Finding John Tanner among the Country Roads and Farms of Greenwich, New York

From Flickr, used as is.

Sometime in 1810, perhaps in the later half of the year after the harvest was over, a census taker followed the winding country roads of Greenwich, New York, to provide an accurate list of all the inhabitants of the town, black or white, free or slave.

The census taker recorded two John Tanners in Greenwich, both men with families of about the same age.

Unfortunately neither entry matches our Tanner family genealogy. The most likely scenario is that the second John Tanner is ours, since he is listed close to his mother Thankful, but neither entry is a perfect match.

Here are the numbers. The first group is how the Tanner family should have looked in the census, based on the genealogy. The next group is a John Tanner family living with two free blacks. The third group is the John Tanner family living close to the widowed Thankful Tanner. Neither family has slaves; by 1810 there were only eight left in Greenwich.

Note that extra individuals in the family do not matter one way or the other since families were often more fluid than today due to early deaths. The more concerning data points would be the lack of small children who should have been at home with their mother.

FAMILY HISTORY

Males

Under 10  2-3 William (age 7-8), Sidney (age 1), possibly Elisha (age 9-10) unless he was living with the Bentlys

Under 16  0-1 possibly Elisha (age 9-10)

Under 26  0

Under 45  1   John Tanner (age 31-32)

Females

Under 10  1  Matilda (age 5-6)

Under 16  0

Under 26 0

Under 45  1  Lydia Tanner (age 26-27)

OPTION 1 (Page 4, bottom half, line 6)

Males

Under 10  2

Under 16  1

Under 26 0

Under 45  1

Females

Under 10  0

Under 16   0

Under 26   1

Under 45   1

Free blacks 2

Slaves  0

OPTION 2 (Page 5, top half, line 14)

Males

Under 10  1

Under 16  1

Under 26 0

Under 45  1

Females

Under 10  2

Under 16  0

Under 26 0

Under 45  1

Free blacks 0

Slaves  0

MUSINGS

The first entry works if Elisha was counted as 10, Matilda was put in the wrong age group, and the Tanners had two free blacks living with them. The second entry works if Elisha was counted as 10 years old and the census taker accidentally recorded one of the little boys as a girl.

Note that Thankful's entry is strange: she is listed in the under-45 category, but she was actually in her 50s. She also has four boys ages 10-26 living with her (Pardon, Francis, Joshua, and William) and one girl under 10 (perhaps a granddaughter; could this be Matilda?).

Another option is that John Tanner was living elsewhere, but this is not supported by the family history or by any online indexed copy of the US Census. If anyone wanted to read through the entire Washington County Census to check for a wrongly-indexed entry, the easiest way would be to read the copy at archive.org:

Washington County Census

Washington County starts on page 291 and goes through 379. Greenwich is at the very end, and the concluding page of the census (381) notes that it was filed on February 7, 1811.

Another avenue of investigation would be to figure out the identity of the other John Tanner and decide out if he is an obvious match for one of the census records.

CONCLUSION

This is a case where we do not have enough data to make a final decision, but since John was shown farming his father's land in the tax records, it's likely that he was located close to his mother, if we can assume that the census was geographical in nature.

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Finding Thankful, Joshua, and Tabitha

See previous discussions of the mystery surrounding Joshua Tanner's burial: (Surname books and the Reed's Corner Mystery) and (Joshua Tanner and the Elusive Reed's Corner).

In 1917 volunteers associated with the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) scoured the towns of Greenwich and Easton, New York, looking for old cemeteries and burials.  A distant cousin and local farmer, Oscar W. Tefft (1865-1934), drove around and cataloged all the old burial plots tucked into corners of area farms. Oscar was very interested in family and local history. He helped with the research for the book The Tefft Ancestry (Stocking, 1904).

