Sherwood Lake, 25 Dec 2008 BEGIN What happened to Great Uncle Earl ?? Great Uncle Earl Joseph Lake was a man that I never met, nor did my father. Earl was born in Natural Bridge, New York in 1884. He was the eldest son of Harvey Jessie Lake and Jennie Sanders and he had 4 siblings: Merle, Bessie, Ernest and Robert. In the early 1900's Earl disappeared from New York State never to return. He communicated very infrequently with his relatives back home, the only person that he exchanged letters with appears to be his mother, prior to her death in 1918 and his sister Merle. The last time anyone can recall hearing from Earl was in the 1950's when he wrote his sister to obtain information from the family bible. He made mention at that time that he was being assisted in writing the letter by his grand-daughter as arthritis was causing him a great degree of difficulty. Earl's sister Merle died in 1972 and the last family connection was broken at that time. When my father and I began researching our family history it was evident that there was almost no information to go on to find Earl Lake. What my Dad did know of him was that he went to Canada around 1915, in the "Three Rivers area," and married an Indian woman and began his family. As of 1982 Earl's only living sibling was his youngest brother Robert who was interviewed about family history but he had no information about his brother other than what has already been expounded upon. So to recap the information available to begin research: Earl Joseph Lake born 24 September 1884 Natural Bridge Jefferson Co., New York May have gone to the Three Rivers Area of Ontario Canada Married an Indian Woman That was about it. I worked on this off an on for a number of years with searches in different databases, articles and books and nothing came of it; however, I only searched this as side line when I came up dry on other efforts. About a year ago I set out make a direct effort in regards to finding Earl and his family; using the information I had and evaluating family history I drew up a research plan. A brief history of our family is in order to understand the research plan path. The patriarch of the family in this country, John Lake, came from England in the 1600's and settled in what is now New York City. His great great grandson Thomas Lake was a loyalist, who lived White Creek New York and at the start of the American Revolution was a loyalist who was forced to flee to Canada after the War. To this day there are Lake family members, in my line, living in these Ontario Canada counties. Earl's great grandfather Jesse Lake was first of the family to return from Canada permanently and began farming St. Lawrence Co., New York in the early 1800's. Earl should have been at least exposed to this information and may have known of family still in Canada at the time; there was at least a possibility that this was why he went to Canada in the first place. I started with a map, applied the known information and came up with nothing. When Ancestry.ca came on line I searched that data base for information, nothing! I then chanced a posting on the message boards for most of the counties in the Canadian / New York border areas. The message was sent out to about 12 message boards seeking information and amazingly enough within about an hour I had my answer as to what happened to Earl. I received information from no less than 20 people that they found Earl's marriage record. This gave me the area to search, his wife and her parents name, his occupation and the year they married. For the next week I received further responses with the same information. This information was the revelation necessary to open the doors for future discoveries; I found that Earl became a trapper in the White River Algoma Co., Ontario Canada community. He married an Indian woman who is identified in the document as Suzanne Potowissian, daughter of Louis and Jean (Legarde) Potowissian. The next bit of information was discovered in the 1901 Census for White River Algoma Co., Ontario, Canada which identified the Potowissian family by the last name of Poto. The Census noted that Suzanne had a brother Albert who died in 1906, he was a trapper that contracted Pneumonia and after battling it for 6 months died. This family, as with a lot of genealogical research, yields its secrets sparingly, you get a tidbit and information which leads you in a direction, then it all dries up again. About a year later I discovered in the Drouin Records several references to Earl and his family, I located birth, baptism, death and burial records which have expanded my information base greatly. Earl and Suzanne had the following children; Marc Mathias Lake 1915 – 1961 Agnes Lake 1917 - Joseph Leonard Herby Lake 1919 - Marguerite Lake 1920 – 1923 Beatrice Lake Marie Clara Lake 1924 - Helene Suzanne Lake 1926 - Almire Joseph Lake 1928 - Walter Joseph 1931 - Earl died in 1966 of a heart attack at the age of 81 years, his wife Suzanne died in 1964, their son Marc in 1961 and a daughter Marguerite or Margret in 1932; the rest of the family information has not been sufficently developed at present. There is still a great deal to do in this line but considering that 2 years ago no one knew what happened to Uncle Earl, we have come a long way! Family is posted on Gene.com and Lake Family Research Project website The investigation continues............ END Sherwood Lake, 30 May 2009 BEGIN Connection Made Earl and Suzanne Lake's family found I have written in this blog several times about Great Uncle Earl Lake and his family. That he left home in upstate New York in the 1900's never to be seen by his family again. Well after about 2 years of search and VERY little information to go on I was able to make connections with relatives in his direct line. This photograph came from the Public Library in White River, Ontario Canada. More to follow........... END Sherwood Lake, 19 Jul 2008 BEGIN A small bit of Family History by Jennie Sanders Lake Jan 1 to Oct 2, 1918 This small appointment book consisting of some 24 pages, gives us snippets of the last 10 month of the life of my Great Grandmother Jennie Sanders Lake. She was one of the millions who died as a result of the 1918 world wide flu epidemic, or what we would call a "pandemic". That year nearly every members of her household became ill at one point or another, Jennie was the only one to have died from the illness. Her small diary notes daily life around their small upstate New York farm; the weather, important events, people who visited, the names of several people from the community who had passed away, their funerals and bit of information important to her. It is a small slice of the history of a community during an extremly dfficult time, in reading it you can see how, life kind of came and went moving along for these people even with everything that was happening around them, and to them. One of the stories that was noted in this small history then expanded on by later verbal family accounts was Jennie's son in law Ira Edwin Clement came in from working the fields very sick with the flu one afternoon infact he was so ill that he had to be carried in the house. When he came down with the illness his hair was a light brown color when he finally left his sick bed his hair had turned white, and remained that way the rest of his life, such was the dramatic effect this virus had on people. Jennie started this little book using an out dated 1916 appointment book, very frugal people "never waste anything you can use later" and as you can see by the example she made little notes everyday. On the first page Jennie identified the date she was started the diary, being January 1, 1918 on October 1st she noted, "Nice Day, Ernest come home sick, Walter Perriggo died" the next day was her final entry, 6 days later she died of the flu at the age of 54. Jennie Sanders was the daughter of Jared A. and Sarah Sanders, she was born in Lewisburg, Lewis Co., New York on 22 Apr 1864. She married Harvey Jessie Lake 14 Dec 1883 in Diana, Lewis Co, New York. Jennie's father was born in 1815, in Champion NY he live to extreme old age for the time passing in 1914. Her grandparents are Joesph Sanders and Lucinda Fairman both born in the early 1780's in what is now southern Windham Co., Vermont or Northern Massachuetts, then migrated to Jefferson or Lewis Counties of New York State. This family line is somewhat a mystery as the lack of records as hampered the research todate. There are possible links to Sanders families in the Halifax, VT, from the 1780 period that are currently being explored. Note: Jennie Sanders was the wife of Harvey Jessie Lake Ernest Leon was their son and my grandfather Ira Edwin Clement was the husband of Merle Florence Lake; daughter of Jennie Sanders and Harvey Jessie Lake END Sherwood Lake, 10 Sep 2012 BEGIN In Search of Maclyn Brown A year or so ago my father and I were discussing family history when the topic of his half-brother came up. He told me that this child was his mother's son from a previous relationship, his brothers had both met this person, and the only information he had was based on conversations with his older brother Harve and an uncle, one of his mothers brothers. My father was told that the child's name was Macklin Brown and that he was raised by his paternal grandparents; and that several times prior to their mothers death, Macklin was brought to their home in Natural Bridge for visits. So the only information to go on was the child's name and that they lived close enough to Natural Bridge, New York, to visit, in the 20's and 30's . This seems like a pattern in our family, the mysteries of Uncle Earl Lake and the Calder Family; little to no information and scant resources available to pursue. Just once it would be nice to have good solid leads for some of these people. But I guess that is what makes genealogy so interesting, the detective work! I started this line of research by tracking the movements of my grandmother