FamilyHistoryFiles.com - The Awesomely Gripping Saga, Book III

The eldest children, including Sheldon, were born in Vermont, before the big migration across the Catskills to southern New York. Hiram, the youngest, was born in their new homestead.

This is, without doubt, a houseful of kids. How many thousands of stories about it are lost to the winds?

Mary Eaton Kinsman lived a long and productive life in Chemung County. According to William Charles Kinsman II's The Kinsman Family, in her 96th year, a few months before her death, she experienced the phenomenon of "second eyesight." As the story goes,

She was fond of reading the Bible and one day as she sat reading, she discovered that her glasses were pushed up on her forehead and she had been reading without them. She was a small, dark-haired woman with small features. Her hair had very little grey in it when she died.

She died during a blizzard, on January 21, 1891,

in the home of her son Hiram at East Smithfield, PA. The severe weather at the time of her death prevented them from transporting her body to Fassetts to inter beside her husband and daughter Amanda Marcella. Her remains lie in the Kinsman lot on the east side of the Union Cemetary at East Smithfield, PA.

Source: Kindly transcribed by Margaret Bourdette from William C. Kinsman II The Kinsman Family.

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Let's trace the lines of descent back even further. Mary Kinsman was born Mary Eaton in 1796 in southern Vermont. Here are the particulars of her family:

THE FAMILY OF KIMBALL EATON AND MARY PAIGE OF CAVENDISH, VERMONT

Mary Eaton	b. 1796, d. 1891 in East Smithfield, PA
Deborah Eaton	b. 1798
Abigail Eaton	b. 1803
Kimball Eaton	b. 1806
Ryland Fletcher Eaton	b. 1808, d. Adams NY
Saloma Eaton	b. 1811
Asa	b. ?

The mother of all these children, Mary Paige, was born about 1776 in Haverhill, Essex County, Massachusetts. Their father, Kimball Eaton, was born even before the Declaration of Independence, in 1772 in Haverhill, Goffstown, Essex County, Massachusetts.

As we go further back in time, the family remains rooted in Essex County, Massachusetts. These were the descendents of the of the original colonizers who came over in torrents from the 1630s and 40s, at the very beginning of Europeans in North America.

Unfortunately, Mary Paige is the end of the female line traced in the nine-page "Ancestors of Mary Eaton" pyramid of 10 generations that goes back to 1558. In other words, I don't know who Mary Paige's mother was. Thanks to Margaret Bourdette we can trace the family of the father, Kimball Eaton, all the way back to England. But not the mother. Not Mary Paige. I'll bet no one has tried before.

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I don't propose to try, at least here and now, though it would make an interesting project. For now it's enough to be able to trace our maternal line back seven generations. Finally, the lines of descent are clear. It seems pretty amazing that those seven generations go back to the year 1776, which also happens to be (duh!) the year of the founding of the Republic: Betty Delehanty – Genevieve Sullivan – Jennie Lang – Ellen Kinsman – (Louisa Tuthill) – Mary Eaton – Mary Paige – the last link in the chain born just as the ink was drying on the Declaration of Independence.

Louisa Tuthill's name is in parentheses here because she occupies a special position in the line of descent. She was Ellen's biological mother, but died with Ellen an infant and thus wasn't involved in her upbringing, as far as I know. That job was left to her grandmother Mary, and maybe her step-sister Selma. That's six generations of child-rearing, among seven generations of women.

Seven generations. That also happens to be the number of generations that some Native American Indian peoples say you should think about whenever you're undertaking some significant action in this life. What impact will my action today have seven generations hence? I think they picked seven because seven's a lot of generations. It feels like a lot of generations to me.

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I still wonder about Ellen's early years, from the late 1840s to the early 1860s, and about her grandmother, Mary Eaton Kinsman. So I started fishing around to see if Mary left behind any letters or diaries, anything directly from her that might shed some light on her life and the raising of her granddaughter. Sadly, no such letters or diary exist.

