Looking for Richard and Esther Bagley

Little is known about the parents of Edward Cyrenus Bagley. We believe their names were Richard and Esther. There are records that indicate Edward was born in either 1800 or 1810, possibly in Hartford Connecticut, or in one of the Hartford's in what is now the Atlantic Provinces of Canada. Richard may have had a brother Samuel who may have had a son named John. The first actual written record of Edward I have is his marriage in 1833 which lists neither parent. The first record of his parents I have is from his patriarchal blessing in Utah, more than twenty years later.

Here are some interesting leads:

• The name Cyrenus is unusual.  It is a New Testament name from the Christmas story.₁ So anyone with the name could just have Bible reading parents. However, there is a Cyrenus Bagley living in Ontario,₂ who was born in New York. It is possible he could be a cousin. His son, also Cyrenus, moved the United States and settled in Iowa.₃ As far as I know this family has no living descendants, his second wife was childless. Cyrenus may have had a son by his first wife, who may have had children.₄ The last I record I've found for them is in Michigan. Most of the living family of the first Cyrenus are descended from his daughters and could still be living in Canada.
• DNA tests indicate the family is related to the family of Samuel Bagley an early settler in Massachusetts.₅ He had three sons - one stayed in Massachusetts, one settled in Providence, Rhode Island,₆ one settled in Fairfield, Connecticut.₇ The son who settled in Fairfield had three sons - all married. One of the son's moved to Long Island is probably the ancestor of Joshiah Bagley,  a New York patriot during the Revolution.₈ Fairfield had an Anglican/Loyalist contingent during the revolution. Fairfield was burned during a British raid.₉ It is possible that Richard could be from one of the Fairfield families, if any remained in Fairfield. If he is from Fairfield, he could have ties to the Loyalists which might have influenced a decision to migrate to New Brunswick. It is also possible one of the other son's descendants could have moved to Connecticut.
• There is a Richard Bagley in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania in the 1790 Census.₁₀ He is the head of a household consisting of one boy and a woman. He living next to Ezra Bagley. Luzerne county was claimed by both Pennsylvania and Connecticut prior to and during the Revolution.₁₁  In 1798 when a direct tax is raised, Richard is living on land owned by Elias Bagley.₁₂ There are other Bagleys in Providence at that time: James Bagley and Elias.  James is important - he is a veteran of the continental Army who served in Valley Forge.₁₃ His unit was raised from Connecticut.  If Richard, Ezra, and Elias are related to James, they would likely be from New England. By 1800, there is no Richard in the federal census.
• There is a mention of a loyalist named Richard Bagley. He apparently was the surgeon for General Howe.₁₄
• There is a Richard Bagley who entered New York in 1825.₁₅ He is a merchant. This may or may not be the Richard Bagley from Amesbury.

Any of these could potentially lead to a possible Richard Bagley who married or had a child with an Esther and is the father of our Edward Bagley. With this in mind the following next steps seem to be:

• Visit the library of the Fairfield Historical Society to look for Church records from the area. Hope to find Anglican and Congregational records with a possible Bagley name in the congregation, or to find grandsons or great-grandsons.
• Visit the Connecticut State Library to look at tax records - Congregational Churches were the established churches in Connecticut, if there are tax records they would let us know who was paying taxes to the Congregational churches and if they weren't which denomination the taxes were going to support.
• Visit the New Brunswick provincial archives to see if we can find a Richard Bagley in the Loyalist records. This is a long shot - there are extensive indexes on line.

Notes:

¹Luke 2:2
²Archives of Ontario. Registrations of Deaths, 1869-1938. MS 935, reels 1-615. Archives of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
³"Iowa, Marriages, 1809-1992," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XVSP-1Z1 : accessed 6 May 2015), Cyrenius C Bagley in entry for C A Bagley and Ada Russell, 25 Dec 1882; citing Winnesheik, Iowa, reference ; FHL microfilm 1,026,661.
⁴Family Trees on Ancestry list children for the marriage, but no supporting sources: http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/441864/person/6115975137
⁵Bagley YDNA project on Family Tree DNA https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/bagley/
⁹British Burn Fairfield – Today in History: July 7, ConnecticutHistory.org, http://connecticuthistory.org/british-burn-fairfield/
¹⁰ Year: 1790; Census Place: Luzerne, Pennsylvania; Series: M637; Roll: 8; Page: 144; Image: 335; Family History Library Film: 0568148
¹¹ See The Susquehanna Settlers, Luzerne County: History of Luzerne County, Fort Wyoming Historical Marker
¹² United States Direct Tax of 1798: Tax Lists for the State of Pennsylvania. M372, microfilm, 24 rolls. Records of the Internal Revenue Service, 1791-2006, Record Group 58. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. available on Ancenstry

