Missing the Boat

Ship records of passengers can be informative, possibly revealing places of origin, occupations, and relations in the originating country as well as the destination country.

You can view indexes on the websites of the National Archives, Family Search (current catalog of passenger lists here), and Ancestry.

The most recent immigrant ancestor in my family tree is Herman Lutter (1860-1924). I have not (yet) found him on any passenger list. From his entries on the federal census of 1900 and 1920 in Newark, New Jersey, he gave his year of immigration as 1881. In 1910, it looks like his year of birth, 1860, was written instead of his year of immigration. His brother, Otto Luther (1845-1909), arrived in 1884.

On November 1, 1892 Herman Lutter swore his Declaration of Intent in Newark. Frank Geisler (1848-1937) swore to Herman's "good moral character." At that point in time, Herman was living apart from his wife, Clara Uhl (1865-1955), and their son, Howard Lutter (1889-1959).

Herman Lutter. Declaration of Intent.
Essex County, New Jersey. Naturalizations November 1, 1892.
Film 1317423.

1900 United States Federal Census. Newark, Essex County, New Jersey.
Herman Leuter, boarder of Frank Geisler. Born May 1860 in Germany. Immigrated in 1881. Naturalized.

1910 United States Federal Census. Newark, Essex County, New Jersey.
Herman Lutter, lodger of Frank Geisler. Age 50. Immigrated in 1860. Naturalized.
The year of immigration is probably wrong; he was born in 1860.
Joseph Hoffman Jr, age 9, was probably Joseph Edwin Hoffmire (1909-2007), a grandson of Frank Geisler.

1920 United States Federal Census. Newark, Essex County, New Jersey.
Herman Lutter. Immigrated 1881; naturalized in 1886.

1900 United States Federal Census. Harrison, Hudson County, New Jersey.
Otto Lutter, born January 1845 in Germany. Immigrated in 1884. Alien.

In 1881, the nearest port of entry to Newark, New Jersey was Castle Garden in Manhattan, New York. (Now a national monument called Castle Clinton.) Yet Herman and Otto do not seem to appear on any lists or indexes, including Germans to America.

Close proximity of Castle Garden in Manhattan to Newark, New Jersey

The port of entry may not be where the person settled. They could have arrived in Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, or New Orleans. Even Canada!

In 1875, a family of Lutters arrived in New York, among them Hermann Lutter, age 15. This matches the year of birth of my Herman- 1860. We can look at their records to see that this is not my Herman.

First I found the passenger list for Steamer SS Silesia, which arrived in the Port of New York on March 19, 1875 from Hamburg and Havre- ports in Germany and France. Hamburg is over 200 miles north of Herman's hometown of Scheibe, now called Neuhaus am Rennweg, in Thuringia, Germany.

Map of modern-day Europe showing the 200 mile distance
between the port of Hamburg, Germany and Scheibe (now Neuhaus am Rennweg),
hometown of my Lutters

On this list, "Herm" Lutter was 15 years old and the brother of Aug Lutter, age 30. Among the people with them was Ottilia, their sister, though this name was scribbled. Herman and Otto had a sister named Ottilia. She ended up staying in Germany.

Passenger list of SS Silesia. Arrived in New York March 19, 1875.
The Lutter family is crossed out; they took an earlier ship.

The strikethrough lines signal that these people did not make the trip. This made sense since my Herman arrived in 1881, not 1875, but this is not him.

Passenger list of SS Herder. Arrived in New York March 11, 1875.

More digging revealed the reason for the crossed out names. The family took an earlier ship, SS Herder. On March 11, 1875, Hermann Lutter, age 16, arrived in New York with his family. The names varied a little from the other entry.

Next I looked for the companion record of this arrival. The departures were recorded in Hamburg. The Luther family was on a separate paper from the ledger book. Their place of origin was among the recorded information; however, I cannot read it. The transcription in the index is Salohow, Preußen. No such place. If accurate, this is not my Herman Lutter because he was from Scheibe.

The originating record of the Lutters' sail to the United States

In a future article, I will explore other Lutters from Newark who appeared on a passenger list bound for New York in 1867.

Genealogy Brick Wall Crumbled

Brick wall down!  The parents of Mary Neil, my 3rd great grandmother, have been discovered.

Five generations of my father's family tree.
The focus of this discussion is Mary Neil (1830-1898), a great great grandmother of my father.

