Margaret McFarlane Bennett Brown (1826-1909) Scotland to Lower Canada to Michigan, USA

Ayshire, Scotland
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Margaret McFarlane, my second great grandmother, was born on March 10, 1825, in Scotland, according to her death certificate and several censuses in Canada and the U.S.  I have some discrepancies, though, on who her parents may be. Her death certificate (information supplied by her youngest son, James – remembering that the information supplied is only as good as the knowledge of the person supplying it, in a time of grief) states that her parents are James McFarland and Jeanette Braiden, both also born in Scotland. But the marriage record for her second marriage (which, frankly, already has one significant error that I know of – which I will get to later when it is relevant) states that her father is Andrew McFarland and her mother is unknown. Although I’ve seen some other family trees which indicate that her parents should be Thomas McFarlane and Ann Miller, they haven’t turned up in my research at all and I’ve yet to find a family tree containing them that doesn’t source that connection with anything but a reference to another tree. On the other hand, AncestryDNA has put me, my Dad, his brother, and both his sisters in a DNA Circle along with 22 other people, stating that “Mary Jane Bryden” is my third great-grandmother and another saying that my third great-grandfather is Andrew McFarlane. It’s easy for me to see how Andrew McFarlane can become McFarland. I can also see how Bryden could become Braiden, when dealing with Scottish accents coming down to later Michigan generations, and how Mary Jane could become Janet or Jeanette, especially since every reference I’ve found to Andrew McFarlane and Jane Bryden call her Jane (I’ve not yet found her birth record, but I found the marriage record and several birth records for their children, and the 1851 Canada East Census). And then there’s the matter of the name of Margaret’s oldest daughter, Mary Jane. For these reasons, I’m currently accepting that Margaret’s parents, and my 3^rd great grandparents, are Andrew McFarlane and [Mary] Jane Bryden/Braiden.

Andrew McFarlane and Jane Bryden were married on June 19, 1825, in Ballantrae, Ayr, Scotland. While I haven’t found Margaret’s birth record, her brother James Carnochan McFarlane was born on June 4, 1830, and baptized on July 2, 1830 in Girvan, Ayrshire, Scotland, suggesting that the family lived in the Ayrshire [although the McFarlanes were historically a Highland clan, the clan fell out of favor with the government in the 17^th century and clan lands were sold to pay off debts, causing clansmen to move out of the traditional clan lands around Loch Lomond]. Ayrshire is in the lowlands of Scotland, on the southwest coast. I discovered when looking into emigration from Scotland in the early 18^th century that while Scots from the Highlands were mainly forced out of Scotland during the Clearances, or eviction of tenants from land in favor of sheep farming by the landlords, those leaving from the lowlands of Scotland, such as Ayrshire, largely left voluntarily in an effort to improve their economic status, and in response to advertisements the British government had made in the papers and on posters and via the lecture circuit, enticing people to move to British American colonies in order to help settle the country and preserve the borders against the United States of America. Moreover, many Scotsmen already had relatives in the area as the Scottish had been moving to the British American colonies for two centuries.

Map of Beauharnois Twp, Huntingdon County, Canada East, 1861
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I have not been able to find out exactly when Margaret and her parents and her brother James moved to the Beauharnois Seigniory in Lower Canada (Quebec), but I know they were there by 9 October 1834 because her next brother, Andrew McFarlane, was born in Beauharnois Canada on that day. Additionally, military payroll records show that her father, Andrew McFarlane, served with Margaret’s future husband in the Beauharnois Loyal Volunteers, during the uprising of 1838 in the Beauharnois Battalion, 1^st company, Georgetown on the side of the British (for more of an explanation of the uprisings see the entry on William Bennett.) This means that they arrived before the severe economic depression began in Scotland, and were thus likely middle-class farmers or tradesmen when they left Scotland. Andrew and [Mary] Jane Bryden/Braiden had five more children born in Canada, based on the 1851 Census of Canada East, and baptism records: Elizabeth Ann Cowans “Lizzie”, born 20 March 1837; John, born about 1839; Helene, born about 1844; David, born about 1848, and Peter, born about 1849.

Birth and Baptism Record  in Beauharnois Siegniory in Lower Canada for Andrew McFarlane (1834 - ?)
Lower Right
Found at Ancestry.com
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When they first arrived they would have lived in a rough shanty, as those were the homes first built upon arrival while the clearing the land on the frontier. The History of Huntingdon and of the Seigniories of Beauharnois and Chateauguay by Robert Sellar contains several fascinating contemporaneous descriptions of life on that frontier in approximately the same time frame as Margaret’s family came to the Beauharnois Seigniory. A woman who had come to the area as a child with her parents in approximately 1830 described the described the normally simple chore of bread-making in those days as having “its own particular difficulties, the greatest of these being the obtaining of flour. Even if we had a bit of land cleared, there was a small, wee, tiny red worm that would eat the kernels out of the wheat and leave the fine long straw standing erect. Even when we had wheat, there was no mill to grind it nearer than Chateauguay basin fit to travel. The canoe had to be used. Sometimes we got a barrel flour from Montréal. There were no hops, but some neighbor would have a bit of leaven, that is, a small piece of the last baking covered up in the flour. This we would put into water a while to sweeten it before setting the bread. When the bread was risen, we would add a teaspoonful of saleratus (sodium bicarbonate) for there was no baking soda. We had no stoves, only square tin boxes for baking, that cost $2. We got nice hemlock bark and made a good fire, and when fit we put our loaf in the chaudron and buried it in the hot coals and ashes, which we heaped also on the lid, and let it bake. When ready the bread was fine was well raised and sweet too.” She continued “for light we had cruises, or just a saucer with some grease and a rag and it; they burn fine..… We made our own tablecloths, towels and trousers for the men out of flax. We sold the flax, then pulled it by hand and let it stand and bundles to dry a little; if we let us stand too long it spoilt the flax. Then we put a lot of nails through the end of a board, kneeling the other end to a block and, pulling the straw against the nails stripped the seed off by handfuls. Then we tied the straw in bundles and put in the water at the side of the river for nine days, afterward spreading it on the grass to bleach, turning it occasionally. At first, we heckled it (preparing the fibers to be spun and removing the fibrous core and impurities by pulling it through heckling combs), but that was hard work so we got a contrivance made to break it for knives underneath and three on top with a handle to lift the top one. That did more quickly. Then we scutched it (beat it) over a board and it was ready. We spun the tow (coarse broken fiber) and so make our thread and towels.” [If you wish to see this process here is a YouTube video of making linen out of flax using 19th century methods: Making Linen From Flax, from the 19th Century Daily Living Series.] They also made wool clothes entirely by hand, starting with shearing the sheep. Life on the frontier was not easy.