¹³ Revolutionary War Rolls, 1775-1783; (National Archives Microfilm Publication M246, 138 rolls); War Department Collection of Revolutionary War Records, Record Group 93; National Archives, Washington. D.C.

¹⁴p. 283, The North American Review, Volume 59, 1844 https://books.google.com/books

¹⁵ Records from Record Group 287, Publications of the U.S. Government; Record Group 85, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service [INS] and Record Group 36, Records of the United States Customs Service. The National Archives at Washington, D.C. (https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/8758/40910_29396-00654?pid=8106264&backurl=https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv%3D1%26dbid%3D8758%26h%3D8106264%26tid%3D%26pid%3D%26usePUB%3Dtrue%26_phsrc%3DXTv82%26_phstart%3DsuccessSource&treeid=&personid=&hintid=&usePUB=true&_phsrc=XTv82&_phstart=successSource&usePUBJs=true)

Entrelib 2014 - Collection Development

On Friday, 17 October, I attended the 2014 Conference for Entrepreneurial Librarians at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, NC. The sessions were thought provoking.

A New Collection Development Culture: Focusing on Individual Faculty by Sharon Holderman, Coordinator of Public Services at Angelo and Jeanette Volpe Library at Tennessee Tech University stood out for me. When Ms. Holderman arrived at Tennessee Tech, the collection policy could be summarized as doing what we’ve always done base on what we did twenty years ago. This include a well entrenched but poorly documented allocation formula and a culture of last minute spending to avoid losing allocated funds. This was replaced with a book policy of “if you want it, we will buy it” (within reason). There were no more allocated budgets, but items were tracked for purposes of understanding expenditures. The policy empowered faculty to add to the collection based on actual needs. Librarians were empowered to fulfill faculty wants and desires and the library received goodwill from the faculty. The library changed processes making the entire program more transparent and removing obstacles to selecting books.

At the same time several high cost per use subscriptions were cancelled and the Library instituted unmediated Get It Now for faculty and graduate students. Faculty were empowered to purchased urgently needed articles, but often still opted to use ILL to acquire materials. Materials that had been underutilized were replaced with access to more journals from many publishers. The changes in the policies allowed Volpe Library to save money in the serials budget and shift allocations to the departments the desperately needed additional materials. I believe the changes were largely successful because librarians were able to effectively communicate the changes to the faculty in a way that created goodwill.

Hopefully, Ms. Holderman will follow up with a full paper in the Journal for Library Innovation. I look forward to thinking about patron driven approaches like this further.

Census Records

Census records are interesting documents - I find them fascinating because of what they can't describe. In 1900, my thrice great grandmother was living in Chicago. The census lists her relation to the head of household as "roomer". While not being inaccurate - the head of household was running a boarding house and she may have been paying rent - it is incomplete. You see, the head of household was previously married to her daughter, my thrice great aunt. This aunt died thirty years before. So, my thrice great grandmother could be described as either his mother-in-law or his former mother-in-law. The census worker probably called this too much information or recorded the information from talking with the neighbors. (It is not the only inaccuracy on the part of that census taker - his second wife - I found the marriage license, is listed as "wage hand". I suspect if I reported my wife as a wage hand I wouldn't be married for much longer. She was still with him when he died eight years later and inherited the property.)

Thirty years later, in the 1930 census, the same family once again stymies the census worker. The second wife owns the property. She is the head of household. All the other occupants of the house are initially listed as "roomer". The first two - both teenagers with the same last name, are crossed out and replaced with "relative". Again this is incomplete. The head of house hold is a widow. The two teenagers are her stepson's children. They are either her step grand children or her step son's children. Too much for the census.

