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Sunday’s Obituary: Nancy Teater White

07 Sunday Oct 2012

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Nancy Teater White survived her husband, Samuel S. White, by two and a half years.  This generous soul could well have spent her widow years with the sons who lived in Independence and neighboring Whitesville.  But she died in Alfred, a nearby town and home to Alfred University.

Her daughter, Serena White Sayles, lived on the campus of that college in the Gothic, a home built by Samuel in the early 1850s.  At the time of Nancy’s death, Serena was home alone with nine month old baby Christopher, five year old Merlin, and eleven year old Clifton; and she may well have been on faculty of that college teaching French as she had periodically since 1848.  Professor-now-Captain Ira Sayles was actually in a hospital tent outside Camp Suffolk, Virginia, suffering the effects of leading Company H, 130th Regiment of the New York State Volunteers in camp drills and exhausting training marches in the Black River area.

Grandma White ended her life in Alfred at her daughter’s home, where she no doubt had helped Serena juggle the demands of young children, a baby and a community while her son-in-law served his country far from home. Or at least tried to help before becoming another dependent in the Gothic household.  I like to think that Serena clung to a community of strong women that January, as her mother passed on.  I am certain that she missed the genial spirit of Nancy Teater White, as the next month’s uncertainties unfolded.

 

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Sunday’s Obituary: “And he was prospered beyond the lot of most men”

30 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in Sayles, Transcriptions, White

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In the Sabbath Recorder, a newspaper of the Seventh Day Baptist Church, the following obituary appeared on September 20, 1860:

DIED

WHITE — At the Utica State Asylum, Sept. 4th, 1860, Samuel S. White, of Independence, Allegany County, aged 64 years.  Mr. White had been suffering from a partial, and at times, a total mental alienation, since about the 9th of October of last year.  In the fore part of November, he was removed to the Asylum, where his last days were spent.  After he became an inmate there, his physical health seemed to improve, and with it, his mental; especially was this the case during the past spring.  But, in the fore part of August, pulmonary consumption set in, and terminated in his death within a month.  Mr. White settled in early life, forty-two years ago last April, in the the town of Independence, earnestly and successfully devoted himself to business, and was prospered beyond the lot of most men.

New York State Lunatic Asylum at UticaFile:Utica03.png

By the 1850s, mental alienation was considered a disease of the brain that was treatable.  Its causes and cures were rooted in environmental factors found in food or water  and social issues like a stressful work environment.  The New York State Asylum at Utica was the institutional home of the American Journal of Insanity, and through its Superintendent, Dr. John Gray, at the forefront in the treatment of mental illness. It was held that insanity was curable, but that the patient had to be totally isolated from family and the stresses of society.  An orderly, controlled environment of light work, recreation and rest was essential to the cure. In instances in which a patient was at risk of harming him/herself or others, restraints were used.  One such device was the “crib”, a box shaped bed with a cover of slats,  which was securely locked while the patient was inside.

Samuel White was ill in October 1859.  However his mental instability manifested itself, his wife, Nancy Teater White, and children must have been gravely concerned, seeking the counsel of their local physician.  The decision to continue treatment at Utica was probably one of hope, with an expectation that this community leader would return home, cured of his mental alienation. Samuel was seen by Dr. Gray, diagnosed as insane and admitted to the men’s ward of the great Greek Revival building in early November 1859.

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What treatments did Samuel require that winter?  Was he permitted to socialize among the other 300 patients; or was he contained in a “crib?”  And at the end, as he lay dying of pulmonary consumption or tuberculosis, did Dr. Gray break the rule forbidding contact with family, and allow Nancy and his children to visit, to comfort him as he passed over?

“and he was prospered beyond the lot of most men.”

1. Photograph gallery of New York State Insane Asylum at http://www.AsylumProjects.org

2. Era of Asylum.  “Overview of Mental Health in New York and Nation.”  New York State Archives.  accessed September 29, 2012.

3. “A visitor to the Utica Insane Asylum.” Weekly Wisconsin Patriot. (Madison, Wisconsin). Volume 6: Issue 42: page 2 (Saturday, January 7, 1860).  Accessed on GenealogyBank.com September 29, 2012.

Wordless Wednesday: The Old Home Place

26 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by in Dodson, Photographs and Memories, Strickland

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A fire licked the home of memories, back in 1947.  My father recalled being summoned by the farm’s bell, and dashing up the pasture with his dad to watch a chimney fire consume the Dodson Home Place, built in 1860 just off of Butcher’s Creek, Mecklenburg County, Virginia.  Family Bibles, photographs, letters and clippings; beds, clothing, sheets, tables, books, piano – all gone in a matter of hours. Family and friends gathered food and clothing to comfort the Stricklands, and others shared photographs – like this one – that the memory of Oakview and her history might not be buried in the ashes of that tragedy.