In the process of looking, though, I discovered something else. On the Tri-County genealogical website where Ellen's birth announcement is posted, they have a collection of letters and diaries that is, in a word, extraordinary. There are dozens of diaries and hundreds of letters that altogether must comprise several thousand pages of text. It is a breathtaking collection of documents. Who knew?? Lots of people, evidently, because for years they've been flooding in from all over the Tri-County area, and more pour in every day. [ http://www.rootsweb.com/~srgp/jmtindex.htm ]

There are letters from people right in Mary's neck of the woods, right from when grandma Mary was rocking baby Ellen to sleep at night. Letters from when Ellen was migrating to Michigan with her father Sheldon and step-mother Mary and all her step-siblings. Letters from when Ellen was milking the cows and shucking the corn and washing the boy's dirty diapers on the farm in Burr Oak.

Ellen couldn't write anyway, so looking for letters or a diary from her would be futile. But we do have letters and diaries from other young women of this period, women whose lives were not unlike Ellen's. And letters and diaries from other mothers and grandmothers and fathers and grandfathers and brothers and sisters and cousins and uncles and aunts, all from this same place and time.

These letters and diaries offer a fascinating window on Ellen's youth, and Mary Eaton's adulthood. They help us better understand what they might've been thinking and feeling, what they thought important and not, what they valued and didn't. So let's dip into these letters and diaries and see if they offer any insights into the lives of your great-great-great grandmother Ellen Kinsman, or of your great-great-great-great-great grandmother Mary Eaton Kinsman.

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Family. Work. Weather. The seasons. Daily routines. Occasional holidays and visits. People moving about. Illness. Disease. Accidents. Disasters. Death. These are the topics that dominate these letters and diaries, many of which are truly heart-wrenching. Their authors were simple, plainspoken people, farming people who rarely went far from home and spent the vast bulk of their time performing some sort of manual labor.

"Simple" does not mean "simplistic." Their forms of knowledge were different than yours or mine – not inferior, just different. They'd be amazed what you could do with a car or computer. You'd be amazed at what they could do with a spinning wheel, or axe and wood adze.

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In November 1857, 19 year-old Mary Griswold Pettibone in Northville, Michigan wrote a letter to her friend Mary Williams in Elmira, Chemung County, New York.

Let's set the stage. A few years back, Mary Griswold Pettibone had moved with her husband Milo to a farm in Michigan from a farm near Troy, Pennsylvania, about fifty miles from Ellen Kinsman's birthplace. She's writing from Michigan to her dear friend back in Pennsylvania. In this same year, 1857, Ellen Kinsman's family migrated to Michigan from her birthplace in New York.

A word about the letter. It's hard to read, because it hardly has any punctuation, no paragraphs, and some of the words are misspelled or abbreviated. This means it should be read slowly and carefully. Ready?

Northville [Michigan] November 8, 1857

Dear Mary Williams,

With pleasure I take my pen in hand to answer your kind epistle [letter] of Nov the first I am well and do sincerely hope you are enjoying the same blessing Mary. I will write you how Milo worked the -------- from beginning to end When we left Troy we came to Mich and Milo's brother George helped him get a farm in this way he gave Milo a deed of it and he took a mortgage of it after he had been on the farm about to [two] years he began to think his brother George might let him have the farm but his brother did not think so so he got his brother to by [buy] it of him and Milo told me that he would take the money and get a cheper farm so I consented to let him sell it thinking we would have a home of our own Milo sold the farm to his brother for 12 hundred and then he sold of the horses cows and sheep and every thing that was on the farm unbeknown to me yes Mary he sold every thing but the house en [and] furniture and he was mad because I wasn't wiling he should sell it it was in July he sold of the things and in Sept he left without saying a word to any one where he was going I was on the farm when he left and Milo's mother was living with us he got up Monday morning I ask him where he was going he said not far I went to washing and in the time I missed some of his clothes and before noon one of the neighbors came to get the farming utensils he had bought that was the first I knew he had sold such things then we began to wonder where he had gone but a week passed and we was ignorant of his whereabouts his folks all lived within a few miles of us they tried all they could to find where he had gone [a few words crossed out] he rote [wrote] a few lines to his sister that he was on his road to California and that was the last we herde of him till he came back I sold some of the furniture to get the money to help myself with and some of it I moved to my sisters where it know is and I am with --- my folks came after me they live about 80 miles from us my sister ----- I went to my fathers and spent the winter and in the summer I came and worked for my sister and the next fall my father came after me I went home and in the spring Milo came back after the absence of a year and a half and promised to do better I went to living with him if living you could call it he worked at the harness trade and some of the time I was with him and some of the time to my sisters and some time with his sister and I did not board with Milo but a little of the time he thought it pretty hard to pay for my board he staid five months and then he told me he was going to Kansas I tried to prevale him to sta on at least let me go with him but know he must have it all his own way and so he did and thank my stars he has left me for the last time I can stand a good deal ad I think I have his folks are all friends to me but his own conduct has made them an enemy to him I have related the circumstances to you just as they occurred I will have you to judge for yourself wether you would have such a man or not. . . .

