The Unknown Origins of Ruben Bishop 1805-1856

Who are the parents of Reuben Levy Bishop, my fourth great grandfather? He died in Morristown, Morris County, New Jersey in 1856, age 52.

In the prior post I demonstrated why the father of Reuben is likely not Stratton Bishop (1760-1823) of Bridgeton in Cumberland County, New Jersey.

Reuben Bishop married Susan C Bell in the 1830s. Her parents were John Bell and Jane Bockoven- according to her 1881 marriage record to Edward deGroot.

From this union five children have been identified:

1. Mary Jane Bishop, born about 1836, died in 1910. Married Edward Skinner in 1854.

2. Emma Louisa Bishop, born about 1839, died in 1888. Married Silas Totten in 1856.

3. Julia Bishop, born about 1841, died in 1902. Married George Joseph Ward and William Condon.

4. William Reuben Bishop (my third great grandfather), born about 1842, died in 1915. Married Susan Jane Marsh.

5. George F Bishop, born in 1848, died 1919. Married Mary E Frances Garrabrant.

In the 1840 census, "Rheubin" Bishop was enumerated in Morris Township, Morris County, New Jersey. Two adults, one male and one female, resided with two female children under age 5. These were probably Mary Jane, born around 1836, and Emma Louisa, born around 1839. 

1840 United States Federal Census
Morris Township, Morris County, New Jersey

In 1850, Reuben Bishop was enumerated in Morris Township with his wife, Susan Bell, and all five of their children.

Reuben Bishop, age 8, is William Reuben Bishop

Register of Marriages and Deaths, Morris County, New Jersey, 1848-1867.
Volume Z.

When Reuben Bishop died in 1856, New Jersey was not issuing individual certificates. A record of his death was entered as a single line in a ledger book. (This ledger book, Volume Z, appears at Ancestry in the collection titled New Jersey, U.S., Death Index, 1848-1878, 1901-2017.) His occupation was listed as Hostler. This was someone who either tended to horses or transported cargo.

His birthplace could hold the best clue. Reuben was born in "one of the Eastern States." Hmm. So not New Jersey? We will return to this.

Places of burial are not listed on this page in the death ledger. A cemetery is also omitted from the death notice in the local paper. A possible match is in Evergreen Cemetery in Morristown, Morris County, New Jersey.

findagrave.com/memorial/173374681/

The date of death is off by one day. Curiously, the burial date was years later in 1873.

I called and visited Evergreen Cemetery. The records, if any exist, cannot be shown to me. The staff did kindly bring me to this site in Section O. There is no marker for Rueben Bishop.

Site of burial of "Rueben" Bishop in 1873, next to Jane Totten.
Evergreen Cemetery, Morristown, Morris County, New Jersey.
The grounds are beautifully maintained with historical and military sections throughout.
The records, however, are not available to the public.

I wrote to the creator and manager of this memorial on Find A Grave, but have yet to receive responses. How did this person access this record? Where was Reuben from 1856, when he died, until 1873, when he was buried at this location? (I submitted updates to other memorials managed by this person. The changes were made on September 14, 2024. Thus, someone is monitoring the account.)

Materials for Evergreen Cemetery are available for in-person use at the Morristown and Morris Township Library in the Caroline Rose Foster North Jersey History and Genealogy Center. Among the items are maps, section maps, transcriptions of gravestones, and published books.

Section map of Evergreen Cemetery, Morristown, New Jersey
available at the Morristown and Morris Township Library

Section O map, Evergreen Cemetery, Morristown, New Jersey.
Ruben Bishop owned plot 53.

What is lacking in these materials are records of burials. They might only be at Evergreen Cemetery, which forbids access. Because Rueben Bishop has no stone, he does not appear in the transcriptions of stones.

I need to know where he was originally buried. This could reveal family connections. Why was he moved to (or within) Evergreen Cemetery in 1876?

Two other Bishops, William and Reuben, lived in Morris County.

1- William Bishop (1768-1844) and his wife, Susan Scofield (1773-1852), were buried at First Presbyterian Churchyard in Morristown. They were from Connecticut.

Bishop family grave at First Presbyterian Churchyard,
Morristown, Morris County, New Jersey.

William Bishop and Susannah Scofield married March 31, 1796
in Stamford, Fairfield County, Connecticut.
Transcription.
Collection at Ancestry

Was my Reuben from Connecticut also? Is this why his death record listed his birth as "one of the Eastern States?"

My Reuben named a son William.

2- An earlier Reuben Bishop of Morris County.

In 1829 Reuben Bishop sold property in Chatham to Vincent Boisaubin and Dr Henry Prentiss Green.

Reuben Bishop appeared on an 1814 tax list in Chatham. He owned one horse.

3- Levi Bishop and family were enumerated in the 1855 New Jersey State census in Chatham. Only heads of household are named. In this residence were an adult male and female, two female children, and two male children.

I wonder if this is my Reuben Levy Bishop listed by his middle name.

Next research strategies:

---Continue searching for records in Morris County and neighboring counties in New Jersey.

---Research these Bishop families in Connecticut.

---Mine the DNA matches

Viewing a Family Tree at My Heritage

My Heritage now offers pedigree views of family trees. This was a desperately needed modification.

In this view, you can see the ancestors of a person.

My Heritage originally offered only a "family view." If you clicked on a person, you saw one line of ancestors and could not click back to the original person. This made navigating a tree frustrating.

I discussed this issue three years ago.

My Heritage became an important factor in genealogy research when the DNA testing site 23andMe enabled customers to link to My Heritage to display family trees.

My Heritage is free to sign up, but a subscription charge must be paid to add larger trees and access records.

