had microfilms of the first three books of Saint Joseph County's death records, and since I had checked Saint Joseph's online death index to confirm that Rhoda's death was recorded in Saint Joseph county, I was able to quickly look up her death. Instead of seeing Gordon and Salinda Havens listed as Rhoda's parents, I discovered that Rhoda's mother was listed as Clarissa Mandigo and the father was only listed with his surname, Havens. (As you can imagine, that was a shock for me.)

So, my next step was to do research on this Clarissa Mandigo, and find out more information on her. In the next post, I will continue my research on Rhoda and Irene Havens' connection to Clarissa Mandigo, and post on what I discovered. Stay tuned ...

Another Shipwreck Found in Lake Ontario

I just happened to look on Fox News, and learned that another shipwreck has been found in Lake Ontario. You can read more about it here. Enjoy!

Blog Changes and Other News ...

I'm playing check-up for the past few days as I realize I have forgotten to mention a few things. First off, I have added a Coming Soon paragraph to the left side of the blog, just above the Genealogy and History Thoughts section. I plan to use the paragraph to list topics for future posts. I do not know if anyone noticed, but I created that section earlier this week. Hopefully, I will get to some of the posts that I want to write for this month and in the future.

I also noticed a few days ago on the Rochester Area Research Aides blog that there was a post on an index of names in old Rochester newspapers recently posted on the Monroe county, New York library website. The indexes are split up into groups of numbers and into two time periods. The first time period is from 1818 to 1850, and the second period is from 1851 to 1897. Since my Havens ancestors were in Rochester, New York around 1850, I decided to take a look at the indexes, and I found a couple things that might help me in my research. (I'll post on those index findings in a future post.)

In addition to forgetting to mention the items above, I forgot to mention that FamilySearch Lab's Record Search has added a couple more databases to their site. They added civil vital records for Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and a census for Buenos Aires, Argentina last week. In addition, the site has been adding more names to the 1850, 1860 and 1870 U.S. censuses over the past few days.

Finally! I've gotten around to posting this news!

My Mystery Ancestor: Irene Havens - Part 3

In my previous post on my mysterious ancestor, Irene Havens, I wrote about discovering a possible sister (or half-sister or step-sister). In this post, I want to continue writing about this sibling, and my continued research into my ancestor, Irene. Plus, I want to make other beginning genealogists aware of some of the mistakes one can make when one makes assumptions without looking at records that might give an answer.

After discovering that Philip Lang was Mary (Stout) Albright's uncle and was married to a Rhoda Havens, I decided to look for Rhoda (Havens) Lang in the censuses. Of course, from the existing 1870 to 1900 censuses I was able to find her living with her husband in Saint Joseph County, Michigan. One of things that I did not due at that time (and should have) was to try to view Rhoda's death registration. If I had, I probably would not have wasted the time I did digging into another Havens family. (A family, of which I will mention later.)

So after finding Rhoda listed in the surviving censuses from 1870 to 1900 under her married name, I decided to look for her in the censuses prior to 1870. Of course, when I did an online search for a Rhoda Havens in the 1860 census, I came across a listing for a Rhoda Havens listed in the household of Guerdon Havens in Plattsburgh, New York. My first mistake was to assume that I had found the right Rhoda Havens. My ancestor, Irene Havens, was not listed in this household, but since I had already found her in Michigan, I figured that was why. So, to try to confirm my assumption, I tried to look for Guerdon's family in the 1850 census, but I was unable to find him. (This should have been my first clue that I might have the wrong family.) Even though, I could not find a Rhoda Havens of the right age living in Plattsburgh, I did find a Rhoda Havens living with a Clarissa Havens and Hirena Haves in Rochester, New York; however, I disregarded this census as I thought I had found the right family. (That was my second mistake.)

