Eighteenth-Century Field Trip Part 1: First Presbyterian Church in Yorktown

Today Laurie and I went on an awesome field trip to three eighteenth-century graveyards. Unlike St. Mark's Cemetery, each of these graveyards is associated with a church that is still standing, although only one was the original church. Our goal was to study the distribution and orientation of eighteenth-century stones around the church in order to gain some insight into where St. George's stood might have stood in our graveyard.

 

The First Presbyterian Church in Yorktown was founded in 1730, and the first meeting house was built in 1737. Like St. George's Church, it was used as an arsenal and a barracks during the Revolutionary War. The British burned the church to the ground in 1779, and a replacement was built in 1785. The church that stands today was built in 1840.


There are a number of eighteenth-century sandstones lined up along the western side of the church, and others are scattered throughout the graveyard, running to the back of the church. Assuming that the present day church was built on the same footprint as the eighteenth-century one (which is not necessarily the case), this would mean that the graveyard surrounded the church on two sides. Assuming that the stones are in their original positions, they would have all faced the church.


Like the sandstones in St. Mark's Cemetery, all of the sandstones in the Presbyterian Cemetery face west. The church itself faces south. The stones themselves are very similar - the cherub on the stone of Abijah Lee, below, resembles that on the stone of Deborah Haight.

Unlike those in St. Mark's Cemetery, all of the stones in the Presbyterian Cemetery face the same way. Assuming that the present orientation of the eighteenth-century stones represents their original orientation, this would indicate that later parishioners followed the example of the first parishioners of the church. In contrast, the eighteenth-century stones at St. Mark's Cemetery face west, while the later nineteenth- and twentieth-century stones face east - perhaps because the church that originally informed the orientation of the stones was gone.


This stone was particularly fascinating, not only because it has a death's head (all of the sandstones at St. Mark's belong to the cherub phase) but because it was restored by its owners' great-great-grandson.

Update: Philander G. Purdy and Sarah Carpenter

Graves of Deborah and Jacob Purdy

Update #1 (scroll to bottom for Update #2). I found this tiny snippet about Philander Purdy in an article from the North Westchester Times, August 11, 1911: "New Castle Corners History of Interest: Reminiscent Paragraphs by A. J. Q. tell about the Early History, Settlers and Business Places": "Now I mention Philander Purdy, who kept the wheelwright shop. He made wagons and ox carts, used locust hubs and hickory spokes. Some of his wagons are still in use today, with wooden axle-tree and iron linch pin."

Philander G. Purdy was the son of Jacob and Deborah Purdy. Sarah Carpenter was the daughter of Willet Carpenter and Mary Ann Miller. Philander and Sarah were married in the early 1840s and had three children.

31: Nathan C. Avery (update)

Update. Claudia, who saw this post through Facebook, has provided me with the details of Nathan's parents and wife. Thanks, Claudia!

I'm always curious about people who seem to have been buried in the cemetery on their own - that is, seemingly without other relatives in the cemetery. In the case of Ann M. Shamp, my first impression turned out to be mistaken; that is, while Ann was the only person with the surname Shamp in the cemetery, she was actually a Sarles by birth. For obvious reasons, this can't be the case for Nathan C. Avery. There are no other Averys buried in the cemetery. Who was his family?

Nathan died in 1894 at the age of 64. Unfortunately, most of the 1890 census was lost in a fire, so the 1880 census is the last surviving census in which he appears.

1880 US Federal Census

This census provides a possible explanation for Nathan's burial in the cemetery. An unmarried 50-year-old stonecutter, he lived with Edwin A. and Sarah E. Purdy in Manhattan. There are four Purdys buried in the cemetery, although Edwin and Sarah aren't among them, and Purdy is a very common surname in Westchester County. Were the Purdys Nathan's family? Sarah Purdy is the right age to be his sister, although his relation to Edwin Purdy is given as "boarder," not "brother-in-law." Additionally, the census says that Nathan was born in Vermont and Sarah was born in New Hampshire.

Ten years earlier, Nathan had lived in Manhattan with a different family - one that provides him with more connections to the cemetery.

1870 US Federal Census

Haight and Hall are both common names in the cemetery. The Mary S. Haight and Elizabeth Hall listed here are both buried there; the transcription indicates that they were sisters.

But how is Nathan related to any of them?

In the 1860s, Nathan's trail goes cold, and I can't find him again until the 1850 census.

In 1850, we finally find Nathan in his native state, Vermont, in the town of Sherburne. Yet there are no other Averys to be found here either, but some Richardsons, a Rowe, a Hawkins, a Danville, a Goodrich, and a Converse. Nathan worked as a farm laborer.

1850 US Federal Census

Because he would have been ten years old, Nathan wouldn't have appeared in the 1840 census except as a tally mark in the household of his father or whoever else was the head of his household, so I can't find him.

