Looking For Lenora - Part 5

For the time being, this will be the final part of my research theme entitled "Looking For Lenora." (Hold the applause, please)!  I'm not saying that more data will never be forthcoming.  I imagine I can find more facts to add to the profile I've put together so far.  I'm just saying that, for now at least, I think I've developed a somewhat comprehensive profile of Lenora Webber, my maternal grandmother's oldest sister, and I think it's time to move on to other subjects.  No research like this is ever fully completed. Most attempts to reconstruct an ancestor's life are continuously works in progress. So it is in this case.  I'm going to let the file evolve into a "cold case" and let it rest on the shelf for awhile.  Unlike the cold cases in TV police dramas, this doesn't mean all the mysteries of Lenora Webber's life are unsolved.  Far from it.  It just means that whatever data has been accumulated will be put to the side for now with the hopes that I can return at some later time.  That's what happened with my research on Lenora's (and my grandmother's) youngest brother, Rollin Webber.  I returned to his profile from time to time to see if anything new had developed from my original research. And when I visited his headstone in the historic Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC I was able to reopen my files and add information to his profile. I hope I can find similar success with Lenora's history. But for now, the data below is what I have accumulated on Lenora's life.

I will be forever indebted to my maternal grandmother, Florence Huldah (Webber) Currier, for the genealogy research she started years before I was even born.  I never knew of her interest in family history until long after she passed away and, of course, she would never know of mine. But her input along with her daughters Alice and Emma (my mother) have given me a wide base of information about our ancestors from the Webber and Currier branches of my family tree.  In some cases their simply saving newspaper clippings and guest registers has contributed a huge amount of source info that has helped my research. Included among these was my grandmother's memoirs describing her life events and feelings covering from her childhood in the 1870's up to her marriage at the age of 36 in 1905.  My initial search for Lenora was inspired by my grandmother's narrative.

Grandma Currier's memoirs started my research rolling by listing the names of her siblings and she even listed them in chronological order by date of birth. Lenora was listed first (highlighted here in yellow) as the oldest and Rollin, the youngest was the last one in her tally.

The newspaper clipping posted beneath the excerpt from the memoirs is a listing of attendees at my grandmother's silver wedding anniversary. This short article was published in 1930, twenty five years after her 1905 marriage. Lenore (sic) spelled with an "e" and listing her married name (Lebroke) and residence (North Waterford, Maine) are jumping out at me almost begging me to start filling in the blanks my grandmother handed to me on a silver platter!




The first area I wanted to look at to compare with the information in Grandma Currier's writing was the Federal Census in 1870 for the town of Oxford in Oxford County, Maine.

The enumerator completing this record appears to have thought the Webber surname was "Wilber." Or may have just not been able to spell very well. Nevertheless, Samuel Webber, age 54 is listed with his wife Delora (age 26) followed by their children Lenora (7), Samuel (5), Anna (3), and Huldah F., age 1. The youngest was my grandmother, Florence Huldah Webber but I don't know if the reversal of her first and middle names was an enumerator mistake or if she simply reversed the order at a later time. But there they were in the age order listed by the memoirs as long as we assume the "Anna" listed on the record is one and the same as the "Minnie" described by my grandmother.

The other newspaper clipping I found interesting cited an unnamed niece living in North Waterford, Maine in 1926. This article is the obituary for my grandmother's aunt, Laura Webber, who passed away at 96 years of age while living in my grandmother's home in New Hampshire. I'm pretty sure the niece to whom the cremated remains were sent would have been Lenora. Interesting wording on this if you can enlarge to read it.

My next avenue of search was to find the 1880 Federal Census for Oxford, Maine.  My grandmother was still there and still listed as "Hulda."  And Rollin, the baby of the family, has now been added to the picture at 4 months old. The father, Samuel Ames Webber is listed and not listed  but allow me to explain. The date of the census record is June 3rd. Samuel died in May. So his name is listed on the record but then a horizontal line has been drawn through it, I assume to account for the head of the household passing away.  A rather unorthodox method of recording and then updating a census record I'm thinking. Nevertheless, no sign of Lenora. Born in 1863 the seventeen year old Lenora very well might have moved out for employment or maybe even gotten married. I was unable to pin down her location in the year 1880.  So at this point I reversed my attention back to the Lenora Lebroke cited in the 1930 newspaper clipping to see if I could work backwards chronologically to find her. I did that backward search as described in "Looking For Lenora - Parts 1 to 4."  That type of detective investigation is one of the things that makes genealogy research interesting. But that doesn't mean anyone else reading this post has to follow every one of my steps and look under the same rocks I did to create a profile of Lenora. I'm just going to move on with a description of what I think we know about her life in a chronological order going forward from the 1880 Federal Census record where her name is missing from the list of the Webber family.

I cannot find a record of Lenora in 1880. Not directly anyway. But I was the fortunate recipient of information on Lenora's first husband and their child. The information came to me from another descendant of the Webber family who has her own tree on Ancestry.com.  In an exchange of seasons greetings I mentioned my current search for Lenora and my very distant and generous cousin did some legwork for me and found the name of Lenora's first husband, Austin Grover and a son, John Austin Grover born in 1881. (I'm very grateful, Carol)!!! But I can't find a record of the Grover marriage nor can I find them together on any Federal Census records. But with the birth of John Austin in 1881 I'm going to guess that Lenora and Austin were married about 1880. In the 1900 and 1910 census records I found Lenora living with her second husband and on both records, a boarder named Ernest Grover resided with them.  Ernest, as it turns out was another son of Lenora and Austin, born in 1884. I also know from the 1900 census that Lenora had birthed three children but in 1900 only two were living.  So far I have no more information on who that third child was. But even without census records or marriage records proving Lenora's first marriage to Austin Grover, I found proof of their parenthood from the marriage records of her two sons.

