Seventh Day Baptist Clarke/Clark Family

 In 2018 I discovered that the father of Dr Adam Clark (1790-1860) was Rev Adam Clark (1764-1837), a Seventh Day Baptist minister in Albany County, New York who was born in Rhode Island.  He was the Great Great Grandson of Rev Joseph Clarke (1618-1694), born in Suffolk, England who arrived in Massachusetts in 1637 and settled in Rhode Island with his wife Margaret Turner who was born there.

This small religious group lived close to each other and moved from Newport to Hopkinton and Westerly, often intermarrying.  By the late 1700s some of them moved further west to New York and eventually some of them settled in Wisconsin.  Some other SDB family names:  Babcock, Burdick, Hiscox, Hubbard, Maxson, Pendleton.

Our line:

Rev Joseph Clarke b Eng  1618-1694        Margaret Turner  b RI  1621-1694

                                                       their son

Rev Joseph Clarke Jr b RI  1642-1726       Bethia Hubbard  b Mass  1646- 1707

                                                        their son

Rev Thomas Clarke b RI    1686-1767        Elisabeth Babcock b RI   1691-1728

                                                        their son

Joseph Clarke  b  RI  1728-1795                  Deborah Pendleton b RI  1737-1793

                                                        their son

Rev Adam Clark b RI 1764-1837                Olive Burdick  b RI  1770-1838

                                                        their son

Dr Adam Clark  b NY  1790-1860               Harriet Watson b  NY  1800-1865

                                                        their son

George Watson Clark b NY 1821-1877         Julia Comfort  b NY 1826-1910

                                                        their daughter

William Hill b NY  1847-1910                      Eliza Clark b  NY  1849-1924

                                                        their daughters

Elsworth McDole b  NY  1866-19109            Julia Hill b  NY  1877-1947

Junius Craddock b VA  1889-1976                 Gertrude Hill b NY  1887-1967

Mary D Comfort, wife of James W Johnson

Mary and James married in 1856 in Catskill, NY and had a daughter named Minnie in New York City in 1860. None of them were found in the 1860 or the 1870 census. I had stumbled upon a NYC marriage record for Minnie in October 1880 and then, checking the 1880 census, found her with her father (born in Ohio), an assumed sister Fannie (also born in Ohio), a stepmother (born in Mass) and 2 young NY born half siblings.

Focusing in on Fannie Johnston, I could find no record of the family in Ohio nor of her birth there about 1864.  With the 20 year time gap between the 1880 and the 1900 census, I hoped that Fannie had married and that I’d find some additional information about her birthplace. Unexpectedly I discovered an 1890 marriage announcement for Fannie HERENDEEN, daughter of James W Johnston, uniting with Rev Henry Freeman of Troy, NY. That led me to realize that Mary Comfort and James Johnston were not her parents as first assumed.

Follow-Up on Mary D Comfort

Mary married James W Johnstone in Greene County, NY in 1856 and was never thereafter found in an official record – not a census, a death, a burial. Their marriage record listed James’ residence as Dubuque, Iowa but I could find no record of him there. Nothing was known of his birth date or place, his parents or his occupation. The only tidbit I had on this couple after 1856 was the appearance of a young Johnston granddaughter listed in the 1865 Catskill, NY census with Mary’s parents, Joel and Emeline.  The record was almost impossible to read & only the child’s surname had been transcribed making it hard to identify and track her later; she was 6 years old and NOT with her grandparents in 1870.

I searched the 1870 census in multiple states and locales, unable to find any members of the Johnston family.  I then turned to family search where I entered a query using only the surname, a birth date 1859-1860 with location New York, plus the full names of parents James and Mary. To my surprise, a NYC marriage record popped up for Minnie Johnston with a matching father and mother (listed as Comfork). It stated that Minnie had been born in NYC, in 1860 and, better yet, her marriage was in October 1880 AFTER the census !!

What happened to Mary D Comfort, daughter of Joel ?

Mary, the oldest child of Joel Dubois Comfort and his wife Emeline Ludington, was born 1829 in Catskill, NY. According to church records she married James W Johnston 'of Dubuque, Iowa' in September 1856 at the Leeds RDC.  I have found no subsequent record for either of them. I had expected that James would be in the Greene County 1855 census, but he was not found. Nor have I located him in 1850 in Iowa or elsewhere.

Interestingly, Mary's parents are listed in the Catskill 1865 census with their youngest daughter Josephine and with a 6 year old granddaughter with the surname Johnston. Sadly, this record is almost impossibly hard to read. I cannot decipher the girl's first name nor did I find her with her grandparents in the 1870 census.