Write soon yours in love,

Mary [Griswold Pettibone]

So what do you make of this letter? Here's some of what I make of it:

L Mary's husband Milo was a no-good louse of a husband. He made promises to his young wife he never intended to keep, abandoned her, caused her enormous grief, returned, and abandoned her again. After he left for the last time she felt the better off for it.

L Mary had almost no control over property, and thus no way to stop her husband from selling all the livestock, taking the money, and hightailing it to California. Despite her inferior legal status, she kept him from selling the house and the furniture, which really rankled him.

L Extended family was extremely important, and changed according to circumstance and people's behavior. After the catastrophe of Milo's selling everything but the house and the furniture, Mary sold the rest and went to live with her sister, then her parents, then Milo's sister, then Milo came back, she lived with him for a bit, though not much – "I went to living with him if living you could call it."

L In other words, life, family life, and living arrangements were all very complicated and rarely stable.

L After all of Milo's bad behavior, Mary's in-laws considered her part of their family, essentially disowning their son.

L Ellen Kinsman was nine years old in 1857, and lived about a hundred miles west of the letter's author. Ellen's grandmother Mary Eaton lived about 50 miles from its recipient.

L This seems the most important thing: Family was defined most of all by the commitments that people made to each other, and the extent to which they abided by those commitments.

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NEWS FLASH! Well, more like an update. I just got a copy of Sheldon Kinsman's obituary, thanks to Audrey at the Burr Oak Public Library. It was written by his widow, Mary Kinsman, in the days after Sheldon's death at his home in Noble, Branch County, Michigan, on July 28, 1904, and his burial in the Trayer Cemetery two days later. Here's an excerpt:

Mr. Kinsman, a brother of Asa E. Kinsman, deceased, was born in the state of Vermont and came to Michigan some forty years ago. He was one of those hard working men, neat and precise in his work, though he met with lots of hardship and trouble early in life. He had a great delight in working in the timber and was a master in his line. . . .

We will remark that the care which was shown during the sickness of Mr. Kinsman by the family revealed to us that there was love there for a step-father, and the son and three daughters surely showed all the respect in the world.

It goes on to list family members from outside the area who attended the funeral. His daughter Mary (4 years old in 1861) came with her husband all the way from McFarland, Kansas. Another sister and her husband came from Lockport, New York. From far and wide people came to pay their last respects to Sheldon Kinsman.

Why not his daughter Nellie? Maybe word of his death didn't reach her in time, though that seems unlikely. Sheldon was sick for seven months, ample time for a letters or visits. She couldn't write letters, but surely could have gotten a friend to do it. Maintaining contact would not have been very hard to do. And there's no sign that Ella Kinsman ever shied away from things that were hard.

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While we ponder on that, let's look at another document from the Tri-County website. This one is the 1887 diary of a man named Emerson Smith. Every day in 1887, Emerson Smith wrote a little bit in his diary about the day's activities. Whenever I get to feeling sorry for myself because I have to work so hard, I really should go read the diary of Emerson Smith.

Emerson Smith, 26 years old, was a farmer in Sullivan Township, Chemung County, New York – not far from Southport, where Ellen was born. His diary helps us to understand the tedium and monotony and just plain hard work of farm life – of the life Ellen Kinsman left behind when she married Frank Lang and left for Minnesota. The work he described was man's work, obviously, but the basic idea – that every day on the farm was filled to the brim with very hard work – applied equally well to women, including Ella Kinsman in Burr Oak.

Let's look, for example, at Emerson Smith's diary entries over the course of a single week in mid-May, 1887. Ready?

