Ubiquitous Smiths: The Smiths in Brooklyn

Bring it on! Smith is the most prevalent surname in the country. Let's meet the challenge to track the ancestry of The Smiths in Brooklyn.

Before Minnesota became a state, 172 people with the surname Smith lived in Hennepin County. Two Smith families had settled in the area of Brooklyn Township as documented in the Minnesota Territorial census of 1857. In 1860, about 50 people, including women with the maiden name Smith, lived in Brooklyn Township.

It is probable that sorting the earliest land records in Twp 119-R 24 will show family groups, such as, on October 30, 1857, both Horace H Smith and Stephen Smith received their land warrants…were they brothers? And on July 1, 1859, both David H. Smith and Harris N. Smith received their land warrants ... were they brothers? And then on September 5, 1861, Hiram Smith’s land warrant was registered…was he related to the others?

So, searching with keywords “Smith” “Brooklyn township, Hennepin, Minnesota” and "1860" at the familysearch.org database, the results DID NOT include a David Smith, or a Hiram Smith. David and his wife Urtilla sold their property for $4000 on March 18, 1857 (a huge amount!) and a record of their residency was not found. He was NOT the brother of Harris N. Smith. Hiram’s residency during his early days was in Champlin, not Brooklyn; it does not appear that he was related to the aforementioned Smiths.

Horace H. Smith, his wife Caroline Shepard, and DeWitt Clinton Smith, his wife Melissa Shepard, were double brothers and sisters, who were born in New York, migrated to Michigan, and came to Minnesota with the “Adrian Colony”. They settled in Brooklyn Township and were the patriarchs of many descendants that remained in the township. They WERE NOT brothers to Stephen Smith.

Stephen and Patience Smith were from New Hampshire and may have come with several other Brooklyn pioneer families of Strafford County, i,e, the Plummer, Chase, Merrill families. The couple did not have sons to populate the Smith surname. It is also probable that Stephen and Patience (also a Smith) were related to a John Smith that settled in Brooklyn Township. [Tracking that John Smith is a future blogpost].

And that John Smith is not to be confused with John M. Smith from New Brunswick. He came to Brooklyn Township with two daughters, one who married Thomas Warwick and another who married William Stevens…but again, no sons to populate the Smith surname. And that John Smith, is not to be confused with the John and Rhoda Smith family: The Ohioans that came in 1880.

There was a Smith couple that migrated from Germany and settled in Brooklyn Township; Robert and Christina. But neither the Ohioan Smiths or German Smiths should have resulted in my search filter of the year 1860.

The most interest generated is Nathaniel Smith, a veteran of 1812, and his son, Harris, who stayed in Brooklyn Township. They are both on the Federal 1850 census in Minnesota Territory. See WikiTree Profile.

The grandson of Nathaniel Smith (son Harris, grandson Harry), and the granddaughter of Horace Smith (son George Haskell, granddaughter, Nettie), married. Harry and Nettie had both been born in Brooklyn township, and they raised their family and died in Brooklyn Township. Result: Brooklyn Super Smiths!

Neighbors Back Home: Strafford County, New Hampshire

 

As we explore relationships of the pioneers of Brooklyn Township, we discover not only blood connections, but community connections. A person can feel closer to someone that lived next door, than that of a cousin who lived in the next town. As profiles are added to the one-place study of Brooklyn Township at WikiTree, Strafford County, New Hampshire was a location that connected many of the migrants to the Minnesota Territory. 

The map of Strafford County is from 1856 and applicable to the time prior to migration to Minnesota. Go to this link at the Library of Congress to enlarge the image. It includes names of residents.

https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3743s.la000435/

Here are links to WikiTree profiles of Brooklyn Township residents from that area:

Brothers John and Robert Plummer; Samuel, Margaret, Silas, Sarah Cotton, Lydia Reidhead, and Samuel Jr Merrill. Families yet to explore are the Daniel Chase family [9VPC-PF2] including Mrs. Alonzo Bragdon, and John Berry [G3V2-YCN]. More will be added via editing as they are discovered. This particular blog is providing a landing place for families from Strafford County, New Hampshire.