Who is she and where are her parents?  I cannot find James and Mary in 1860, when their daughter would have been an infant. I have found no 11 year old female Johnston in Greene County in 1870.
This family group remains a mystery.

Ludington – Comfort marriages in Catskill, NY

Brothers Archibald and Tertullus Ludington were born to Col Henry Ludington and his wife Abigail in Dutchess County.  Both migrated to Catskill in Greene County where they raised their families.  Each had a daughter who married into the Comfort family.  Emeline was born to Archibald and his wife Elizabeth Sears in 1805.  Julia was born in 1807 to Tertullus and his wife Rebecca Brown.

Brothers Hiram and Joel Comfort were born in Montgomery, Orange County, NY to Samuel Comfort and Ana Maria Youngblood in 1791 and 1800 respectively. They both migrated to Catskill in Greene County in early adulthood.  Within a three month time period in 1822 the brothers married the Comfort Cousins – Joel and Emeline in May followed by Hiram and Julia in August. The girls were both quite young (17 and 15) which may have been the custom at the time and/or may have been a necessity in light of their fathers’ deaths a year or so earlier.

Between the 2 couples, they increased the Comfort clan by 11. Five daughters were born to Hiram and Julia and 3 sons and 3 daughters to Joel and Emeline.  The migration continued with only a few of that next generation remaining in Catskill.

Gravestones Dates – should you trust them?

I am generally quite excited when I find birth / death dates while visiting a cemetery or see photo posted on Findagrave. My first thought would be “these dates are correct”, however, I have come to realize that’s not necessarily so.

I found findagrave entries with photographs for 2 of the children of John K Comfort and his wife R.A. Stephens in Mississippi. This son and daughter were listed with their parents in numerous census records where their ages and even their recorded names varied some over the decades.

Trofmoc, the son (in case you couldn’t tell) has a birth date of April 21, 1863 on his gravestone. His sister Exermenia’s gravestone shows her birth date as Sept 27 of the same year. I DON”T THINK SO !   How does that happen?

Obviously there can be problems with keeping track of a person’s birth date especially if they live a long life and a younger family member becomes the one to provide the dates to be inscribed on the stone.  If a birth or christening record can be found, that’s likely quite accurate. I did not find either in this case.

Going back through the various census records, the brother is always recorded as older, even if not by much. The fact that he died at age 30 when his mother was still alive and living in the same locale, I tend to trust that he WAS born in 1863.  By the time his sister died 50 years later, it is understandable that there might have been confusion over her exact birth year.

So, the bottom line is that I still don’t know, but strongly question Exermenia’s birth year and will just remain much more vigilant in seeking documented confirmation of birth and death years rather than considering a gravestone to be accurate.

What Killed Them? Yellow Fever 1854

In 1854 Dr John W Comfort, age 32, died of Yellow Fever in New Orleans leaving his wife with 3 young children. Further investigation identified a horrific epidemic in numerous southern port cities in the mid 1850s with New Orleans losing 10% of its population to this infection in 1853 with thousands more succumbing in 1854-5. The cause was not known and no cure existed.  It made me wonder why Yellow Fever had been such a scourge and why we don’t hear much about it today.

Accounts from individuals present in New Orleans depict a very grim picture of a disease-ridden city filled with the stench of dying and dead bodies in the heat of the summer. The city’s business leaders tried to keep the news quiet as they feared the entire city would be quarantined in an effort to prevent the spread of the disease upriver. Mobile, Charleston, even Philadelphia and Baltimore were infected – port cities !

It is believed that the disease originated in Africa and was introduced to Europe and the Americas by the slave trade. The first definitive report was from Barbados in 1647 and soon thereafter from the Yucatan Peninsula where the disease was called “ blood vomit”.  Patients have fever, convulsive black vomit and develop jaundice as the liver fails (hence, Yellow Fever). Decades passed before the cause was identified and a vaccine developed. 

In 1881, a Cuban physician, Carlos Finlay, proposed that Yellow Fever might be transmitted via mosquitoes, but received a cool reception from the medical community at the time.  A team led by the now famous Walter Reed, (prompted by heavy losses from the disease in the Spanish-American war) finally confirmed Finlay’s hypothesis in 1901 subsequently leading to the eradication of yellow fever first in Havana and then later during the construction of the Panama Canal.