Sunday’s Obituary: Merlin W. Sayles of Chase City, Virginia (1878)

23 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in Sayles, Transcriptions

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A family mystery has been solved! My great-great-grandparents, Ira and Serena Sayles, had four children, wrote my grandmother, Florette Sayles Strickland. The daughter, Florette, died as a young girl. One son, Clifton, grew up to be a farmer, a husband, a dad – her dad. Another son, Christopher, grew up to join the peacetime army, and yet another son, Merlin, was lost to memory’s mists, until I uncovered his obituary in the Seventh Day Baptist archives of the 1878 Sabbath Recorder. From page three of Volume 34, issue 40, I finally learn the fate of this young man.

DIED

In Whitesville, N. Y., September 23d, 1878, MERLIN W. SAYLES, of Chase City, Maklinburg (sic) County, Va., aged 21 years, 2 months, and 11 days, second son of Prof. Ira and Serena C. Sayles, formerly of Alfred. His disease, as shown by examination after death, was aneurism in the right of the mesenteric artery, followed by a completely conjested mesentery, with incipient abcsess (sic) of the same, thus functionally destroying this vital organ. For the last two months, his sufferings were intense — he really starved to death. He was a member of the First-day Baptist Church of Chase City, Va., and died clinging to Jesus.

Just imagine the scene.  On a muggy, hot July day, Merlin collapsed after slopping the hogs. His brothers, Christopher and Clifton, rushed to where he lay doubled over, clutching his belly as the blood vessel lay ruptured inside him.  As they carried Merlin up the porch steps Clifton yelled to his mother, and Serena rushed into the front hallway of the family’s farmhouse.  Sizing up the moment she turned and took the stairs two at a time, with the boys on her heels.  Merlin was gently lowered into bed, his shoes taken off, his clothing loosened.  He must have been in agony that day, and each day after as his intestines slowly died and infection set in.  No tea, no soup, no biscuit would have stayed down; Serena would have tried every sort of remedy to ease the pain, to cure the fever, to stave off his withering.  Today the ruptured artery would be quickly diagnosed and surgically repaired. Serena could only watch over her boy, mopping his sweaty brow, wetting his dry lips, holding his feverish hand, praying for his recovery.

Would Ira have traveled down from New York for a last visit? Or did Serena meet this tragedy alone with her boys and neighbors?

Merlin W. Sayles may be buried in the family’s cemetery just off of Hunter’s Lane, south of Chase City, Virginia. Hidden among trees, his tombstone may still serve as testimony to the horror of his final days.

Matrilineal Monday: Whites of Whitesville, New York

17 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by in Surnames, White

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This is my brain on genealogy.

While transcribing a letter dated July 24, 1869, a couple of its sentences looped relentlessly through my head, like a snippet of a catchy tune. My great-great-grandfather complained to his brother, James :

My year’s expenses devoured my year’s salary (as principal of Rushford Academy), and left me as poor today as one year ago today.  Serena does not dispose of much of her landed property, though, of course.
 

Just how much landed property did Serena have? De Beer’s 1869 Atlas of Allegany County, New York mapped residences, illustrating that the couple, or rather, Serena owned three properties – the Gothic house on Alfred University’s campus, a farm a few miles south in Independence, and a house on Main Street, catercorner to Rushford Academy.  How did Serena come by these properties?  On her teacher’s salary?  Hardly likely, since Ira notes that his wages didn’t cover expenses. Mutter, mutter….. Far more likely that Serena received land and property from her parents, Samuel S. and Nancy Teater White, who had been successful farmers and business owners in Whitesville, Allegany County. But how had they managed that in one generation, on those rocky Appalachian hills, removed from any highways or railroads?  And what attracted them to western New York in the first place?

In the space of five minutes I found myself in a web of my own, sticky design.

This is my brain on genealogy, just a web of ideas and places and people, stuck together in a mass of interconnected strands.  Not til I imagine that I am a Super Fly, using this mess as a trampoline, can I make a bounding leap of faith and see the story hidden in its design.