Markov Chains Monte Carlo, Oh my!

Yesterday was the craziness we call Librarypalooza. We set up tables on the first floor explaining various library services from printing help to employment opportunities to research appointments. And then in exchange for visiting two or more of our tables we bribe the students with a cookout on the plaza in front of the Library. I was on the crowd control team guiding students and handing out passports to prove they had visited at least two tables. I didn't do much crowd control.

The research sent students to find me. Oh, your majoring in Science - we have a librarian who can help you with that. He's out in the lobby. I spent a good amount of time giving on the fly "How to use the library for Science research" and making research appointments for later in the week. And handing out my business cards.

One statistics student cornered me. He has an interesting problem. He is working on a work study project and needs to do some economic modeling. We briefly discussed various models he could use and MCMC came up. I had mentioned Monte Carlo methods, since I'm looking at them to model a demand driven acquisition (DDA) program. He couldn't remember what the other MC in MCMC stood for and commented it was an advance method. I thought nothing of it until I got in the shower this morning.

I was thinking about DDA and how my curve fit model was giving me good predictions - the experience in the last quarter seem to indicate the model overstates the number of books being purchased. I've been thinking about how to use Monte Carlo methods and it hit me - I have a Markov Chain. Using a physical analogy, think of each title as having a "state", there is a certain probability will flip to the next state. This sequence of states is the Markov Chain. It's a rather complex system - I think of it as a series of phase transitions - from available for rent to either owned or out of the catalog/no longer available.

So one of today's projects will be translating the model into a spreadsheet and see if predictions match reality. I am in over my head. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.

Day 700

Saturday was a big day for my younger son William. He had his final recital with his first violin teacher and he finished his 700th day of continuously playing violin. In spite of family vacations, summer breaks and other challenges.

Quote for the Day

I just finished How the mighty Fall by  Jim Collins.  I really like this quote on page 120:

The signature of the truly great versus the merely successful is not he absence of difficulty, but the ability to come back from setbacks, even cataclysmic catastrophes, stronger than before. Great nations can decline and recover. Great companies can fall and recover. Great social institutions can fall and recover. And great individuals can fall and recover. As long as you never get entirely knocked out of the game, there remains hope. 

So, as long as you can keep moving there is no reason to lose hope. Carry on!

Wanted: George Robert Hewlings Emigration Records

George Robert Hewlings is my great great grandmother's second husband. Lucy Granger nee Woodward, married him in 1867 three years after her first husband, Henry Hinsdale Granger, died. I believe Lucy left her first husband sometime in the late 1850's. Land records from Hardwick, Massachusetts show Henry buying land and then abruptly, both he and Lucy are selling land. I haven't found a divorce record, though family oral history indicates there was a divorce. She may have simply moved out of town to get away from Henry. By 1860, he's living in Hardwick with one of the older boys, and Lucy with the two youngest children is living near their married daughter in Clinton County, Iowa._1,2

The last 20 years of George Robert Hewlings life are well documented. George Robert Hewlings was a congregational minister from England who died in 1877 when his family was living in Salt Lake City.  I first find him in the United States in 1859 performing baptisms at the Ephrata Dutch Reform Church, in Fulton County, New York.₃ He continued to return and perform baptisms at that Church through 1876. By 1862 he was seeking ordination in the Episcopal Protestant Church in Western New York.₄ He then moved to the midwest to head a Congregational Church and meets the divorced/widowed Lucy Granger. They marry in Porter County, Indiana in 1867.₅ He is a minister in various parts of the midwest until the family moves to Salt Lake City sometime between 1870 and 1877 where Rev. Hewlings died. We know Lucy's son, Louis, is mining in Utah by 1872.₆ Reverend Hewlings in listed as the head of the Congregational Church in the 1874 Salt Lake City Directory.₇ Lucy's grandson Leslie Scott Snyder is born in Utah in 1875.₈ So, I speculate the family had set up at least partial residence by the early 1870s, with somewhat regular trips to other parts of the country. By 1880, Lucy is living with her daughter's family in Kansas.₉ The Snyder's younger son, Corydon Granger, was born in Atchison County, Kansas in 1879.₁₀