John Austin Grover's record of marriage to Ella Francis Stevens in 1905 is a two sided document with the reverse side notated with father and mother info on both groom and bride. John Austin is recorded as the son of Austin Grover and Lenora Webber.













Ernest Grover's record of marriage in 1920 to Nona Allen duplicates the groom parental information noted on the record of his brother fifteen years earlier. For research purposes, it's fortunate for me that these records listed the mother of both grooms by her maiden name, Webber. The same info on the brides' parents just helps expand my tree with source information.



There are no 1890 Federal Census records available to pinpoint the status of Lenora and her first husband, Austin Grover. Sadly, these records (or nearly all of them, anyway) were destroyed in a fire in Washington, DC in 1921. But there is a record of Lenora on file with the town of Albany, Maine that shows her whereabouts in 1890. It is a "Copy Of An Old Record Of A Marriage" showing Lenora's marriage, as Mrs Lenora E Grover to George W Abbott on September 27, 1890.  Not nearly as forthcoming as a census record might have been but good info nevertheless. A copy of this 1890 record was posted with my Part 4 posting on Lenora.

For the next three decades Lenora is listed on the Federal Census records residing as the wife of George W Abbott. In 1900 and 1910 they lived in Albany, Maine and George listed his occupation as farmer.  There was no entry in the occupation block of the record for Lenora, presumably proof that she maintained the housekeeping duties. On a farm those duties could be extensive for the wife of a farmer. In 1900 also residing in the home were George's mother, Beulah Abbott (a widow) and as mentioned earlier, Ernest Grover listed as a boarder. Since relationship to the head of the household was the base for occupants' description I am assuming that George never adopted Ernest. If he had done so Ernest should have been listed as a step son. Ernest was listed with the occupation of "farm hand" so perhaps the relationship of "boarder" was just the simplest way of explaining why the fifteen year old boy was residing in the home. In 1910 Ernest was still with his mother and George Abbott but Beulah was no longer with them having passed away in 1902.

In 1920 George Abbott and Lenora show up as husband and wife but by this time they have relocated to a different town, Waterford, Maine.  Moreover, both of them are recorded with occupation as "none."  This possibly could mean George had retired from farming?  And perhaps relocating was a result of poor health?  George was only 59 years old when this census was recorded in January, 1920. A farmer's life is no easy life and the work may have taken its toll on George. Whatever the circumstances for the move, George passed away that year in May.  The record of death indicates he had been a resident of Waterford for three years. And this record of his death from heart disease was noted that he had suffered from the illness for two years. That record is pictured below along with a photo of his headstone.

One thing I found interesting about this record is while the information regarding his parents' names and places of birth are filled out in detail, the form has no place to designate the name of his widow. It allows for recording "wife of" or "widow of" info but nothing to indicate spousal info except a one letter notation of married, single, widowed, or divorced.

George Abbott is buried in Hunts Corner Cemetery in Albany, Maine near his parents. There are no records that I can find to indicate that George ever had another wife besides Lenora nor did he father any children.





In my Part 3 posting of my search for Lenora I described the documents and research of Lenora Abbott's marriage to Ezra Lebroke.  This marriage, Lenora's third (and Ezra's third, too) took place on April 7, 1923.  This was the marriage certificate I attempted to obtain through a third party record service but failed because I could not document my relationship to Lenora.  Maybe I should send them a copy of this posting to prove that Lenora was my grand aunt! Their boredom would be my revenge for having doors slammed in my face during my investigation. And charging me $12.95 for a non-refundable processing fee, too!! But I probably should have been a little more patient because, as it turned out, I didn't need the document anyway. So there's no one to blame but my self. Duh. Time to move on. Which brought the research along to the Federal Census Records for 1930 and 1940. The 1930 record generated the first hint I came across suggesting multiple marriages for the Lebrokes. But other than that little avenue of interest to investigate both records were unremarkable except to provide evidence of an elderly couple residing in Waterford Town Maine. The 1940 record was the only one that gave a little more detail of location with a note in the left hand column that the households listed were on "Route 118 in N. Waterford."  In comparing the two records I'm unable to say for sure whether Lenora and Ezra lived in the same place in 1940 that they did in 1930. One question on the later record asks if they are living in the same state as 1935 and their response is that they were. But the 1930 census records Ezra's occupation as "farmer" and also indicates that they lived on a farm that they owned.  In 1940 they are recorded as being renters, not living on a farm, and Ezra has no occupation and no longer works.  Not surprising that he wouldn't be working at the age of 86 I suppose. He also shows earning no income but does have income from "other sources."  Perhaps he sold the farm he owned in 1930 and used proceeds from the sale to generate income? I have no way of knowing but will pursue at a later date with land records to see what I might be able to find.