The McFarlane lot in North Georgetown was two lots down from the Bennett lot, where William Bennett, Margaret’s future husband lived, according to the settler's lists in Sellar’s History. In order to survive on the frontier, neighbors had to work together, and help each other, so Margaret and William probably saw each other frequently. In the 19^th century marriages were often arranged to best suit the business alliances of the parents. I don’t know if their marriage was initially arranged by Margaret’s parents or whether it was a love match.

As William was 20 years older than Margaret it is possible that he was married before. I don’t know.  I do know that they were together at least as of early 1845, as their oldest daughter, Mary Jane, was born in the Unified Province of Canada on October 28, 1845. However, they did not or were unable to marry until ten months after their third child and first son, Thomas, was baptized on January 21, 1849.  William was originally Catholic when he emigrated to Lower Canada, while Margaret was Protestant (the Church of Scotland). The Catholic Church in British Canada did not like marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics, and the priest may have refused to marry them. The Church of Scotland was less stringent as to mixed marriages in that time so it is possible that they married in the Protestant church after giving up on being able to be married in the Catholic Church – after the birth of their first three children. Living on Canada’s frontier, they also probably had to wait for a traveling pastor to come through the area.

By the mid-1840s when William and Margaret started living together, Mr. Sellers’ said in his History, “the revolution that has taken place in the conditions of the habitants has been such that it has been a complete revolution. With rare interruptions their houses so close were they formed continuous streets on both sides of the St. Louis from the 4^th concession to Beauharnois. They were invariably of wood, one story with an attic, divided into rooms, the larger serving as kitchen and living room, the other the bedroom, a big Three Rivers double stove set in the partition, heating both. The children climbed the ladder to sleep in the attic: when the weather was warm the barn was used as a sleeping place. In winter, buffaloes were spread on the floor where the younger members slept. Houses and barns were thatched with straw; in front of each house was the V-shaped oven, perched on a wooden table and beside it a sweep well. Outwardly the houses look trim, being kept whitewashed, in the inside they were clean and bare of furniture. Madame did her cooking with few conveniences. On the stove was kept the big pot and a smaller one served for extra needs. There was no necessity for more, for the menus were simple, consisting mainly of bread and milk in the summer and when the cows went dry bread with cupfuls of peas soup dipped from the pot-au-feu kept simmering on the stove. Pork was the chief meat and the fatter the better. Every habitant had a few sheep, kept more for the wool the family spun and got woven into cloth or blankets than for their flesh. So few were there wants that each family was sufficient in itself; excepting molasses nothing in the grocery line was bought and of dry goods what was traded was for Sunday wear.”

William and Margaret had eleven children that I know of:  Mary Jane (bn 28 October 1845 in Canada East, married John Young on 12 July 1870, and died 15 July 1923 in Brown City MI); Charlotte Marguerite (bn in 1846 in Saint Martine, Canada East, married Charles Gray on 19 October 1873, married Joseph Bone on 20 November 1897 in Clark, Washington, and died 16 February 1916 in Portland OR); Thomas (born about 1858 in or near Ormstown, Canada East, married Margaret Cody, and died on 24 June 1934 in Reed City MI); Elizabeth (born 29 February 1852 in Canada French near in or near Beauharnois County, married William Henry Lewis on 18 August 1880, dd 23 September 1914 in Osceola MI); Dorothy (born about 1855, married Robert Watson on 25 December 1875 in Saginaw MI, and died in Battle Ground WA  on 31 December 1927); Andrew (born 26 November 1858, married Anna Gregor on 10 April 1885, and died 30 January 1920 in Brown City MI); Sarah (born about 1858 – ?), William (born about 1862 in Canada, married Teresa Tracy on 6 July 1884 and died after 1940), Janet (born 15 July 1863, married on 13 October 1886, and died 28 March 1932 in Flint MI); John Edward (born in September 1865, married Emma Masters on 28 October 1889 and died in Maple Valley MI on 2 March 1935); Lucretia (born in or about 1868, married William H. Baker, and died after 1905); and James (born in April 1871 in Michigan, married Martha Wengert on 27 January 1892, and died in 1958). Margaret gave birth over 26 years (she had to love that man). She had children born in each of four decades! So in addition to cooking, cleaning, laundry, gardening, sewing, quilting, farm work, etc. -- all without electricity or running water, or central heat or air conditioning – she always had kids around to raise, care for, and love. That’s a strong woman.

In the early years of their marriage, the couple lived in the southwest corner of what became Quebec in Beauharnois township. I found William and Margaret and their first four children in the 1851 Canada East census, for Beauharnois Township, living in a French-speaking area of Canada in a one-story brick house. Margaret’s parents and seven of her siblings are found on the same page, 26 entries above (also in a brick home).

Bennett's and McFarlane's on 1851 Census Beauharnois County Canada East
{Page 1 of the 3 page census}
Found on Ancestry.com
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In or about 1869, the family immigrated to Lapeer County in Michigan, USA. They may have been attracted by the excellent farming on land that had already been logged by the Michigan timber companies, and/or may have been enticed to move there by entreaties of family already there as both the Scots and the Irish tended to move in family groups (I’ve not yet sorted out who might already have been there, but there was a large Scots settlement in neighboring Sanilac county and my own family tree shows several generations of mixed Irish and Scot stock living in Lapeer and Sanilac counties in Michigan). They lived in Burnside Township of Lapeer County, Michigan, until William’s death at age 84, on 27 December 1890.

After her husband’s death, Margaret initially lived with her youngest son James, who was 18 at his father’s death, on the family farm, according to William’s obituary.  But by June 18, 1894, according to the 1894 Michigan Census, she was living in the household of, or it appears, perhaps, next door to her son John and his wife Emma and their three young children James, Albert, and William. That may be because James got married in 1892 to Martha Wingert.