Monday 16 - Hauled Stone with the Steers Broke one of the ox Bows Went up to Toms after a yoke Had to go up to the Back Place after it John Finished Sowing oats in the 4 acre Lot Sowed 20 bushels in the 4 acre and Creek Lot Helped John Haul Stone in the Creek Lot across the Creek Helped Plant some Potatoes in the Garden Warm 94 degrees in the Shade

Tuesday May 17, 1887 - Hauled Stone with the Horses out of the 4 acre Lot along the Creek for to Straighten it John went to Troy with Gertrudes Horse Got Back in to Help Hand Stone Hot and Dry

Wednesday 18 - Hauled Stone in the 4 acre Lot John finished Sowing Grass Seed and Helped Haul Stone Finished Hauling in the 4 acre Lot John Rolled the same and a Part of the Creek Lot across the Creek J. Hauled stone this side of the Creek with the Steers Hot and Dry

Thursday, May 19, 1887 - Finished Hauling the Stone in the Creek Lot John Helped me Haul and John Rolled the same I fixed some fence to Shut the Cows out of the Creek Pasture Below the Cold Spring Hot and Dry

Friday 20 - Hauled Stone along the Creek in the Creek Lot with the Steers John Commenced Plowing for corn in the upper Part of the old House Lot Below the Barn on the Hill Hot and Dry

Saturday, May 21, 1887 - Hauled Stone in the Creek Lot with the Steers Hauled them along the Creek and in the Barn Yard John Plowed for corn on the Hill with the Horses Thermometer 96 in the shade

On Sunday he rested. The next week he continued hauling stones, plowing, and planting. The tasks changed with the seasons – in September it was ". . . cut corn . . . cut corn . . . cut corn . . ." – but the pattern remained the same: work, work, work, day after day, week after week, the whole year through.

Now imagine a woman writing a similar diary. Change the tasks, substituting "haul stone" for "washed clothes," and so on – and it would look nearly identical.

The point is a simple one, but also essential for understanding Ella's first 17 or so years of life: farm life consisted, overwhelmingly, of very hard, very tedious, very draining, endlessly repetitive rounds of work, work, work.

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Not only work, but sickness, disease, and death. These heart-wrenching but ever-present facts of life were nowhere more poignantly expressed than in a series of letters from a woman named Floretta in Burlington, Vermont, to her Aunt Mary in Elmira, Chemung County, New York, in the fall of 1863.

Dear Aunt, September 25, 1863

I now seat myself to answer a kind letter which came at hand today. It being so that Aunt Sarah can not write, I will tell you how it is. Debbie & Eva is very sick. The Dr was there this morning and he said that if his medicine did not help them they would not live 24 hours, but ma has just come from there and she says they are a little easier. Evva lies very stupid [in a stupor]. Ma thought that Debbie was a little better than she was when she went there. The Dr is a coming again tonight. Granma is there helping take care of them. They was taken with the Inflamatory Diarea connected with the intermitting Billious Fever. It seems a complaint going around almost as bad as the diptheria. Elam has had it, all of Aunt Elvira's children has had a touch of it, but not so bad as Elam or Aunt Sarah's children. Debbie and Evva was taken last Monday. Nothing but blood passes their bowels ever since. Dr. Sweeny says there was a funeral yesterday, all with the same complaint . . .

Eleven days later, on October 7, Floretta wrote again to her Aunt Mary:

Dear Mary,

I now take my pen in hand again to inform you of the sad news, yes sad it is. Little Evva is dead. She died last Thursday eve at eight Oclock, after suffering severely. She was sick one week and four days. . . .

After another eleven days, on October 18, Floretta wrote to her Aunt Mary with more terrible news:

Little Lovet, he is dead. He was laid by the side of Evva. . . . He did not seem to suffer as much as little sis did . . .

These are but three letters among hundreds, two small children's deaths among thousands. Again, the point here is simple, but crucial: in the 1850s and 1860s and 1870s and after, it was very common for people to get sick and die. Think of my grandmother in the 1910s and 1920s and 1930s. Her two husbands, dead. Her sister, dead. Her sister's son, dead. Illness and death were not rare, not infrequent. They were horribly commonplace, woven directly into the fabric of everyday life.

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Let's return to the question: Does Ella's absence from her father Sheldon's funeral help us to understand why she and Frank left Burr Oak to begin with? Maybe, along with everything else we know, including any insights we might've gleaned from the letters and diary excerpts you've just read

My hunch is that Ella was never very close to her father, and found the prospect of living on the farm for the rest of her life simply unbearable. That she knew life was fragile, that people got sick and died all the time, and that she might well be next. That she'd been exploited for her labor ever since she was small, and she'd grown sick and tired of it. That even before she met Frank, she decided to leave Michigan and never look back. That the move to Minnesota was her idea, and hers alone.

