Cummings and Grant Ancestors in a Book

Thank you to the person who sent me this research tip that my Cummings and Grant ancestry is detailed in a book, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution, by Bernard Bailyn with the assistance of Barbara DeWolfe.

Book jacket
Voyagers to the West

William Henry Cummins (1858-1882) was one of my third great grandfathers. He lived his life in Catskill, Greene County, New York. About 1877 he married Anna Belle Heiser (1860-1934). I descend from their only known child, Nellie Cummings (1879-1965). (These surnames are also spelled Cummings and Hyser.)

Family tree
Parents and grandparents of William Henry Cummins (1858-1882)
Catskill, Greene County, New York

After William's death, Anna Belle joined her parents in Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey. This is 120 miles south of Catskill.

Map showing distance between Catskill, New York and Jersey City, New Jersey

William Cummins and Anna Belle Heiser/Hyser were both buried in their respective family plots in the Catskill Village Cemetery in Catskill. The stones next to William reveal are his maternal grandparents, Annie Cumming (1793-1876) and John A Grant (1792-1882), revealing the intermarriage in his family. 

Gravestones of William Cummins' maternal grandparents,
Annie Cumming (1793-1876) and John Grant (1792-1882).
Catskill Village Cemetery, New York.

Around 1880 the State of New York phased in laws requiring births, marriages, and deaths to be recorded with the State. Today the indexes are published in a few places. You can view for free at FamilySearch. The individual certificates are not available online or in any repository; instead, they must be ordered for a fee from the State.

Recording was spotty at first. I do not see a match in the index for William's death in 1882.

There are entries in the index for:

James Cummings 1912 Catskill Fourth great grandfather

Jane Cummings 1899 Fourth great grandmother

John Grant 1882 Fifth great grandfather

I ordered these three death certificates from New York State in February 2024. I do not expect to receive these records for a few years. I have been waiting two and a half years for a death certificate requested in March of 2022.

Death Index New York State
John A Grant died December 27, 1882 in Catskill.
I sent a copy of this index with highlighting to increase the chances
that the State finds this record and fulfills my order.

The grandparents of William Cummins were born in the 1790s, after the American Revolution ended. The excerpt in the book explains the arrival of the prior generation as they arrived in New York as the War was starting.

Gleaned from the book is some genealogy as well as a history lesson about what was happening in Scotland and New York in the 1770s.

In 1774 John Cumming arrived in New York from Scotland with several other people, mostly Grants and Cummings. "He was a native of Strathspey, the broad valley of the Spey River, southeast of Inverness in the eastern Highlands." John was a half brother of James Grant, governor of East Florida. John's brother was Alexander Cumming, a watch maker in London.

In 1776 John Cumming purchased land called Tapugieht, 1000 acres of land in the Catskill Patent, thirty miles south of Albany. He renamed this area Oswald Field. The families farmed the land. (This was in Albany County but became Greene County in 1800.)

This was a tumultuous time. The American Revolutionary War began in 1775. Great Britain versus the Colonies, which became the United States of America. John Cummings was deemed a Loyalist, meaning he supported the British crown and not the newly emerging country in which he found himself. (What a person had to do, or not do, to prove loyalty to one side or the other can vary and is subject to debate and confusion and is not the topic of this writing, though it is fascinating to explore.)

John Cumming was eventually arrested, lost his land and possessions, and allowed to return to Britain.

Many of the people who originally traveled with John Cumming in 1774 remained on the land, which lost the name Oswald Field.

I would normally place an old map here to help visualize these places, but "Oswald Field" and "Tapugieht" are not used in the literature and do not show up in a Google search. Use this link to view a map of Catskill from 1798- after the War. No Oswald Field or Tapugieht on this map.

I suppose that my third great grandfather, William Cummins, descended from these Scottish immigrants to Catskill who were thrown into a war shortly after their arrival. His grandparents were born to people who grew up during the Revolutionary War.

Citation of book:
Bailyn, Bernard, and Barbara DeWolfe. "The Rise and Fall of Oswald Field." Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution. Alfred A Knopf, Inc, 1986, pp. 597-604.

Locating the Death of Anna Hyser (1860-1934)

Anna Belle Hyser (1860-1934) was one of my great, great, great grandmothers. She was widowed three times. I descend from her first marriage to William Henry Cumming (1856-1882).