Six months later, on 19 December 1894, Margaret married John Y. Brown, who was also born in Scotland. He had never been married before and was a peddler at the time of the marriage (thereafter he became a farmer). The registrar made a significant error in the ages of the couple in the marriage record saying they were both 54. A comparison with later documentation assures me that the marriage record is for my Margaret but that the age listed for her should have been approximately 68 (Margaret may have shaved 4 years off her age for the event but I strongly doubt she shaved off 14 years!).

Marriage record Margaret McFarlane Bennett to John Y Brown 19 December 1894
Third Entry
Found at FamilySearch.org
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The 1900 Census shows Margaret (74) & John (60) Brown living and farming next door to Margaret’s son James’ family (James and Martha now have 3 sons and 2 daughters, ranging from 7 years to 8 months old (and two doors down from son Andrew’s brother-in-law, Anson J. Bentley, which confused me for a while since I knew I knew the name but couldn’t find a daughter married into that name – I finally went back to my actual tree software and traced the name to son Andrew’s wife’s sister Grace Gregor Bentley’s husband Anson. This genealogy stuff is starting to make me think in webs!)

Margaret was widowed again when John Y Brown died on 6 February 1909 of Oedema of Organic Heart Lesion (which appears to mean a swelling caused by a buildup of fluid in the tissues of a narrowing of the arteries going into the heart, or, essentially, heart failure). The more personal information was supplied by Margaret’s son, James, who didn’t know his birth date but said he was 67 when first married, and that he was a cabinet maker. He reported that John Brown’s parents’ were John Brown and Jeannie Young. (As I’ve mentioned before, the information on death certificates, other than the date and cause of death filled out by the doctor, is best taken as clues rather than facts, as it is only as good as the knowledge of the person giving that information.) John was buried two days later in the West Burlington Cemetery in Clifford, Michigan.

Margaret died eight months later on 15 October 1909 at age 87, 7 months, and 6 days. Her cause of death was listed as Old Age. James supplied the information for her death certificate too. It appears that She was buried four days later in the Deanville Cemetery, in Lapeer County, Michigan, which is the cemetery in which her first husband, William Bennett, was buried.

If anyone reading this is related to Margaret McFarlane or William Bennett or their parents/siblings or children, and would be willing to share any information or stories or pictures they have with me, I would love to see to speak (or email, probably email) with you. If you wish to dispute any of my conclusions, I’d still like to hear from you – maybe together we can figure it out. (I’m also interested in John Y. Brown.) Please leave me a comment below or email me at the address on my Contact Me page.

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I’d really like to find out more about William and Margaret’s early years: where they were born, more about their families of origin, how they got to Canada and when, when they met, how they lived, etc.

I’d also like to find out more about how they lived in Canada and when and why they decided to move on to Michigan. I’d love to know how they made the trip, and how they lived after they got to Michigan, where the farm homestead was, what it looked like, etc.

And I’d really love to see pictures of any or all of them!

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Much thanks to Judy Wilcox for her help with information regarding Martha Wengert, James Bennett, and the Wengert family and James and Martha's family, and the Findagrave.com links for William Bennett and Martha Wengert, and her encouraging emails. (I’m related to her husband twice!)

“McFarlane” History, https://www.scotweb.co.uk/info/macfarlane/; https://www.scotweb.co.uk/info/macfarlane/ ; https://www.scotsconnection.com/clan_crests/MacFarlane.htm; http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/higherscottishhistory/migrationandempire/migrationofscots/emigrationandsociety.asp; Transcribed militia pay lists for companies in the Beauharnois Battalion during the Rebellion of 1838, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~qcchatea/1838pay.htm#first; Ancestry.com. Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 200 - Original data: Gabriel Drouin, comp. Drouin Collection. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Institut Généalogique Drouin; 1851 Census of Canada East, Canada West, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia; transcription of the Cadastre Abrege for 1854,http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~qcchatea/cadastre/ngeorge3.htm ;  The History of Huntingdon and the Seigniories of Beauharnois and Chateauguay, From Their First Settlement to the Year 1838 and Revised to the 1900s by Robert Sellar, (150^th anniversary edition, the Gleaner, Huntingdon, Québec, June 1975; originally published by Huntingdon, Québec, the Huntingdon Gleaner Incorporated. 1888.); Courtship, Love, and Marriage in 19th Century English Canada, by Peter Wald (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993); U.S. Federal Census for 1870, 1880  and 1900; Michigan Death Records; Michigan Death and Burial Index.

"Baby Henn"

In the public domain

About a week ago in my NoteWorthy Reads #7 post I told you all of the new death certificate databases added and being added to SeekingMichigan.org via a post from the No Story Too Small blog (they will cover 1921-1952, which will bring their death certificate coverage to 1897-1952). You can download and keep a digital image of the death certificate for free. It's a wonderful resource!

Even though I have other genealogy tasks I should be doing I could not ignore this "Bright Shiny Object", and spent the other night looking for death certificates for my Henn ancestors. So far I've found one for my 2nd-great-grandfather John Henn, his daughters Ella May [Esper] and Olive [Kreiner], and John's nephew John Philip Henn who came to Michigan when he was 15 to live and work with my 2nd-great-grandfather. There were one or two interesting revelations contained therein that I will save for another day.

My most unexpected and saddest find was a death certificate for "Baby Henn," who was the second son, and third child, of my great-grandparents, Owen James Henn and Myrtie Wilcox Henn. His name was Earl Owen Henn. He was born on October 29, 1904 and died less than two months later, on December 20, 1904.

Death Certificate for "Baby Henn" (Earl Owen Henn, 1904 - 1904)
Found at SeekingMichigan.org
Click to make bigger.

He was one month, twenty days old. The Medical Certificate of the cause of death indicated that he "died very suddenly" at 5:00 A.M. on December 20,  1904. In the blanks for 'Disease Causing Death' and 'Immediate Cause of Death,' Dr. J. E. Campbell wrote "hard to say positively, most probably heart trouble of some kind." Earl Owen was buried the next day in the South Burnside Cemetery, in Burnside, Michigan, The Undertaker was W.R. Elliott. The Reporter who certified the information given was correct was the child's grandfather, John Henn.

