Envelope Addressed to George S Duryee

On eBay is an envelope for sale. The attraction would be to the stamp, I suppose. According to the additional writing on the envelope, the year was 1885. Preprinted as the sender is "United States Senate." The postmark is Washington, D.C. on April 15.

Envelope addressed to "Hon Geo. S. Duryea Newark New Jersey"

I noticed the listing because of the recipient: Hon Geo. S. Duryea of Newark, New Jersey. This is probably George Sharpe Duryee. He was a lawyer who lived and worked in Newark. He was born around 1850 to Peter Sharpe Duryee (1807-1877) and Susan Rankin (1816-1886).

Newark City Directory, 1890
George S Duryee, lawyer, 810 Broad, resided at 30 Washington place

This family cluster was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Newark. Two of George's brothers, Joseph and William, became pastors. You might see their names on baptismal, marriage, and funeral records for families throughout the New Jersey and New York areas in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Duryee family plot.
Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Newark, New Jersey.
Section E.

George died in New York City in 1896. These records are being digitized and placed online for free; however, this year is not yet available as of this writing.

Marker at Mount Pleasant Cemetery for George Sharpe Duryee
and his wife, Virginia Teackle Beasley.

Because of the offices that George held, his death was reported in newspapers across the country. 

Article in the Newark Evening News announcing the death of George Sharpe Duryee.
"The State Commissioner of Banking and Insurance Succumbs to an Illness of Two Years' Standing."

George was married once in 1878 in Torresdale, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His wife was Virginia Teackle Beasley, born about 1856 to Reverend Frederick Williamson Beasley and Virginia Teackle Bancker.

Entry in the records of All Saints Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Record collection online at Ancestry.com

Ten months after the wedding, on August 16, 1879 in Newark, Virginia gave birth to their daughter, also named Virginia. The baby and mother were not named on the birth certificate.

Birth certificate of Virginia Teackle Beasley Duryee,
born August 16, 1879 in Newark, New Jersey.
Available through the New Jersey State Archives in person or via mail.

Virginia, the mother, died two days after giving birth from an infection. She was 23 years old.

Death certificate of Virginia T Duryee, died August 18, 1879 in Newark, New Jersey.
Cause of death- puerperal peritonitis.

Death notice for Virginia Teackle Beasley, wife of George S Duryee.
Note that her date of death is given as August 17th.
Her death certificate, which is a primary source, gives the date as the 18th.

Baby Virginia died a few months later on December 24, 1879 from bronchitis.

Death certificate of Virginia Teackle Beasley Duryee, died December 24, 1879 in Newark, New Jersey.
Cause of death- capillary bronchitis.

Both mother and baby appear in the Mortality Schedules for the 1880 census.

Virginia T Duryea [Duryee] in the mortality schedule for the 1880 census

Virginia T B Duryea [Duryee], age four months, in the mortality schedule for the 1880 census

Pictures and documents for Virginia and her family are featured in family trees at Ancestry.

Missing Marriage Returns

If you cannot find a marriage return filed with the State, this article from 1897 could explain why.  It seems that Father O'Connor of Hudson County, New Jersey, was remiss in completing and filing marriage returns for several years.  When prompted, he filed seven years of marriage returns.  If you come across one of these returns, you need to keep in mind that they may not have been made at the time of the event and some were made on behalf of other priests.

I am still searching in the Trenton Archives for a marriage from 1887 performed in Bayonne, Hudson County by Reverend Egan.  The marriage turns up in the index at familysearch.org.  (Remember to use any index as a guide for where to locate the actual record.)

Familysearch.org
This marriage record should contain names of parents, which would be wonderful, if I could locate the record.

St. Mary's Church is still active in Bayonne and has a record of this marriage.  They kindly sent me a transcription of their record.

Record of 1887 marriage of Patrick ODonnell to Delia Joyce in Bayonne.
Courtesy St. Mary Star of the Sea Church

The next important step is to locate the actual marriage return.  Marriages in New Jersey in 1887 are indexed by the name of the groom.  But there is no listing in the index for a marriage between Patrick ODonnell and Delia Joyce.