Anna was from Catskill in Greene County, New York. By 1885, she had relocated to Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey. She shares a headstone with her parents, Louman Hyser (1826-1895) and Catherine Eckler (1835-1889), and her siblings in the Catskill Village Cemetery. The year of death is on her headstone, but I could not find the exact date and location of her death.

Picture by Jody Lutter
November 21, 2010

This month, with the receipt of a death certificate from the State of Florida, I finally have Anna's exact date and location of passing.

Death certificate
Anna Brower (born Hyser)
February 12, 1934

Anna died February 12, 1934 in Orlando, Orange County, Florida at 440 West Minister [Westminster?] Avenue. Her address was in Greenwich, Connecticut. Informant was Mrs Edna Bullock of the same address. I don't know who this person is. Why was Anna at this place? Was she visiting friends?

The last record I could find for Anna was the 1920 census. She was living in Orangetown, Rockland County, New York with her daughter, Beulah Miller (1890-1940), and Beulah's husband, Raymond Sprague (1887-1983), and their children.

In the 1930 census, Beulah and Raymond Sprague were living in Greenwich, Fairfield County, Connecticut. Anna was not listed with them. My grandmother had told me that Anna married four times. It was possible that Anna had remarried, then died using her husband's surname, making her very difficult to find. I had to look at marriages and deaths in New York State, New York City, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The indexes for all of these locations have been enhanced and expanded over the years, yet I could not find Anna.

The Connecticut death index can be accessed for free through the State Library's website. These are deaths for the years 1897-2001.

There is no good match for Anna, died 1934, in the index of deaths in Connecticut.

Anna's daughter, Beulah (for whom my grandmother was named), died in Florida in 1940 while returning home from a vacation trip. I found this information in a newspaper from Kentucky. This is why you need to search states unrelated to the geographic area in which your people of interest resided. Beulah's death was probably reported far away because of her husband's business with the New York Stock Exchange. "Beulah" was not named directly in the article.

The family was not living in Florida, so I had not thought to check there for Anna. When I checked the Florida death index, I found an entry for Anna Brower, died 1934 in Orange County.

Florida Death Index at FamilySearch.org

The Florida death index is free at FamilySearch. The index is also at Ancestry behind a paywall. The difference at Ancestry is that you can view the actual index and see a certificate number. In the transcribed indexed, Anna's certificate number was missing.

Florida Death Index at Ancestry.com

Based on the index alone, I could not ascertain if this is my Anna or not. I needed the actual record of death. Applications for copies of vital records are on the website of the Florida State Department of Health. (This is the current website as of this writing.) The cost was five dollars and the wait time was two weeks. The cause of death was not blocked and I did not have to send any proof of identity. (Compare this to the hurdles in New York and New Jersey.)

Although the information on the death certificate was scarce, this was my Anna.

---If anyone researches on location in Florida, could you let us know if you can walk into a repository and look through records yourself? Thank you.---

I also requested the death certificate for Anna's daughter, Beulah.

Beulah died April 11, 1940 in Sanford, Seminole County, Florida from head and chest wounds due to a car accident. The newspaper article stated that she died instantly; however, the death certificate states that she died at the Fernald-Laughton Hospital 25 minutes later. She was removed to Greenwich, Connecticut- her residence. No cemetery was named.

Had I relied on the 1940 census for Beulah's date of death, I would have been misguided. Although the information was supposed to reflect who was alive on April 1, 1940, Raymond was listed as a widow.

Since the couple was driving home after returning from the Virgin Islands, I checked ship records. Beulah and Raymond were on a ship sailing from Ponce, Puerto Rico to Tampa, Florida from March 30 through April 2, 1940. The enumeration date on the census is blank, but must have been after Beulah died on April 11th.

Isn't that eerie? She died soon after this record was made.

Beulah's widower, Raymond Sprague, remarried to Janet Griffith (1904-1982). I do not know where Beulah or Raymond are buried. If anyone knows, please send word.

Marriage of Step Siblings

A marriage between step-siblings is not a rare encounter.

Below is an explanation with documents on one such marriage.

Richard Everet Wolff (1908-1992) was my father's second cousin, three times removed. The common ancestors were Peter John Hyser (1790-1874) and Ella Fritz (1801-1847) of Greene County, New York.

