So of course we need a posting place for Asa and Mary's children...
We want to plant this post like a garden spot for Mary McAlpine Candee. So we'll leave lots of space where family story can be joined in.
Mary and Asa's children (as best we can compile as we go along in this exploration)...
Caius the eldest child of Asa and Mary was born in June of 1812/1813.
He went on to marry Eliza Hitchcock and to live in Monroe County in Michigan.
In Baldwin's Genealogy, Caius and Eliza had (at least) two children...George H. Candy and "Mary C."
The story of Caius going west is told more in the entry about the Candee family in Whiteford Township, Monroe County, Michigan (Munsell & Company, Publishers, 1890). The entry was written by Caius' wife, Eliza Hitchcock Candee.
We were pouring over Census readings and our notebooks when we found something that made the research come to life.
A letter sent in reply to this:
The following notice appeared in the papers of Fulton, N.Y.:
June 18, 1881 - As it is fifty years since the organization of the First Congregational Society of Volney, and the commencement of public worship on Bristol Hill, and the great revival, it has been decided to have a semi-centennial service at their church on the first Sunday July, 1881, sermon by Rev. Henry Kendall, D.D., of New York. After the sermon there will be a re-union, in which we expect to hear by word or by letter from many of the worshipers of past days. The good old tunes of fifty years ago will be sung. Come and meet with us once more.
That letter,
________________________________
WHITEFORD, MONROE CO., MICH., June 27th, 1881
To the Brethren and Sisters in the Lord, who are worshipers in the meeting house on Bristol Hill, town of Volney, Greeting:
Brother Jacob Kendall has informed me that you have decided to hold a memorial or semi-centennial meeting on the first Sabbath of July 1881, and requested me to be represented by person or letter. More than fifty years ago by His grace I was led to see myself a sinner, lost, and to believe in Jesus as my Saviour. Fifty years ago, I was a member of the church there, and joined with many who are gone to their rest in the worship and praise of God. I also at that time was a member of the Temperance society in that place and have kept the pledge, and I am now in favor of State prohibition. In the fall of '33, I left your State for the west, since which time I have been a resident of Ohio or Michigan.
I am now 69 years of age, and by the grace of God that bringeth salvation, teaching us that "denying ungodliness, worldly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously in this present world," I have been kept, and more and more do I admire that grace.
Hoping that you all abound therein, I must say dear friends farewell.
CAIUS MARIUS CANDEE
__________________________________
In our research we had a bit of a thicket to pick through. George and Mary and Eliza, all common names and all appear in the multitude of Candee general records. It's quite the painstaking effort to sort it all out.
George H. Candy, the son of Caius and Eliza, is seen in the U.S. Census 1870, Whitford Township, Monroe County, Michigan as a fourteen year old boy "at home." On that Census the Candee surname is written as "Canday." And Caius' name is written as "Christ." How this came about, we may never know. The Candays are wedged in between the Frosts, Thorps, Smiths, Tendrinas, Rogers, Sawers, and Quelehs. Christ has a combined material wealth of $4600. And that Census confirms birthplaces for Caius and Eliza Hitchcock Candee as New York. Their children were both reportedly born in Michigan.
By the Census of 1900 for Whiteford Township, Monroe County, Michigan we find no Caius. This proverbial snapshot of the family lists son George H. Candee as Head of Household. He's 44 years old and single. We also find out he was born in February of 1856. His sister Mary C. is also single...having been born in March of 1859 she's 41 years old. And there is our illustrious writer Eliza Hitchcock, their mother. She widowed and aged 79. She was also a February baby. There are servants living in the household as well. White servants. Andrew Never (or Neuer), James Stevenson, and Emma Gerber. The 1900 U.S. Census is always exciting for its matriarchal information and this one does not disappoint, although it makes more mystery. It says, Eliza H. gave birth to four children/4 still living. There's lots of cross-outs and erasure marks for this household on this particular Census which adds to the sense of people scrambling to make sense...just like us.
We can travel through Mama's Quilt to Monroe to learn more about Caius and Eliza Hitchcock. And because Eliza Hitchcock Candee was interested in genealogy and writing, we find many of her writings like signposts along the journey of learning about our family tree.
Caius and Eliza are buried in the Whiteford Union Cemetery, Lambertville, Monroe County, Michigan
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Leander...
We can find Leander in the Censuses AND we can read about him in a history of Hillsdale, MICHIGAN.
We believe he married Lorinda Bird...the child of Rowland Bird and Lydia Ford. Rowland Bird seems to have been a prominent founder in his town. But we need to go back and re-read our collection of local histories and biographical sketches to match this Leander up with the Leander who "died of inflammatory rheumatism" in the prime of his life at age 34. That would've been around the middle of the 1800's when all kinds of people were getting sick from mosquitoes and sewage management and an increase in travel which exposed people to traveling diseases.
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Seldon
In the Census reading work we followed Mary's Asa out to Iowa! There we saw him as an older grandpa living with this son. This was before we found out from an account by Eliza Hitchcock Candee that Mary McAlpine (Asa's wife) had got a fever, either from upstate New York or in Michigan, and died upon arrival in Michigan. Probably exhaustion due to lighting out for Michigan made her sickness worse. Seldon was determined to get settled so his mother could get better, but not all the loving in the world could fix things up.