Leaving was risky, that is true, with potentially devastating consequences. For one thing, leaving Burr Oak with an infant in tow also meant leaving behind all of her family support networks. Frank had no family in Minnesota, and neither did she. What if he left her or died, or if they fell on hard times? Moving to Minnesota under these circumstances was bold, daring, risky, dangerous, like walking a tightrope without a net. She did it anyway.

She surely knew that men could not always be counted on. The experiences of Mary Griswold Pettibone were not unique. A young man's potential for neglecting his marital obligations was something about which young women of this era were entirely cognizant. They saw it all around them, all the time. Ella was no dummy. She knew it could happen. But she up and left anyway.

Frank and Ella were young and impetuous, and probably madly in love. We'll never really know why they left. Still, all signs point to Ella's agency. Her most burning desire, I'd wager, was to get the hell off the farm. After leaving her grandmother behind in New York, she likely found her family entanglements in Michigan too burdensome, her farm life too soul-deadening. Burr Oak mainly meant mind-numbing routines from sunup to sundown, day after day, year after year. Peering into the future, she saw no prospect of change. Her spirit would wither, die a slow death. Unless she got the hell out.

I imagine she wanted what all people want – a richer, fuller, happier life. I imagine that memories of her grandmother Mary kept echoing through her head: a little voice saying, "it doesn't have to be like this, it can be better." A clean break seemed the only solution. That meant not relying on her father or the others, but relying on herself – on her own strength and character, nurtured by memories of her grandmother's lessons and love.

So, carefully figuring the pros and the cons – the dangers of staying, the dangers of leaving – she made up her mind, she hopped on the train, and she never looked back.

If this was how it was, which seems pretty likely, then our family ended up in Minnesota because of Ella Kinsman's unstoppable, pig-headed passion to make for herself and her daughter a better life.

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It's also true that this was an era of migration, and migration often meant leaving one's loved ones behind. Powerful insights into that process of migration can be gleaned from hundreds of documents on the Tri-County website. Consider, for example, just one letter of the mid-1840s. It's also from Troy, Pennsylvania, from a woman with the last name Eaton – the same last name as Mary Eaton, your great-great-great-great-great grandmother. I don't know how these two Eaton's were related, though if you systematically searched and played with the data, you could probably figure it out in a day or two or six (there were lots of Eatons in the Tri-County area).

The author of the letter was named Asenath Loomis Eaton, a woman in her 50s or 60s or 70s. She was writing from Troy, Bradford County, PA, to her daughter, Laura Emily Eaton Miller Carlton, in Illinois. A few years before, her brother, several of her sons, her daughter, her daughter's husband, and their small son had left Pennsylvania for Illinois. At the bottom is a postscript by her sister Fanny. The envelope is stamped Nov 3, 1846.

That's about 18 months before Ellen Kinsman was born to the son of another Eaton, Mary Eaton, about fifty miles to the north.

It's a very moving letter – the plaintive cry of a heartsick grandmother who hasn't seen or heard from her children or grandchildren for years, who misses them terribly, and who has very sad news. The letter itself was badly damaged by time and wear, and was only partly legible when it was transcribed onto the Tri-County website. You really do have to read it from beginning to end.

Hand-stamped Nov 3, 1846, Troy, PA

To Erastus Eaton & Laura Eaton Miller

Dear Children,

I am going to try to write you I do not now [know] as you can read it for I have not wrote the value of a sheet of paper for more than forty years but I have heard that Adolphus is Ded [dead] We heard the sad news to [two] weeks ago and we have sent to the Post office all most every day sinc to see if we had not a letter and we are afrade [afraid] some of the rest of you is sick is the caws [cause] of you not writing. Oh my dear children how anxious I be for all thos I never attemp to write you I have not forgotten the days of your childhood and you are as dear to me now as then you have all sest [ceased] to mention my name but I have not forgot to pray for you If this ever reaches you I want you to immediately and let me now [know] every perticular about Adolphus is sickness and everything he said or did whilst he was with you I remember how he trembled when he bid me Adue [Adieu] O how I tryde to not have him go Children your friends is all anxious for [you] to return to Pencylvania if you can sell [ ] and get back with alittle property it will [be better?] for you to be here without much property [ ] and have your helth than to have riches [ ] out of my numerous family I have but three [ ] Dexter Fanny and Jackson Almn and [Electa] are in Connecticut Almon has been there [ ] he works in an ax factory he makes [m ] fast and is a Gentleman in apperance Elec [ ] work in a factory weave in suspenders [Dexter] [ ] doing well he is one of the best farmers we [ ] [ ] our Country now Laury if you can read [ ] [ ] find out what I want which is to know [ ] about Adolphus sickness and deth and then [ ] the rest off you do not forget to tell [ ] about Louis's Children