That must have been a very sad Christmas.

Rest in peace, little one, and all those who loved you.

52 Ancestors: #50 Anna Mae Bennett (1898 – 1977) and #51 Owen Carl Henn (1906-1988), my grandparents

Anna Mae (Bennett) & Owen "Carl" Henn - early to mid 1950's
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This is my last post for the “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” challenge initiated by Amy Johnson Crow of the No Story Too Small blog. For more information about the challenge and links to the other blogs participating in the challenge, please click on the badge in the right margin. I didn’t make it to 52; but considering that I took 4 or 5 weeks off in the summer to pack, move, and unpack, I don’t feel bad about it.  I’ve enjoyed it, but I’m also glad to be done.

Anna Mae (Bennett) and Owen Carl Henn are my grandparents, my father’s parents. I will not be naming their children or giving specifics about them in this post as they are still living.

The Grandma I remember was, to my child’s memory, what we now call an introvert, and she was also quite shy. She loved her God, her husband, her children and her grandchildren fiercely. But she didn’t like crowds much, and would get overwhelmed and withdraw into another room for a while until she could come back out to be with people. She loved reading, and listening to music.  My memories of her remind me of me (minus the kids – I haven’t got a maternal bone in my body – and Grandma loved being a Mom and a grandmother, and minus that degree of shyness).

The Grandpa I remember was a do-er. He dug wells in his 70’s -- by hand! He gardened – on a large scale. He loved puzzles – did jigsaw puzzles upside down, green side up. Loved those odd puzzle things you get only at Christmas. He loved math. He found mathematical puzzles in the Bible. He loved the Bible and God and his family. He had a lot of Bibles. I have one of them now. I have his jigsaw puzzle gene too – but the math gene skipped me entirely.

I tried to write their entries separately as I did for my mother’s parents. But for Mom’s parents I had newspaper articles from their home town that covered the minutest things throughout their growing up years (who went to whose 4-year-old’s birthday party, 50^th anniversaries, kid’s plays, football games, debate clubs etc.) But, although I’ve got basic documents such as census documents, city directories , etc., as I’ve noted before, there are very few local papers online for Michigan’s Lapeer and Sanilac counties for this time period -- and none that mentioned my grandparents.  Moreover, I discovered that my grandparents didn’t make the papers in the town they spent their adult life in. So I’m depending more on the email interviews I did of my uncle, my Dad, and my aunts.  In the stories I know, and the ones I learned, Anna and Carl are too intertwined to do separate blog posts well so I decided to write about them together.

As we’ve seen both Anna and Carl (Grandpa went by “Carl” to friends and family because his father was “Owen,” too; but in nearly all official documents he is “Owen C. Henn”) descended from people who pushed their boundaries to live on the edge of civilization, leaving family and home for the gamble and the hope of better things to come.  Both Carl and Ann’s ancestors were hard working people who did their best to make a good life for their families with what was available to them. When you read Carl and Anna’s story, you can tell that that blood runs in their veins.

I don’t have a birth certificate for Anna, and her children tell me “there were some questions about her birth year,” although they agree that her birth day was May 16.  I think her birth year was about 1898 or 1899. In the 1900 census she was listed as 2 years old, which put the birth year as likely 1898.  In the 1910 & 1920 census, she was listed as 11 and 21 respectively, which indicates a birth year of 1899.  After she got away from home and married a younger man, she indicated in 1930 that she was 28 (which would have her born in 1902) and in 1940 as 40 years old (1900).  I think that the earlier ones, where the information was supplied by her family are more likely to be right.  Moreover, the Ohio and Social Security death indices and her obituary also all say she was born in 1898. 

Anna loved books, school, and learning, and had dreams of going to college. She grew up in a farm in Maple Valley Township in Sanilac County, Michigan. Unfortunately, she was just old enough, when her mother became ill, to help care for her parents, Andrew and Anna Gregor Bennett, her younger siblings, and keep up the housework, and she spent the next 13 years of her life doing so, as her older siblings went to college, or got married, and struck out into lives of their choosing. (See the posts on Anna Gregor Bennett and on Andrew Bennett for a listing of her siblings and their spouses.) She also knew sorrow, and just how short a time one could have to live her dreams, as her older sister, Elizabeth, died at age 28, in 1920, not long  after marrying; Anna was 22. Anna wanted to finish school and go to college, but she was not allowed to go to school past 8^th grade. After her mother died in 1828 (her father had died three years before), Anna left the small town home where she had cared for her parents, to move to the big city of Detroit. She got a job in a Department store – my father recalled the job was as a secretary, and that it was a job for which she had to dress very nicely and she was pretty. She hoped to save money to go to school.

Map of Southeast Michigan,
showing where Sanilac &Lapeer Counties are in relationship to Detroit,
In the public domain
Click to Make Bigger

I’m going to save the story of how she met Carl Henn until after I tell you about his beginnings.

My grandfather also had boundaries placed on him my Aunt tells me he felt ignored his dreams. Owen Carl Henn (“Carl”) was born on December 27, 1906 to Owen James and Myrtie Mabel Wilcox Henn. I don’t have his birth record either but all the other documentary evidence I do have that mentions a specific date is in agreement. As a farmer’s son, he was used to helping out on the family farm in Lapeer County, Michigan, while he went to school, but he had dreams of going to college to become a math teacher.  He had taught Sunday school at his family’s church from late high school on. One of my aunts told me that Carl’s father, Owen Henn, did not allow Carl to go to school past age 16 and pulled him out to work full time on the farm. But Carl reported on the 1940 census that he had finished all four years of high school. In either case, he was not given the option to go to college and was held to farm work until he turned 21, in 1927. (See posts on Owen James Henn and Myrtie Mabel Wilcox for his parents' stories and listing of brothers and sisters.)

I know the family story is that Carl and Anna married one month after he turned 21, but Grandpa’s (Carl’s) genealogy notes say that he married Anna on January 26, 1929, and the Michigan marriage records confirm that; so it was 13 months after he turned 21.  The 1929 date comports with the rest of the story, too.  It looks like Carl left the farm after his 21^st birthday, and went to Detroit and found a job, likely as a laborer, and began saving money, still with the dream of going to college.