So, to find out as much as I could about Guerdon Havens and his wife Salinda, whom I believed might be my ancestor and step-mother (I'll explain in a moment), I started to follow them forward in the censuses. In the 1870 and 1880 censuses, I found them living in Shelburne, Vermont, and I began tracing their sons forward in the censuses as well. I also began looking for a possible marriage record for Guerdon and Salinda, and on the familySearch website, I found some information that suggested that they were married about 1844. Since I knew my ancestor, Irene, had been between 1840 and 1842, I assumed that Salinda must have been Gurdon's second wife. (Again, I was making a big mistake.) So, I tried to look and see if I could find a possible first marriage for Gurdon, but I was unsuccessful. (Of course, looking back now, I realize that what I was doing at the time was trying to make my hypothesis work. Instead of waiting until I had viewed Rhoda's death registration before I tried to move backwards, I made an assumption that I could try and find Rhoda's family in the censuses without that vital record. Unfortunately, I probably made more of a mess by just jumping to a conclusion without some solid information.)

As I stated before, I made several mistakes up above, and although I was trying to make my assumption work, I was still trying to find out as much information as I could about Guerdon and Celinda Havens and their family. In short, I was still trying to figure out if my assumption was workable since I knew I still needed to look at that death registration before I could confirm my hunch. I figured that Rhoda's death record would confirm my beliefs. (I did not know it then, but I was in for a big surprise.)

In my next post, I will continue on with my research into Rhoda and conclude with my who I think are actually Irene and Rhoda's family. I will also include my list of my sources. (Also, as a note: I had used different spelling variations of Guerdona and Salinda Havens' names in this post since I found their names spelled in multiple ways. The two I used just happen to be the ones I can recall off the top of my head at the moment.) Stay tuned ...

More On Irene Havens ...

Earlier this month, I started to write about my mysterious ancestor, Irene Havens, but to be honest, I realize I left the post unfinished. I'm terribly sorry about that. Anyhow, I'll just start over again.


What I know about Irene primarily consists primarily of estimated birth year, a possible birth location, and her marriage to my ancestor, Peter Stout. As I mentioned before, I suspect she was born sometime between 1840 and 1843 in New York. (That information is based upon census records and her tombstone epitaph at the moment.) On one of my first research trips to Saint Joseph County, Michigan, I found the marriage record for Peter Stout and Irene Havens, and learned that they were married on the 1st of January in 1862. The marriage record suggested she was about 18 years old at the time, and unfortunately, the record in the county did not record the names of either bride or groom's parents. Prior to Irene's marriage, the only census I could find Irene in (at first) was the 1860 U. S. Census. In that census, she is living in the Household of Calvin Johnson in Florence Township, the same township where the Stout family resided, and her occupation is given as a servant. Calvin's birthplace was listed as New York, and I thought at that time that there might be family connection since Irene's birthplace is given as New York. Of course, when I tried to find a location in New York for Calvin Johnson and Irene Havens, I could not find a place where both could have lived nearby each other's family. I then quickly made the assumption that the chances were that Calvin and Irene were not related. So, for a little while after that, I was stuck and I put her line aside for a while.

Later on in that year, I visited St. Joseph County, Michigan again, to do more research. (I was planning to do research on all of my branches, not just on Irene.) In my previous visit, I had been unable to find a death record for Irene. Even though I did not have a death date for Irene, I knew she had died by 1877 since her husband remarried that year. (Of course, I should also state that I noticed that Peter had another wife by looking at the 1880 census, but at that time, it was only a guess.) I would not have a possible death date until towards the end of my visit when I visited Calhoun Cemetery in Florence township. I'll write more about my visit to Calhoun Cemetery in another post, but for the moment, it'll suffice to say that after finding Irene's grave, I had a possible death date and possible age at death in years, months and days. So far, this is the closest I have to a possible birth date and year for Irene.

Of course, finding Irene's grave did not help me figure out where in New York she was from or who her parents were. And I would not have an idea until about a year later. At that time, I was starting to think about what I could do to figure out where Irene came from when I realized that I had not followed her younger daughter forward into the censuses from 1900 to 1930. I knew that Mary Stout had married Clement Albright in the 1880s, but I realized that I did not know what happened to her after her marriage. So, I began to look for her daughter in the censuses. At the same time, I took a look back at the 1910 census for Peter Stout's household, and I noticed that Peter had a granddaughter named Jessie Albright living with him at the time of the census.

