Honorable Soldier or Deserter? 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Shadows”

The Shadow of Dishonor: A Blot on Captain Jerome Dane’s Service Record

Jerome Dane: 1828-1908 (Maternal Second Great-Grandfather)

 

Jerome Dane had a long military career, serving in the war against the Sioux tribes in Minnesota, and then leading an Infantry regiment as a Captain in the Civil War. However, his first military experience came as a raw recruit in the Mexican American War in the 1840s. I had very little data on this first period of service—only Jerome’s claims in newspaper interviews and in biographies in various Minnesota history books. So when I read a brief article in my genealogy group’s newsletter about a new website established by the National Park Service listing all the men who served in the Mexican-American War, I was excited. I could finally verify that Jerome Dane served in the Mexican War.

Captain Jerome Dane

I quickly found Jerome Dane’s record on the US Mexican War Soldiers & Sailors Database. While his listing verified his service, it also stated that he had not been discharged---he had deserted. I was stunned. This didn’t seem to match what I knew about Jerome. He seemed proud of his military record. And why would the army have allowed him to enlist again in the 1860s if he had a record as a deserter? He not only served again in the Infantry, he was made an officer, mustering as a second lieutenant in 1862 and getting promoted to captain before 1865. I needed more information.

Jerome Dane was born March 3, 1828 in Morganville, Genesee County, New York to parents David Dane and Sally Randall. According to a brief biography in Neill’s History of the Minnesota Valley, “At the age of seventeen he enlisted in the Mexican War; served three years.” 

This matches the record on the National Park Service website, which lists his enlistment date as December 25, 1845—quite a Christmas gift! He would have been 17 on that date, but the enlistment form, seen below, states that he was 21 years old. Did he lie or did the enlistment officer change his age on the forms because he was too young to serve?  

The record provides some fascinating details about Jerome. He was 5 feet 9 inches tall, had a fair complexion, blue eyes and brown hair. He was working as a cooper—a maker of barrels—at the time of his army enlistment.

Jerome enlisted in Buffalo, New York, nearly fifty miles from his home. I wonder what led him to travel so far for such a purpose. A Lt. Canby signed him up, and assigned him to the Infantry’s 2^nd Regiment, Company E. According to the New York State Military Museum, the 2^nd regiment of New York State Volunteers was under the command of West Point grad Ward Burnett. According to a Wikipedia entry on the regiment,

“When war broke out with Mexico in 1846, the 2nd Infantry Regiment was sent to Camargo, Mexico and joined General David E. Twiggs' Brigade. From September 1846 to December 1847 the regiment campaigned from the Rio Grande to Mexico City, fighting in battles at Veracruz, Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco, Moline del Rey and Chapultepec.”

The New York State Military Museum provided further detail:

The Second Regiment New York Volunteers “joined General Winfield Scott’s invasion force and landed at Vera Cruz in March 1847 and participated in the siege of that city.  The 2nd Regiment moved westward with Scott’s army, fighting in the Battle of Cerro Gordo, where it was in the vanguard in pursuing and capturing Mexican General Santa Anna, and the Battles of Contreras and Churubusco which resulted in the fall of Mexico City.

Second Regiment--Infantry Coat of Arms

Obviously Jerome saw considerable action in Mexico. How did it affect him? I also wonder how he reacted to the southern climate and Spanish-speaking population. It must have been a total culture shock for a teen from upstate New York. He probably suffered in the heat. According to the Military Museum article, the regiment began with 1000 soldiers, and suffered 400 casualties, with 199 men dying of wounds and disease.

Mexican American War illustration, courtesy Library of Congress

The Mexican war ended February 2, 1848. The New York Volunteers had been told their service would be for the “duration” of the war, although Jerome’s enlistment record shows he signed up for a five-year term of duty. According to records, “The rate of desertion during this war was 8.3%. Some deserted to avoid the horrendous conditions of the camps.” I doubt Jerome deserted due to camp conditions, as he remained with his unit for over six months following the end of the war. His desertion date is listed as August 18, 1848.

So what might have prompted him to desert his unit in August? I have a hypothesis. According to the Wikipedia article on the Second Regiment,

“In September 1848 because of conflicts with the Indians in Oregon and California the regiment was sent west. The regiment sailed via Rio de Janeiro, Cape Horn and Santiago, Chile, to California. Between 1849 and 1853 the regiment was in California occupying stations from Goose Lake on the north to Fort Yuma on the south and the Pacific Ocean on the west and the Sierra Nevada Mountains on the east, scouting, providing protection for the '49ers and fighting throughout the entire area. The regiment returned to New York in 1853.”

