Three Hours

Fannie Duryea and Abraham Lent Brewer were married in the 1840s and had no known children.  They lived in New York City and then Rockland County, New York.  They both died in 1901.  Fannie left her estate to Abraham, but he died before she wrote a new will, so her estate passed intestate to her surviving sister and nieces and nephews.  The disposition of her estate solidified many of these suspected family lines.

I recently discovered that Abraham founded a fire department in Monsey, New York.  (You can read the post here.)  In spite of his local fame because of his contributions, I have yet to find an obituary for Abraham.  I decided to widen my search and found a notice of the deaths of Abraham and Fannie- in Georgia of all places.  They have no connection to Georgia, so I never thought to look there for information.

The Augusta Chronicle, Augusta, Georgia, 1 May 1901, page 4.
Retrieved from genealogybank.com.

Fannie died at 3 a.m. on 28 April 1901.  If Abraham died before her, but on the same day, he had only a three hour time span.  This quirk enabled me, one hundred years later, to map out her family lines.  Had Abraham died just a few hours later, I may still not have such a clear mapping of Fannie's lines.

Certificate and Record of Death for Fannie M. Brewer,
died 28 April 1901 in Ramapo, Rockland County, New York.

Even on Fannie's death certificate, she is listed as widowed.  I never suspected she was a widow for only a few hours.

Two Deaths on Christmas

A recent study finds that Americans are more likely to die on Christmas Day, December 25th, than any other day of the year.  (You can read an article about the study here.)  This conclusion was based on analysis of death certificates from 1979-2004.

I have uncovered two deaths on December 25th, several years before the deaths studied.  (It would be interesting if someone expanded on this study and included deaths in the 1800s through the present.  Perhaps the commercialization of Christmas and the added stress increases deaths on December 25th.)

Stephen C. Duryea died on December 25, 1893 in Jersey City.  He was 21 years old, unmarried, and died of pneumonia.  He was the 7th of 12 children and the 5th to die.  This must have been a very difficult time for his mother, especially since his father died six years earlier.  I discovered Stephen's death date upon finding the family plot at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Tarrytown, Westchester County, New York.

Jacob Duryea died on December 25, 1899.  His death took a while to uncover.  He appeared in the 1880 census in Hoboken.  His wife appeared without him, widowed, in the 1900 census.  At a local family history center, I searched microfilm rolls of death indexes year by year, starting in 1880.  On the last possible roll was Jacob's death.  He was buried at Hoboken Cemetery.  I visited his grave to find a bunch of family members buried with him.  The stone had fallen, but right side up.

Hoboken Cemetery is not in Hoboken; it is in North Bergen, which is in Hudson County, not Bergen County.  There is a house by the entrance, but it does not contain a caretaker or records.  You may call Epstein Management for records at 201-867-0635.

More unknown photos

These photos aren't of people.  They are of land.  I'm hoping that someone will recognize the roller coaster and let me know where it is.  My grandfather took these photos, so I'm thinking that they are from the Jersey shore, Staten Island, or Long Island.  Thank you for looking.

Can anyone identify this roller coaster?

Where is this?