Finding George Robert Hewlings prior to 1859 is a trick.  There is a George Robert Hewlings who appears in non conformist records as the husband of Martha Freeman and the father of three children:

• George Freeman Hewlings born in 1826 in England and who may have settled in New Zealand.₁₁
• Martha Freeman Hewlings born in 1831 in England. She married Peter Barr and died in 1882.₁₂
• Henry Freeman Hewlings born in 1833 in England.₁₃

I believe this is the person who emigrated to the United States. George is living with the family in the 1851 Census₁₄, but is absent in the 1861 census₁₅. There is a G. R. or G. K. Hewlings who entered the United States at Castle garden in September 1859, prior to the baptisms at Ephrata Reformed Dutch.₁₆ There is a mention in the June 1967 Daffodil Journal that G. R. Hewlings is the father of Martha Barr and died in Salt Lake City.₁₇ What I would really like to confirm this speculation is some record of Reverend Hewlings leaving the United Kingdom. I'm hoping some descendent in the UK or New Zealand sees this and has these records.

Notes:

¹"United States Census, 1860," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MZH2-CD2 : accessed 16 Aug 2014), , Hardwick, Worcester, Massachusetts, United States; citing "1860 U.S. Federal Census - Population," Fold3.com; p. 108, household ID 880, NARA microfilm publication M653; FHL microfilm 803533.

²"United States Census, 1860," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/M825-4X1 : accessed 16 Aug 2014), , Lyons Township, Clinton, Iowa, United States; citing "1860 U.S. Federal Census - Population," Fold3.com; p. 140, household ID 1064, NARA microfilm publication M653; FHL microfilm 803316.

³"Ephratah Dutch Reformed Church, Baptisms." Ephratah Dutch Reformed Church, Baptisms. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 May. 2014.

⁴Journal of the Proceedings of the Annual Convention, Diocese of Western New York - Protestant Episcopal Church. Diocese of Western New York, Held in St. Paul's Church, Buffalo, on Wednesday, August 20, and Thursday, August 21st, A. D. 1862. p. 28, 29, 31, 151

⁵"Indiana, Marriages, 1811-1959," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/KDH3-TSC : accessed 16 Aug 2014),<unknown>, 17 Oct 1867; citing Porter County; FHL microfilm 001686156.

⁶I speculate the family moved to the Utah Territory to be close to family - Lucy's four younger sisters were Mormon - her sister Emmaline was quite prominent in the Church. It is possible they were also moving to join her son Louis, since it is not clear from the records who arrived first - Louis from Louisiana or New York, or the Hewlings/Snyders from the midwest.

L. E. Granger is a name listed in newspaper articles about meetings taking place in the Ophir Mining District, starting with  December  7, 1871. see "Mining Intelligence." Salt Lake Daily Tribune and Utah Mining Gazette, Tuesday, December 12, 1871, p. 2 (http://newspaperarchive.com/us/utah/salt-lake-city/salt-lake-daily-tribune-and-utah-mining-gazette/1871/12-12/page-2 : accessed April 27, 2014) and "Miners Meeting." Tuesday, December 12, 1871, p. 2

⁷Sloan, Edward L., Gazetteer of Utah and Salt Lake City directory, p.228 Salt Lake Herald: Salt Lake City, 1874. Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. (http://Ancestry.com : accessed August 20, 2014)

⁸"Scott Leslie Snyder." US Sons of the American Revolution Applications 1889-1970 (http://Ancestry.com : accessed April 20, 2014)

⁹"United States Census, 1880," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MFPN-F6W : accessed 16 Aug 2014), , Atchison City, Atchison, Kansas, United States; citing sheet 239D, NARA microfilm publication T9.

¹⁰"United States World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942", index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/V1K2-N9C : accessed 16 Aug 2014), <unknown>, 1942.

¹¹"England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/J38B-W5J : accessed 29 Aug 2014), George Robert Hewlings in entry for George Freeman Hewlings, ; citing St Mary Islington, Middlesex, England, reference ; FHL microfilm 838728.