Imagine being a young 20 year old who has spent three long years at war, far from his home, family and friends. He had enlisted assuming his service would be over when the war was over, but instead his unit was being sent to the West Coast for more years of conflict. I suspect that he decided that his service was done, whether or not the Army agreed, and he headed home rather than get sent to some other far off place. I’m sure he wasn’t the only deserter from his regiment—he probably joined a group of soldiers heading north as traveling alone would have been hazardous. Did he even understand he was committing desertion and the potential ramifications if he was caught? I checked the records on Fold 3 of the other men from his area on the same page as Jerome’s entry. The two men from his area of New York died in battle. Perhaps this influenced his decision as well. I wonder how long it took him to make his way home, and what he told his family and friends about his separation from the army.

Did the Army also have questions about whether Jerome’s return home in 1848 was truly desertion?  Instead of throwing him in the brig when he signed up with the Ninth Regiment in Minnesota, the Army made him an officer. I suppose it is possible that record-keeping was so primitive at that point that the enlistment officers in 1862 had no way to check his 1848 record.  

Despite the shadow of desertion on Jerome’s service record, he seems to have redeemed himself as an infantry officer from 1862 till the end of the Civil War. It appears he was both a deserter and a hero—a man of many sides.

 

 

Sources:

US Mexican War Soldiers & Sailors Database. https://www.nps.gov/paal/learn/historyculture/search-usmexwar.htm#sort=Title%20asc

History of the Minnesota Valley Including the Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota. By Edward Duffield Neill · 1882. https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=jerome+dane&pg=PA1004&printsec=frontcover&q=inpublisher:%22North+Star+Publishing+Company%22&tbm=bks&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi159DV5a76AhWGLkQIHeVTAS0QmxMoAHoECB8QAg&sxsrf=ALiCzsZ4kMVVpj-ACObFbJ67oMn4llT7Ig:1664069421041

Army Register of Enlistments, 1798-1914. Accessed Sept 26, 2022 https://www.fold3.com/image/310827952?rec=299679172&terms=dane,jerome

2nd Infantry Regiment (United States). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)

List of United States military and volunteer units in the Mexican–American War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_and_volunteer_units_in_the_Mexican%E2%80%93American_War#New_York

New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center. 2nd Regiment New York State Volunteers. https://museum.dmna.ny.gov/unit-history/conflict/mexican-war-1846-1848/2nd-regiment-new-york-state-volunteers

My Father’s Unknown Brother: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Overlooked”

The Overlooked Baby: My Father’s Unknown Sibling

Oscar Peterson: 1898-1898

 

I received a notification from FamilySearch today that they had located a new record for my grandmother, Regina Syverson Peterson. I checked out the new record, and was perplexed. It was an 1898 death record for an infant named Oscar Peterson born in Lake Hanska Township, Brown County Minnesota. Oscar’s parents were listed as Paul and Regina Peterson.

The names on the record were all familiar. Paul and Regina Peterson were my paternal grandparents. They farmed in Lake Hanska Township. They had a son named Oscar. The only problem was the date. The only Oscar Peterson I knew of, my Uncle Oscar, was born October 8, 1908, a full decade after the death of the Oscar on this death record. And my Uncle Oscar did not die in infancy. He grew up, married, had two children, and died of a heart attack at age 57 on April 12, 1966.

So what did this mean? Was there another Peterson family living in the sparsely populated area of 1890s Lake Hanska Township? A family with the exact same first names as my grandparents? It seemed unlikely.

I turned to my Ancestry tree, and did a search for an Oscar Peterson who was born and died in Lake Hanska Township in 1898. To my surprise, I found two birth records that matched. The first was a birth record from a database called the Minnesota, U.S., Births and Christenings Index, 1840-1980. It stated that Oscar Peterson was born February 3, 1898 in Brown County. He was a male. The record listed an FHL Film Number of 1870146.

The second record was more conclusive. It was a christening record, so included information on the names of the baby’s parents. It had an FHL Film Number of 1671372. While there was no image attached to the record, it listed both the place of birth, Lake Hanska Township, and the place of the christening, Burnstown Township, also in Brown County, Minnesota. This is probably why I had never run across the record before this—I had found a lot of baptism/christening records for my Peterson ancestors in the Lake Hanska Lutheran Church database. However, this child wasn’t christened at Lake Hanska Lutheran.