Mary Neil married Calvin Cook in 1847.  Like most of the marriages recorded in Morris County, New Jersey in this time period, the names of parents were not included.

New Jersey County Marriage collection at FamilySearch.org.  Free index and free images.

In other records, Mary was born in New Jersey around the year 1830.  As time went on, some of her children recorded her name as O'Neill on their documents and gave her birthplace as Ireland.

In the 1870s, the family relocated to Jersey City in Hudson County.  Calvin died in Jersey City in 1889.  I found his death certificate with no difficulty in the Archives in Trenton; however, I could not locate his final resting place "at Dover" until someone kindly posted on FindAGrave the stone for Calvin and Mary's son, William Cook, who died in 1871.  The family plot is located at Locust Hill Cemetery in Dover, Morris County.  This was discovered over two years ago.

Mary's final passage is recorded on the same stone as her husband, Calvin.  She died August 9, 1898.

Great!  I had Mary's date of death.  But I still could not find a death certificate or obituary for her.

Time passed.  Recently I was at the Morristown and Morris Township Library and checked the Morris County newspapers again.  The few papers for the area for 1898 were published weekly, so I did not have too much to sift through.  This time, an obituary in the paper "The Iron Era" from Dover caught my attention.  Mary A Keating died on August 9, 1898 and was buried at Locust Hill Cemetery-- just like my Mary.  She was the wife of Nicholas Keating and lived in Rockaway.  No other family members were mentioned.

Could Mary Keating be Mary Neil, widow of Calvin Cook?

Digitized newspaper collection at the Morristown and Morris Township Library.  Free on-site usage.

At home, I checked the online index of New Jersey marriages at FamilySearch.  Calvin Cook died in 1889, so if Mary remarried, the date would be in the 1890s.  And there it was.  Mary remarried in 1892 (this is the correct year) in Jersey City to Nicholas Keating.

FamilySearch.org.  New Jersey Marriages.
This is a free index.  The images are not online.  They are at the Archives in Trenton.

This marriage record was my best chance of finding out the names of Mary Neil's parents, as the record was created during Mary's life.

I looked through the index at FamilySearch for Mary's death certificate, but found no matching entry.  Both Mary and Nicholas died in 1898 and their estates were probated through the Surrogate's Office of Morris County.

MorrisSurrogate.com
This is a free service to search probated estates in Morris County, New Jersey.
The actual files are in the court house.  [The other twenty New Jersey counties are online at FamilySearch.org.]

At the Archives in Trenton, I found Mary's marriage record to Nicholas Keating.  Her parents were listed as Charles O'Neill and Catharine Brougham, both of Ireland.  (This explains the source of the names for two of Mary's children.)

Witnesses were Margaret Tower, Mary's daughter; and Harry Tower, Mary's son-in-law.

I found a death certificate for Mary Keating.  No day of death is on the certificate; only the month and year- August 1898.  Maybe this is why it missed the index?  I looked at the microfilm roll of deaths from 1 July 1898 through 30 June 1899, Morris County, surname K.  This same method did not produce a death certificate for Nicholas Keating, who died 21 December 1898 according to his estate papers.

Whoever provided the information for Mary's death certificate only knew that her mother was "Katie."  This is why it is best to try to obtain a record created during the person's life.  (Cause of death was "cerebral haemorrage," probably a stroke.)

I went through the census to find Nicholas Keating.  In the 1860 federal census in Rockaway, Nicholas and his first wife, Catherine Shaw (1825-1891), were living next door to Mary Neil and her first husband, Calvin Cook.  32 years later, both of their spouses would be dead and Nicholas and Mary would marry each other.  For the record, Catherine Shaw was not merely a neighbor.  She was a first cousin of Calvin's father; the common ancestors were Conrad Hopler (1730-1815) and Elizabeth DeMouth (1735-1812).

In the 1895 New Jersey state census, Mary and Nicholas were residing together in Rockaway.  Had I not made the connection with the obituary, this piece of the puzzle could have provided a big clue.  I do not know how the three people named Nix tie into this yet, but look at the last person in the household, a child, Francis A Peck.  He is a grandson of Mary.  His parents were Calvin Peck (1848-1923) and Catherine Cook (1854-1885).  Francis was born on the 28th of April in 1885 in Jersey City.  Three weeks later, on the 17th of May, his mother, Catherine, died.

Mary's estate papers clearly list her surviving children and her grandson.  But estates are organized by the surname of the deceased, not by those who inherit.