In Part 3 I described finding Ezra's headstone on the website, Findagrave.com but no record of burial for Lenora.  That website consists of burial records and headstone photos contributed by volunteers. As a result, finding someone's burial info can sometimes be hit or miss. I kept striking out on finding anything on Lenora with all the surnames I knew she had: Webber, Grover, Abbott, and Lebroke. I visited the Webber family graveyard in Oxford, Maine a couple of years ago and photographed all the stones in the Webber section. But I never thought to look for other surnames while I was there so now I started to wonder if she was with the Webber family but interred nearby with another surname. In the meantime a surfing expedition on the website for the Grover name revealed a headstone for Lenora's son, Ernest Grover that caught my eye. And lo and behold on the very same stone was the name of Ernest's mother, Lenora E Lebroke.

Lenora is buried with her son Ernest in Woodlawn Cemetery in North Waterford, Maine.  The photo provided on the website is interesting because it appears the engraving below Ernest's name appears to have been added later than the original stone, almost as an afterthought. Lenora's year of death, 1950 is the same as that of her third husband, Ezra who died September 1st that year. I don't know if she preceded him or not.

It's clear that Lenora Webber, Grover, Abbott, Lebroke was a farmer's wife three times over as all three of her husbands were labeled as farmers on Federal Census records. With the majority of citizens living and working on farms a century ago, oftentimes couples were joined in marriage for practical considerations centered on operating the farm. We can hope they found happiness and perhaps even love in their marriages but there were never any columns for that category on the census forms. So I don't know if Lenora enjoyed happy marriages or not.  I think marriage considerations centered on utility more than on romance for most of rural America as it passed from the nineteenth into the twentieth century.  While I can only guess the emotional factors of Lenora's life I think I can make an educated guess about some parts of her character. Her marriage to Austin Grover I've estimated to have been ten years or less in duration and according to Lenora she bore three children with the man who was at least 25 years her senior.  Her marriage to George Abbott endured 30 years before he died. And her marriage to her last husband, Ezra Lebroke, lasted over twenty seven years. Happy? I don't know but the record indicates she chose the companionship of a husband over living alone. And the last two marriages both endured for many years. Her sister Florence made the same choice. Although only married once, Florence married in her mid thirties and according to her memoirs, "My last patient (she was a nurse) was an old maid and I decided then and there I would not be an old maid, so I married..." Perhaps the two sisters were of like mind when it came to matrimony. Family seems to have been important to Lenora as evidenced by her attendance at Florence's 1905 wedding in Fitchburg, Ma and her silver anniversary in Alstead, NH, both trips requiring travel close to 200 miles from Oxford County, Maine. I choose to believe Lenora was comfortable with her marriages. But that's about all I can offer regarding her personal life. 

I think I've found a photograph of Lenora.  From some family photographs of headstones located in the Webber Cemetery in Oxford, Maine I came across the one below depicting an older woman standing behind the gravestone shared by Sarah and Laura Webber. Laura Webber is the one and same Laura who died in 1926 at my grandmother's home and whose remains were sent to a niece in North Waterford, Maine. The photograph is printed with the developed date: July 12, 1940. If the woman shown here is indeed Lenora, she would have been 77 years old. Looks pretty close to me.

Webber Cemetery, Oxford, Maine - 1940

I see some features in her face that are similar to her sister, Florence, but I don't think it's my grandmother in the photo. I could be wrong but I think it's a good possibility that this was Lenora.  And with that I'm done looking for Lenora, at least for now. I've enjoyed trying to learn about her and her life. But there are lots more ancestors I want to look for.  So to that end, my search goes on.

Looking For Lenora - Part 4

Utilizing the surname "Abbott" on Lenora's 1923 marriage to Ezra Lebroke has revealed the strong possibility that her previous marriage was to a George W Abbott. That opened up a number of census records that seems to show Lenora sharing a household with George in 1900, 1910, and 1920. Moreover, a Maine marriage record indicates Lenora and George were married on September 27, 1890. Armed with this data, my profile page for Lenora has grown considerably from the page I posted on Looking For Lenora - Part 1.  The newer expanded page is shown below:

Lenora (Webber) Abbott - profile page on Ancestry.com

So it appears we've made progress in looking for Lenora. But progress in this case comes with puzzles attached.  The 1890 marriage record is not for Lenora Webber. Rather, the bride is listed as Lenora GROVER! So is this Lenora nee Webber or another Lenora? Could Lenora Webber have been married three (or more) times?  I've tried to cover my butt on the 1890 marriage entry with the notation, "This fact and two sources need further investigation."  The two sources are the 1890 marriage record of Lenora Grover and the 1900 Federal Census records that appears to be Lenora but the handwritten entry lists her name as "Lemarice."  Here's a copy of the marriage record:

Obviously, more research has to be done to help on my search for Lenora. And to that end my search goes on.

 

 

 

 

Looking For Lenora - Part 3

In Part 2 of my search for Lenora I said I intended to forge ahead in my search for documentation about Lenora (Webber) Lebroke.  I've done just that, forged ahead. But I may have gotten a little ahead of myself, perhaps even taken a wrong turn or two. I started eagerly and with the best of intentions but reliable documentation has proven to be a scarce commodity in this search.