I looked up the christening record for Regina and Paul’s eldest child, Anna. She too was christened in Burnstown Township. I can’t imagine why those two children were baptized nearly thirty miles from their home—it would have taken hours to travel that far in a horse-drawn wagon. The Lake Hanska Lutheran church, located just two miles or so from the Peterson farm, had organized in the 1860s—why didn’t the Petersons go there? The rest of their children seem to have been christened at Lake Hanska. Did they have relatives in Burnstown Township? I looked at plat maps from 1886 and 1905 for Burnstown Township, but failed to find any surnames I recognized.

I am amazed that Paul and Regina’s other children never seem to have mentioned their lost sibling Oscar. As far as my brother and I knew, Paul and Regina only had nine children, but here was a tenth. Did the second Oscar ever know he was named in honor of his brother who had died ten years before?

I decided to review the Petersons’ 1900 census form. That year, the census asked mothers how many children they had borne, and how many of those children still survived. I was shocked to see Regina’s response to the question: she told the census taker that she had borne 5 children, and only two survived. At the time of the 1900 census, Paul and Regina’s only living children were Anna, their eldest daughter born in 1895, and Randine, born in 1899. Oscar was born between those two children. But according to this census form, Paul and Regina had two more children who died in infancy. How tragic! They had been married for eight years by that point, so it is likely they lost two children before Anna was born, since she was born four years after their marriage.

I also verified this information on the 1910 census, where they once again asked how many children had been born, and how many survived. Regina responded that she had borne nine children by then, and that six survived, which matches what she said in 1900.

As yet, I have found no information on Paul and Regina’s other two children who did not survive. Perhaps they were stillborn so no birth record was filed. The real puzzle is where little Oscar is buried. I have found no information on him on Findagrave. I will have to examine Paul and Regina’s plot at Lake Hanska Cemetery to see if there might be an unmarked grave next to them. I also have no burial record for the other two infants.

Paul and Regina's 1892 Wedding Photo

I am embarrassed to have overlooked so much important information about my own grandparents. First, I had never thought to ask why Paul and Regina had been married four years before Anna was born. That’s an unusually long time between a marriage and the first child. Second, I had never thought to look at the question about the number of children born when I first looked at the 1900 and 1910 census records. That was sheer carelessness. I thought I knew the answers and never bothered to check if I was right. This is an important lesson for me to remember in my future genealogical research.

Sources:

Ancestry.com. Minnesota, U.S., Births and Christenings Index, 1840-1980 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. Original data:"Minnesota Births and Christenings, 1840–1980." Index. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2009, 2010. Index entries derived from digital copies of original and compiled records.

"Minnesota, County Deaths, 1850-2001," database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:7Z7R-LTW2 : 14 December 2020), Oscar Petterson, Lake Hanska Township, Brown, Minnesota, United States; citing Death, multiple county courthouses, Minnesota.

 

Two Branches of Osgoods: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Organized”

Osgoods: Good and Plenty—Plenty Confusing, That Is

Christopher Osgood: 1606-1660 (Tenth-great-grandfather maternal side)
Mary Osgood Lovejoy: 1633-1675 (Ninth-great-grandmother maternal side)
John Osgood: 1595-1651 (9^th Great-Grandfather, maternal side)
Mary Osgood Ingalls: 1633-1686 (8^th Great-Grandmother, maternal side)

 

A notification from FamilySearch about an ancestor that wasn’t on my Ancestry tree sent me into research mode. I ended up adding some new eighth and ninth great-grandparents to the maternal side of my tree. However, these new discoveries were also quite confusing. Some of the surnames were awfully familiar—Ingalls and Osgood, surnames already in my tree. I thought I had discovered new ancestors—was I wrong? Were they already in my tree? Or were they somehow related to people already in my tree? I suspected my family tree might have some crossed branches back in mid-1600s Massachusetts. It was time to get organized and tease out who these people were, and how they might be related to one another.

I realized I had some real problems when I tried to attach a record to my new eighth-great-grandmother Mary Osgood, verifying her marriage to Henry Ingalls, and discovered that the Mary Osgood I’d attached it to already had a husband named Lovejoy. While this other Mary Osgood had the same birth year as Mary Osgood Ingalls, Mary Osgood Lovejoy had a different death date—and different parents. I had barely begun researching my new branch, and I was already attaching documents to the wrong people.  

So who were these two Mary Osgoods? And who were their parents? And how am I related to them?

The first Mary Osgood in my tree was the daughter of Christopher Osgood and his first wife Mary Everatt. Christopher was born April 10, 1606 in Wilshire England. His parents are believed to have been Thomas Osgood and Margaret Skeat.

