Workday Wednesday: All In A Day’s Work
In the
novel People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks,*
the central character, Hanna Heath, is a rare-book expert and conservator.
Hanna describes her work as not merely technical but having something to do
with an “intuition about the past” wherein she links “research with
imagination” and eventually adds a “few grains to the sandbox of human
knowledge.”
I
resonate with those thoughts when it comes to doing family history research. I’ve
been researching for some twenty-plus years. So now when I go on a hunt, I
usually have a feel for what records I can find to uncover a little more about
an individual and flesh out a more concrete identity. Sharing it with others is
my way of adding a few grains to the sandbox of human knowledge about the past.
Take
for instance my recent foray into the ancestry of Harvey B. Potter. I knew about Harvey because his
great-granddaughter showed me a picture of him and said that he played the
fiddle all over the area. His youngest daughter Velda was born in 1917, over
ten years after the last daughter was born.
.jpg) |
| Lottie (Herrick) Potter holding her daughter Velda** |
She was somewhat spoiled then,
according the family, as the youngest of five girls. Harvey was married to
Lottie Herrick and they had Gertrude, Olive, Doris, Alice and Velda.
 |
| Harvey & Lottie Potter with their five daughters |
Of
Harvey’s ancestry, the only clues I had to start out with was that his parents
were Alpha Potter and Susie Hitchcock. Harvey was born about 1875 and died in
1948. He is buried with his wife in Black Creek Cemetery in Black Creek, New
York a hamlet of the town of New Hudson in Allegany County.
By
running through searches of census records online and other tidbits of
information gleaned from the familysearch.org website, I eventually found that
Harvey’s grandfather was also named Harvey B. Potter. This first Harvey was
found in the 1855 NY State Census in the town of Wirt, Allegany County, New
York. He was a 22-year-old farmer with a 23-year-old wife named Amanda and his
son Alpha, just one year old. The state census indicated that both Harvey and
Amanda had been residing in that town for six months.
The
next time the family was found was in 1870 when Amanda Potter, her son Alpha
and a 9-year-old by the name of Elijah V. Potter were living in the town of Caneadea
(also Allegany County, New York). Five years later, in the 1875 NY State
Census, Amanda M. Potter was a housekeeper in the William Crawford family in
the town of Belfast (Allegany County, New York). Twelve-year-old Elijah V.
Potter was also living with the family. The last I saw of Elijah V. Potter
census-wise was during the 1892 NY State Census, when he was listed after the
Elam Seward and Frederick Cline families as a 31-year-old shoemaker.
The
most curious record was Elijah V. Potter listed in the US Veteran
Administration Payment Cards 1907-1933 on familysearch.org. The card had dates
of 1902 and 1920 and a certificate number of 552427. The name of the soldier
was Harvey B. Potter with service listed as “Sgt B6 Mich V Cav.” Finally a
google search yielded posts from 2004 and
2007 by Nancy Dearing Rossbacher, a descendant of the second Harvey B.
Potter’s father, Isaac B. Potter, indicating that Isaac originally lived in the
Caneadea, New York area in 1850 and migrated to the Grand Rapids, Michigan area.
A
combination of clues and tracking methods illuminated one man’s ancestry in a
matter of hours thanks to the ease and convenience of the internet. Now after
collecting the facts, a more comprehensive story can be told, one that can add
to the historical knowledge of the area and its people. It is knowledge like
this that can sometimes spark a writer’s interest and lead to great reads such
as in the historical fiction novels Geraldine Brooks has written.
*Probably all novel
writers use liberties when writing historical fiction and perhaps Vienna,
Austria was different than the United States, but my research and knowledge of
old photographs here in the U.S. indicates that ambrotypes waned in usage in
the 1860s. Brooks has one of her characters unearth an ambrotype dating from
the 1890s.
**All photos courtesy
LuAnne Everett
How nice you use Brook's People of the Book as your jumping off point, one of my favorite books. Very nice post.
ReplyDeleteThank you! Although I had read Caleb's Crossing, I had not read any other books by her. The cover of People of the Book caught my daughter's eye when we were in the library together a few weeks ago. It piqued my interest, too, when I looked at it further and brought it home. So glad I did :)
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