While validating some of Calista Emery’s dates and places, I finally made some progress on William W. Emery/Emory, and Hannah Merrifield; the parents of Calista and Carrie Emory Gage.
I was musing about the timing of William’s probate filed in 1864. I never did nail down an exact death date and place, I had just estimated it to have been near the time of the probate in March 1864 and at his last recorded residence of Topsham, Orange County, Vermont. It’s a reasonable assumption considering how infrequent people died far from home, especially farmers or farm laborers like William. Even Aunt Eileen recorded his death similarly. As William was in his 40s, I discounted the possibility that he had died in service during the Civil War. This was a relatively young mans war. The average age of enlistment was 18 to 30 years old.
William is estimated to have been born in 1814 in Vermont, though his marriage records report his residence as Greenwich, Massachusetts in 1841 (if you go looking for Greenwich on modern maps, it is now submerged beneath the Quabbin Reservoir). The only time the entire family was recorded together was in the 1850 Census and this record places William, Hannah, Calista, and Carrie’s birth state in Vermont. Starting with her marriage record, Carrie claimed her birth occurred in Warwick, Massachusetts. And Hannah Merrifield does have relatives who lived in Warwick when Carrie and Calista were young. Calista, on the other hand, claimed Vermont most of the time. So, if Carrie’s birth state is accurate, William and Hannah remained in Massachusetts for a few years before moving to Vermont. If Calista’s birth state is accurate, then William and Hannah settled in New Hampshire soon after marriage.
Since William was 36 in the 1850 Vermont census, I expect to find him as a head of household in 1840 between the ages of 20 and 30 (1840 just has tick marks in age brackets), but I have yet to locate his name in the 1840 census’ of Vermont, Massachusetts, or New Hampshire. Even if he were 26 in 1840, he could still be enumerated as a tick mark in another household and his name is not listed. And, after reviewing 1858 property maps, there are several Emery/Emory property owners in nearby Washington Township, Orange County, Vermont.
William’s last census entry is 1860 Vermont where he is the head of household and only Hannah is listed in his household. Calista was in a nearby household working as a house servant. I was not able to locate Carrie.
When William’s 1864 probate was filed in Orange County, Vermont, Carrie was already married to Sumner Gage, had at least two children, and moved to Sumner’s residence in Orford County, New Hampshire. William’s probate record reported he was “late of Topsham, Orange, Vermont”. Even though Carrie and Sumner were nearby (Orford, NH was not far from Topsham, VT), Carrie did not sign Hannah’s administrative forfeiture and she was not mentioned in her father’s probate file. This is not surprising as William was not a wealthy man. The only asset listed in William’s probate was a savings account containing about $30 in Newark, New Jersey.
Why Newark, NJ? An 1864 probate in Vermont and a savings account in Newark, NJ…there were few reasons for a farm laborer to venture so far from home in the 1860s. I took a shot at pension files for men named William Emery/Emory and there it was, a widow’s pension card for Hannah Emory, widow of William W. Emory, private in D Company, 11th New Jersey Regiment. His enlistment papers report his residence was Topsham, VT. Was this the right couple, or was there another couple with the same names in Topsham? William and Hannah are popular names in this time and place.
Fortunately for me, I have not found another William/Hannah couple in Vermont and Hannah Emory’s widow’s pension file is digitized on Fold3. Her pension application validates that William W. Emory, private of D Co, 11th New Jersey Infantry Regiment was indeed the husband of Hannah of Topsham, Orange County, Vermont. Hannah’s pension application does not name his daughters because they were no longer his dependents at the time of his death. For me, the fact that New Jersey William was from Topsham, and Hannah’s reason to file for probate was to recover funds in a New Jersey savings account is good enough proof that these are the same two people.
William enlisted on 10 July 1862 in Newark, Essex County, New Jersey at the age of 49. If the Army back then was anything like the Army I enlisted in, he would have been highly encouraged to open a bank account in Newark while he was in training so that he could easily cash his paycheck and draw money as needed. Or perhaps he was simply smarter than the average farmer/soldier.