My documentation base as described in Parts 1 and 2 is, I believe, pretty strong, including my grandmother's memoirs, a 1925 newspaper clipping, and the 1930 and 1940 Federal Census reports providing me a good start on building a profile of Lenora. But further searches on Ancestry.com revealed very little more to build on. So I moved on to outside sources to see what info could be developed.  Using both Lenora's and her husband Ezra's names I plugged into different websites in search of clues. GenealogyBank.com was employed first to see if there were newspaper articles about either of them that might be helpful. I struck out.  Next I went into New England Historic Genealogical Society website and searched both names again. I found zip. Both are subscription websites just like Ancestry.com and have frequently been very helpful in other searches in the past.  But on this search there was to be no return on my subscription investments. Last I went to Findagrave.com which is a free website with burial info provided by volunteers and found nothing on Lenora.  But this time I came up with a hit on Ezra. He is buried in Oxford County, Maine in Bisbeetown Cemetery. I also searched Findagrave to see if any Webbers were buried there but found none. If Lenora is buried near Ezra she certainly is not in the same plot and if she's in the same cemetery she might be there under a different surname.

                                                           

Findagrave entry for Ezra H LeBroke

Every other document I've seen on Ezra spelled Lebroke with no capitalization on the "B" but on his headstone his surname is engraved with the upper case as "LeBROKE." Not sure what difference it makes but will keep that in mind on future computer searches. The stone is also engraved as follows:
"His wife, Abbie Cummings, 1851 - 1882" which supports my suspicions from the 1930 census category of "age at first marriage" that both Ezra and Lenora might have been married previously to other spouses. There was no Webber listed on the Findagrave list of interments in Bisbeetown Cemetery so it appears Lenora is buried elsewhere. So at this point I've sort of run into a dead end on Lenora. But dead ends in genealogy research can sometimes be opened up for access by side stepping to connecting avenues. In this case, I hope to find more information on Lenora by exploring deeper into the profile of Ezra H Lebroke who I now believe is buried in Bisbeetown Cemetery in Oxford County Maine with a previous wife named Abbie Cummings.

Back on Ancestry.com I try to find out more information on Mr. Lebroke who, according to his gravestone, was born in 1854 and died in 1950. There are sources of information to be sifted through, some acceptable as probable and others doubtful. One source that attracts my attention right away is Ancestry.com's hints linking to other member family trees. There were some linked to Lenora too but they were exact duplicates of my profile on her. That leads me to suspect that the other family trees listing Lenora probably just copied off mine, a procedure available on the website as long as the tree your pulling info from is set up as public as opposed to private. Public trees share their info with anyone who wants it. The family trees linked to Ezra were fairly extensive listing his date and place of birth, parental and sibling names, and of most interest to me, spouse information and marriage dates. One precaution important to me is to take info from other family trees with a grain of salt. The website lets you see the profile of the tree owner and their sources of documentation for the profiles they construct in their tree. The owners' frequency of logging on, the longevity of membership, and their self described proficiency, beginner, intermediate, or expert, all together can give you a good idea of how reliable the information may be. It can be a big guessing game sometimes, especially when another tree owner is working from family history files instead of official source documents like census records and certificates. Nevertheless, there are times when you just have to make an educated guess on the info you find and do the best you can to back up "borrowed" info with certifiable documentation.

A family tree on Ezra "Hicks" LeBroke (only had the middle initial "H" up until now) indicated he had three wives, the first of which was Abbie M Hamlin Cummings which should be the same Abbie listed as Ezra's wife on his gravestone. The tree listed a marriage date of 1881 but sadly, per the gravestone Abbie passed away in 1882. The same tree lists a second marriage to Marilla Jane Paige in 1884, and a third to a Nora E Abbott on April 7, 1923. Only the third marriage is backed up by a source, Maine Marriage Records, 1892 - 1996.  The computer matched the 1923 marriage to Egra H Lebroke, replacing the "z" with a "g" apparently a transcription error. When I pulled up the name Egra Lebroke on Lenora's profile page the Maine records again listed the 7 April marriage date but listed the bride as Nora E Webber. So it looks to me like I'm closing in on some good info here. Unfortunately, the Ancestry.com website offered transcripted info on this marriage but if I wanted a copy of the marriage certificate itself I would have to pay a fee to a third party to get me a copy from state of Maine Records Dept. Even though I knew better, I went ahead and applied for the copy of the marriage certificate. I knew they would require documentation of my relationship to Lenora but I was hoping the fact that both were born nearly 150 years ago and the marriage was 85 + years ago would exempt me from showing proof of relationship. I was wrong. There's another investment down the drain but I figure sometimes you just got to give it your best shot. Some win, some lose, and some get rained out. So below is what I've got on the 1923 marriage:

From this I will try to pursue a record of Lenora as named above, Nora E Abbott. I hope to build a profile with documentation of her with the married name of Abbott and see where that investigation takes me. So my search for more info on Lenora goes on.

Looking For Lenora - Part 2

There's not a lot of info on my grandmother's sister, Lenora Webber, but I feel like I've got some solid info to establish she existed and hope to build a profile of her through my Ancestry.com website. My Part I blog included a photo of Lenora's profile page on the website that included two sources of documentation that I already had added to her profile page.  Both were Federal Census reports, one from 1870 when she was 7 years old and the other from 1930 when she was 67.  The 1870 census record from the town of Oxford, Maine included my one year old grandmother and her older sister born in 1863.  Records separated by sixty years leaves a lot of room for information to fill in if I'm to succeed in constructing a more complete picture of Lenora's life but you've got to start somewhere.  Two other sources available to me were my grandmother's memoirs wherein she listed the names of her siblings in the household she was born to in Oxford, Maine and a newspaper clipping from 1930 describing my grandmother's silver wedding anniversary and a listing of the friends and relatives attending that celebration. The article identified a "Lenore Lebroke, (of) North Waterford, Maine."  Despite the newspaper spelling Lenore with the last letter "e" and my grandmother's memoirs ending her name with an "a"  I'm pretty sure we are talking one and the same person. Not proven without a doubt but I'm comfortable it is a fairly reliable educated guess. So my plan is to accept both sources as documentation of Lenora and proceed with my search.

