1855 Catskill NY Census: BOGARDUS

The census was abstracted/alphabetized by Frank Q. Bowman and published in 1988 by Kinship. This book format is easy to access and provides great information, but also raises some questions about the data it contains and the relationships listed (as do all census records).  It also provided direct information about daughter Martha.

Elsje Comfort married Egbert Bogardus and had 7 children in Catskill: Maria, Samuel, Emeline, Hiram, Edgar, Abraham and Martha. All lived into adulthood but Abraham. Egbert died in 1852 and his widow was head of household in the 1855 state census, as shown below:

BOGARDUS, Else [wid] 70/52 ORA

Children: Maria C 51,Eveline 46, Hiram 44, Julia 34/15 DEL, Martha A Clark 36/6 GRE
Sarah Clark (gr ch) 15/6 GRE, Julia Clark (gr ch) 10/6 KIN, Charles Clark (gr ch) 17/6 GRE
Hannah Bogardus (sis) 67/67/ GRE

The numbers indicate age/yrs in the county followed by the county of birth. Marital status seems to only be indicated for the head of household.

Counties are: ORA Orange DEL Delwaware GRE Greene KIN Kings (Bklyn)

Eveline is actually EMELINE

Julia (nee Bennett) is Hiram’s wife / Elsje’s daughter-in-law

Martha A is actually Elsje’s daughter, who married Z.M. Clark

Charles, Sarah and Julia are assumed to be Martha’s children with Z.M. Clark

Hannah Bogardus is Elsje’s SISTER-IN-LAW, unmarried sister of Egbert

Sons Samuel and Edgar had left Catskill prior to this census and never returned.

Martha's marriage had not been known. She has not yet been found in the 1850 federal census. She is buried in the Catskill Village Cemetery with her gravestone stating that she is the widow of Z.M. Clark.  A marriage certificate for her daughter Julia listed her father's name as Zeba M. Clark. An apparently matching 5 Dec 1891 death record was found in Manhattan for Zeba M Clark -- burial in Catskill per the NY Herald.

Family Snippets: Comfort Siblings in Catskill NY

I started researching Hiram Comfort (1791-1839) who was born in Montgomery, Orange County and then relocated to Catskill where he married Julia Ludington in 1822. Hiram was the 4^th of 9 children born to Samuel Comfort and Anna Maria Youngblood. I also found that his youngest brother Joel was in Catskill and he too married a Ludington, Emeline 1776-1856.I have been searching for proof of her parentage, thus far without luck – but feel that she and Julia were cousins, daughters of brothers Tertullus 1737-1821 and Archibald 1767-1820. My search for proof continues. Interestingly both couples married in Catskill in the spring of 1822.

Only later did I realize that their oldest sister Elsje Comfort (1785-1862) had preceded them to Catskill where she married Egbert Bogardus about 1803.

When Hiram died unexpectedly in 1839 leaving Julia with 5 daughters aged 6 to 15, it was probably helpful that she had close family nearby in Catskill. On the Comfort side there was Joel and Emeline with 5 children plus the 6 surviving Bogardus offspring and their families. On the Ludington side, 2 of Julia’s siblings (Amelia and Robert) had moved to Texas but her sisters Eliza Austen, Harriet Lusk and brothers Henry and Tertullus were nearby with a total of 16 children.

Hiram’s brother Moses lived in Brooklyn and also died in 1839 leaving wife Ann with 10 children. Their siblings Samuel, Mary (Douglass), Martha (Rogers) and Catherine (Clearwater) remained in Montgomery with their combined 14 children. Only their brother James 1795-1844 left New York, settling in Kentucky where he married in 1820 and had 4 sons.

Dr John H Cunningham Collected Duck Decoys

Is that interesting? Maybe, maybe not. However, I found a great article about the decoy maker, Elmer Crowell, with interesting facts about Dr Cunningham (1877-1860) who married Theresa Ingersoll in 1914.  It’s these little tidbits that can make our ancestors come alive.

John studied at Harvard with his friend (and later, Best Man) Dr John Phillips. They spent many weekends studying, hunting and fishing in the “crystal clear waters” of Lake Wenham in Beverly where the Phillips family had 275 acres.  It is said that Wenham Lake ice was renowned for its purity … demanded by Queen Victoria and written about by Rudyard Kipling. (That’s another historic bygone … shipping naturally formed ice across oceans).

A. Elmer Crowell (1862-1951) was a master decoy carver from East Harwich, Massachusetts. Crowell specialized in shorebirds, waterfowl, and miniatures. Crowell's decoys are consistently regarded as the finest and most desirable decoys ever made.  Some of his decoys have sold for over a million dollars.