My aunt told me that Anna met Carl in Brown City, the small town nearest to where each of them grew up, when she took her nieces to Sunday school, which he taught. But my Dad, my uncle, and my Mom told me that Carl met Anna at a church Bible study and some church socials in Detroit, which fits, as Anna had been living in Detroit since 1928. He was attracted to her because she was so pretty, well dressed, and well read, and from the same small rural area he was from. He may have found her, an older, pretty, well-dressed woman, a touch exotic. He courted her and she liked this young man from the same sort of background as she, who was a church-going man, with the same dreams as her of further education.

Carl and Anna (Bennett) Henn, circa 1929 - wedding picture, I think
Click to make bigger

They married, in Detroit, on January 26, 1929. He was 22 and she was 30 years old. They started out living in Detroit and Anna became pregnant within a few months. Unfortunately, they lost all their savings in the stock market crash of October 1929 and the resultant financial panic. Carl likely lost his job then too, because, the family story is that after they lost nearly everything, they heard that there were jobs in Indianapolis IN and Dayton OH and they flipped a coin to choose which city to move to. The coin flip sent them to Dayton, Ohio.

In the longer run the choice was a good one. Dayton did suffer from the Depression, but as the war escalated in Europe in the late 1930’s, many of Dayton’s many factories were converted to produce war-related supplies to be shipped overseas, and, therefore, Dayton’s economy began to recover sooner than other cities. But they arrived at the start of the Great Depression, and they didn't know that yet, and neither did anyone else in Dayton.  In Ohio, by 1933, more than 40% of factory workers and 67% of construction workers were unemployed. In 1932, Ohio’s unemployment rate for all residents reached 37.3%. The industrial workers who managed to retain their jobs experienced reduced hours and wages. People had a terrible time trying to support, and feed, their families.

When Carl & Anna first got to Dayton, the only work Carl could find was as a farm hand at a $1 a day, seven days a week plus room and board, and he took it.  Anna helped by cutting wood on the farm, even though she was pregnant. Carl knew they needed more money with a child on the way, therefore, because it was more money per week, he quit his job and they went on Welfare at $15 a week, until he was able to find other better paying work.  By April 2, 1930, when the census was taken, he was a laborer (freight handler) in the B & O rail yard, and he and Anna were renting a home or apartment for $28 a month; their first son was born twenty days later.

The 1930 and 1931 city directories show that Carl & Anna were living at 18 Pioneer Street about one block west of the Miami River. At that time, through about the 1950’s, anything west of the river that split Dayton was known as the poor side of town. Carl was soon promoted to “checker” at the rail yard which involved assuring that freight was moving to the correct car, to arrive at the proper destination; later he was promoted to foreman.

In 1933 they moved further west to 43 Harvard Blvd, outside of the downtown area. My father was born that year, a healthy baby boy, over eight pounds!  My Dad told me that he was born in Drexel and Harvard Blvd doesn’t look that close to Drexel on the map so there may have been another address between 1931 and 1933; I haven’t been able to find the 1932 city directory.

They only lived at the Harvard Street address for about one year before moving to 39 Dennison Ave., southwest of the city. The city directories show them at the Dennison Ave. address from 1934 through 1937. A baby girl was born to Carl and Anna in 1934, and in April 1935, Anna’s younger sister, Margaret, died, bringing more sorrow to her and making her children all the more precious to her.

Three of Carl & Anna's addresses in Dayton, OH
Courtesy of Google Maps (& Skitch)
Click to map bigger

By 1937, the city’s economy was improving as war ramped up in Europe and the city’s factories switched to producing wartime supplies for Europe, so salaries also increased. As the economy improved, people from other areas began migrating to Dayton to find work, but Dayton was unprepared for the influx and an acute housing shortage developed. By the early 1940’s, it was reported to the Public Welfare Office that multiple families were sharing single homes, and other families were living in hotel rooms, garages, automobiles, and even sewer pipes.

Carl and Anna had been saving what they could, and some time after Anna’s younger sister died, Anna received a $500 bequest from her sister’s estate.  With that money they bought two acres of a farm being subdivided out in Jefferson township, a largely rural area of Montgomery county, to the southwest of, and abutting, Dayton; one acre had a garage or large shed on it. The acre with the garage cost $175 and the one with the building cost $125, according to my aunt. Carl bought building materials with the other $200.  My Dad remembers the family moving into that one room dirt-floored garage before he started school. According to the city directories, they were living on the property as of 1938. Dad remembers they got a fierce cat, Balti (for the Baltimore & Ohio railroad where his father worked), to deal with the rats that were used to stealing the grain that used to be stored there. The family lived in the garage while Carl built an 8 room, 2-story house, with a basement and well that he dug by hand with pick and shovel. Dad remembers that every day after work his father would come home with some of the box car package framing sticking out of his Model A Ford’s window; he used it in building the house.  After he got home from work, he would work until dark on the house, helped by the kids. After Carl finished one room (the living room, about 12’ x 16’), the family moved out of the garage and into that one room while he built the rest of the house around them; they would expand into each new room as it was done.

My Grandpa built this house!
on Olt Rd Extension in Jefferson twp, Montgomery County OH
Click to Make Bigger

The house was built without electricity or indoor plumbing; it had a gas furnace in the basement with registers cut in the floors to allow the heat to rise to the next level.  My aunt remembers studying by kerosene lantern.  When it was finished, (although one of my aunts contends, with a laugh, that it was never finished), it had a living room, dining room, kitchen, and four bedrooms … and by the time I remember it, indoor plumbing, electricity, and a bathroom.

The property became the one house in the neighborhood that all the kids played at. They had a baseball diamond laid out in the yard, and Carl built them a clubhouse in the basement.

Part of the reason they wanted that much land was to raise goats to supplement the table with milk, cheese, and meat, and a garden to bring more food to the table. Initially, each spring they rented a horse to plow one acre for corn to feed the goats for a year. They used a single bottom handheld plow. When my uncle was 9, Carl taught him to drive the Model A to pull the plow so they didn’t have to rent the horse anymore. Carl dug a huge vegetable garden, and turned the soil each year, by hand. They grew potatoes, green beans, lima beans, corn, peas, lettuce, onion, carrots, tomatoes, etc. They also had a small orchard (apple, pear, and peach trees and grapes, raspberries and blackberries).