With the married name of Lebroke established by the newspaper clipping my search started with census records sorted by surname alphabetically in Ancestry.com. The 1930 Federal Census report lists a "Nora" Lebroke, wife of "Ezra H. Lebroke" residing together in Waterford, Maine. Waterford is located in Oxford County and not too far from the town of Oxford where my grandmother was born.   Ezra is listed as 76 years old while "Nora" is recorded as 67 which would make her birth year around 1863.  Their ages and the first name of "Nora's" spouse from this 1930 record are the source data I used to update Lenora's profile page on Ancestry.com (as pictured on the first blog). If any data is subsequently found to be different I can always update it later.  Before I accepted this census info to be accurate, however, I wanted to make sure there was no separate census report for North Waterford, Maine as the newspaper article described her residence. Waterford Town is posted on the census report I found and there was no separate record for a town called North Waterford. I also scrolled through all fifteen pages recorded for Waterford Town just to make sure there was no other Lebroke recorded with a different given name that could possibly be Lenora's husband instead of Ezra. I did find one Lebroke named Samuel L Lebroke residing with a wife named Ella. Samuel was recorded as 75 years old and Ella 74 so Ella would have been born around 1856. Both Lebroke couples were recorded with Maine as place of birth for themselves and their parents. So other than ages the only other descriptive data to differentiate them from each other on the 1930 census was the category, "Age at first marriage." Ezra and Nora were recorded as 28 and 17 respectively, approximately 11 years different. Samuel and Ella's first marriage ages were 24 and 23, one year difference, just like their ages in 1930. Ezra and Nora's first marriage ages with an eleven year gap don't quite reconcile with their stated ages on the census differing by nine years. None of these age categories proves anything toward the identity of Lenora but at this point I believe multiple marriages for either Ezra and/or Nora are quite possible.  For the time being I'm going to stay with the link to Ezra as her husband but keep Samuel on the back burner as an alternative data source. And at this point I want to go back to the other ancestry hints provided by the website to see what else we might find out about Lenora.

The two historical record hints are Federal census reports, one for 1940 in Waterford again and the other from 1900 in Lisbon, Maine in Androscoggin County. For no other reason than hoping the later census record might be more informative than the earlier one, I reviewed the 1940 record first. On this one the wife of Ezra is recorded as "Elnora." Elnora sure seems to me to semi-match the 1930 "Nora" tag and a lot closer to Lenora than Ella. Moreover Ezra and Elnora are still in Waterford Town and even though "Nora" and "Elnora" are not exact matches they are similar enough to each other to make me think Lenora is the subject of  both records and quite possibly used the nickname of Nora. There is no record of Samuel and Ella Lebroke on any 1940 census records I could find so it may be that they did not survive to their mid eighties in age. If they did, apparently they no longer resided in Waterford. So at this point I have added the 1940 Federal Census report for Waterford Town with Ezra and Elnora to my Ancestry.com profile page. And moving on, the 1900 census was next up for review. This record of the inhabitants of Lisbon, Maine listed a "Fred W. Webber" and his wife, "Elmira."  Born in 1862 and 1863 respectively, Fred and Elmira resided with a fourteen year old son and a twelve year old daughter. Both parents and in turn, their parents were born in Maine. So there's no information on this record so far to disqualify it from being a legitimate source of documentation for Lenora. But keeping in mind that the accuracy of all census reports depends in large part to the accuracy and proficiency of the enumerator that recorded the information, including their spelling ability as well as strength of attention to detail, sometimes such records are not all they seem. The computer obviously picked up on a possible match to Lenora on this 1900 record with source data of state (Maine), surname (Webber), birth year (1863), and given name Elmira which is sort of close to Lenora. Ancestry.com hints are offered with no guarantees. They are just hints. It's up to the researcher to determine if the hint information actually applies. In this case, I think not. And my main reason for setting this hint aside is my doubt that Lenora would be married to a husband with a surname the same as her maiden name. Not impossible, just not likely. So setting this record aside along with the 1930 record of Samuel and Ella just means I'm not committing myself to accepting them as source documents detailing the life of Lenora Webber. I can always go back to them to reconsider if I run into stone walls in my research going forward.

If indeed there are stone walls looming in future research, there's no better way to run into them than to forge ahead with my research. And to that end, my search goes on.

Looking For Lenora - Part I

My maternal grandmother, Florence Huldah (Webber) Currier, was a daughter of Samuel Ames Webber and Delora Adella (Haskell) Webber.  Florence, born in 1869 was one of nine offspring of Samuel and Delora and also had two older half brothers and a half sister born to Samuel and another wife. Old Sam was a propagating fellow to say the least, but that was not unusual for nineteenth century families to have many children. Especially farm families where every hand was welcome, if not necessary, to keep the farm running.  Sometimes I like to surf on my Ancestry.com tree to see if there are new hints that have developed that might reveal new facts on my ancestors. In particular I wanted to see if there was any new info that might help me determine the date of death for Delora. Up to this time I have never been able to locate any documentation that would confirm when she passed away. I knew from my grandmother's memoirs that her father Samuel died in 1880 but her mother was in too poor health to care for seven children ranging in age from 4 months to 15 years old (two of the nine had already left home).  Most of the children were relocated with relatives or friends, including my grandmother who was sent to live with a family in New Hampshire. But so far I have struck out finding any traces of Delora after her husband died and her children scattered into different homes.

