18: The Lane Family (updated)

Lane monument (source)

Update: Claudia, who saw this post via Facebook, was able to find the 1876 obituaries of William H. Lane and Albert S. Lane. The latter died of "typhoid pneumonia," and the former of "pneumonia." It seems plausible that all three of the Lanes who died in 1876 suffered from typhoid. She also alerted me to several Lanes on the 1914 cemetery transcript that I missed; their information is in the family tree at the bottom of the post.
 
This large obelisk commemorates four members of the Lane family: William H. and Eliza A. Lane and their two sons, Albert S. and William H. Jr. Father and sons all died in 1876 - the same kind of multiple family tragedy that wiped out four Baker children in the years between 1868-1871 and three members of the Babcock family within five months in 1861-2.

The most probable culprit is infectious disease. Living in close quarters, with little knowledge of how disease spread and little means of treating it once it occurred, the people of the nineteenth century were in many ways helpless. The monuments they erected to the dead - some small and humble, some large and ornate, and some, like the Lane monument, large and austere - gave family members some semblance of control. They may not have been able to stop their loved ones from dying, but they could shape the way they would be remembered after their deaths.

In 1850, William and his wife Eliza had eight children ranging in age from one to eighteen years. He was a merchant.

1850 US Federal Census

Twenty years later, the house had been emptied of children, with the exception of youngest daughter Emma, 19. Sixty-year-old William ran a restaurant.

1870 US Federal Census

Six years later came the dreadful year that saw the deaths of William, William Jr., and Albert Lane.

Albert S. Lane had served in the Civil War. He was discharged with a disability in September 1861 at Alexandria, Virginia. I can't find him in the 1870 census, so I don't know if he was ever married. He died at age 36 in New Jersey.

William H. Lane Jr. also served in the Civil War. He mustered out in May 1865. In the muster roll abstracts, he is said to have gray eyes, brown hair, a fair complexion, and to be 5'7.5" in height. I can't find him in the census either, but William Lane is a terribly common name. He died at age 30.

Eliza A. Lane is similarly difficult to find in the 1880 census, although I know that she lived until 1890.

William H. Lane Sr. was the defendant in a legal case regarding his restaurant in the 1870s. From this I found that his restaurant was located at the corner of Hall Place and Seventh Street in Manhattan, and that Albert S. Lane was also involved in the restaurant. It's long and complicated, but one interesting tidbit was that William H. Lane couldn't be reached for his testimony at the time because he was sick (the case was written up in 1877; this was probably the sickness that killed him). In any case, he seems to have won the case.

Hall Place has since been renamed Taras Shevchenko Place - so according to Google Maps, this seems to be the general area where William's restaurant stood. I wonder if William ever stopped to get a drink at McSorley's Old Ale House, established 1854.

East 7th Street, NY, NY

I tried to find out more about William Lane's restaurant. I found this in a real estate record from 1870:

Real Estate Record 1870

I'll have to do some further research to see if I can trace the Lanes any further.

1. William H. Lane (1807-1876) m. Eliza A. (1808-1890)
1. Harriet Lane (1832-)
2. Francis B. Lane (1835-)
3. Hannah M. Lane (1838-)
4. Albert S. Lane (1840-1876)
5. William H. Lane (1841-1841)
6. Elizabeth Lane (1844-)
7. Charles Wesley Lane (1845-1855)
8. William H. Lane (1847-1876)
9. Mary A. Lane (1849-1862)
10. Emma J. Lane (1851-)