The Whites of Whitesville came from the sea

Samuel’s father was born Oliver White, Junior, in 1759 to Oliver White and Mary Sherman in the town of Newport, Rhode Island, down by the sea. Oliver Jr. removed west to Hopkinton, Rhode Island, a small town carved from Westerly, by 1775 when he first enlisted in the colonies’ army. Oliver served off and on for the duration of the Revolution, and between one of his tours of duty, on March 1, 1781, Oliver made a fateful decision. He decided to marry a Seventh Day Baptist.  Cynthia Burdick was the daughter of  Hannah Hall and Robert (4)  Burdick, who was the latest generation of Burdicks to provide leadership to the Westerly congregation.  Like other Baptists, they believed that local congregations were autonomous from a church hierarchy and had the authority to make decisions locally; and that the Bible was the authoritative source of faith. But unlike other Baptists, the Burdick family held that the scriptures designated Saturday as the Sabbath.  Sabbatarians worked on Sunday.  The rhythm of their work and worship, then, fundamentally differed from those of the larger community – and economy – in which they found themselves.   (Oliver Jr. became a member of the Hopkinton Seventh Day Baptist Church in 1786.)

As the atmosphere became more hostile to those not adhering to the conventional Christian sabbath, the sabbatarians began to migrate westward.  They moved in clusters, establishing communities in which they were free to work six days and worship on Saturday.  Oliver and Cynthia left Hopkinton, RI, with their children including Samuel, before 1810.  They lived for a short while in the 7th Day Baptist community of Brookfield, Madison County, New York, before moving on to Alfred, another center of sabbatarians, before 1816.  Here, young Samuel met and fell in love with a young school teacher and early organizer of Alfred’s Seventh Day Baptist Church, Nancy Teater.

They married in 1819 and moved to a new community south of Alfred, near the millson Cryders Creek. Within their first decade, Nancy and Samuel had established a farm, started a family, provided leadership for another Seventh Day Baptist congregation, and opened a hotel in the town which soon bore their name – Whitesville.

Sunday’s Obituary: Florette W. Sayles

16 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in Sayles, Transcriptions

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From the Sabbath Recorder, Alfred, New York, July 1856:

DIED

In Rushford, N. Y., on the 25 ult., (of last month) after an illness of eight weeks, FLORETTE W., daughter of Ira and Serena C. Sayles, aged 8 years, 8 months and 19 days.  A few days before her departure, while in her father’s arms, she told him she was not afraid to die and be with Christ.  She also assured her mother, during her last hours of consciousness, of the same confidence.  She moreover reproved her mother for weeping, saying, “It can do no good.”

In grief we lay our daughter down
To sleep the sleep that knows no waking'
In faith, we look beyond the tomb--
We see the glorious morning breaking, 
Brightly dawning through the gloom:
We see, by faith, her spirit come,
Midst the joyous angel throng, 
To proclaim their Jesus King--
King o'er heaven and earth most glorious--
King o'er death, and the grave victorious--
King omnipotent to save 
All who put their trust in him.
Then where's thy victory, boasting grave?
O death! where is thy venomed sting?
Then triumph! triumph, weeping mother!
Triumph, little trusting brother!
Triumph, father, in thy faith!
Jesus hath won life from death!

Obituary accessed with the help of the Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society.

Poem is not attributed to any person, though I suspect that Ira Sayles is the author.

Remembering 9/11: We are all together. Still.

11 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by in Family Lore

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This post was originally published September 11, 2010.

I finished my morning run on the dike, and walked to the car under deep blue skies.  The air carried the first smells of fallen leaves.  I unlocked the door, got in and took a drink of water before starting the car.  The radio greeted me with a special announcement rather than the music of Mozart or Beethoven.  This was the before moment.  Then there was after.

A plane had hit the World Trade Center.  No.  Two planes had hit the World Trade Center.

My cellphone rang and I answered, relieved to ramble with my brother about the certainty that these were terrorist attacks.  Who? What? Why?  And as we spoke, he cried, “Oh, my god! Something just hit T.C. Williams High School! Oh, my god! I will have to call you right back!”  And the phone went dead.

I drove home, in stunned silence, the radio serving as my companion through the next fifteen minutes.  National Public Radio hosts reported the Pentagon strike, and I thought of my brothers, the one coping with hearing the Pentagon’s explosion on his way to work, the other already in the Ronald Reagan Building near the National Mall.  What now?  Were they safe?  Was there more to come?

Oh, my god!  Perry! His office was just blocks from the World Trade Center! I checked in with my sister-in-law…he was so far safe.

I got home to speak with my house painters, who found it hard to concentrate as they applied one more coat to my trim. Their radio announced the Shanksville crash and they finally just climbed off their ladders.  We took turns sharing what we knew, breaking to call more family as we thought of one more person that might be stuck in DC or New York or Pittsburgh.   And then…

Silence in the skies.