One of the nice features of Ancestry.com membership is that it computer searches for possible links pertaining to all members in your tree. These searches are called "hints" and identified by little green fluttering leaves to catch your attention. There were two fluttering leaves on Delora that I immediately pursued when I saw them. Both hints turned out to be dead ends but if you don't look into them you could pass by some important info.  There are other avenues of search that I have tried and probably haven't even thought to try to determine Delora's fate but for now, the timing of the end of her life remains a mystery. But with nine children and three more sired by Samuel with another wife, there's plenty of other mysteries to search. One of those is Delora's oldest child, a daughter called Lenora born in 1863. There were leaves fluttering on Lenora's profile page too and since I don't know her date of death either, I decided to take a look at the hints and see what I could find. There were two historical record hints and one family tree hint (trees belonging to other Ancestry.com members that match the name of my ancestor).  Up to this point I had documented Lenora's birth year and residence on Federal Census reports in 1870 and 1930. In addition I had two newspaper clippings from my grandmother's files that supported Lenora's existence, one by listing her married name in 1930 and the other possibly referring to her residence in North Waterford, Maine in 1926. So I had already documented some information on her and I hoped the new hints might add more information on my grandmother's older sister. Lenora and my grandmother, by the way, were older sisters to Rollin Farquhar Webber, the same gentleman I have written about in some previous postings.

So now I have some hints to pursue on Lenora and hope I'll have more success on documenting information on her life than I did on her mother. The website profile page is pictured above with the hints circled at the top right and the newspaper clippings noted in the media gallery section to the left and below the hints. Looking for Lenora will continue as my search goes on.

Uncle Rollin's Headstone

On our return home from New England this past July we made a scheduled stop at Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC to visit the grave of my grand uncle, Rollin Farquhar Webber. Back around April 2011 I started posting the results of my research on Uncle Rollin. I found him a pretty interesting character, perhaps because I was able to document a sizable amount of information on his life from photographs, newspaper articles, census reports, and more. Starting with the first record I uncovered on him, the 1880 Federal Census Record for Oxford, Maine where he was listed at the age of "4/12" (four months) and ending with the Allentown, Pa newspaper obituary notice I found in the public library in Allentown. After serving as a fusilier (counterpart to today's Marines) in the Spanish American War, he distinguished himself as a machinist at the Boston Navy Yard, the Washington (DC) Navy Yard, and finished his career with the Navy serving as an inspector with the Navy's Bureau of Ordinance in Bethlehem, Pa. He married his first wife in 1910 but sadly, she died from complications from childbirth a year and a half later. The unnamed infant son also died. He married his second wife in 1913 and in 1915 they had a son who was named after Rollin. I found one reference to the son in 1930 when he accompanied Rollin to New Hampshire to celebrate the 25th wedding anniversary of Rollin's sister, Florence (my grandmother), but I've uncovered very little else on both the son and the second wife. Apparently the second marriage was not a happy union despite their having a child together as documented by wife #2 listed on the 1930 Washington, DC Federal Census with marital status "D" for divorced while Uncle Rollin shows up in Philadelphia that same year with wife number three. The newspaper article on the silver wedding anniversary lists Rollin in attendance "from Philadelphia with his wife and son" but I can't tell for sure which wife he was with, number 2 or number 3! Probably 3 but just my guess. Rollin also managed to be issued a patent in 1915 for a "motor vehicle starting device."  From this and his varied assignments with the Navy yard and the Ordinance Bureau, I'm pretty sure Rollin wasn't just your average everyday journeyman machinist but a very skilled machinist to say the least.

I'm familiar with Rollin's third wife, Lois. But before I started researching I didn't know anything about the previous wives or a Rollin, Jr. Nor did my sister who as a few years older than me, is my only living source to verify family genealogy. The truth of the matter is I recognize Uncle Rollin and Aunt Lois in photos but I don't know if their images are actually in my memory from firsthand exposure or if I'm just associating their faces with photographs where they have been identified. There could be a memory link inside my degenerating brain cells because I know for a fact we were all in the same place in 1955. The occasion was my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. I was recently fortunate enough to locate the guestbook for their golden wedding anniversary. And listed on the guest pages at the top of one page were "Bro (brother) Rollin F Webber & Lois" and my distinguished signature as a ten year old guest on the opposite page squeezed in between my sister and my brother.  I don't remember the celebration. Even though, there's strong evidence we were in the same place at the same time. But at ten years old I probably was paying more attention to other things besides people's faces. Especially, older people's faces!

Rollin F Webber

Lois Webber

These two photos were probably taken around 1940 when Rollin and Lois were in their late fifties.  So if there are some facial recognition memories lurking inside my brain they would be of Rollin and Lois when they were in their seventies. So you could say I've got photographic memory but it has nothing to do with retention. I'm just fortunate enough to have inherited a lot of photographs to go along with my family history research. 