Index of Marriages in New Jersey
June 1, 1878 to December 31, 1900
Surname ODonnell
(No listing for Patrick ODonnell to Delia Joyce)

There are possible explanations for the marriage not appearing in the index:  it was misspelled, it was left out of the index, or the return was never filed with the State.  For now, the above church record is what I use for a source of the marriage date and place, but with a notation that the record cannot be located in the State's records.

You may ask, "Why does this matter?"  For this particular couple, we are dealing with some common surnames.  We would like to pluck this Patrick ODonnell out of the vast sea of ODonnells inhabiting Hudson County in the late 1800s.  This particular Patrick ODonnell was born in Ireland, but we know that he was in the United States by 1887 because he married in New Jersey.  This 1887 marriage record is actually the earliest definitive record that I have found on this man.  The 1880 United States Federal Census does not provide us with a good match for an Irish couple named Peter and Margaret ODonnell with a son named Patrick.  The 1890 census was destroyed.  In 1900, Patrick is living with his wife and children, but not his parents.  We need to link Patrick ODonnell to a set of parents, and the marriage return is a great way of doing this.  The luck of the Irish was with me when someone filled out Patrick's death certificate in 1931.  His parents are listed as Peter ODonnell and Margaret Gallagher, which bolsters the information supplied at familysearch.org.

We want to next establish the identity of the parents of the bride, Delia Joyce.  She died in Bayonne in 1929.  Her death certificate lists her father, but not her mother.

I previously wrote of the death of Delia Joyce's mother in 1870 in Pawling, Dutchess County, New York.  The record of this death is provided by the 1870 mortality schedule, a companion to the census.  In this record, Mary Joyce was killed by a train in 1870; she matches up to family 21 in the census, which is Patrick Joyce, age 40, with a bunch of small children, but no wife.

1870 morality schedule for Pawling, Dutchess County, New York
Viewed at Ancestry.com

While we can say with confidence that the father of Delia Joyce was Patrick Joyce, we need additional documentation to establish that her mother was Mary or Margaret and that her last name was Campbell.  We can use the name Campbell to help us perhaps find a marriage record for Delia's parents.  Having a copy of Delia's marriage return, rather than an online index entry, would lend more credence to a claim that Delia Joyce's mother was Ms. Campbell.  There are still other paths to try, such as marriage and death records for Delia's siblings.

Solving another family story

"Delia's mother was holding her by the train tracks when a train came along, caught her mother's skirts, and dragged her to her death.  As she was being swept away, she managed to throw the baby at a crowd on the platform, and a man safely caught the baby."  This story was told to us for years, with slight variations.  I always wondered how I could find a record of it.

Delia Joyce married Patrick ODonnell around 1887.  They are buried together at Holy Name Cemetery in Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey.  Her dates are listed as 1862-1929 on her gravestone.  She first appears with Patrick in the 1900 census in Bayonne, Hudson County, New Jersey, born in New York to Irish parents.  There are not many Joyce families in New York in the 1870 and 1880 census, but several had a girl named Delia, making it impossible to decide which was the correct family.

I had the opportunity to show some old photos to an older relative.  I had this photograph of a woman suspected to be Delia Joyce ODonnell.

The older relative confirmed that the woman in the center was Delia.  "She was the baby that her mother threw as she was being dragged by the train."  And she was able to recall the location:  Pawling.  Delia was not looking at the camera because she was blind.


Armed with a location, I found the Joyce family living in Pawling, Dutchess County, New York in the 1870 census.

1870 census for Pawling, Dutchess County, New York

The eight year old Adelia was Delia, the "baby" thrown by her mother to escape death.  The problem with this finding is that Delia could not have been a baby when her mother died because there are two more children born after Delia.  By Irish luck, Delia's mother died during the census year, so she turns up in the mortality schedule for us to easily find 140 years later.

1870 US Mortality Schedule, 1870 New York

The first number, 21, matches the families.  Mary Joyce, age 35, of Ireland, died in May of 1870, "Run over by cars Railroad."  This confirms that I have the correct family.  The remaining issue is that Delia was not a baby when her mother died, so either the story should have been "Mother throws small child to safety" or the rescued baby was not Delia, but rather a younger sibling, perhaps John or James.

Able to make the match to Dutchess County, I found a descendant of Patrick Joyce by his second wife.  Patrick remarried and had more children.  They too had heard the same baby and train story.