Walk behind, horse- drawn  (or Model A- drawn!), single bottom, handheld plow.
In the public domain.
Click to Make Bigger

At that house, Anna did washing on Monday: an all-day job.  According to my uncle’s recollection water was pumped from the well, then carried to the kitchen stove to be heated. Clothes and sheets & such were washed in a tub with a scrub board. She washed, rinsed, and wrung out each item, then hung it all up on a clothesline, and when dry took it all down again. She ironed all day on Tuesdays, with irons heated on the stove, and folded each item. In addition, , cleaned house and cooked meals on a gas stove, without refrigeration, and washed up without a dishwasher and after having gone out to pump more  water and heating it on the stove. They tried to have meat on the table once a week: sometimes a rabbit, sometime a chicken, and occasionally a goat.  Late summer and fall, she spent innumerable hours harvesting the orchard and vegetable garden, cleaning and sterilizing canning jars and lids, and then canning all sorts of fruits and vegetables. Her children were the main focus of her life, and later, her grandchildren. But whenever she had a quiet moment, she loved to read books she had gotten from the library (since she didn’t drive, she had to walk a mile or so to the end of the trolley rail line to take a city trolley car to the library), or, if she thought no one was around, she would play the piano.

The family went to church “every day it was open”, at the Evangelical United Brethren (EUB) Church in Liberty Ohio (a community in Jefferson Township that doesn’t seem to exist anymore). Carl taught adult Sunday school there, and was a superintendent of the Sunday school. He also taught a Men’s Bible Study at the Euclid Avenue EUB in Dayton, and Bible at Sinclair College. I know he later also took several correspondence courses in the 1950’s in such subjects as “Bible Studies”, and “Guidance In Christian Homemaking”, and “John – Life Through Believing”, as I have the certificates of  completion he received. I also have a copy of one of his Sunday school curriculum memos – it’s an intense course. His belief in God and his religion/church was very important to him. It was also important to Anna, but my father thought that her beliefs were not as rooted in a literal reading of the Bible as those of her husband. That dichotomy of belief has carried down to the next generation with some following in their father’s footsteps, and some, more in their mother’s.

In 1940, Dayton had 432 factories; from the late 1930’s through the mid-1940’s many of those producing war-related products. As the wartime economy ramped up, Carl knew that while he was making good money as foreman at B & O and loved working with trains, he could make more money at G.M., and he hired on to work on the assembly line at Frigidaire in the Moraine City plant, which made propellers and aircraft machine guns. He was soon promoted to “set up man”, which meant going in two hours before the first shift started to prepare for that day’s production.  My uncle told me that at some point Carl was working two jobs as he got off work at G.M. at 1 p.m., then went out to Hamilton OH to work at a B & O rail yard there, too. The city directories only list Carl as working at the rail yard – I guess that’s the job he liked best. When he switched to working for Frigidaire, he lost his draft deferment. In the 1940 Census, Carl reported working 48 hours the week before, and that his income in 1939 was $1120. (For comparison’s sake for my younger readers, in 1939, the average yearly wage in the U.S. was $1730; average rent was $28 a month; a new home cost $3800, a new car was $700 and gas was 10 cents a gallon.)

Propeller made by Frigidaire during WWII in Moraine City plant
[Note: I couldn't find copyright info on this picture, or who to contact for permission to use.
If it's yours, comment below, with available proof, & I'll attribute or take it down as you choose.]
Click to Make Bigger 

In 1942, a second daughter was born to Carl and Anna. The older children were 12, 9, and 8. They considered her a miracle. She was a well-loved baby.

In 1944, at age 38, Carl was drafted into the army. The family was very scared. Several men in the neighborhood had died in the war so they knew the danger was real. They held family prayer meetings and sang and prayed every night from when he got his draft notice until he left for Ft. Thomas in Newport KY in March, 1944. While he was away, Anna made sure each child wrote their father daily, as she did. Carl responded to each letter individually.  Anna was given a driver’s license without having to take a test even though she had never driven, because Carl was in the military and the family did not live near public transportation or any stores. My uncle, then 14, was given a restricted license, but at least he had driven the Model A to pull the plow in the garden and knew how the car worked.

Carl did not want to leave home. He felt he was needed more at home than by the army.  He had had rheumatic fever when he was 14, and, occasionally, his heart would act up, especially if he smoked or was around cigarette smoke. Nearly everyone smoked in the army, and he spent a lot of time in Army hospitals.  The Army doctors decided that his heart was too bad for him to remain in the Army and be shipped overseas, and so he was discharged. He came home 7 months and 22 days after he left. The night he came home the children heard their dog, Shep, barking outside, and when they went to look, saw their father walking straight across the fields to the back of the house carrying a shopping bag of gifts for his children, with Shep ecstatically running circles around him, barking like crazy.

He returned to work at Frigidaire, and continued working there until he retired.  

In 1948, Anna grieved the death of another older sister, at only 54. This left Anna the only surviving sister in her family. In the end, Anna, who was the sixth of eight children, outlived all of her sisters and brothers.

Carl & Anna’s oldest son married his high school sweetheart in 1950.  Their oldest daughter married in 1957. Their younger son married in 1959, and younger daughter in 1962.  On March 18, 1962, just weeks before his youngest child’s wedding, Carl’s older sister Hazel (58) was murdered in her home by a burglar who beat and then strangled her, while she fought him. $900 was taken, but nothing else was disturbed. I don’t know how you deal with news like that about your sister’s death in that manner.

Carl & Anna at my father's wedding - cropped from the 'bridal couple & parents' photo
Click to make bigger

I asked Dad, but he can’t remember when his father retired, but can recall seeing him make calculations repeatedly to determine whether he would have enough money in retirement to live on. When he calculated that he would have $6000 a year, he retired because he felt they could live comfortably on that.

After retirement, he became more involved in the church, helped his neighbors with building projects, worked in his garden, and took up the hobby of researching his family’s genealogy (the traditional way – no computers) and his work on that (and that of other’s on my father’s side – it seems to be in the genes) has formed the foundation of mine. (Thanks, Grandpa!)

In her later years, Anna developed medical issues similar to dementia (so sad for such a bright person), and Carl cared for her. She died on September 7, 1977, while Carl was feeding her oatmeal. She was 79.

