Snoopin’ with the Snoop

Daniel Sackett died in Troy, Rensselaer County, NY in 1845. After ordering images of his probate record from sampubco in the beginning of November (2009), I’m finally finished with the transcription.

Because I’ve worked for an attorney in a legal assistant/paralegal capacity for the past two years, I easily recognized many words, which in years past have been undecipherable:

• heretofore
• that is to say
• pursuant to the statutes in such case made & provided
• thereof
• as aforesaid
• made due & satisfactory proof
• in manner and form
• in pursuance of
• thereupon
• afterwards
• affidavits
• whereof
• the hand caused the seal … to be hereunto applied (in otherwords, the person signed the document)
• instant
• annexed
• deponent / depose
• abovementioned
• herein
• thereon
• hereunto
• thereof
• attesting Witness
• thereto
• whereas
• said (as in “said person”, “said document”, “said date”, “said place”, …)

I also think it is interesting, that back then, they had to different “and” symbols. A lowercase “and”, which is most like “+”, and an uppercase “and” — ” &”, though, in my transcript, I did not differentiate between their appearances.

Thankfully, attorneys have ceased, for the most part, being wordy, and have caught on that the best writing is simple and direct. Nightmarish legal writing hasn’t totally fled from existence, but it is less common to find documents as redundant and wordy as this court document. My favorite sentence from the will (p.396)  is “And it is further ordered by said surrogate that said Will & Codicil thereto annexed together with the proofs thereof be recorded as a will of real Estate which said proofs so ordered to be recorded are here and before recorded & contained, and which said will so ordered to be recorded is recorded in the words and figures following to wit.” That and of course the common phrase “my hand caused the seal to be hereunto applied.”

p.386]
at the City of Troy in said County on the 17th day of June
1845
Present Stephen Reynolds Jr Surrogate
In the matter of the }
last Will & Testament of}
Daniel Sackett deceased} Be it remembered that heretofore that is to say at a Surrogates Court held for the County of Rensselaer at the City of troy in said County on the 12th day of April 1845 before Stephen Reynolds Jr Surrogate of said County personally appeared Charles H. Kellogg an Executor named in the last Will and Testament of Daniel Sackett late of the City of Troy in the County of Rensselaer deceased & made application to said Surrogate to have the Will of the deceased proved and recorded pursuant to the Statutes of the State of New York in such case made & provided & thereupon presented a petition for the proof thereof both as a Will of real and personal estate verified by his oath setting forth that the said Daniel Sackett died a natural death at his residence in the City of Troy in said County of Rensselaer on or about the 8th day of April 1845 and that said will relates to both the real & personal estate.
And the Said Charles H. Kellogg Executor as aforesaid then & there made due and satisfactory proof before said Surrogate of the names, ages & places of residence of the Widow (& next?) all the heirs at Law & next of Kin of the said Daniel Sackett deceased so far as the same could be ascertained according to the form of the statutes in such case made and provided.
And thereupon said Surrogate did then & there issue a Citation to the Widow and heirs at law & next of kin of the said Daniel Sackett deceased requiring them to appear before the said Surrogate at his office in the City of Troy aforesaid to attend the probate of the last Will & Testament of the said Daniel Sackett deceased in manner and form & in pursuance of the Statutes in Such Case made & provided. And thereupon afterwards that is to say at a Surrogates Court held for the County of Rensselaer at the City of Troy in said County on the 2nd day of June 1845 the said Charles H. Kellogg Executor as aforesaid again appeared & the Citation heretofore issued not being returned the said Surrogate by an order duly adjourned the hearing of the matter to the 17th day of June 1845 at 10 o’clock at the office of said Surrogate in Troy aforesaid.
And thereupon afterwards that is to say at a Surrogates court held for the County of Rensselaer at the City of Troy in said County on the said 17th day of June 1845 the said Charles H. Kellogg Exectuor as aforesaid again appeared before the said Surrogate

Names mentioned on page 386:

• Stephen Reynolds, Jr
• Daniel Sackett
• Charles H. Kellogg

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(As with all posts in my Lurkers category, this excerpt contains names of people mentioned in texts that I read. Currently, I am working on “transcribing” my great-grandmother’s travel journals, and this is an excerpt from 1937.)

August 9, 1937 — Speedometer reading – 46999.5
St. Clair County, Michigan

We were up bright and early and ready to leave at 8′o’clock. Pat had told me a couple of weeks earlier that John Robinson had offered to take care of the cow for us and then after a few days he decided the Burse’s might like to take care of her so he asked them and they thought they couldn’t manage it. Then just two or three days before it was time for us to go he said he believed he would ask Fred Burdie as he thought it would be asking too much of John to milk an extra cow in the mornings. Well it was left like that and on Monday morning I went to see if Johnson’s or Robinsons would sell Burses milk for themselves and to feed our cats. Found out that John had been depending on milking her. I came home and told Pat that if he hadn’t had that cow on wheels up and down Griswold Street for the last two weeks we wouldn’t have gotten into such a tangle.