Mary also left money to Louisa Lee "of Dover, N[ew] J[ersey], niece of my deceased husband Calvin Cook."  I don't know why Louisa received this special treatment.  Louisa's mother was Anna Cook, a sister of Calvin; her father was Jesse Lee.

Next I need to research Charles O'Neill and Catharine Brougham.  I'm not convinced that they were Irish.

Double enumeration in the census

Sometimes people can't be found at all in the census.  Others have two entries for the same census, called a double enumeration.

Adelia "Delia" Joyce was born about 1863 in Pawling, Dutchess County, New York.  Her mother, Margaret Campbell, died in 1870 after a train hit her.  Adelia is listed with her father, Patrick Joyce, and her step-mother, Bridget Cortney, in the 1880 census in Pawling, occupation "out at service."

1880 United States census
Pawling, Dutchess County, New York
Household of Patrick Joyce
Retrieved from Ancestry.com

I looked into this "out at service."  I figured it meant that Delia was working and living somewhere else, probably as a servant.  If she were living elsewhere, she could also be listed on the census at her place of employment.

Indeed I found her again in the 1880 census, still in Pawling, working as a domestic servant for the widow Margaret Craft, age 70.

1880 United States census
Pawling, Dutchess County, New York
Household of Margaret Craft
Retrieved from Ancestry.com

This finding sheds some more light on Delia's early life.  She was sent away from her home- was this a blessing or a curse- to live and work with a nearby family.  We don't know at what age she was sent to start working as a domestic, and if she was able to earn any money to keep for herself.  This also provides us with some more people to explore.  Was Margaret Craft related to the Joyce family?  What about the other worker, Francis Cullum?

To get to this point, I first had to figure out that the name was Craft.  In the 1880 index, Margaret is actually listed as "Carzt."

Index at Ancestry.com for household of Margaret Craft in the 1880 United States census,
Pawling, Dutchess County, New York.
I submitted an alternate spelling.

The name "Carzt" looked bizarre for this time and place so I had to find a more normal-looking spelling.  Neighbors tend to not move much when we're dealing with farmland, so I searched for all the women named Margaret or Mary in the 1870 census in Pawling.  And here she is, this time more clearly as "Craft."

1870 United States census
Pawling, Dutchess County, New York
Household of Margaret Craft
Retrieved from Ancestry.com

Margaret Craft and daughter Mary aged beautifully from 1870 to 1880.  But this is not the only way we know we have the same family.  Look at the neighbors.  You can see that the census taker in 1880 approached in the opposite direction from the route followed in 1870.

With a more reasonable spelling, we can explore the Craft family more easily.  Margaret Toffey Craft's grave was posted on FindAGrave (by a Fallen Graver) and there is so much more to explore.

Following Daughters

Louise and Charles Lutter were parents of five known children- all daughters.  This could spell disaster for tracing this family, as women of the late 1800s tended to marry and change their last names.

1880 federal census, 52 Belmont Avenue, Newark, Essex County, New Jersey
ED 81, page 15, enumerated 3 June 1880

Fortunately, all of these sisters and their children can be traced with little difficulty.  In his 1920 will, their father lists each of them by their married names.

Will of Charles Lutter, proved 12 January 1921 in Essex County, New Jersey

When you get stuck trying to trace the life of one sibling, switch to another sibling.  Sometimes siblings are living in the same house or on the same block.

1900 federal census, 342 Camden Street, Newark, Essex County, New Jersey
ED 132, page 2A, enumerated 8 June 1900

Neighbors and business partners

In researching the connection between the Place and Duryea families, I am reminded of two things to always pay attention to:  the business partners and the neighbors.

My current theory is that John Place was a brother of Lydia Place.  In poking around in documents I already have, John now jumps out as a business partner of Stephen C Duryea in the grocery business.  They are mentioned in a deed in 1836, taking over the lease of 309 Spring Street in New York City from John H. Duryea, deceased.

New York City deed book 362, page 294

John Place is found in New York City in the 1850 census- on the same page as George W. Duryea (brother of Stephen and John) and Fannie Brewer (their sister).

1850 United States Federal Census, New York Ward 8, New York, New York; roll M432_542, page 241B, lines 19-22.

The more names that you acquire, the harder it becomes to organize everything and realize the links.  I recommend typing out transcriptions of documents, at least of the names, so that you can easily find the names on a search function of your files.