A few words instead of a picture

Family historians seek to associate a face with the stark facts of life they assemble about people of long ago in order to have more than a mere collection of names, places, and dates.  I love to find photographs of ancestors.  Today we can snap pictures easily on our phones.  Just a generation ago, this was impossible and for generations before them, well, photographs were not very common.  I have several unidentified older photographs of relatives (or dear friends, we may never know), and sites like ebay are filled with beautiful, old, and unmarked photographs of somebody's ancestors.

I am sorting through my finds in a family file from Morristown, New Jersey and was struck by a paragraph in a compiled genealogy submitted by the late Louis Cook in the 1970s and 1980s.  He tells the reader that there are few photos of ancestors before 1900.  This does not mean that I will stop looking and hoping for photographs.  It's as if he just knew that future researchers would want images for the names.  Not to disappoint, he provided us with physical descriptions to fuel the imagination.

Family Tree

Family tree of Ellis Cook by C. W. Holland, as submitted to the Morristown Library.

This beautiful drawing of a family tree resides at the Morristown/Morris Township Library.  (Physical address is One Miller Road, Morristown, Morris County, New Jersey.)  An extensive genealogical collection is in the lower level.  You can read about it online, but I recommend visiting if you have research to do in New Jersey.  The drawing of the Ellis Cook family tree was found in a file for the surname Cook.  Some libraries keep files on local families and fill them with documents and donated matter.  You won't know what is there until you sort through the contents.  The Cook family folder contains compiled genealogies by individuals, copies of indexes from books, and letters of inquiry from researchers to the library staff, some dated in the year 1906.  You can scan papers of interest and then either print them onto paper or save them on a flash drive.  Most libraries do not offer electronic copying.

Life, vanished

May 16th marks the 147th anniversary of the death of George W. Duryea.  He was a policeman in New York City.  At the corner of Second Avenue and 63rd Street, just blocks from his house on East 54th, he was shot in the head while attempting to bring in a prisoner after an uprising at Jones Woods.  He was 41 years old and left behind a wife, Rene Brewer, and six children, ages seven to fifteen.

Entry for death of George W. Duryea, 16 May 1864 in New York City.
"Shot while in discharge of his duty."
Individual death certificates were not issued in this time period.
Deaths were recorded in chronological order in a ledger book.

George was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, Westchester County, New York in his wife’s family plot.  His gravestone lists his dates of birth and death, with no hint of the violence that brought him to his early grave.

George W. Duryea
Born Feb. 12, 1823
Died May 16, 1864

As was customary, a coroner’s inquest was conducted immediately and detailed in the newspapers.  We learn that George was shot at three times, with one bullet entering the right temple.  He died almost instantly.  John Cahill was arrested for the crime months later after being tracked down in Ohio.  At trial in February of 1866, Cahill was found guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to life at Sing Sing State Prison, where, ironically, several of Mrs. Duryea's family members worked as guards.

New York Herald-Tribune
24 February 1866
genealogybank.com

George's family may have received word of his death in an abrupt manner.  Trial testimony in the newspapers tells us that George’s body was taken from the scene of the shooting to the police station and then to his house, where a post-mortem exam was performed.  Can you imagine losing a loved one by violence and then having his body dissected in the front parlor?

New York Herald
20 February 1866
genealogybank.com

Coroner’s inquests are available on microfilm through a local family history center.  Any papers from George’s inquest have not been located, though.

http://www.familysearch.org/

Following the death of her husband, Rene received her own listing in the city directory.  She continued living at the residence she shared with George and his brother, Stephen.

Wilson's city directory for New York City
1865-1866

When we research our family history, sometimes we uncover tragedies, which lead us to a greater understanding of what our ancestors endured.