Adieu Dear,

Aseneth Eaton to Laury and Erastus with Betsy

Dear brother Erastus I want to see you very much although I was a little girl when you left I havent forgotten you I can remmember the last time I saw you stood in the doreyard you muste write to me we have not received but one leter from you Fanny Fan Fanny

This is such a heartbreaker. And there are so many others expressing similar sentiments – of love ones missed sorely, of dear ones saying their final farewells – in this life, or preparing for the next – of fond remembrances, of pain and death, of prayer and hope.

I hope this letter, along with the other documents cited above, helps you better understand the social, cultural, and familial world in which your great-great-great-grandmother and her grandparents dwelt.

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I would like to thank Joyce Tice, the creator and webmaster of the Tri-County website, and all the people who so generously shared such invaluable parts of their family's histories by posting them on this site. Your efforts are deeply appreciated. Thank you.

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Ella Kinsman's biological mother, as we've seen, was named Louisa (or Eliza) Tuthill. What do we know about her ancestry? Well, after digging around in the Tri-County website for half an afternoon, I can tell you this: there are a lot of Tuthill's in this area, and the relations between them are complicated. I haven't yet found a Louisa, or Eliza, who was born at the right time, though a relentless search would probably find her somewhere.

There's a chance, in fact, that she was distantly related to President Benjamin Harrison. No kidding! Here's some of what I found on the Tuthill's of this area, from a book by a local historian named Ashburn Towner, called Our County and Its People: A History of the Valley and County of Chemung (1892).

Barnaby Tuthill was a considerable man in Orient, Long Island, during the time of the Revolutionary War. He was a fighter and did his country good service. He had a brother, Henry Tuthill, who is the great-grandfather on the maternal side of President Harrison. Barnabas Tuthill with his son, Samuel Tuthill, came to Tioga County in 1793, and settled in this township . . . Captain Samuel was a leading and prominent citizen of this locality. He was the commanding officer of a company recruited in Chemung County for the War of 1812 and was ordered to the frontier. . . .

There's lots of stories of the Tuthill's brave deeds in battle against the British. One might even be able to find the original reports. So far I haven't been able to trace Ella Kinsman's biological mother Eliza (Louisa) to Captain Barnabas Tuthill or his family from Long Island. If there were a connection, would you be surprised?

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In a way, I really would be. My mom's ancestry seems determined to wend its way back to sturdy peasant stock. Potato farmers fleeing the Famine. Washer-women and farm girls. Pioneers hacking a life out of the wilderness. Poor people, working people, with calloused hands and little education. People who learned the hard way, through illness and suffering and death, how precious life is. That's the Delehanty-Sullivan-Kinsman side of the family.

In fact there was another Tuthill family in the tri-county area, headed by one Greene Tuthill, a man of much lesser social standing than the renowned Captain Barnabas Tuthill. The local history book we just quoted says his was another family entirely. Barnabas Tuthill was a big shot, Greene Tuthill pretty much of a nobody. I bet Greene was the one.

I also searched a bit for Mary Paige on the Internet, and the best I could do was find that maybe the Eaton family actually went back to 1548 instead of 1558. Not exactly earth-shattering. There is one Mary Paige who's listed as immigrating from Nova Scotia to Massachusetts around the right time, though the birth dates don't match, and there's no other information about her I can find.

Chances seem good, though, that Mary Eaton's mother Mary Paige was a poor, unlettered farm girl who moved up a station in life when she married Kimball Eaton. A handsome, willful young woman of calloused hands and sturdy frame, with a quick wit and lively tongue, who knew what it meant to love, and be loved.