When he drove up and down the old farm roads and highways in 1917, the burial locations he found had between one and a couple dozen headstones as well a variety of graves marked only by slates. [1]

Oscar listed 19 farm cemeteries and gave each a name: Koert L. Foster's Farm, Alpheus Barber Farm, Daniel Tefft Farm, William Hartshorn Farm, and so forth.

After Oscar and others finished their explorations, they compiled the lists and sent them to be published in The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. 

Some of the cemeteries, particularly the larger ones, are still in existence, but a century later some may be unknown, or grave markers could be missing or inscriptions worn off, so Oscar Tefft and the others provided a valuable service to the community.

In recent years websites including GenWeb put this data online, but as with any type of indexed information, it's worth going back to the first known compilation.

— o o O o o —

Several months ago, Karen Bray Keeley noted on Family Tree that Joshua Tanner was buried in the William Hartshorn Farm Cemetery. She had seen the name "Joshua Turner" and recognized that the other burials in the small cemetery were Joshua and Thankful's grandchildren, so "Turner" was a misreading of Tanner, and now thanks to Karen we know where Joshua is buried.

I saw her note on Friday and although she used one of the secondary sources it was enough to find the original list.

As I read through the lists, many names were familiar: Tanner, Tefft, Barber, Kenyon. Since so many Tanner relatives migrated in great waves from Washington County, Rhode Island, to Washington County, New York, these families lived and died within miles of each other. [2]

The list cleared up a few mysteries.

John Tanner's first wife, Tabitha Bently Tanner, is buried in the Koert L. Foster Farm Cemetery, one mile north of Greenwich. [3] She is buried next to her father Elisha Bently, her sister Mercy Bently, and her mother Sarah Bently Rose. [4] This means that the Elisha Tanner who migrated west with John Tanner and his family was not Tabitha's father as Pioneers and Prominent Men claims. Instead the Elisha mentioned in the book may be a brother or other relative.

Here is the list showing Joshua Tanner, transcribed Turner, five grandchildren, and son-in-law John Wellwood. The death dates of the grandchildren are between 1816 and 1826, which indicates that Tanner relatives were living on the farm until at least that date.

No surprise:
Based on the Greenwich grave records, the information in this Tanner genealogy is largely incorrect.
From Maurice Tanner, Descendants of John Tanner, The Tanner Family Association, 1923.

Many of the family trees show the John and Esther Tanner Wellwood family living in Mexico, Oswego, New York, but they were clearly located in Greenwich, and Esther continued to live in the area until at least 1855. By 1860 she had joined one of her sons in Mexico, but it is incorrect to list her children as being born in Mexico. Additionally, many families list a son John in this family with the same death date as Esther's husband John. Due to the possible confusion created by this list, the existence of a son John needs to be proved separately.

— o o O o o —

The list of burials at the William Hartshorn Farm Cemetery includes an inscription on a stone that says simply "T.T." Thankful Tefft Tanner died in 1822, so there is a good chance that she died and was buried next to her husband on the farm where she had lived for decades.

Why would she have been buried in Greenwich when she was shown living in Greenfield, Saratoga, New York in the 1820 census? A quick look at Google suggests an answer: Greenfield was adjacent to Saratoga Springs, which was where people, including invalids, went to "take the waters," or use the mineral waters for their supposed health benefits. It makes more sense that she would have relocated temporarily for health reasons than that she would have randomly moved 23 miles west to a town with no known relatives.

Why didn't Thankful have a normal gravestone? There are at least four possible reasons.

First, she may have had one and it may have been broken or disappeared during the intervening century.

Second, she was a widow. It is likely that she would only have had a stake in any real property (farm land and dwellings) until her death, and living as a widow for so many years could have reduced her circumstances.

Third, her death occurred during the aftermath of the Great Panic of 1819. Times would have been hard and cash would have been scarce for farmers. 