Carl lived for 11 more years. He didn’t care for being alone and he met someone who helped him not feel alone, and enjoy life again.  On July 11, 1980, he married Winnie Korn Baver, became instant (step) grandfather to her grandchildren as their grandfather was dead.  He was 73 and she was nine years younger than him. They moved to a trailer park in Miamisburg OH.  I remember her as bubbly and cheerful and their home as bright and filled with tchotchkes everywhere. Carl died on April 14, 1988, at age 81.  Winnie outlived him by 18 years; she never remarried.

My grandparents pushed against the boundaries placed on them by their families to make their own lives. When the Great Depression hit in 1929, they left Michigan and their birth families behind for the gamble and the hope of better things to come.  Although they never did get to realize their original dreams and attend college themselves, like their ancestors, Carl and Anna were hard working people who did their best to make a good life for their family with what was available to them. They succeeded in that. And they succeeded in passing on their love of learning and their love of God to their children. They raised four children who went to college and obtained advanced degrees, paying for it themselves. In addition, all of them have had good careers and have good families and a strong faith. 

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I would like to know more of Carl & Anna’s years in Michigan, and about their life after the 1950's.

I know I need to track down copies of the documentation I mentioned that I don’t have.

I Love hearing any story I can about them.

More pictures would be great too, especially a better copy of the one that I think is their wedding picture.

There is probably more I'd like to know but it's after 3:00 AM and I can't think of it right now.

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U.S. Census for years 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1940; Dayton City Directories for 130, 1931, 1933, 1934, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1942; WWII Army enlistment records; Ohio Birth Index; U.S Social Security Death Indices; Email interviews of my aunts, uncle and Dad, 2014;  Interviews of my father over a decade, compiled into a small book in or about 2008; “Ohio Modern: Preserving Our Recent Past Dayton and Surrounding Area Survey Report”, prepared for the Ohio Historic Preservation Office of the Ohio Historical Society by Heritage Architectural Associate, Kathy Mast Kane, Historic Preservation Consultant and Nathalie Wright, Project Manager and Historic Preservation Consultant, September 2010 (found at www.ohiohistory.org/File%20Library/.../Report/rp-05.pdf); http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Great_Depression; http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1939.html; Ohio Marriage Index for 1980; Findagrave.com Memorial # 13206439 for Winifred Korn Baver-Henn.

52 Ancestors: #45 William Bennett (about 1806 in Ireland – 1890 in Burnside, Michigan, USA), and #46 Margaret McFarlane Bennett Brown (1926 in Scotland – 1909 in North Branch, Michigan)

I have removed this post due to inaccuracies, and newly discovered information.

I am going to do new posts on William and Margaret, with the updated information, as follows, but I didn't want to leave up inaccurate information pending getting the new posts up. The links will go live to the new articles as they are posted.

1 - William Bennett (1806-1890), Revisited, Part One, will address William’s life to the extent that I currently know it, including newly discovered information leading to more explanation of context of his early life in Canada

2 - William Bennett (1806-1890) Revisited, Part Two (Hypothesis), will address why my tree on ancestry is different than many others following this particular Bennett line up past William, and address my current hypothesis as to who are his parents, and why I think so. This particular post may constitute “thinking out loud” or, at least, “thinking in print, publicly,” but I want to put it out here so that I can get feedback on my hypothesis (whether you may be related or not).

3- Margaret MacFarlane Bennett Brown (1926-1909), will address Margaret’s life to the extent I currently know it. As such, there will be some crossover information, but the post was getting way too long when I tried to write about them in one post as I did before, since I have some new bits of information about her as well.

52 Ancestors: #44 Anna Gregor Bennett (1858 – 1929), my greatgrandmother

Location of Puslinch Township in what is now Ontario Canada
 Courtesy of Google maps
Click to make bigger

This is my latest post for the “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” challenge initiated by Amy Johnson Crow of the No Story Too Small blog. For more information about the challenge and links to the other blogs participating in the challenge, please click on the badge in the right margin.

I had been intending to write about someone else, and had found some fascinating things. But, I hit a snag, and figuring out how to untangle it is taking too much time right now. So I’ve decided instead to write up my great-grandmother, Andrew Bennett’s wife, for this week, especially since she leads to the person I have been researching (who I will post about in the future – so you now know you have something fascinating to look forward to). Finding and tracking Anna before her marriage to my great-grandfather was interesting to me as well --- and again proves the helpfulness of researching more than just my direct line into to find my people. I’m not going to repeat the historical information I put in Andrew’s post; please read his post as well.

Anna Gregor is my great-grandmother:  my father’s maternal grandmother. Anna was born on October 7, 1858 or 1859 to Benjamin Gregor (1824 – 1880) and Elizabeth Taylor (about 1832 – before 1880). She was probably born in Puslinch Township in Wellington County, in the British colony of the United Province of Canada (in what today would be Ontario, Canada today), as her mother grew up there and her father moved there sometime in the six years prior to Anna’s birth. Puslinch Township is  just south of the town of Guelph, which is  61 miles (99 km) west of where Toronto is now and in the peninsula east of Lake Huron, west of Lake Ontario and north of Lake Erie. (See map at the head of the post.) I’ll discuss its history more when I do posts on Anna’s parents and grandparents as some of them were among the early pioneers in the area.

In the 1861 Census of Canada, Anna was 2 years old and living with her parents and older brother James (he was 4) in Puslinch Township. Her father was a farmer. The census recorder spelled their last name as Grigor. By 1871, the family had expanded to include younger brothers George (9) & Benjamin (3) and younger sister Gracie (7). And, again the census taker spelled their last name as Grigor. I think Anna’s mother died in or before 1879, as I cannot find her in any census in Canada or the United States after that date. Hr father died on 15 March, 1880.* The children left Puslinch Township by or shortly after 1880 -- four of the five moving to Michigan. James moved to Michigan first, in or about 1878 and the others joined him in 1879.