My Heritage offers its own autosomal DNA testing services. The price for a kit is in line with the other testing companies. DNA tested at My Heritage is compatible to upload to GedMatch.

If you tested your DNA elsewhere, you can upload the file for free to My Heritage for an ethnicity estimate and family matches. No subscription is required to access this information.

I have found many more matches from United Kingdom at My Heritage as compared to the other testing companies.

In the examples below, the tester's parents were from Ireland. At other testing sites, he has many distant matches. At My Heritage, he has several close matches.

Waiting on Family Tree Maker Update

I use Family Tree Maker software to organize ancestors (and some living people).

MacKiev, the same company who brings us Mavis Beacon typing lessons, recently acquired Family Tree Maker.

The joy of this particular program is that it aligns with Ancestry.com.  Shaking leaves show possible record matches at Ancestry.  The tree on your computer can be synced to your tree on Ancestry for the world to see.

An interim upgrade was offered until MacKiev's new 2017 version is released.  Still waiting on that 2017 release.  Ancestry.com trees cannot be updated using the 2014.1 version.  (You can still change your tree directly on Ancestry.com.)

But there is hope.  Tonight an email offered me a chance to be a beta tester of the 2017 version.  If I become a beta tester, it looks like I have a small window of time in which to try to update my Ancestry.com trees.

So I signed up.

I should be notified tomorrow if chosen.

Via the sign up process, I learned where to find some interesting facts about the tree, such as average life span (66 years!), generations (17), and the oldest birth date (John Stronge, born 1585 in Somerset, England).

I need to read Russ Worthington's blog more to learn more about Family Tree Maker's capabilities.

Interactive Family Tree: Places of Birth

This article follows up a previous discussion of a family tree tool by Bradford F Lyon, available (free) at his site.

Places of birth is a new display option.  You can display flags of countries (for a screen shot see my blog post about ethnic calculations based on DNA) or more specific locations, such as states of the United States.

The idea is similar to My Colorful Ancestry created in an Excel spreadsheet.  The bonus of the Lyons tool is that the result is interactive.  You can choose to highlight a specific place, which then blinks to draw your attention to ancestors from that location.

Interactive places of birth family tree
Courtesy of Bradford F Lyon

Ancestors of David Lutter
Highlighting those born in Connecticut.
His ancestors were concentrated in New Jersey and New York.

Zeroing in on a place of birth can help visualize migration paths.  If you are planning a research trip, you can see at a glance which branches were in your intended destination so you can look for their records.

And for the DNA pursuits, you can quickly find an ancestor or branch that was in a specific geographic location.  Surnames, matching or not, is not enough.  You need an intersection of geography and time.

Another new feature is selecting an ancestor and then displaying the direct line of descent to the home person.

Interactive family tree to display direct line of descent
Courtesy of Bradford F Lyon

In the above screenshots, I chose my father's eighth great grandmother, Mary Chittenden (1645-1712), from Connecticut.  From there, you can display these eleven generations all the way to today, ending with the home person, my father.  The information includes their lifespan.

Interactive Family Tree

Create your own interactive family tree through a tool developed by Bradford F Lyon.


Below is a tree of my father's ancestors.  At a glance, you can see the lines that are traced back farthest, as well as the tail ends of each line.  (Individual names appear as you scroll the cursor.)

My mother's tree, in contrast, does not extend past the 1800s, so far fewer ancestors are displayed.

You can also generate a descendant tree.  The tree below is for Joost DeRieux, the original immigrant of my Duryea line, who was born around 1635.  Not every descendant is in the family tree file that I used to create this diagram, but you can see at a glance which branches died out or which ones need further research.

Family Tree Repair: O'Donnell, Part Three

The revision of the ODonnell branch of the family in Indiana tree continues with the acquisition of death certificates.

Here are some pictures of this branch to be shared with the world, courtesy of an ODonnell in Ireland.

Rose and Agnes ODonnell were first cousins of my great grandfather, Frank ODonnell.

Father Charles Carey was the son of Agnes ODonnell.

He edited the book of Father Charles ODonnell's poems.

Using the entries for this branch at FindAGrave.com, I requested the death records for the couple Neil (Cornelius) ODonnell, died 1909, and Mary ODonnell, died 1924, from Howard County, Indiana.  Neil's record was found; Mary's was not.  As I was preparing this article, Ancestry.com published actual images of Indiana state death records with an index.  Mary's state record of death was in this collection.  Neil's was also found, but his name was mangled in the index as "Damerell" instead of ODonnell.

Please note that Mary ODonnell's parents are listed as Peter ODonnell and Margaret Gallagger [Gallagher].

This is consistent with the records of Mary's siblings, Rose and Patrick.

John James ODonnell (1882-1914), a son of Neil and Mary, is featured at FindAGrave with a former date of death of 1930.  The current administrator of his page corrected the year of death to 1914 at my bequest.  John was an acrobat in the circus.  He died in Warren, Warren County, Pennsylvania.  Ancestry.com has a collection of Pennsylvania death certificates and John's match beckoned to me as a quivering leaf in Family Tree Maker.

[This is the second person found so far who worked in the circus setting.  My great grandfather's second wife, Fiorita Lorenze (1890-1969) did "the wire act on a bicycle."]

"Circus acrobat expires.  John O'Donnell of the Wallace-Hagenbeck Shows died in P[ennsylvania]."

A search of the Indiana death certificates reveals one for a man named John ODonnell who died in 1930 in Kokomo, Indiana and was buried at Crown Point Cemetery.  But he was not the John ODonnell who was the son of Neil and Mary.  This illustrates the perils of working with common names.

The online family trees have corrected some errors but not others.

We now know that Mary was herself an ODonnell.

Her mother was Gallagher.

If only New Jersey would place its death records online . . .

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.