Richard married his step-sister, Grace Liebeherr (1914-1993) in 1939 in South Orange, Essex County, New Jersey. One year earlier, Grace's mother, Edna Schermerhorn Hogan (1884-1938), who was also Richard's step-mother, died. I don't know if her death influenced the timing of the marriage. Perhaps a descendant could write in to clarify?

Witnesses Edna Gamble Liebeherr (sister of Grace Liebeherr) and G Wallace McComb.

Death certificate for Annie Coombe, first wife of Charles Wolff, 1927
in Westfield, Union County, New Jersey.

Death certificate of Edna Hogan, second wife of Charles Wolff, 1938
in South Orange, Essex County, New Jersey.

Richard's parents were Charles Endicott Wolff (1881-1946) and Annie Rosalee Coombe (1886-1927). They had married in Jersey City in 1907.

In 1928, one year after his first wife's death, Charles Wolff remarried to Edna Hogan in East Orange, Essex County, New Jersey. Edna was the widow of Richard Liebeherr- Grace's father, who had died in 1924.

Death certificate of Richard Liebeherr, first husband of Edna Hogan, 1924
in East Orange, Essex County, New Jersey.
Informant was Ernest L Broome of Tarrytown, New York.
Why was his wife not the informant?

The merged families in the 1930 federal census at 116 Prospect Street, East Orange, Essex County, New Jersey.

The family remained living together in 1940 following the death of Mother Edna
and the marriage of Richard and Grace.
195 Prospect Street, East Orange.

Family Tree Repair: Hyser and Preston

While working on a branch of my Hyser family, I noticed that online family trees had a different year and place of death for Adelaide Hyser, wife of Sherwood Preston.  Adelaide was a sister of my father's 3rd great grandfather, Louman Hyser (1826-1895).

In the 1855 New York State census, Adelaide and husband lived in Catskill, Greene County, with two children.  In the 1860 federal census, Adelaide was living with her father and three children, minus the husband, in Catskill.  Adelaide relocated to Jersey City after the 1870 census.

My source for Adelaide's death was from a compiled genealogy of the Rockefeller family.  In this work, Adelaide died in Jersey City, [Hudson County], New Jersey on February 6, 1907.

Online trees had the year of death as 1908.  Places included Jersey City, Union Hill in Morris County, and Union Hill in Hudson County.

The source for this date and these places of death was from an application by Irving Sherwood Preston (a great grandson of Adelaide) to join the Sons of the American Revolution under the patriot Simon Rockefeller.  In viewing the actual application [database at Ancestry.com], you can see that the date given for Adelaide's death was February 6, 1908, but no place of death was given.

The compiled genealogy and the SAR application are both derivative sources with questionable reliability.  I needed the actual death certificate.  Fortunately, I copied many years of Preston deaths because I am a Preston descendant on my mother's side of the family.  The last Preston in my line was Anna Preston (1890-1921).  I have not found a relation between my great grandmother Anna Preston and Adelaide Hyser's husband Sherwood Preston.

According to the death certificate, Adelaide M Preston, daughter of Peter Hyzer and Ella [Fritz], died in Jersey City on February 6, 1908.

Her obituary appeared in the newspaper Jersey Journal, viewable at GenealogyBank.com (pay site).  A textual search for "Preston" did not yield this result.  I searched by date.

Burial was in Catskill.  Adelaide's father, brother, and other family members were buried at Catskill Village Cemetery.  I don't see a grave listing for Adelaide online.

Actual Record versus Index

I was reviewing a New Jersey (second) marriage with someone from Jersey City in 1888.  We don't have the original record, only the entry (no image) at FamilySearch in the collection, New Jersey Marriages, 1678-1985.

The question was:  As this is a remarriage, is the bride's name in the index her name at birth or her first husband's name?

The answer:  We don't know unless we look at the record.  (The record is on microfilm in Trenton, so we aren't going to see it from our computers at home.)

I looked at some marriage returns in my possession to compare to the online index.  From Jersey City in 1886, I have the marriage return for the second marriage of bride, Anna, to James Livingstone Miller.  She was the daughter of Louman Heiser (Hyser) and Catherine Eckler.  She first married William H Cummings in 1877 in Catskill, Greene County, New York.