After finding one of Mary's children, I decided to look for her and her family in the censuses. I was able to quickly find Mary and Clement in the 1900 census in Kalamazoo County. I then looked for Mary again, and I found her with her children in the 1910 census living in Gladwin County with a Philip Lang (or sometimes spelled Lange). Mary and her children are listed as nieces and nephews to Philip, and since Mary is listed as a widow, Clement probably died sometime between 1900 and 1910. (Of course, I could be wrong, but I'll have to do a little bit more research to find out when he died.) I then looked for Mary again, and I found her living in Gladwin County again in the 1920 census. In this census, Philip was listed in the building below Mary's. After finding them in the 1920 census, I could not find Philip or Mary in the 1930 census. I am uncertain as to when or where they died, and I hope to be able to do some research sometime into when they died.

After noticing that Mary Albright was listed as Philip Lang's niece, I went backwards in the censuses to see who he married, as Philip's wife might be a sibling to Irene. In the 1900, 1880 and 1870 censuses, I discovered that he was married to a Rhoda. I then looked up Philip Lange's marriage record in Saint Joseph County, and discovered that he had married a Rhoda Havens. After discovering that Rhoda was related to Irene (either as a sister, step-sister or half-sister), I decided to look for her in the censuses prior to 1870. I also looked again at the 1900 and 1910 censuses and realized that Rhoda had died sometime between the 1900 and 1910 censuses. I looked at Saint Joseph County's online death index, and learned that there was a death record for a Rhoda H. Lang listed.

On another note, I'll have to continue this article on Irene in another post since this post is getting extremely long. So, in another post, I'll write about searching for Rhoda, and what I discovered. In addition, I will continue writing about my research into my Havens ancestors.

Update On that Lake Ontario Shipwreck ...

As you may remember, I posted an article on the discovery of a shipwreck in Lake Ontario. Well, I just happened to notice that Tim Agazio posted an update to this article. You can read it here.

An Interesting Article on a Great Lakes Shipwreck

I just happened to learn about this article from one of the online genealogy groups that I am a member of, and I thought I would share this article. A shipwreck dating from the American Revolution was found in Lake Ontario, and you can read more about it here.

And More Great Lakes Books - Islands!

In addition to mentioning books on lighthouses and shipwrecks, I thought I would mention a couple of books on the islands of the Great Lakes.

A couple of interesting books to read are:

• Mysterious Islands: Forgotten Tales of The Great Lakes by Andrea Gutshe and Cindy Bisaillon
• Ghosts of the Bay: A Guide to the History of Georgian Bay by Russell Floren

Well, those were two books that I could think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there are other books on the islands of the Great Lakes.

And More Great Lakes Books - Shipwrecks!

As I promised earlier, here is a couple of books on shipwrecks of the Great Lakes:

• True Tales Of The Great Lakes by Dwight Boyer
• Shipwrecks Of The Lakes by Dana Thomas Bowen
• Ghost Ships, Gales & Forgotten Tales: True Adventures on the Great Lakes by Wes Oleszewski

Of course there many other books written by the authors above and many other authors, including Frederick Stonehouse. Enjoy!

Genealogy And History News of the Past Week Or So

I realize that I did not do a post on articles dealing with genealogy and history in the news. So, to make up for that, I've decided to do a post on the news of the past week or so that it has been since my last post of this type. So, here are the news articles of this week so far and the past week or so:

• Ancestry.com Allows Free Searching Of Its U.S. Military Records Until May 31st.
• S.S. Columbia Is Planning To Sail To The Hudson River. (I happened to notice this article on the World History blog. For those who don't know, the Columbia was one of the ships that took passengers to Boblo Island in the Detroit River. Boblo Island used to be a theme park, but it not longer exists. Now there are large homes on the island. I do remember seeing the ships docked off of the Detroit River, but at that time, the ships were decaying. And that was in the mid-to-late-1990s.)
• Archaeologists Find Statues of Cleopatra and Aphrodite (Venus) In Egypt.
• Bust of Caesar found In France.
• My Brief Post On New England's Darkest Day.
• My Post On Additional Records Added To FamilySearch's Record Search.

I think I got most of the history and genealogy news. If I have missed any articles from the past week up to do, please let me know. Thanks!

Some Disturbing News ...

I just ran across this story a few minutes ago on yahoo, and I thought that maybe some of you would want to read this article. It is the actions of people like that who make me sick.