UPDATE
Claudia told me that The Chandler Family: The Descendants of William Chandler and Annis Chandler Who Settled in Roxbury, Mass., 1637 (1883) provides information on Nathan C. Avery's family. She was also able to find the maiden name of Nathan's wife, Libbie, through the New York City marriage records index. It's Haight - are you surprised?

The book gives Nathan's date of birth as November 25, 1829. He was the son of Jeremiah Avery of Sherburne, VT, and Ruth Chandler of Alstead, NH; they married on July 4, 1825. Jeremiah was the son of Nathan Avery, a cooper and farmer.

Nathan C. Avery married Libbie A. Haight on April 28, 1881, in Manhattan. Is this the same woman as Elizabeth Haight, age 17, with whom Nathan was living in 1870? And was this Nathan's first marriage? He would have been 52 at the time. Better late than never, I suppose!

Nathan and Libbie would have appeared together in the 1890 census, but that census was destroyed in a fire. The next time Libbie would appear, she would be a widow in the 1900 census. I didn't find her there, but I did find a Libbie Avery in the 1910 census, living in the Bronx with a family of Walkers. She was 57 at the time, which makes her precisely the right age to be Elizabeth Haight, the daughter of Stephen and Mary Haight, who was 17 in 1870. In the 1910 census, her occupation is given as music teacher.

1910 US Federal Census

The next census in which I find Libbie is the 1930 census, when she was living at the Association for the Relief of Respectable, Aged, and Indigent Females in Manhattan. She was then 77.

1930 US Federal Census

Libbie was still living at the Association in 1940 at the age of 86. It was also known as the Association Residence Nursing Home. The building, constructed in 1883 and designed by Richard Morris Hunt, is still standing and is on the U.S. Register of Historic Places. It's now a youth hostel.

(Source)

Through one of the family trees on Ancestry, I was able to find the name of Nathan C. Avery's sister, Eliza Arabel Avery, who was born in 1823. She married Charles Fisher Lincoln in 1844. In 1850, the couple was living next door to Nathan and Eliza's father Jeremiah and his second wife, Laura, in Sherburne. They had three children, and also housed 14-year-old Charles Avery and 23-ear-old Alonzo Estabrook.

1850 US Federal Census

In 1860, the family had moved to Woodstock, VT, with their six curiously named children.

1860 US Federal Census

They were still there in 1870 with two more children, bringing the total number up to eight.

1870 US Federal Census

By 1880, Charles Fisher Lincoln had died. Eliza Lincoln was the head of a household that included three sons, two daughters, and two grandsons.

1880 US Federal Census

These are the children of Eliza Avery and Charles Lincoln that I have been able to trace:

Newman M. Lincoln was already a farmer of 35 in the 1880 census. He fought with the 6th Vermont Infantry Regiment in the Civil War. He is listed in the 1890 Veterans Census as living in Woodstock, VT. He married his wife Lettie in 1887 and had one child, Gladys. He was working as a carpenter in 1900 and 1910. In 1914, Newman was admitted to a National Home for Disabled Soldiers in Los Angeles, near to the home of his daughter Gladys Mellon, with a number of infirmities. He died in 1915 of nephritis.

Estell W. Lincoln married Sarah Gates in 1878 in Boston. He worked as a machinist. They were living in Los Angeles in 1910 and 1920. They didn't have children.

Arba Nelson Lincoln married Mira Kimball in 1876 and had five children. They lived in Bristol, Massachusetts, and he was a lawyer. You can see his biography from Who's Who in England of 1915 below. He died in 1922.

Who's Who in New England 1915

Mary E. Lincoln married George W. Clark in 1874. In 1880, they were living in Illinois, and in 1900, they were living in Los Angeles.

Loyal Tisdale Lincoln and his wife Emma were married in 1894. She had two children from a previous marriage. They lived in Los Angeles, where Loyal was a mail carrier.

1. Jeremiah Avery (1797-) m. (1) Ruth Chandler (1804-); (2) Laura (1798-)
1. Eliza Arabel Avery (1823-after 1880) m. Charles Fisher Lincoln (1819-1876)
1. Newman M.  Lincoln (1845-1915) m. Lettie (1858-before 1910)
1. Gladys Lincoln (1891-) m. Mellon
2. Estell W. Lincoln (1847-) m. Sarah Gates in 1878
3. Arba Nelson Lincoln (1849-1922) m. Mira Kimball (1850-) in 1876
1. Ernest Avery Lincoln (1883-)
2. Ralph Hayford Lincoln (1885-)
3. Grace Lincoln (1888-)
4. Kenneth Chandler Lincoln (1890-)
5. Carl Kimball Lincoln (1892-1961) m. Jean L. (1887-)
1. Nelson H. Lincoln (1915-)
2. Warner C. Lincoln (1920-2001)
4. Mary E. Lincoln (1852-) m. George W. Clark in 1874
1. William L. Clark (1874-)
2. Dona M. Clark (1886-)
3. Loyal N. Clark (1893-)
5. Loyal Tisdale Lincoln (1857-) m. Emma (1855-) in 1894
6. Julia A. Lincoln (1859-) 
7. Nettie Lincoln (1861-1924)
8. Charles R. Lincoln (1866-) 
2. Nathan C. Avery (1829-1894) m. Libbie Haight (1853-after 1940) in 1881