Yellow fever is a viral disease that is endemic (present at a fairly constant rate) in Africa and South America and transmitted to humans by the bite of female mosquitoes of the Aedes species in Africa and Haemagogus species in South America. The bite of an infected female mosquito introduces virus particles under the skin where replication occurs before spreading via the lymphatic system and bloodstream to the major organs.  Symptoms of Yellow Fever start after an incubation period of 3 to 6 days and most non-vaccinated people in endemic areas will suffer a mild infection with fever, chills, backache, headache, nausea and vomiting lasting 3 to 4 days; no jaundice is seen. This acute phase is followed by a period of remission of about two days where symptoms abate and recovery is seen.  However, in about 15% of individuals in whom recovery seems apparent, a second ‘toxic’ phase occurs with recurring fever, nausea, liver injury and jaundice, kidney injury and characteristic black vomit due to stomach bleeding.  Death, due to multi-organ failure, generally follows in 7 to 10 days killing 20-30% of native Africans who enter this toxic phase, and 50-60% of native South Americans.  Surviving the infection confers life-long immunity and typically no permanent organ damage occurs.

The Yellow Fever virus was first isolated in 1927 from a diseased patient in Ghana.  This led to the development of a vaccine in 1936 by Max Theiler, a South African microbiologist working at the Rockefeller Institute in NYC, who received the Nobel Prize in 1951 for this achievement.  Immunity against all forms of the virus occurs in nearly 100% of vaccinated individuals, lasting for at least 10 years.  Since World War II, mainly because of effective vaccination programs, yellow fever is only rarely seen in travelers returning to Europe and North America.  Yellow fever has never appeared in Asia.  Today, there still is no cure or specific antiviral therapy.

Many thanks to microbiology expert, Dr CJ, for scientific content

Children of Samuel Comfort and Anna Maria Youngblood

Married in 1784 in Montgomery, Orange County, NY, they had 9 known children as follows:

All of their children except son James (who moved to Kentucky) remained in New York State throughout their lives. Elsje, Hiram and Joel lived in Catskill. Moses moved to NYC, the others stayed in Montgomery.

1786-1862 Elsje + Egbert Bogardus, 7 children, Catskill

1786-1839 Moses + Anna Pache, 10 children

1788-1846 Samuel + Fanny Low, 10 children

1791-1839 Hiram + Julia Ludington, 5 children

1792-1881 Mary + Isaac Douglass/Philip Mould, 3 children

1795-1844 James + Jane Smith, 8 children

1797-1874 Martha + Moses Rogers, 4 children

1800–1871Joel D. + Emeline Ludington, 5 children

1802–1892 Catherine + Peter Clearwater, 1 child

Children of Benjamin Comfort and Elizabeth Youngblood

They married in 1780 in Montgomery, Orange County, NY and had 9 known children as shown below. Elizabeth died in 1805 when their youngest son was only 3.  Benjamin outlived her by only 9 years.

Three of their sons moved to Mississippi: Daniel, William and Joseph. Catherine remained in Orange County. Benjamin, Samuel and Absalom lived in Catskill, Greene County. David and Jacob have not been found as adults; unsure if they survived and if so, did they leave NY state?

 

1784-1855  Daniel +Martha Cruser, 9 children

1786–1867  Benjamin + Eliza Kierstad, 10 children

1788-1832  Catherine + John D Fulton, 7 children

1790 - ??    David   

 

1792–1836  William + Eleanor Whitsett, 6 children

1794 - ??    Jacob  

1797–1870 Samuel G. + Mary S Chollet, 6 children

1799–1858 Abasalom + Sarah Oliver, 8 children

1802–1870 Joseph W + Nancy Williams, 7 children

Family Snippets: Comfort - Youngblood 1780s New York

In Montgomery, Orange County, NY brothers Benjamin and Samuel Comfort married sisters Elizabeth and Anna Maria Youngblood.  The four remained in Montgomery where they raised their families, died and were buried in the local church cemetery.

The grooms were sons of New York natives John Comfort (1725-1795) and his wife Annatje Maul (1726-1805). Their brides were daughters of Revolutionary Soldier Johannes Wilhelm Youngblood and his wife Caterina Buchstaber (1744-1807) who were also born in New York. All four had parents born in Germany.

Benjamin (1757-1814) and Elizabeth (1763-1805) married in 1780 and had 9 known children (8 sons and 1 daughter) and at least 53 grandchildren. Two of their sons (David b 1790 and Jacob b 1794) have not been found as adults. Only their daughter remained within the same county after marrying. Three sons moved to Catskill in Greene County and 3 sons moved south to Mississippi.  Benjamin outlived his wife by 9 years. 