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Winter Solstice, Wednesday, December 21, 2005. 9:40 p.m. Earlier this afternoon, after writing everything up to and including that last sentence (including all the stuff about Ellen's unquenchable desire to leave Burr Oak), I turned off my computer and drove off to have dinner with Nora. On my way out I stopped at my mailbox. Inside was an envelope from Patty S. Bender, the Clerk of the County of St. Joseph. Inside the envelope was a certified copy of Frank and Ellen's marriage license. Nine days ago I found it indexed online and sent for a copy.

I opened the envelope, read the certificate, threw my head back, and laughed out loud, at which time an electric shiver danced circles round my spine. Here's what it said:

Frank Lang to Ellen Kinsman

This certifies that Mr. Frank Lang of White Pigeon and Miss Ellen Kinsman of the same place were by me united in the bonds of marriage at White Pigeon on the 11th day of January, in the year of our Lord one Thousand Eight Hundred and sixty five conformably to the ordinance of God and the Laws of the State.

Filed February 7, 1866 F. H. Davis

John C. Goss, Clerk Minister of the Gospel

Do you get it? Take a minute and try to figure out what this means.

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Look at the dates. They were married in January 1865. Their marriage license was filed – that is, made official and public – in February 1866. More than a year later.

L Their marriage took place during the Civil War, not after the war! They were married while Frank was still in the army. He still had five or six months left to serve. Ellen was only 16. She would be 17 in two months.

L The marriage license was officially filed more than a year after they were married! In other words, Jennie and Frank let more than a year pass before letting knowledge of their marriage become public. They were secretly married for about 13 months.

L The date the marriage became official and public (Feb 1866) was almost exactly nine months to the day before baby Jennie was born (Nov 1866). The actual count was 277 days. The gestation period for a human baby is generally reckoned at 280 days. In other words, Frank and Ella conceived Jennie on the day their marriage became official.

You know what this means. Frank must have come to Burr Oak on leave or furlough in January 1865, secretly married Jennie, and gone back to his unit. She didn't conceive his baby then. It seems obvious that they didn't have sexual relations then. She must have made him wait. "Not until the marriage is public!" No doubt she insisted. Making him wait was her only leverage, her only power – her only guarantee that he'd come back, and that she wouldn't be stuck with a child and no husband.

What does Frank's "Company Muster Roll" paperwork say? It says:

Jan & Feb 1865. [Remarks:] Vet Transferred to V. R. C. Jan 12 / 65.

Amazing: he was transferred to the "V.R.C.," or "Veteran Reserve Corps" (sometimes called the "Invalid Corps") the day after his marriage! The V.R.C., as I learned, was a branch of the army where injured soldiers went onto a kind of injured-reserve list. Why the coincidence in the dates? I wondered whether his marriage helped Frank get transferred to safer or lighter duty, away from the battlefield.

So I emailed a man named Don Harvey, whose website on Michigan in the Civil War is amazingly comprehensive and authoritative. He replied that "There really was no big advantage to being in the VRC, you still had to serve your term of enlistment, usually as a prison or train guard, and the real danger in the Civil War was disease and not the battles."

So, from what Don Harvey says, my best guess is that Frank knew about his upcoming transfer, took advantage of the situation to leave Virginia for Michigan, married Ellen on January 11, and returned to his unit very soon after – his transfer to V.R.C. went into effect on January 12, the day after he and Ellen secretly exchanged vows.

One thing also seems clear: Ellen Kinsman was one stubbornly wickedly powerfully unstoppably unmercifully pig-headedly determined young woman!

This also means that just about all of my "hunches" (quasi-informed speculations, if you please) about how Frank and Ellen met, why Ellen decided to marry him and leave Burr Oak, her relationship with her father, etc., etc., were pretty close to dead-on, as far as we can tell. They are not contradicted or undermined by the marriage license data; instead they're pretty much confirmed.

Frank and Ellen must have met in August 1861, when Frank first came to Burr Oak. It seems likely, too, that they exchanged much more than a glance. They must have met, talked, planned, schemed. Why else would he come back and marry her three and a half years later? This calls for hunch-revision: they got together at least two or three times during that 10-day period in Burr Oak in 1861, when Frank was enlisting and Ellen 13½, at which time they plotted the future.