Christopher married Mary Everatt in Marlborough on April 21, 1632. He was 26, and his bride was only 17. About a year later on March 17, 1633, their daughter Mary was born. Sadly, Mary Everatt Osgood appears to have never recovered from childbirth, or perhaps contracted an illness shortly after the birth. Whatever the cause, she died on her first wedding anniversary, April 21, 1633, leaving a motherless one-month-old baby.

Christopher remarried just three months after Mary’s death; he probably needed someone to help care for baby Mary. He chose another 18-year-old girl, Margaret Fowler. Around the same time, he decided to move to the American colonies, booking passage for his young family on the ship “Mary and John”. They travelled with Margaret’s parents, Philip and Mary Fowler, so at least Margaret had help to care for her little stepdaughter.

The Mary and John travelled back and forth from England to both Maine and Massachusetts in the 1620s and 1630s, carrying colonists and supplies. This illustration of the ship’s interior shows how cramped the conditions must have been on the vessel. It is amazing baby Mary survived. The Osgoods must have travelled with a wet nurse.

The family arrived in Massachusetts in spring of 1634, and settled in Ipswich. Several researchers have compiled all the colonial records for Christopher Osgood that can be located, showing that he took the Freeman’s Oath in 1635, received several grants of land in the Ipswich area, and worked as a bricklayer. Over the years, he also served several terms on the Ipswich Jury of Trials, so must have been a respected member of the community.

Map of Ipswich, Massachusetts 1640

Christopher Osgood died sometime between 1650 and 1651. He remembered Mary in his will, which read, “First, I do give unto my oldest daughter Mary Osgood, ten pounds, to be paid her or her assigns at her day of marriage.” He left five pounds each for her three half-sisters by his second wife, with his lands and property left to his wife and oldest son (which left the youngest son, born after his death, totally without property). Sadly, his wife Margery returned to the court a few months after his death to ask for an “abatement of the portions” (cutting of the bequests) to be paid to Mary and her siblings as the “property not proving sufficient.”

Close-up of map, with Osgood spelled "Ausgood"

Despite Mary’s lack of an inheritance, she was able to find a husband shortly after her father’s death. According to S. L. Bailey’s Historical Sketches of Andover, “third in the list of the first ten marriages in Andover is Jan. 1, 1651, John Lovejoy and Mary Osgood.” They were married in Ipswich by the Rev. Mr. Simons. The Lovejoys had travelled to Massachusetts on the same ship as the Osgoods, so the families were long acquainted. Mary was 18 years old, while John Lovejoy was 28.

The couple was quite prolific. Mary gave birth to twelve children over the space of 22 years. She died July 15, 1675 at the young age of 42—she probably died of exhaustion, having borne a baby every two years! Mary and John Lovejoy’s fifth child, Anne Lovejoy, was my eighth great-grandmother. She was born December 21, 1659, and married Johnathan Blanchard May 20, 1685. The familial line down to my great-grandmother Lucy Dane is shown below.

The second Mary Osgood is part of the newly-discovered branch of my family tree. She was born March 17, 1633 in Wherwell in the Test Valley of Hampshire, England. Her parents were John Osgood and Sarah Ann Booth.

John Osgood, my ninth-great-grandfather, was born in the Wherwell area in 1595. There is some debate about his parentage. Most researchers agree that his parents were Robert Osgood of Wherwell, and his wife Joan, who owned a farm called Cottonworth. John seems to have been the oldest son, and took over the farm when Robert died in 1630. I wrote about this farm’s house in my previous blog entry.

John Osgood married Sarah Ann Booth, sometime around 1627 in Wherwell. The couple likely had four children by the time they decided to emigrate to the colonies in 1638. The children included my eighth great-grandmother Mary Osgood, who was probably their third child, born March 17, 1633.

The Osgoods’ decision to emigrate was influenced by religious intolerance in their area, increasing tax burdens, and a crop failure in 1637. John seems to have been desperate to leave, as shown by a letter sent by the headmaster of the school at Winchester, a town ten miles from Wherwell, on John Osgood’s behalf. The letter was sent to Sir Edward Nicholas, Secretary of State to King Charles I, begging that he grant approval to Osgood’s planned move to the colonies.

John set sail with his wife and children, including 5-year-old Mary, on the ship Confidence in 1638. The passenger list includes “Sarah Osgood, spinster of Herrell, and four children”. Herrell is the phonetic spelling of Wherwell. Oddly, John Osgood is not listed on the passenger manifest. Instead Sarah—who was definitely not a spinster-- is accompanied by a William Osgood, age 11. There were several versions of the passenger list, compiled at separate times, and one of the others lists Sarah’s children as “Sarah Osgood 9, John Osgood 7, Mary Osgood 5, Elizabeth Osgood 3.” Her destination was listed as Newbury, Massachusetts.