We received this tintype image of a Seldon Candee from contemporary "cousin" Mr. Hampton Wilmot...but we have to tread carefully on the records to sort out the Seldons before we definitively attach photos to names.
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| e-Quilt piece by Lara Lynn Lane, photograph submitted by Hampton Wilmot, Jr. |
Don't worry, Seldon wasn't the only family member that has us tracking and pathing on wild west e-xcursions.
But for the purposes of Mama's Quilt it behooves us to put Mary's Seldon (born 8 December 1816 in Oswego, NY) on the Iowa page of our webcluster.
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Gideon married Harriet Peck in New York, and the genealogy says they had the children George, Jane, Benjamin, and Alice. And that Gideon died in Hinsdale, Michigan in 1848.
Likewise the Gideons give us a run for the money in the given name extravaganza. There was the Rail Road Man and the Justice of the Peace, ones that married young and some that married late.
Asa and Mary McAlpine's Gideon seems to have been the Rail Road Man according to Baldwin's Genealogy.
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Alta was belovedly nicknamed "Alty." She was 15 years old when her mother died. And it fell to her to be motherly in the family which included helping the others understand math and budget and raising the baby who would always have to be reassured that she had not killed their mother. Babies whose mamas die in childbirth often get accused of such mythology. When Alta got older she married first Russell Dean of Whitford, Michigan and they named one of their children Caius too in 1876. That Caius died when he was just a boy of ten years old, but his brother Charles went on to live in San Francisco!
Alta got married a second time to Oliver Wilson and in 1876 they were living in Toledo, Ohio around the time Baldwin wrote his Candee Genealogy.
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Jane was close in age to Alty. And was an experienced settler by the time she went up to Fergus Falls. She married Silas Phelps of Mankato, Minnesota in 1876.
They had children:
Mary Jane
Erika
Oddo
Emily
Amy
Daniel
Asa
(According to Baldwin's GENEALOGY)
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Amy was a the third girl in a row, the brothers might have explained by way of making up a memory song. Only eleven when Mollpine died, young enough to help with the "improvements" some and so would have spent quality time with all the men and women in her folk.
Amy married M. Knight Joles. They were also in Hinsdale, Michigan. They early lost their children Rosanna and Mary. And in 1876 their child Job was still unmarried but their child Ary had married...
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Asa the younger also moved out to Iowa--Alma Key (Nineveh Township). He married Cordelia Warden and their children were Florence, Dora, Daniel, and a baby ASA! He had a tough as nails side and a sweet sentimental stream of his being as exhibited in his work as a blacksmith and a creamery farmer.
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Eardley
Seems like Eardley was hard to keep up with. He went away to the Mexican War and "passed through a number of battles uninjured," we know from Eliza Hitchcock Candee. She also records that he was honorably discharged. And he seemed to be returning home and had gotten as far as New Orleans when, technically, the family lost track of him. "A steamboat explosion on the Mississippi about that time" occurred and the family believed it was in that accident that Eardley may have perished.
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In March of 1831 Mary and Asa had TRIPLETS.
One was named Mary like her magnificent mother.
One was named Huldah like Grandpa Gideon's daughter, Aunt Huldah.
And one was named George.
Mary died young, the last one born in the batch and the first one to make it to heaven.
Huldah followed a traditional route for ladies in the Candee family and became Mrs. George Cassandra. She and her husbdand pursued farming in Iowa.
And George. George was born into privilege in the sense that he was the youngest son in the family. This put him on track for learning. He learned about skills first...living in the country skills and people skills. He took to learning, and, then learning took him to study...Theology at college--Oberlin.
We've begun a Reverend George Candee page in our webcluster and hope to do more serious research on him since as a subject there are few more fascinating. From being tarred and feathered to fighting with some of America's first gangsters in Toledo, the Reverend George had opinions on and experience with nearly a century of life.
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And so we come to the 13th child. Funny thing about that number...it's gained a lot of superstition over time but in Mama's family, at least amongst us girls, it's a LUCKY number! I don't really know if Sarah Orinda, the last born child of Mary and Asa, would have considered it luck, but she beat all odds against her when she survived her mother getting Cholera.
She was also blessed by being born into a family that was tight like elm bark on a roof making a mostly waterproof cradle and nursery.
She had a cornucopia of family near and far. It may have early in life contributed to her own sense of "it takes a village to raise a child" or in other words some sort of meaningful connection with "community."
Sarah Orinda was born the year that Mary McAlpine died, 1834.
The above image of Sarah Orinda Siddall is found at:
www.flickr.com/photos/27192231@N08/page5/
And pasted into a jpeg created in Microsoft Picture it (by Lara Lynn Lane, 2010).
The Photographer is listed as: A. C. Falor, Oberlin, Ohio.
It gives us some sense of what Asa and Mary looked like, most likely.
Sarah Orinda's family brings up Quakers and literary people. Click here to glimpse Sarah Orinda Candee Siddall, that's Sarah in her family after growing up.
It is through one of Sarah Orinda's children, Eugene, that we get to hop from branch to branch in our contemporary Candy family tree! Click on the family tree e-notebook notation below to connect with that string of story.