To get to Newark, New Jersey from Topsham, Vermont, William would have either walked the whole way (yikes), or walked as far as Bradford or Newbury, VT (the nearest major towns) to take a boat down the Hudson River to Jersey City, or a train on the Connecticut & Passumpsic River Rail Road that skirted the Hudson River, through Massachusetts all the way to New Haven, Connecticut. From New Haven, he would have had to made a connection to New York, City and then across the river to Newark. (https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3721p.rr001090/?r=-0.085,-0.045,1.171,0.964,0)
The 11th New Jersey Infantry Regiment was trained at Camp Perrine near Trenton. They departed New Jersey in August of that year and were held up in Washington D.C. due to a measles outbreak among their ranks. By December they had made their way to Fredericksburg, Virginia to join Major General Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Potomac and the offensive against General Robert E. Lee. From there William would have participated in the Battles of Chancellorsville, Salem Heights, Gettysburg, Beverly Ford, Locust Grove, and Mine Run before the Army of the Potomac made winter camp at Brandy Station, Virginia in December 1863.
At Brandy Station, William had contracted an undisclosed disease and was admitted to the field hospital where he succumbed to diarrhea on 29 December. He was first buried at J.P. Thom’s at Brandy Station before being reinterred by the military on an unrecorded date at Culpeper National Cemetery, Virginia. It was common for our Civil War militaries to use the most convenient farmer’s fields for hasty burials until a more permanent location could be located and acquired where all the remains could be reinterred.
So here’s a pleasant topic…what disease causes diarrhea among Civil War soldiers? There were a lot of deaths attributed to this symptom. Many times, field doctors specifically named Dysentery. But William’s doctor does not name his disease. The other possibilities besides Dysentery were Typhoid, and Pneumonia (though diarrhea is a “possible” symptom). Based on the number of deaths recorded due to disease for this unit, I suspect Dysentery over the other two, which was (sadly) the most common ailment and a very unpleasant experience for our Civil War ancestors. But do you remember the measles outbreak the unit suffered in December 1862? Measles in adult males was deadly, but those who survived had weakened immunities leaving them vulnerable to both Typhoid and Dysentery. Pneumonia would have simply complicated any other ailment William may have been combating. https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/disease-in-the-civil-war.html
https://www.civilwaracademy.com/civil-war-diseases
The mystery that accessible records can’t tell us is why did William travel to New Jersey to enlist? And why at the age of 49? Did he have to cross New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York into New Jersey to find the nearest actively enlisting unit to join in 1862? Vermont’s male population had been nearly decimated by the War, but not until 1863. Was he abandoning Hannah and his daughters with no intent of returning from New Jersey? Regardless of why New Jersey, the possible answer to why at the age of 49 was that William may have been trying to escape financial hardship.
I returned to the census. His absence in 1840 could suggest he was working for his father or a neighbor. In 1850 he was a farmer but owned no property so he was renting a farm at the age of 36. In 1860, he was a tanner but still did not own real estate. At least one of his teenage daughters (probably both) was working as a household servant and residing in the homes of their employers. This paints an additionally disheartening picture that he may not have been able to support a wife and two unmarried daughters as a tenant farmer and tanner. Perhaps a soldier’s pay of $13 per month paid every two months (if the paymaster was diligent) was better income than a tenant farmer could make in Vermont. At $13 per month the $30 in his savings account was about two and a half months’ worth of salary.
His occupation as a tanner leads me to another possibility for enlisting. If you remember from Calista’s post, Hannah initiated the probate process in March 1864 and petitioned to forfeit her place as the administrator of William’s intestate probate in favor of Oramel H. Watson. Oramel or O.H. Watson was the Emory’s neighbor in 1860; a tanner and currier who also served as the county Sheriff at one point. Was O.H. Watson William’s employer? Did William owe him money or was O.H. being a good neighbor to Hannah? If O.H. acted as the administrator does this mean William is not related to the other Emery’s in New Hampshire?
No other modern researcher is tying William to any parents, so far that I have found. And so, I am conducting a single surname review of Emery’s living in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts between 1840 and 1860. Wish me luck.
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