There are varying explanations for the relationship between 11-year-old William Osgood and John Osgood. Most researchers suggest they were either brothers or that William was John’s nephew.

The Confidence probably set sail from Southampton on either April 11 or 24, 1638. The date of the ship’s arrival in Boston is unknown.

Christopher Osgood and family were living in Ipswich in 1638. Researchers have suggested that John and Christopher were related somehow—possibly cousins—and that Christopher provided shelter for John Osgood and his family for a few weeks after their arrival until John was able to acquire land of his own in nearby Newbury.

Colonial era Newbury Mass. map

From the colonial records, John seems to have been a decent, respected member of his community. He made his Freeman’s application on May 22, 1639. He spent some years living in Newbury before becoming one of the founders of Andover, Massachusetts. In 1645, he was one of ten founding members of the church in Andover. In 1650, he sold a house he still owned in Newbury to a man named George Little. In 1651, Andover residents appointed John to be their first representative to the General Court.

Sadly, John Osgood did not live to complete his term in office. He attended the May session, but by the fall session he was ill.  He died on October 24, 1651; he was 56 years old.

His will, reproduced in the Eben book listed below, provided 25 pounds each for daughters Mary, Elizabeth, and Hannah payable when they turned 18, and 25 pounds for son Stephen at age 21. John also left 20 shillings for Sarah Clements, his eldest and now-married daughter, with an additional 20 shillings for Sarah’s daughter Bekah. Presumably Sarah received less in the will because she had already received a dowry upon her marriage. His oldest son, also named John, inherited his lands and house, with a life interest to the widow Sarah.

Part of John Osgood's will

Mary Osgood had her 18^th birthday a few months before her father’s death, so came into her inheritance quickly. She married Henry Ingalls two years later, on July 5, 1853. Mary was 20 years old, and Henry was 26.

As I alluded to at the beginning of the blog, I already had a man named Henry Ingalls in my family tree—he was the brother of my eighth-great-grandmother Elizabeth Ingalls, who married Rev. Francis Dane. This was the same man, so Henry Ingalls is both my eighth-great-granduncle, and my eighth-great-grandfather. Henry and Elizabeth’s parents, Edmund Ingalls and Ann Telbe, are my ninth-great-grandparents twice over.

Mary Osgood and Henry Ingalls had a huge family. Mary gave birth to ten children between 1654 and 1679—she was 45 years old when her last daughter, Sarah Ingalls, was born. Mary died seven years later on December 16, 1686 at age 53. I am descended from their daughter Mary Ingalls, born January 28, 1659, who went on to marry John Stevens. The relationship is spelled out below.

In order to understand how all these Osgood and Ingalls family members were related to one another and to me, I had to organize my records and do a lot of research into genealogies and family histories prepared by other researchers. I now have a clearer picture of these families. Best of all, I can finally tell the two Mary Osgoods apart. Perhaps someday I will be able to definitively determine whether the two Mary Osgoods and their Osgood fathers were related to one another, and if so, how. A project for a later date!

 

 

Sources:

Ancestry.com. The Fowler family : a genealogical memoir of the descendants of Philip and Mary Fowler, of Ipswich, Mass. [database on-line]. Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. Original data: Stickney, Matthew Adams,. The Fowler family : a genealogical memoir of the descendants of Philip and Mary Fowler, of Ipswich, Mass., ten generations, 1590-1882. Salem, Mass.: Printed for the author by Salem Press, 1883. https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/191:15733?tid=46986934&pid=322178585653&hid=1037386144396&_phsrc=Jng14245&_phstart=default

Great Migration 1634-1635, M-P. (Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2010.) Originally published as: The Great Migration, Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635, Volume V, M-P, by Robert Charles Anderson. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2007.

https://www.americanancestors.org/DB401/i/12155/318/235141190

https://www.laddfamily.com/Files/Mary%20&%20John/Mary%20and%20John.htm

Tepper, Michael, Passengers to America, Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc.: Baltimore, MD, 1977. Passenger list for the Mary and John’s 1633-34 voyage that Christopher Osgood and family were aboard.

"New Light on the English Background of the Osgoods of Essex County, Massachusetts", published in The American Genealogist, Jan/Apr 2008.

A Genealogy of the Descendants of John, Christopher and William Osgood, Who Came from England and Settled in New England Early in the Seventeenth Century, Osgood, Ira, 1799-1877; Putnam, Eben.         https://archive.org/details/genealogyofdesce00osgo/page/n23/mode/2up