Obituary for Cynthia Blakely (d. 4 Jul 1915)

Obituary
Mrs. Cynthia Blakely Mallory

Mrs. Cynthia Blakely Mallory died July 4 at the residence of her son, Warren B. Mallory, in Kimball township, at the age of 96, being born in Castleton, Ontario, March 5, 1819. She was united in marriage to Caleb J. Mallory July 4, 184[3], her death occurring on the seventy-first anniversary of her marriage. Her husband died twenty-two years ago. They settled in Kimball township at what was then known as Bartlett’s Mills, about two miles east of Smith’s Creek.

Mrs. Mallory is survived by six children as follows: Digene Mallory, of Campus, Kansas; Warren B. Mallory, of Miles City, Montana **1**; former sheriff of St. Clair county; Mrs. J. D. Palmer, of Thermopolis, Wyoming; Mrs. Richard Hubble, of Smith’s Creek and Mrs. M. V. McFarland, of Omaha, Nebraska; also one sister Mrs. R. S. Little, of Port Huron, who is now eighty-five years of age.

Mrs. Mallory resided in Kimball township sixty-four years. Funeral services will be held from the residence of Warren B. Mallory, on Griswold street Tuesday morning at 10:30 local time. Burial in Mallory cemetery. This cemetery is situated on property formerly belonging to the Mallory family near the old Mallory mills, east of Smith’s Cree, which were built and operated by Caleb J. Mallory in the early lumbering days of Michigan.

So it would appear that Cynthia has a sister:

also one sister Mrs. R. S. Little, of Port Huron, who is now eighty-five years of age [b ~1830] (Obituary of Mrs. Cynthia Mallory, date unknown)

I will also need to check for the censuses for Digene Mallory, of Campus, Kansas; Warren B. Mallory [supposed to be George E.?], of Miles City, Montana; former sheriff of St. Clair county; Mrs. J. D. Palmer, of Thermopolis, Wyoming; Mrs. Richard Hubble, of Smith’s Creek and Mrs. M. V. McFarland, of Omaha, Nebraska, because the 1920 and 1930 censuses provide a lot of information. Not necessarily about grandparents, but it will flesh out the family. Problem is, I can’t seem to find any of them in the 1910 or 1920 (or 1930) censuses.

But to start, I’m looking for her sister, Mrs. R. S. Little of Port Huron.

1880 US Census, Chesterfield Township, Macomb, MI, page 15, dist 3, enum dist 200: Sylvester R Little (continued on page 15) wife Mary E. (b ~1836), children Amy 18, Charles 16, William 14, Howard 12, Theodore 7, Mabel 5. Mary born New York as were her parents.

In Ancestry search only female Little born ~1830 in St. Clair County MI: Source Citation: Year: 1910; Census Place: Clay, St Clair, Michigan; Roll T624_673; Page: 5B; Enumeration District: 92; Image: 143.

Doesn’t seem to be a matchup between Mary E Little and Ester Little. Or perhaps she married again. The Esther Little married to Theodore W. Little in 1880 in Chesterfield, was 52 at the time, and Theodore was 53, which eliminates them.

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Names from DARING AND SUFFERING: A HISTORY OF THE GREAT RAILROAD ADVENTURE BY LIEUT. WILLIAM PITTENGER, ONE OF THE ADVENTURERS (see the bibliographic record at Project Gutenberg and download if you wish). The Introduction author describes a bit of  Mr. Pittenger’s family and path to the railroad adventure:

William Pittenger, b. 31 Jan 1840, Jefferson Co. Ohio, son of Thomas Pittenger. His mother’s family were the Mills’s. He was under the command of Colonel Harris in the Ohio 2nd, and General Mitchell after transferring to a division encamped at Louisville.

Two other names in the introduction:
Chaplain Gaddis of the Ohio 2nd
Rev. Capt. J. J. Geer

Names from DARING AND SUFFERING: A HISTORY OF THE GREAT RAILROAD ADVENTURE BY LIEUT. WILLIAM PITTENGER, ONE OF THE ADVENTURERS (see the bibliographic record at Project Gutenberg and download if you wish). This book describes the adventurers’ roles in the Union’s run to destroy the Georgia State Railroad during the Civil War. It is easiest to copy the names here as they are listed in the book:

I was finally able to scan in the Civil War pension records that I bought for Lewis Winnie and his son James Newton Winnie:

Pages 1-12 of the Pension Record for James N. Winnie
Pages 13-41 of the Pension Record of James N. Winnie
Pension Record of Lewis Winnie
Pension Record of Jeremiah Raner

They both enlisted in the 86th New York Infantry Company B out of Jasper, Steuben County, NY. James died from disease shortly after enlisting, and Lewis was discharged in December 1862 due to illness. James was the Winnie’s eldest child, and was 17 at the time of his enlistment.