1884 Michigan State Census (Goodland twp. Lapeer County, MI)
Found at SeekingMichigan.org
Click to make bigger

I found Anna in the U.S. Census, in 1880, when searching for her brother James; she was living with him in Burnside Township in Lapeer County Michigan; she kept house for him as he farmed. Searching the surname “Gregor” at SeekingMichigan.org, I found James, Anna, and Benjamin in the 1884 Michigan Census (see above picture), living in the township of Goodland, in Lapeer County. James (27) worked in “lumber manufacturing”, Anna (24) was his housekeeper and Benjamin (17) attended school.  The census also indicated that a female of 18, who had previously lived in the household, had married Anson Bentley on August 18, 1884. I also found a marriage record for Grace’s marriage to Anson Bentley on that date. Between these three documents I felt I had enough information to confirm that this was indeed where my great-grandmother and her siblings had gone after the probable death of their parents, and to confirm this was my Anna (Anna Bennett is a very common name). The census form also asked the time of residence within the state, which is how I found out that that James moved to Michigan first. He reported he had been there 6 years and Anna and Benjamin reported they had been there 5 years.

I think Anna’s younger brother, George, remained in Canada when the others moved to Michigan, although I’m not certain of that.  The first record I found him in was a marriage record for 1888, in which he married Emily Janette Lamont in Puslinch; the record indicated that his residence was in Hespeler, Ontario which is 9 miles (15 km) west of Guelph. [George, and his wife subsequently moved to Manitoba Canada and lived out their lives there. Anna's sister, Grace, and her husband, Anson Bentley, moved to Kansas, then Wyoming, and then to Idaho where they were buried. Anna's youngest brother, Benjamin, married Maude Amelia Thompson, and they lived most of their life in Indiana. After Maude died, he moved to Illinois; he was buried in Newago, MI with Maude. Unfortunately, I lost James after 1884.]

I feel a bit sad for Anna, with her family scattered at long distances from her. My brothers are all at long distances from me, but I have telephones, the internet, cars, and airplanes, and Anna likely didn’t have any of them. While telephones had been invented by the late 1870’s, their use in homes wasn’t common in rural areas until into the mid-1900’s because it was so expensive to string the wires out to the farm homes. Brown City itself received telephone service in 1898, but long distance calls were expensive and not private, as many families in separate households would share a “party” line and could hear whoever was speaking if they picked up their receiver. The rural areas of Sanilac County were slow to receive telephone service, until Federal Funds were approved to help run electricity and telephone wires to rural areas in the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 – seven years after Anna died.

I wonder if her brothers and sisters ever visited her, or she, them? With railroad travel it would have been possible and a lot easier and less time than horse and wagons had taken—one could travel across the country in a week instead of the several months it had taken just a few decades before.

I bet letters from Grace, George, James, and Benjamin were like gold the rest of her life. I hope they were good correspondents.

Postcard of Brown City MI  Main Street East in 1906
Off copyright and in the public domain, but
found at http://genealogytrails.com/mich/sanilac/citybrown.html (where there are more postcards)
Click to make bigger

Sometime after moving to Michigan, Anna must have met and gotten to know Andrew Bennett when he came home to visit family in Lapeer County (adjacent to Sanilac County – Brown City straddles both counties), from where he was working in Evart MI, as she married him on April 16, 1885. Anna and Andrew lived in Brown City, MI, on the Sanilac county side at least through their last child’s birth; the children’s birth records show a Brown City address. Their children were: Benjamin Gregor (born 15 February 1886, married Florence Short, and died 31 January 1970); William John (born 15 April 1889, married Mary Kalbfleisch, death date not discovered for certain yet); Elizabeth Grace (born 8 May 1891, married Arthur Bernard Martin, died 7 February 1920),  Blanche Maud (born in January 1894, married & divorced William John Huston, died 8 February 1948), Andrew Russell (born 26 January 1896, married Olive Gertrude Glover, died 23 July 1969), Anna Mae - my grandmother (born 16 May 1898, married Owen Carl Henn, died 12 September 1977), Margaret McFarland (born in August 1900, died 6 April 1935) and Thomas Edison Bennett (born 19 February 1906, married Lenore M. Griffen, died 1969). 

1900 Federal Census - Andrew and Anna Bennett Family,
found at Ancestry.com
Click to make bigger

By the time their youngest child was four years old, the family moved out to Maple Valley township, in Sanilac county and farmed until they retired. Then they moved back to a house in town in Brown City, leaving the running of the farm to their son William and his bride. Andrew died in 1925 and Anna followed three years later on April 18, 1928.

This is when I truly regret that I cannot find any Sanilac or Lapeer county newspaper archives online. When I can find historical newspapers online for where my ancestors lived, I can find out all sorts of things that help me build a fuller picture of them as a person as besides real news stories, the old time newspapers printed stories about who is going to visit who, who had someone over for dinner, church activities, school activities, legal notices, anniversary and reunion celebrations, as well as obituaries. But, try as I might, I can’t find any for any newspaper in Sanilac or Lapeer counties at any of the major (or minor) newspaper archive sites.

If you know anything about Anna Gregor Bennett and/or her family, and are willing to share, please contact me by leaving a comment below or by emailing me at the address provided in my Contact Me page.

Update: Anna's father, Benjamin Gregor, died 15 March 1880, according to the index of Ontario deaths on Familysearch.

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I truly wish I knew more about my great-grandparents. I wish I had pictures of them. I’ve seen pictures of one of Anna’s brothers and of her sister on other people’s trees on Ancestry.com, and that just makes me want to see her more (I can’t post the pictures of her siblings here for you to see as I haven’t reached out to the tree owners to ask for permission to do so yet).

I’d also like to know when, where and why her parents died. And where did her brother James go after 1884; did he have a family of his own? And more of what her life was like.

By the way, did you know that there are petroglyphs in Sanilac County that are 300-1000 years old?! Too cool! I'd also like to go see them! But until I do, here’s a link to a blog by a guy who did go see them, who has lots of pictures at the bottom of his post about his trip to the Sanilac Petroglyphs Historic State Park. 

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Canadian census of 1861; U.S. Federal Censuses for 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930; Michigan State Census for 1884; http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/rd/70th/rea-history.pdf; http://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/early-twentieth-century-railroads.htm; http://amhistory.si.edu/onthemove/themes/story_48_1.html ; http://www.ci.brown-city.mi.us/history.php; http://genealogytrails.com/mich/sanilac/citybrown.html