It was still that perfect blue sky, with wispy clouds, sweetly fragrant with first fall smells. But it was so still.

My son called home to report that he had forgotten his trumpet and the band instructor would just KILL him if I didn’t bring it down real, real soon.  That was my moment of Can Do: we must be resolute, take this in stride, aid those who are hurt, show our children just how we Americans handle disaster.  I picked up that trumpet, got into that car, and headed into town, through the mountain pass along Toby’s Creek.  The valley opened up with those beautiful Poconos on the other side, the highway straightened out, cars picked up speed.  Just as I hit that 55mph there was a highway construction sign, the kind that can be programed for all sorts of alert messages.  Today instead of providing a heads up about construction it flashed:  All Roads to NYC CLOSED.

Up to that moment some part of my brain still said that this morning was a dream. That we had all just misheard the news.  But that pixelated message struck me with a ferocity.  We have been attacked.  We must learn to live and create now in fear’s midst.

I didn’t see the towers fall, I was too busy being resolute and determined to act with courage and be a rock for my children.  The trumpet was delivered and my child stayed in school all day.  Just like any other day.  My daughter stayed in school, with her classmates slowly being pulled out by anxious parents.  While they went through the motions of normality I found the nearest Red Cross Bloodmobile and joined dozens of Back Mountain residents giving blood for New Yorkers, who would never need it.

I continued the normal routine, which included cello lessons, and the children and I talked a bit along the way about what had happened and what we were feeling.  Keep going, I thought, just keep going.  Cellos got played and packed up–clack, clack, clack, clack went the latches of their cases.  We piled into our van and headed into the dusk.  The car seemed to drive itself to our church; I certainly had not intended to go.  But I had a sudden, overpowering need to be in community.  No one noticed or cared that we entered the crowded service very late.  We were all together, that is all that mattered.

The sun had come up and crossed a brilliant blue sky, and now it set in the same place as before.  East was still east and west was still west. But our moral compass as America had just been put to a huge test.  How would it survive?  How would we survive?

We were together.  We are together.  That is all that matters.  Still.

Follow Friday: Historic Map Works

31 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by in Maps, Sayles

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One of the all-time best inventions of the human mind, in my humble opinion, is the map.  Whether ink to paper or pixels to screen, maps represent reality as seen from the cartographer’s point of view.  Beyond the accurate recording of topography and societal infrastructure, map makers convey all sorts of information, depending on who has paid their salary!  Display all the gas wells in Allegany County! List all the businesses of the Whitesville!  Differentiate between a dirt road, a tiny local road and the main state road.

One of my favorite sites lets me explore the world according to my ancestors. Historic Map Works lets you browse United States, World or Antiquarian maps by searching with a Keyword, Family Name or Address.  I wanted to know what a map could tell me about my ancestors, Ira and Serena Sayles, in the 1860s when I know they lived in three separate towns in south central New York.

Using the keywords ALLEGANY COUNTY NEW YORK my query returned a treasure: The Atlas of Allegany County, published by D. G. Beers and Company in 1869. Each page of the atlas has been digitised, and can be opened for expanded viewing.

 

 

 

 

This page of Alfred Center shows my great-great-grandmother’s home, The Gothic. According to records this house was sold and the proceeds used to purchase a farm in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, shortly after the publication of this atlas.

Interestingly, I also found Serena Sayle’s name on a property in the township of Independence and her husband’s name, Ira, on a property in Rushford, where he was the principal of Rushford Academy.

 

 

 

With a subscription to Historic Map Works I can download and print these maps out, further exploring Ira and Serena’s world; who did they live next to, what stores might they have shopped in, how far did they travel in going about their daily lives? All these details, from a map.

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On This Day: Ira Sayles Enlists in the Union Army

14 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Project 150, Sayles

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On August 14, 1862, my great-great-grandfather, Ira Sayles,  volunteered “to serve as a soldier in the Army of the United States of America, for the period of THREE YEARS, unless sooner discharged by the proper authority.”  The forty-four year old teacher from Alfred, New York joined others gathering at the recruiting station in Almond, Allegany County, New York.  The blue-eyed volunteer swore that he would “bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America” and that he would serve “them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whomsoever.”  He stood five foot eight inches tall, his hair still dark and full.  Having pledged to observe and obey the “orders of the President of the United States, and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the Rules and Articles of War,” Ira Sayles signed his name.  The next day Private Sayles was mustered into Company H of the 130th Regiment of the New York Volunteers Infantry.

*** Thank you, cousin Sharon, for sharing this photograph of Ira Sayles.

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