Fourth, her oldest son John Tanner had moved to Bolton Landing and had a large family and many financial demands. Her daughter Esther Tanner Wellwood who, as the deaths of her children attests, lived there on the farm, was recently widowed. Thankful's youngest son William may have taken over the farm after John Wellwood died, and he was just starting out in life, so there may have been no family members able to purchase an expensive headstone.

— o o O o o —

These records leave a few questions. 

First, is there anything I missed? Do you read any of the records differently?

Second, where are these graves? I cannot find any of these farm cemeteries in FindAGrave or Billion graves except for the Alpheus Barber Cemetery. (That is the burial location for another of John Tanner's sisters and her gravestone is still there.) I have put out some requests for information, but have not heard back from anyone yet.

— o o O o o —

Thanks to Oscar Tefft we have a better picture of the Greenwich Era in the Tanner family history. In appreciation I left a "flower" and brief note on his FindAGrave entry.

Notes

[1] Although the following article is primarily about Dutch settlers in the region, it explains the different type of markers found in cemeteries from this era. (Brandon Richards, "Fieldstone Burial Markers in the Upper Mid-Atlantic Colonies," January 23, 2010, link.)

[2] The great family migration that John Tanner participated in while he was a boy certainly prepared him with the practical knowledge and experience he would need much later in life when his family moved in other great migrations: first to Kirtland, then to Missouri, Illinois, and Utah. The practical training he gave his sons benefitted many others in the Church as they helped lead wagon trains and freight back and forth between western settlements.

[3] The name is alternately listed Bently and Bentley. The government records from the time use "Bently" so I mostly use that, but it isn't too important; either spelling works.

[4] The others in the Koert Foster cemetery may also be Bently relatives.

Picture of rural Westchester County, New York cemetery from Flickr.

Who Were the Tanner Family Ancestors on the Mayflower?

"Signing the Mayflower Compact, 1620," Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1899). From Wikipedia.

One child of Joshua Tanner (b. 27 July 1757, d. 12 September 1807) and his wife, Thankful Tefft (b. 21 March 1757, d. 18 November 1822) was John Tanner (b. 15 August 1778, d. 13 April 1850). It is through Thankful Tefft that the descendants of John Tanner are able to trace their ancestry to three of passengers on the Mayflower who landed in America in 1620.

The three Mayflower passengers were Francis Cooke (b. aft. 1582, d. 7 April 1663), his son, John Cooke (b. abt. 1606, d. 23 November 1695) and Richard Warren (b. abt. 1579, d. 1628). Despite over a hundred years of very thorough research, many of the details of their lives have been lost. This extensive research has been unable to uncover exact birth dates for either Francis Cooke[1] or Richard Warren[2] nor has the research been able to establish any of their parents or ancestors.

John Tanner Biography: Birth Record

Thanks to my dad, who tells the story of finding the record at Genealogy's Star, this is a photo of John Tanner's original birth record.

This // of the birth of Joshua Tanner & his wife Thankful.

children — Mary Tanner was born March 10th Day Ad 1776

John Tanner was born August 15th Day Ad — 1778 —

Entered Dec. 1 Ad 1779 By — Abel Tanner Town Clerk

Thankful Tanner was born December 20th AD — 1880.

Susannah Tanner was born May 2nd AD — 1783.

Elizabeth Tanner was born December 25th AD — 1785.

Esther Tanner was born May 10th — AD — 1788

Pardon Tanner was born March 23 — AD — 1791.

Entered on Record May 13th.

AD 1791 — —

By Caleb Potter T. Clerk

John Tanner was born on August 15, 1778 in Hopkinton, Washington County, Rhode Island. Also listed in the record: parents Joshua and Thankful (Tefft) Tanner, and siblings Mary, Thankful, Susannah, Elizabeth, Esther, and Pardon. Brothers Francis, Joshua and William are not listed. John was the second of ten children, five boys and five girls.

John Tanner's birth is also listed in the database Rhode Island Births, 1636-1930, as found on Ancestry.com.


Photograph used by permission.