Marriage Return, 1886, Jersey City, New Jersey
James Livingstone Miller, son of Christopher Miller and Agnes M Barton
Anna Bell Hyser, daughter of Luman Hyser and Catherine Eckler

"Cumming" was listed as Anna's "maiden name," then crossed out and "Hyson" (Hyser) written in.  "Last name, if a widow," was Hysen Cumming.

Next I turned to the index at FamilySearch to see which name appears.

In the index, Anna is listed by her name at birth, Hyser, or at least a construed version of the name, Hyren.  The married name, Cumming, is not mentioned at all.  The middle names of the parties are omitted from the index, but are available on the actual record.  Marital status is single and does not change if the record is for James or Anna, yet the actual marriage record is clear that this was Anna's second marriage.

James Livingstone Miller in the 1887-1888 Jersey City (Hudson County, New Jersey) directory

By 1900, Anna Hyser had married again, this time to Nicholas Brower.  My grandmother told me she married four times.  Still looking for another husband.

Shared Ancestor Hints for AncestryDNA

One of the alluring features of Ancestry's DNA testing is the Shared Ancestor Hints derived from family tree comparisons.  (The other feature is finding missing close relatives.)  My test produced over 15,000 matches.  (Can that be?  306 pages of 50 matches per page.)

With my test attached to my mother's tree, only one DNA cousin produced a shared ancestor hint.  This is my mother's second cousin in the Preston/Sheehey branch.  We had already made contact before the tests results were in.

Attaching my father's tree to my test profile produced five people with shared ancestor hints.  (When my father's results are ready, these five people should also match him.  If not, then the shared DNA likely is from my mother and these family tree hints are misleading.)  One of the DNA cousins has a private tree, so I could not review the hint.

Of the remaining four shared ancestor hints, two were for the same set of 5th great grandparents:  Jacob vander Hoof (1772-1847) and Ann Hopler (1772-1841) of Morris County, New Jersey.  These folks are buried in the deMouth Family Burial Ground in Boonton.  I have also met other descendants in my DNA travels.  Based on our family trees, one DNA match is a fourth cousin, twice removed and the other is a sixth cousin.

The other two matches are from the New York Hyser branch of my tree.

Common ancestors are Simon Rockefeller and Anna Bahr, based on our family trees.
We also share some identical DNA.  Is it from these shared ancestors?  We do not know.

Note that this Shared Ancestry Hint only reported Elizabeth Burke as the common ancestor.
In both of our trees, we have John as the husband.
Perhaps the alternate spelling of Lehman/Layman threw off the calculation.

Although on paper I am a cousin to these matches, the shared DNA could easily come from another ancestral line that is not documented in at least one of our family trees.  That is how I have over 15,000 matches but only 6 matching family trees.  Someone has not documented back far enough, or someone has a non-parental event.  I could have easily found any of these DNA matches by comparing trees- no DNA testing required.

When my father's results are available, I expect him to have far fewer matches.  I am trying to use the AncestryDNA Chrome Extension to reveal which segments of DNA are shared by the matches in order to triangulate.  AncestryDNA provides no chromosome browser function to do this directly, unlike 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA.  The high number of my matches is causing the Chrome Extension to freeze.

Book of Eckler

Congratulations and thank you to Paul E Eckler for publishing a family history book, Eckler-Eiklor-Eaklor-Akler Family of Hudson Valley, New York and Bradford County, Pennsylvania.  This is a labor of love.  The original immigrant Christian Eigler was born about 1680 in the Rhine Valley region of what is now Germany and came to New York around 1711 with his wife, Maria Neff, and other Palatines.

You may reach the author, Paul E Eckler, at paul.eckler@att.net

 

 

Page 42: details of my Eckler becoming Hyser

The most recent Eckler in my ancestry was Catharine Eckler, born in 1830 in Catskill, Greene County, New York.  Her mother was Maria Layman.  The Layman family, also spelled Lehman, had many intermarriages with the Ecklers.  Catharine's parents were cousins to each other.  Her mother's great grandfather was her father's grandfather, Adrew Eckler, born in 1732.  This is an especially interesting line to me because it represents my father's direct maternal line.  Ten generations back from my father, all on his direct maternal line, are in this book, to Anna Maria Kieffer, born about 1700.

Great job, Paul!