Informative Missing Information

While at the New Jersey State Archives most recently, an interesting death certificate caught my eye.

Nicholas Bretzler, died February 28, 1919 in Paterson, Passaic County, New Jersey.  Resided in Clifton.

Nicholas Bretzler died February 28, 1919 at Saint Joseph's Hospital in Paterson, Passaic County, New Jersey.  He was a resident of Richfield, which is a neighborhood in Clifton.  The names of his parents were not included on this death certificate, which is not unusual.  The remarkable feature was the explanation by Mrs C Plog, employer and informant, for the absence of the parents' names:  "Endeavored to obtain this information but was unsuccessful, for he never would talk."  This explanation for the lack of information provides some insight into Nicholas Bretzler and his life.

Nicholas Bretzler was buried at East Ridgelawn Cemetery in Clifton, New Jersey.  Last year I photographed a grave at this cemetery, replicating one taken by my grandfather almost eighty years earlier.  When the snow and ice disappear in the spring, I can return to cemetery photography.

The more common (and unfortunate) finding in the spots for names of parents on a death certificate.
"Unknown."

Finding the Baby

Another component of a family story mentioned in a newspaper!

A few years back, I wrote of a family story:  Delia Joyce's mother's skirts were caught by a passing train; as she was dragged to her death, she threw the infant Delia safely to a man on the platform.

When I uncovered Delia's hometown as Pawling in Dutchess County, New York, I was able to locate the family in the census starting in 1860.  Delia's parents were Patrick Joyce and Margaret or Mary Campbell.  The train accident happened in 1870.  Delia was born around 1862, making her too old and big to have been the baby in her mother's arms when she died.  Delia's younger brothers, John and James, were more likely candidates.

I located one newspaper article about the accident, which happened in Katonah Station, Westchester County, New York.  The accounting took up all but four lines of the paper.  No mention of a baby.

Well, I found another newspaper article that mentioned the baby.  (Thank you FultonHistory.com again!)  The search terms I used included "cars," not "train" or "railroad," as this is more consistent with terminology in use at the time.  Margaret's first name is not in this article.  The mention of the baby is consistent with the family story.

"Her infant child, which she was carrying in her arms, she had previously passed off the car."

We cannot tell from this account if the train had already started to move, so she handed off the baby first and then tried to jump by herself.  Maybe the train was stopped when she got the baby off first, but then started to move, so she jumped so as to not be separated from the baby.

1870 United States Federal Census: Pawling, Dutchess County, New York
Ancestry.com
The newly widowed Patrick Joyce and his four children.  Mary Joyce appears on the Mortality Schedule.

In the 1870 census, James Joyce's age is listed as one year.  His entry at FindAGrave shows a gravestone with a date of birth May 20, 1870.  He qualifies as an infant for this train accident in June of 1870.  He may have been only a few weeks old.

Marriage Announcement from 1859

I finally found a marriage record for my 3x great grandparents, Stephen C Duryea (1814-1887) and Mary Ann Evanshirer (1842-1916)!  The record is in the form of a marriage announcement from a newspaper, New York Evening Express, which I found by doing a Google search of FultonHistory.com.

The possible years of searching for this marriage were narrow.  Mary was born in 1842.  Her first child, Garrit Duryea, was born in February of 1860.  She would have married as late as the year 1859, and not much earlier.

Mary was about 16 years old when she married on February 2, 1859.  Her husband, Stephen C Duryea, was 44 years old- a 28 year difference.  By age 18, Mary had already given birth to a baby and seven months later, buried him.  Mary and Stephen had twelve children from 1860-1881.

A marriage announcement in the newspaper is also the only record I found so far for Mary's parents, John Evenshirer and Rene Brewer (1824-1904).  Note the spelling this surname:
1842- Evenshirer
1859- Evanshearer
John Evenshirer remains a tail in my family tree.  He must have died before 1847, when Rene Brewer remarried to George W Duryea (1823-1864).  Spelling variants are normal (look at Duryea and Duryee above), but I still cannot find any solid leads on this surname.