To learn more about where those families came from is this text: Scales, John. 1914. History of Strafford County, New Hampshire and Representative Citizens. Chicago: Richmond-Arnold.

Notable: A Paid-For Obituary

STAR TRIBUNE October 4th, 1868, page 1.

First responses: probably related to the naming of Palmer Lake; is he in the historical society's books on civil war veterans? The family came 15 years prior...1853. Why isn't the Palmer name prominent in the literature?

So, he is in the Patriots of Brooklyn: Suppressors of the Great Slaveholders Rebellion, and on the first page of Part III. The authors evidently had not found this obituary as they did not know of William's demise. 

The family was from Hillsdale, Columbia, New York, same as the Rivenburghs that I explored in my last blog! It is probable that Elisha Rivenburgh and the Palmer family migrated together.

UPDATE: See family profile on familysearch.org Lewis Resseguie Palmer (1810–1887)

 

Headlines: Malicious!

How alarming that the newspaper, on June 29, 1869, alerted the community that 'some malicious person' had shot a valuable mare of E. Rivenburgh in Brooklyn Township. And in response, Mr. Rivenburgh was offering a $100 reward 'for the detection of the person who did it.'  So now we will go on a horse chase for some background information.  

First of all, the Rivenburgh family was known to have been from Crystal Lake Township, and their German name is spelled in various ways; in fact, the newspaper spelled it Rivneinng. Records wrote it as Reiffenburgh, Riefenberg, Rivenberg. Such variations make it difficult to research, but the task was undertaken (at an earlier date) because one of Brooklyn Township's first town supervisors, William Stinchfield, married (his third marriage) a Catherine R. from New York, and after decades of living in Brooklyn Township, William was buried in New York; it was a mystery to me how he ended up in New York and hence the research.

It turned out that Catherine R was a Rivenburgh. A girl/young lady that lived with the William Stinchfield family (Ida Calkins; see note 1), married Charles Rivenberg; the assumption was that when William became a widower, he met his future wife, Catherine, through his foster daughter, Mrs. Charles Rivenburgh.  But we see, via the newspaper headlines: Malicious! that an E. Rivenburgh lived in Brooklyn Township.

Let's review. Here is the marriage certificate of William and Catherine dated November 8, 1881. Notice the witnesses...I thought they were C (Charles) Rivenburgh and Ida Calkins

I had not taken the time to realize that the marriage was one year prior to the marriage of Charles Rivenburgh and Ida M. Calkins on November 30, 1882. So instead of William meeting Catherine through Ida, it was probably the other way around,  that Ida met Charles through William.

But the real love matcher was possibly "E. Rivenburgh"; that is an E. not a C. on the witness signatures.  So, who was E. Rivenburgh? By the time those marriages were performed, he had already lived in Brooklyn township for ten years, based on when his horse was shot.

Using the spelling on the signature, familysearch.org easily found a land record for Elisha Rivenburgh for November 4, 1854: he was a territorial pioneer! ["United States Bureau of Land Management Tract Books, 1800-c. 1955", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6KVK-1R32 : 16 June 2023), Elisha Rivenburgh, 1854.] The MN census records for 1875, 1885, and 1895 recorded him in Crystal Lake Township....so not technically a Brooklynite.

Now back to his horse. The issue was not resolved. On October 26, 1869, this notice was the follow-up:

Stay tuned if more related notices for Brooklyn Township are found.

(1) MN 1875 census age 11; federal 1880 census age 16.

Brooklyn's Pioneer Female Doctress

Notice a Mrs. L. R. Sherman, physician, on the list of patrons to Andrea's 1874 Atlas  (August blogpost). She stated she migrated in 1856; the atlas was published in 1874, so that is almost twenty years in Brooklyn as a "doctress". That was how the census taker labeled her occupation on the 1870 census. I want to know more about her.

