Trumbull Family Reunion, Of Sorts

Over the holiday weekend I had occasion to open my genealogy database and putter around a bit. Puttering is such a wonderfully relaxing and exciting way to explore something, I find. The only down side is that I often fail to make note of where I've stopped previous putterings, perhaps just on the verge of hitting a rich vein of information.

But the wonderful thing about genealogy is that if I've absentmindedly ignored a line for a few years, important new information may have come to light on line in the meantime.

And that is what last weekend's putterings showed to be the case with my Trumbull ancestors.

So here's the story. All of my maternal ancestors and my paternal grandfather's ancestors were 19th century immigrants from Germany and Denmark, respectively. But my paternal grandmother's ancestors have been kicking around on this side of the Great Puddle since the early 1600s. In this line, I have an ancestress named Harriet Trumbull Slater, who died young after giving birth to two sons and a daughter. Her widower George W. Slater remarried and Harriet's daughter, my great-great-grandmother Almeda, grew up knowing only her step-mother.

I knew that Harriet and George married in Jay, Essex County, New York, and I was told several years ago that Harriet's father was likely Levi Trumbull, who had a large family in Jay. I had even made contact with a woman who had a information from a family Bible. It listed names, dates, and spouses for 7 other children, with a mere name, "Harriet Trumbull," for an eighth, indicating (barely) that she actually had existed.

But what a stroke of luck to discover that in the 1840 census, which must have shortly after Harriet died, two young boys of the right ages were enumerated with Harriet's parents. (The 1840 census only lists names for the heads of household.) In the 1850 census it gets better; Edgar Slater is enumerated with Levi. I've never found another mention of the second son, Egbert, so he likely died during that decade. The 1850 census does not yet indicate relationships among those in a household, but the evidence is very suggestive that Levi Trumbull and his wife Sarah were indeed the grandparents of Edgar and Egbert Slater.

Just as an aside in this rambly post, I had always thought it a bit odd that George W. Slater remarried so quickly. But, considering the culture of the time and that he had a very young daughter to care for, I imagine he felt himself in immediate need of a mother for Almeda, who was born in October of 1836. Harriet died sometime thereafter. George's second wife Jeanette died in September of 1840. George married his third wife a mere seven weeks later. Their first daughter was named Harriet Jeanette. It is fascinating to think about the drama experienced in these lives. And then of course I wonder how it was the two boys ended up back in New York with Grandpa when they had all previously lived in Vermont after the boys were born.

So, I'll cut to the chase here and say that I did some hunting, some census searching, some digging out of old notes and some plain old googling and came up with decent verification to lead me to several brand "new" ancestral lines to research: Trumbull, Harmon, Sheldon, Austin, and Skinner, plus at least six or more others that I haven't verified yet. This makes the English strand of my ancestry all the firmer, although the Trumbull line casts yet another wafting of Scottishness over me. I don't mind digging back 500 years to find a touch more Scottish.

But rock solid proof remains elusive. I know when and where my great-great grandmother Almeda was born, but I don't know when Harriet died and I don't know when George married Jeanette. I have a Slater genealogy which contains information which seems to have been submitted by George himself (I surmise this because of unique wording misused in the text: it states that he "was located," i.e. lived, in such and such a place, when "located," in the lingo of the Methodist Episcopal church in which George was a circuit preacher, means that he retired from active ministry.) This text states that Egbert, Edgar and Almeda were all children of Harriet. However, Almeda herself in census after census states that her mother was born in Vermont, which both George's second and third wives were, but Harriet was born in New York. Even Edgar, George's firstborn, states that his mother was born in Vermont! (From this and other research I've done, it seems that 19th century parents did not often speak to their children of the dead. I wonder if it would be different with Catholic families in the same time period?) So, finding burial information for Harriet and/or marriage information for George and Jeanette would make all of this much tidier.

Here's a little visual aid:


The older woman on the right is Almeda (1836-1917) posing with three generations of her descendants: daughter Emma (1855-1938) (my great-grandfather's sister), granddaughter Ivah (1878-1970), and great-granddaughter Jessie (1901-1990).