♣

Revised scenario: August 1861. Hot, dry, and the war has begun. Ellen still wants the hell out (that much is the same). For miles around, young men come flocking to Burr Oak to enlist in the Union Army – 66 from St. Joseph County alone, according to Don Harvey's list. By some quirk of fate, some unlikely happenstance, she and Frank cross paths. Each feels a powerful chemistry. They arrange to meet secretly. They rendezvous somewhere, in a haystack perhaps, and share a few indelibly precious romantic moments. He promises to return, they embrace, she sobs, and he's gone.

Ellen waits. Winter 1861-62 passes. Winter 1862-63. Winter 1863-64. He'll come back, a little voice echoes through her mind, over and over and over. He's just got to come back.

In the dead of winter 1864-65, soon after Christmas, Frank Lang does come back. Just shy of 17, she's elated, ecstatic, and wary. If we marry, she insists, it must remain secret. And no sexual intercourse yet. He has to come back again, to prove his love. That's her deal. He agrees, and they marry. Only Ellen, Frank, the minister, and the witness know, and the latter two both pledge their silence (we've no inkling of who served as witness).

Frank departs, and she resumes waiting. Only now as a married woman. On March 8, 1865, her 17th birthday, only four people on Earth know she is married. All keep silent.

The image of Ellen at 14 and 15 and 16 pining away for her Prince Charming to return, as she cooked and cleaned and washed her step-brothers' diapers, is only intensified, magnified, made that much more palpable, by the simple facts conveyed in this document.

Then, the war finally ends. Will her Prince return? August 1865. September . . . October . . . November . . . Christmas . . . is Frank back yet? There's still no official marriage, still no sexual relations. Then, for some reason, Frank and Ellen choose February 7, 1866 as the day to file the paperwork and announce to her family that they're married. Perhaps Frank returns that same day.

Exactly when he returns scarcely matters. He has kept his promises. Twice he has come back to her. Now Ellen keeps hers, and a new life begins.

♣

What was Sheldon's reaction? Blind fury, I imagine, at least at first. His daughter had snuck behind his back, deceived him, lied to him, secretly married some passing fellow who seemed alright, but who can tell?, then pulled the wool over the eyes of the entire family for more than a year. More than a year! Hard to forgive something like that.

He probably also knew she wasn't long for Burr Oak. She'd always been headstrong, always pursuing some scheme hatched in her bonnet. What's a father to do with such a daughter? Compelled once more to swallow the world as it is, Sheldon's rage gives way to simmering anger, then finally, acceptance. Someday might come forgiveness, but not yet. Not after what she's done.

I wonder: after impregnating Ellen on February 7, 1866, did Frank stay, living with his bride under Sheldon's roof? Or, did he leave? Maybe he pitched in with the farm work through the spring and summer of 1866, helping his father-in-law and the older boys haul stone, plow and plant corn, and mend fallen fences.

Or maybe not. It's unlikely Sheldon welcomed him with open arms. And Frank probably didn't want to stick around. All we know is that he, Ellen, and baby Jennie end up living in Minnesota less than a year after Jennie's birth. The likeliest scenario is that all three left Michigan together.

As Ellen's belly swells through the spring and summer of 1866, she keeps at her chores – she never was one to neglect her chores. Is she glad she is pregnant? Happy to be married to Frank? Confident she'll be leaving? Or is she more anxious and worried than ever about what the future might hold? In either case, with the first hard frost the time for the birthing draws near. Till about two weeks short of Thanksgiving, when baby Jennie comes bawling into the world.

The new family makes ready to leave soon after. Maybe Frank has an army pal in Hastings; maybe Ellen an aunt or uncle. By this time, Frank is as anxious to be gone as she is. He sees no future in Michigan either.

Deep inside, Sheldon is glad to see them go. He'll have no more daily reminders of her deception and perfidy. Plus, she seems happy. I imagine a fine spring morning in 1867, with the St. Joseph River roaring with snowmelt, the sun softly dappling the cold muddy road, songbirds soaring and diving and gathering twigs. And the four of them – Sheldon, Frank, Ella, and Jennie – clustered onto the carriage on their way into Burr Oak, the rear piled high with baskets and bags, the young mother cooing to her baby, the young man anxious and glad, old man firmly gripping the reins in his large, steady hands, sitting stock upright, his gaze on the road, resigned to God's will. Then the handsome young family clambers onto the train, they all wave their farewells, and Ellen and Sheldon never see or hear from each other again.

That Ellen, always such a headstrong young thing.

♣

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