So, Andrea's also listed her birthplace of Monroe County New York.  OK: found all her census records. In 1857, her husband Daniel was a mason, they had two children, and Eli, a blacksmith,  and his wife Lovina Haviland. lived with them.  I believe that Lovina was of Quaker heritage. Their residence was in the area of Maple Grove Township (T119-R22); one has to actually look at the census because halfway down the page it is noted that the enumerator crossed over from T119-R21 (Brooklyn) to T119-R22 on September 28th, 1857.

And in 1860, the family was farming in Maple Grove; still just two children: Parley (8) and Lorissa (5). In 1865, after her husband's service in the Civil War, they were in Brooklyn Township, and added a son, Darwin. And now, in 1870, her family lived next to Frank Lawson, a physician, and she was labeled as a "doctress". The record also shows that the son Parley, and daughter Lora, were born in Michigan, so the family migrated from Michigan, not New York.

The 1875 census did not document occupations. It appears the family had several boarders in Osseo; also, her daughter was not living with them. Oh dear. That is the end of census records in Minnesota. What happened? Her husband died.

The death register image is online, and it lists Daniel Sherman's death on September 4, 1876, from diarrhea, at age 43.  He has an attractive monument at Brooklyn-Maple Grove Union Cemetery--her name, Lora A. Graham, and death in 1907 is also on the monument.  It looks like she moved back to Michigan and married Martin Hoig....well, we didn't learn much about her occupation as a physician. We know she didn't save Daniel.

Brooklyn Township: WikiTree One-Place Study

 

Brooklyn Township now has a page on WikiTree.  WikiTree is a collaborative genealogy site that welcomes others to participate in projects. The page is a one-place study. Systematically, the history of Brooklyn Township is portrayed with citations; tasks are defined and progress noted.  One task in the study process is to develop a slate of First Settlers.  When research identifies an early family that settled in the township, their individual profiles on WikiTree are marked with the emblem shown above. The emblem symbolizes reaping the fruits of their labors.

Bookmark the image at WikiTree and watch the slate of First Settlers grow

WikiTree also categorizes pages and profiles into groups as defined by participants.  Examples of categories that correspond with the history are 'Red Lake Settlement' (Pierre Bottineau), 'Mound Cemetery' (Ezra Hanscom), and 'Horsemen' (George Durnam), and of course, 'Minnesota' (Brooklyn Township). It is fun to see how people and places interconnect; how Brooklyn Township contributed.

This is the purpose of the WikiTree One-Place Study of Brooklyn Township as stated on the study page: 

The purpose of this study of Brooklyn Township is to bring together resources that will add depth to the family stories of the people that resided in the area prior to its incorporation as cities. The area is currently the City of Brooklyn Center (1911) and the City of Brooklyn Park (1954) in Hennepin County, Minnesota. This Study will complement the project manager's blog: The Past: Brooklyn Township, Hennepin, Minnesota. An exploration of community connections in the historical area of Brooklyn Township.

Check out WikiTree, and consider collaborating at the site. Click on the image of the first survey; it links to the WikiTree One-Place Study of Brooklyn Township.

Brooklyn Township: Year of Migration

The Minnesota censuses for 1895 and 1905 ask 'What year did you come to Minnesota?' and 'What year did you come to the current precinct?'  So if your ancestors were born out-of-state, and were living in 1895 and 1905, those census records are good clues as to when they migrated.  That is a pro.  A con is that only the head of the family was asked, and a wife's family may have migrated a different year. Another negative is that unfortunately, oftentimes the answers are different between 1895 and 1905; a definite red flag.

An exciting find from the 1880s is a Hennepin County death register that has a column, filled in for some, with heading 'Date of Arrival in Minn'.  For example, Mrs. Norman Jenkins entry states 1851.

Another place to check, besides biographies of course,  is Andreas' 1874 An Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Minnesota.  It includes listings of patrons (those that contributed to the publication) by county and township.  The headings are Name, Residence (and this is a property description), Business, Nativity (where born), Came to State, and Post Office.   Here is Brooklyn Township:

If the image is not clear, go directly to the image on page 295: An Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Minnesota posted at Minnesota Digital Library.