Guestbook for 50th wedding anniversary

Guestbook signatures

In the summer of 2011 I completed most of my research on the lives of Rollin and Lois. Rollin's obituary indicated his funeral in 1960 was being handled by a Washington, DC funeral home. And from them I was able to pinpoint his burial in Congressional Cemetery. He is buried with his first wife, Cora, and the unnamed infant son who was interred with her in 1912. I had a photograph of the headstone I found online through the FindaGrave website but it was blurry and couldn't see the engraving. So our July trip to Congressional Cemetery was to see where he rests and to get better photos of the headstone. Congressional is a beautifully maintained cemetery located on the southern edge of DC. It's old and worn and sits inside an urban setting but the area is not drab and dreary like we feared we might find. The cemetery gets some Federal financial assistance for historical preservation and we were surprised to find that a lot of revenue for maintaining the grounds comes from dog walkers. Dog walkers pay an annual fee for the privilege of walking their dogs on the grounds. We saw plenty of them and got to meet a few. Sounded like a perfect solution for dog owners to have a place to walk their dogs in the middle of a city and for the cemetery to earn revenue. A win-win story if I've ever seen one and did not see any evidence that the dog owners were not cleaning up after their pets. 

This brick path leads to where Rollin is buried

Rollin's headstone is the 3-tiered monument left of center

The base of the headstone on one side is engraved with Rollin's first wife's maiden name, TREWOLLA. Gertrude L. Trewolla, was Cora (Trewolla) Webber's sister and she is buried with her sister and brother in law in the same plot. 

Gertrude L. (Trewolla) 1868 - 1933 

On another side of the same headstone the base is engraved with the name WEBBER where Rollin dedicated with engraving to "my beloved wife, Cora L. and infant son" and lists their birth and death dates as well as his own. Rollin died in 1960.

Rollin, Cora, and infant son

I found out from the funeral home that arranged for moving Rollin's body from Allentown to Washington that Aunt Lois accompanied his remains on a train and was met by the DC funeral home to coordinate burial. Lois was married to Rollin for thirty years and she showed her love and loyalty to her husband by honoring his wishes to be buried with the young wife and infant he lost fifty years previous. Lois passed away in 1973. She had remained in the same home she and Rollin shared in Allentown since 1936. The same funeral home that helped her move Rollin to DC coordinated moving her remains back to Indiana where she is buried in a family plot with her parents.  

Heritage Trail Road Trip

At the beginning of July we searched some family cemeteries in Kentucky as described in my post, "Gone But Not Forgotten." From Kentucky we drove to New Englend where my ongoing search took us to Shelburne, Massachusetts and Langdon, New Hampshire. I had never seen the burial place of my mother's sister, my Aunt Alice.  Alice W Currier was born in Langdon, NH in 1909, three years after my mother, and is buried in Shelburne, Ma with her husband,  Donald R. Morrissey. They rest together in Arms Cemetery in Shelburne.


The entrance to Arms Cemetery and the view as we entered makes it clear that it is a well maintained and finely manicured graveyard. Like everywhere in the Northeast these days the grass is somewhat burnt up and yellowing due to drought but the large number of trees providing shade throughout the grounds allows for plenty of green grass.

The cemetery is cradled between forested hills (people from Massachusetts would call them mountains!) with a winding river on the West, a pond on the East, and the Mohawk trail running East/West on the South. It is a beautiful setting for an attractive and peaceful resting place for my Aunt Alice and Uncle Don. We visited on a hot and humid Wednesday morning and only saw two other cars visiting during the hour and a half we spent there. The cemetery has two central circles around which the headstones are arranged in semi-circular rows. 

The photo on the right shows the entrance road leading to the first circle which contains a fountain and what's called, the Arms Monument.  We drove around this circle and proceeded to the Northwest side of the cemetery where we knew the Morrissey's were buried. I had obtained the plot numbers and a map from communication with members of the Shelburne Historical Society. My search coincided with the society's efforts to catalogue and photograph all Arms Cemetery headstones for the FindaGrave website. 

Donald Morrissey and Alice Currier Morrissey rest beneath a headstone engraved with their names and years of birth and death.  The stone is in good shape as you would expect it to be after only fifteen years but did have some moss growing on the face which we cleaned with a soft sponge and water. 

This stone is placed about ten feet or so forward of another Morrissey headstone marking the burial site for Donald's parents and two sisters (one of whom died in infancy at 15 days of age) and his maternal grandmother.   Both stones share some shade from a tree next to the larger stone and since they are on the Western perimeter of the cemetery it appears they are in the sun for just a few hours in the morning followed by a longer period of shade in the afternoon and evening. That's my conclusion, anyway, and seems a valid theory to explain why the stones are surrounded by mostly green grass. 

There are other Morrissey's buried in Arms Cemetery that I have not fully researched yet. I believe they might be uncles or cousins of my Uncle Don. My uncle's grandfather, Thomas Morrissey, apparently was born in Ireland around 1846 and resided in Buckland, Ma per the 1900 Federal Census. Buckland is in the Shelburne area and is where Uncle Don was born. I have no record of where or when Thomas Morrissey died so that's more research that I will have to pursue.

Satisfied that my Aunt Alice and Uncle Don were resting in a beautiful and nicely maintained setting we departed Arms Cemetery late in the morning to look around the area a bit and grab some lunch. We had seen signs for the Bridge Of Flowers in Shelburne Falls and that sounded interesting so we made a brief tourist stop to check it out. It was very nice but hard not to notice that most of our fellow tourists were our generation or older! Guess that's what happens when we age...we have plenty of time on our hands and nothing better to do than check out tourist traps so just like sheep, we join the herd (or flock) and walk around viewing and smelling flowers.