Samuel (1760-1802) and Anna Maria (1762-1847) married in 1784 and also had 9 known children and 53 grandchildren!  All but one of them stayed in New York State – 1 in NYC, 3 in Catskill and the others in Montgomery. Their son James ventured south to Kentucky. Anna Maria outlived her husband by 45 years.

California Death Record + Maiden Name

 

In tracing the Comfort family members who moved from Catskill, NY to California, I found Hiram and his wife Catherine with a young daughter listed in the 1880 census of Yolo.  I was quite sure Hiram was the son of Absalom Comfort, born in 1842 and last found in the Civil War registration records of 1863. I have still not found him in the 1870 census, though his daughter Alice was born in NY in 1873.

I checked the 1900 census but could not find him nor his wife. I did find a likely match on Alice, now 27, as a boarder in the household of New York born Samuel Wentworth. Also included in the household’s group of 9 was Jennie B. Comfort, 60, listed as “mother-in-law”. So, they were obviously related. Yes, Jennie was the widow of Joseph, brother of Hiram.

In checking additional records for Alice, I discovered her 1950 California death record (she had never married which made the match easier). It listed her birth in New York on 12 May 1873, her middle name as Maude, and her mother’s maiden name of FRY.  Realizing that these death records are a prime source of maiden names, I looked for Samuel Wentworth’s wife, born Katherine Comfort (the daughter of Jennie), born in 1870.  She died in 1842 and her mother’s maiden was ALSO FRY-- BINGO !!

So, looks like brothers Joseph and Hiram Comfort married sisters Jennie and Catherine Fry.  Now, to dig deeper for their marriage records (not found in the usual sources) and records of young Jennie and Catherine with their parents.

Great Catskill Village Cemetery Resource

The genealogy community in Catskill, NY has done a terrific job of documenting gravestones in the Village Cemetery.  By listing them based on location, family groups can be found and understood – often providing a hard-to-find maiden name, a daughter’s married name (even if the husband is not buried there) and confirmation of children lost at a young age.

Here is an example (without the dates):

Julia Bennett, widow of Hiram Bogardus

Hiram Bogardus

Sarah R. Clark, w/o Howard Wilcox

Egbert Jedson, s/o Howard and Sarah Wilcox

Abraham, s/o Egbert and Elsie Bogardus

Julia Clark Linthicum

Martha Ann, widow of Z.M. Clark, and d/o the late Egbert and Elsie Bogardus <my favorite with so much info>

Eliza C. Bogardus
Emeline Bogardus

Elsie Comfort, w/o Egbert Bogardus

Egbert Bogardus

There are several generations listed here plus maiden and married names that were not previously known. It was immensely helpful in piecing together this family group.

1951 Report of House Fire Reveals An Unknown Sister b 1822: Harriet Hill Hull

While searching online newspapers for information regarding the 1899 death of young Hiland Hill in Catskill, NY, the report of a house fire in 1951 surfaced.  It referenced a home at Hill and Bronson Streets in Catskill that had been built in 1848 by Hiland Hill (1786-1850), the great grandfather of my research subject.

It mentioned that the builder had been the father of  “late bankmen Frederick and Henry and Mrs. A. Cooke Hull”.  Really ? I had records for 2 other daughters of Hiland and his wife Mary Butler, Mary and Emily, both of whom had died unmarried. I knew nothing of Harriet.

Lucikly A. Cooke Hull is not a common name and I easily found him, a physician, trained in NYC and practicing in Brooklyn. He and Harriet married about 1845, too early for her to have ever been listed with her parents in a census. Aaron Cooke Hull was a leader in the field of homeopathic medicine as were his brother and brother-in-law which adds a bit of interest to the story of the Hill bankers.

You never know when a “remember when” or other historic notations in a newspaper will reveal new family members and stories.

Who was Alice Hill's Mother ?

While working on the Comfort Family of Catskill, NY I was tracing Hiram and Julia’s daughter Hellen, born in 1828.  She appeared as married in the 1860 census with husband Henry Hill and a daughter, Alice, aged 9. I had confirmation that Henry and Hellen had married in 1859 which made it seem obvious that Alice was not Hellen's daughter.  But who was Alice's mother?  Both Henry and Hellen had appeared in the 1850 census as single living with their parents. Had Henry married soon after and had his 1st wife died before 1859? 

I could find no evidence.

Although it is not available online, I was able to purchase a copy of the 1855 State Census for Greene County NY. There I found Hellen living with her mother, listed as single, and assumed I would find Henry as head of household with Alice and her mother. I did not. So I looked for his parents. His mother, now widowed, was listed as head with Henry and two of his sisters ... no Alice, no wife.