as best as possible, given how long ago this was and the fact there is no one left from her immediate family but my father and precious few records. A bit about my grandmother: Leona G. Finley was born in July 1899 in Macomb, St. Lawrence Co., New York, she lived in Fine NY a great deal of her younger life. She died in Natural Bridge, Jefferson Co., New York in 1938 of cancer. She married my grandfather Ernest Leon Lake on Dec 14, 1923; so this date becomes my search terminus. A newspaper clip in Dec 1919, from the "Ogdensburg Republican Journal" identifies that she is living in Carthage, Jefferson Co., New York. The clip, a gossip column of the day, says she was visiting a cousin, Mrs Lloyd Ward, in Oswegatchie, St Lawrence Co., New York. The census taken on January 9, 1920, Wilna, Jefferson Co., New York line 71 identifies that Leona G. Finley is a resident in the household of George and Lottie Tharrett, where she is working as a "servant". With no other leads to follow at the time, I took the most obvious next step, looking for Macklin Brown born between 1915 and 1923 in the Social Security Death Index. Too easy and no such luck! Using a map locating Natural Bridge New York as my center point, I made a circle with a 50 mile radius, and began to search newspapers, census reports, cemetery records, anything I could find in that circle relative to the name Brown. There are a lot of Browns in that circle, but no "Macklin Brown" materialized. The newspaper, cemeteries, death records and census material for 1920 & 30 produced no new leads, so the only thing left was to wait for the 1940 census to be released and see if Macklin possibly (being an adult) would appear anywhere. Now saying there were no leads is slightly misleading, I am sure that digging more and possibly visiting untold number of Village, Town, and County Clerks, etc, might have produced something, but with no information to go on, that kind of search may never produce a result. As it turned out there was a bit of a clue but it was one of those hind-sight things that only show themselves after you find another piece of the puzzle; we'll talk about that later. In April the census was released, but other issues cropped up that delayed my research; last week I finally got to resume the search. One of the first searches I did in the new database was Macklin Brown with a date of birth range between 1915 and 1925 and the very first hit was "Charles Macklin Brown 18 YOA living in Edwards, St. Lawrence Co., New York. I pulled the microfilmed digitized image and there he was, only if you looked closely at the image you could see where the census taker wrote his name, Brown, Macklin and then inserted a carrot adding Charles between last and first name. The census identifies him living with his mother, Nellie Brown 56 YOA; she is listed as a widow. Checking the census of 1930, he is living with his father Bower Brown, mother Nellie Brown, and is identified as Charles M. Brown. Now one would think that being identified with parents in the census that would be it! Wrong guy, right - well not so fast! With the information found in the 1940 census, it allows a more in-depth look into the Brown Family. There were a lot of newspaper articles involving them in the Edwards NY area, the most important one for the purposes of this blogpost is Bower Brown's Obituary. The attached image is the complete Obituary as published in the Dec 16, 1930 Canton Commercial Advertiser: Third Paragraph is as follows; "He is survived by his window Nellie Wetherbie Brown; and adopted son Macklin; a sister Mrs. Mabel Clark of Canton. There is a lot more information involving the Brown's that I will save for a later post, I will close this out for now with some interesting factoids. First: The 50 mile radius, I used to determine search boundaries was based on what might be reasonable travel to visit Natural Bridge NY in the 1920's & 30's. Edwards is 32 miles away. Second: The little hind-sight clue, Feb 28, 1923 Gouverneur Free Press published under the "Edwards" town news: "Miss Leona Finley of Ogdensburg is a guest of friends in town" Granted this could be coincidental; however, none of her family is living in Edwards, NY at this time, and "friends" could certainly mean anyone. It is just a bit suggestive that Leona Finley having a child being raised by others, who's name is Macklin Brown happens to be visiting in the town where a child with the same name, about a year old, is being raised by his "adoptive" parents, and their name is Brown. Hmmm, kind of interesting coincidence, don't you think? Oh yes! Ogdensburg, NY, where she was living at the time, was 45 miles away from Edwards, and that doesn't seem very far by today's standards, but on 35MPH roads in a bus or maybe a car, in 1923 that was some trip. This all needs more follow up and is by no means conclusive; however it's highly suggestive at this point and I will continue to follow the leads until there are no more avenues of research. END