After lunch we hopped back onto I-91 North into Vermont and then jumped East over the Connecticut River and into New Hampshire on NH-12 and NH-123. Our destination was Langdon, New Hampshire. My mother was born in Langdon and although I'm not sure, her sister (my Aunt Alice) may have been born there as well. Their father, Marshall Currier had inherited a home in Langdon when his father passed away in 1902. Langdon is only about 60 miles from Shelburne so it only took a little over an hour to reach our intended destination. Our GPS, (who we call Penelope) decided to crap out on us and went totally brain dead once we got inside New Hampshire. Fortunately, I had already printed up Google Map directions so we weren't entirely lost when Penelope suffered her dementia. Our intent was to locate the house my great grandfather, Austin Currier (1838 - 1902) had built and passed on to his son Marshall. We last saw the house in 1977 on a road trip with my mother who wanted to show us the house she was born in. She had no problem finding it despite the fact she had not seen it in several decades. I tried finding it a few years ago utilizing my world famous dead reckoning technique and found nothing. But in my own defense I had two passengers in the car with me who got nervous whenever I started to drive on unpaved roads and protested going any further into uncharted territories. My wife and sister don't have the same faith in my internal GPS that I do.

Anyway, a few months ago in anticipation of this trip to Langdon I found some old maps online depicting the town in 1892 and 1860. Although not official plat maps, the maps I found identified land owners by name in general locations. By viewing these I was able to approximate the general location of the farms owned by my great grandfather, Austin Currier and his father, John Currier. Moreover I have a copy of a letter my Aunt Alice had written to my mother in 1977 (same letter mentioned in my June post about letters) describing the approximate locations of John Currier's homestead as well as the land owned by his father, Joseph Currier.  All in Langdon and adjacent to each other. Aunt Alice's letter stated that the two oldest homesteads (John and Joseph) were "cellar holes" and she referred to the Austin Currier home as "Hillside Farm." Armed with her contributions to our search and trying to recall details of the 1977 trip with my mother we unplugged Penelope and suggested she take a nap while we forged ahead with pre-printed Google Map directions and satellite images of our objectives.

Langdon 1892 - The "A. Currier" notation is one and the same  "Hillside Farm"

Langdon 1860 - The "J Currier" notation is John Currier (Joseph died in 1854)

Thanks to the advance research we found Hillside Farm quite easily. It has been modified and improvements made both to the structure and the grounds since 1977 and the result is a beautiful home. It is located at the far reaches of a dead end dirt road which provides plenty of privacy. I introduced myself to the owners and explained the purpose of my unannounced visit was simply to see the house where my mother was born and asked for their permission to take photographs. They graciously approved and granted my wife and I permission to look around and take pictures as much as we wanted.

Hillside Farm

Sandi admires the views looking South from the house

A reflection pool with waterfall behind the home make a peaceful setting

Hard to see but in distant pasture was a herd of bison!

From Hillside Farm we resumed our search to see if we could locate the cellar holes of the homesteads of John Currier and Joseph Currier. Long story short...no could find. Even Aunt Alice's 1977 letter indicated their locations were largely overgrown "when we were last there" which didn't generate much optimism we'd find anything. We didn't but we gave it a good shot at least. Aunt Alice had indicated that one of the cellar holes was near "the Bascom farm."  The Bascom name is mentioned on both the 1892 and 1860 maps as located towards the north of the Curriers so we roamed around a bit in that direction when we left Hillside. Nothing jumped out at us even though some of the turns of the road looked familiar to our 1977 visit when we found and photographed what my mother thought was the cellar hole of John Currier's home.

1977 photo of a Langdon cellar hole

In the vicinity of where I thought I recalled this photo being taken we saw an attractive home with what appeared to be a good sized vegetable garden off to the side. A woman was working in the garden  so we stopped to see if she might be aware of any cellar holes in the area. We showed her some of our maps and info citing the neighboring Bascoms and Curriers and were surprised to hear that she was part of the Bascom family that has continuing farming operations in Langdon. She was familiar with the Currier name (there is a Currier Road in Langdon) but was not familiar with any cellar hole locations. She volunteered to call a relative (father, I think) and was given some suggestions of possible places to look that sounded like they were pretty far off the beaten path. Of course, most things in Langdon are far off the beaten path but while I'm not too bashful about driving around on dirt roads in the middle of nowhere for the sake of ancestry searches, I have some reservations about walking around in people's back yards which is what it sounded like our new found Bascom family friend might have been suggesting. It was very generous of her to allow us to interrupt her gardening and even make calls to assist our search. We were grateful for her attempts to help us but it was getting late in the afternoon by this time and we still had to drive back to Connecticut for the night so we thanked her and departed. She volunteered to call if she or her family came up with any more ideas of cellar hole locations so I left her my cell phone number. 

I have found in the course of researching family history that most people try to be very helpful if you ask for their assistance.  Our visit to Langdon is proof of this both from the Hillside residents and the Bascom family descendants. And while my communication with Shelburne Historical Society members was either on the phone or online, they too were willing to bend over backwards to help us with our ancestry search. If any of them read this post, please accept my gratitude for your contributions to my search. And because of people like you, my search goes on.