One of the pensions (or maybe both of them), but I don’t remember which, gives the information that Lewis’ wife Eunice’s maiden name was Raner.

After leaving New York, they lived in both Cumberland and Rhea counties, Tennessee.

Three cheers, or more, to HP and the Pavilion dv4000. Back when I bought the laptop in 2005, I was obsessed with Linux, but not to the point of installing it. Three years later, I have finally gotten rid of Windows as a host system, and am running Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) on my Pavilion laptop with the GNOME desktop environment. I have not yet missed anything from Windows. Well, since I found VirtualBox that is. I was pleased with Unbuntu/Gnome except that my genealogy program is only for Windows (TMG). So I tried setting it up in WineHQ and failed miserably, though there are users who have managed to make it work. I kept getting a VisualFoxPro9 error when it tried to launch my project after loading the program. I fretted over HAVING to have windows only to run my program, and I did not want a dual-boot system.

Then I found VirtualBox. VirtualBox is not an emulator; I actually installed Windows with my CD and went through the entire process required as if installing it as a host system. I had a bit of difficulty figuring out the Guest Additions inside VirtualBox in order to get the mouse, etc. to work, but it’s been breezy since. You can install any OS in VB (I assume), and following a tutorial I found on the net has provided me with an awesome way to have a portable media editing environment as opposed to installing everything on my hard drive (which by today’s standards is a small 55 GB). I haven’t yet figured out how to access my printer wirelessly in the XP Guest, though I can surf the internet just fine.

Truth be told, I like the Fluxbox Windows Manager better than the Gnome Desktop Environment (what’s the difference?), with the exception that I haven’t figured out how to access the wireless network in Fluxbox. (My brain has turned to mush being pampered by desktop environments like Windows (and Gnome) since Windows98. I never liked Windows95 and preferred DOS. Further, I hated Windows 3.1 for Workgroups and logged in as little as possible. 98 I liked though and drifted away from DOS at that point.) On the other hand, I can’t play Secret Maryo Chronicles in Gnome, though it works perfectly in Fluxbox.

I installed Opera instead of Firefox on the XP guest, just because I prefer Opera, though I choose to use Firefox3 regularly. I prefer Opera because of their trashcan (allowing one to bring back to life tabs accidentally or carelessly closed). Perhaps a Firefox3 user has developed an extension or add-on to duplicate this luxury, but I have not found one or one to my liking. [Update 16 March 2009: By accident, I found that Ctrl+Shift+T opens the last closed tab. But I have not yet found out how to open the 5th previously closed tab without opening all of the previous. Opera offers a dropdown list of closed tabs.]

Firefox3 is my browser of choice because of Zotero:

Harnessing the Zotero extension for genealogical use is the next challenge. I played around with it awhile back, back when I was in Vegas and wasn’t really focused on applying any free time to genealogical research and organizing my life. I didn’t get it much then, but I also wasn’t looking for organization, which it seems to provide. My only hesitance is that if I depend on it and my collections somehow get corrupted or mixed up, where will I be? I also need to study how and if (which) files are saved on my hard drive.

I’ve been looking for a manager for regular text, doc, pdf, &c files for quite a while. Plenty exist as music and photo applications, but I’ve not yet uncovered one geared for non-media documents. It would most likely use a database structure and would look not unlike the applications that law offices, for example, use to manage their cases (like Amicus). My want stems from organizing my files and retreiving them: say that I am doing research on the town of Pontiac, NY, and in a history book on the geographic area, one paragraph of the chapter I’m reading mentions Anson Bassett, my ancestor who died there. Since the pages I’m printing (to a pdf file) deal with an area in Erie County New York, I’d like to save them into my Places folder. In Windows, I got started placing shortcuts in my specific Surname folders when this situation occurred (and vice versa). I’d be nicer to have a visual organization and the ability to tag files with description as is allowed in many photo/music applications. (I just tried a new search string: “document management” instead of “file management” and seem to be on the right path.)

I stumbled over my Phettiplace research today and was browsing census records on Ancestry. I wish I had William David Phettiplace’s pension record with me here, instead of it being stuck at home 1000 miles away. All I know is that he was married in Tonowanda, NY, and that being Resolved’s and Malinda’s son, that possibly they were there as well. Something to look at in Salt Lake City.

Well, I finally decided to pull out my genealogy again. Not so much by desire to immerse myself in non-stop addictive research, but because I’ll probably be heading to Salt Lake City in May, and I’d like to have an inkling of what I will be searching. A trip without preparation is worse than no trip at all. Two months prep? Too much you may say, but I disagree. Besides, with tours, it’s more like one month.

I took photos of the copies I made at various locations across Bledsoe/Cumberland/Rhea Counties in TN in August. I will type out each photo as a post, eventually. But here are all of the photos of the copies, and the links to each larger file. My camera is fuzzy in the middle. Must be time to get a new one. Read the rest of this entry »