13: Gilbert, Mary, and Oscar Carpenter

Grave of Gilbert, Mary, and Oscar Carpenter

Here is something I haven't seen before in this project: a triple gravestone. That is, there are three people commemorated by this stone: Gilbert Carpenter, his wife Mary A., and their son Oscar. The stone itself is a bit of a mystery. Both Gilbert and Oscar died in 1873, and Mary died in 1898. Surely Gilbert and Oscar were not without a tombstone for 25 years. Did Mary have the tombstone made for all three of them, with her death date added later? Or did this later tombstone replace one or two earlier ones? There's also the strange fact that the stone sits rather crookedly on its base. Is it a replacement for a damaged stone or stones, perhaps created years after Mary's death?

I'll have to return to the cemetery soon to make sure I'm not missing any other tombstones. Sometimes a family in which each member had his or her own stone also had a stone commemorating several of them. Usually, however, these family stones were much larger than a regular stone and had the family's name prominently displayed (such as the Stanton family stone).

Here is Gilbert Carpenter in 1850 as a farmer of 25 living in his parents' house. I'm sorry to say that this is what the census looks like. Fortunately, it's been transcribed, I'm not sure how - perhaps the black stuff is a problem with the copy or it happened after the transcription, I don't know. But in any case it shows Gilbert living with his father, Gilbert Sr., his father's wife Anna, eighteen-year-old Amy Wonder, and eleven-year-old Sylvia Vail.

1850 US Federal Census

Gilbert Sr. was significantly older than Anna (60 to 40). This is why I hesitate to call her Gilbert Jr.'s mother; she would have been 15 when he was born, which is possible, but I think it's more likely that she was his stepmother. The two girls might have been her daughters from a previous marriage or marriages.

Ten years later, Gilbert was married to Mary and they were living with their nine-year-old son Oscar and a nineteen-year-old named Willett H. Carpenter. Gilbert was a farmer.

1860 US Federal Census

In 1863, 37-year-old Gilbert was drafted in the Civil War along with some other local Carpenters, a Cronk, a Cornell, and a Crosby. My favorite, of course, is Purdy Carpenter. I love when the old families of this area use their old family surnames as first names for their sons.

US Civil War Draft Registrations Records June 1863

I can't find any of the Carpenters in the 1870 census, which is unfortunate, since it was the last census that would have listed Gilbert and Oscar. They both died in 1873 - Oscar in February and Gilbert in November.

By 1880 Mary, having lost her husband and son, had become the housekeeper to 85-year-old Thomas Wright. They shared the house with Philander Purdy, a wheelwright.

1880 US Federal Census

I found a legal notice in the Albany Evening Journal from 1854 that named Jesse M. and Caroline Carpenter as plaintiffs against a large group of defendants that included Gilbert and Mary Carpenter. I can barely read it except for this first part:

Westchester County Court
Jesse M. Carpenter and Caroline his wife, against Mary Ann Carpenter, Gilbert Carpenter and Mary Adelia his wife, Philander G. Purdy and Sarah his wife, William J. Underwood and Sarah his wife, Mary Emily Carpenter, Willet H. Carpenter, Hannah Elizabeth Carpenter, George O. Carpenter, and William Carpenter, defendants.

My best guess is that this is some sort of dispute over an inheritance - hence the multiple Carpenters. I have a hunch (but no proof) that Jesse M. Carpenter (born 1819) and Gilbert Carpenter (born 1825) were brothers. If so, then 1854 would be just the right time for their father, who was born in 1790, to die, leaving his heirs to battle it out. Assuming this is true, might Sarah Purdy and Sarah Underwood have been Gilbert Sr.'s daughters or stepdaughters?

So far, I've had trouble finding any evidence at all. It seems that all of Gilbert Sr.'s children except for Gilbert Jr. had moved out of his house by 1850, which is the first census to list all family members' names. Thus determining the relationship of all of these Carpenters is going to require further investigation.

Here is the family tree for now. If Oscar really was Gilbert and Mary's only child, and he was never married, that would explain why someone thought they should all share the same gravestone.

1.  Gilbert Carpenter (1790-) m. (1) Unknown; (2) Anna (1810-)
1. Gilbert Carpenter (1825-1873) m. Mary Adelia (1830-1898)
1. Oscar W. Carpenter (1851-1873)