¹²"England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/J38R-XB6 : accessed 29 Aug 2014), George Robert Hewlings in entry for Martha Freeman Hewlings, ; citing DR WILLIAMS LIBRARY, LONDON, LONDON, ENGLAND, reference ; FHL microfilm 815947.

¹³"England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/JMLF-M9J : accessed 29 Aug 2014), George Robert Hewlings in entry for Henry Freeman Hewlings, ; citing DR WILLIAMS LIBRARY, LONDON, LONDON, ENGLAND, reference ; FHL microfilm 815947.

¹⁴"1851 England Census - Ancestry.com." 1851 England Census - Ancestry.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 May. 2014.

¹⁵"1861 England Census - Ancestry.com." 1861 England Census - Ancestry.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 May. 2014.

¹⁶"G. K. Hewlings - Castlegarden.org"(http://www.castlegarden.org/quick_search_detail.php?p_id=626900), retrieved 29 Aug 2014) Hewlings is a 54 year old gentleman who arrived on the Hamburg and South Hampton line on 1 September 1859.

¹⁷THE REV. JOHN J. BROADHURST, Callington, Cornwell, England; THE VICAR AND HIS DAFFODILS LOOM LARGE IN HISTORY; The Daffodil Journal, Volume 3 No. 4, June 1967, p. 159, http://dafflibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/1967_June_ADS_Journal.pdf, retrieved 18 May 2014

Front Page News

Dear Julianne,

This would be a private communication, but you didn't put contact information in, and it is just creepy to call someone out of the blue and say - "Are you Julianne? Did you just reserve all the names I've been working on for the last two years for the Temple? Why didn't you contact me before you did it? You're a jerk, and your behavior reminds me of a seagull. I do all the work and swoop in and take it."

I understand the social pressure to take family names to the temple. There is this assumption that because some estimate there are billions of people we can identify in the various records people have kept, we can all find thousands of family names. It doesn't work that way when your family is large and has been looking for family names for five generations. The official line doesn't take that into account. When someone like us find a name there is a line of 30 people who would all like to do the work, and it can get pretty acrimonious. This is why people reserve names for years - SO NO ONE ELSE STEALS THEM!

And you're in Happy Valley, so the pressure is much worse. I imagine you're a good BYU student. You can't possibly understand how deeply, I hate your school for what it represents to me. My experiences with BYU students and graduates have not been favorable.

I don't really care if you do the temple work. I was hoping names would fly under the radar long enough for my seven year old to turn twelve. Highly unrealistic, I know. If I didn't want someone to do the work, I could have hoarded the information for five years. But you see, I want to collaborate - I can't go everywhere and do everything.

I'm just a little hurt that I wasn't told - I have flags for changes, apparently this isn't a change that matters. But, it's obvious I've been working on them, and my contact information is public. I do that because I want to be contacted. And because I don't think just knowing a name is sufficient. You need to know stories if you are going to develop compassion for these people.

Letitia A. Thorndike is the best kept historical secret of Louis Edwin Granger's life. In 1870, the marriage and the incidences around it were front page news, but his family ignore it for more than 200 years. Letitia was from a good storied, New England family. I think she was an intersex individual - the evidence is scant, but her family has a little boy in the 1850 and 1855 census that is the same age as Letitia, and then a girl in 1860 and 1865 who is probably Letitia. I think the Thorndike's little boy hit puberty and obviously wasn't a little boy. I think the A. is for Augustin/Augustine the name on the early census records and preserves the name she was given at birth. If my wild speculation is correct, Letitia probably couldn't have children, which raises speculation that the marriage could have been a match of social convenience - Letitia gets legitimacy as a woman and the widow of a war hero. Granger gets cover for his financial shenanigans in Louisiana. Some newspaper accounts imply, Granger intended to have marital relations with Letitia, supporting this guess. We will never know for certain.  I don't have birth record for Letitia and birth records are very good in Massachusetts at the time. Granger didn't include Letitia in his autobiography, and Letitia claimed she was a widow at least as early as the 1880 census. I'm still looking for an annulment or divorce.

Elizabeth Harriet Rickerby is another mystery wife not included in Granger's autobiography. I have much less information on her. She was born in Brooklyn. Her parents were immigrants - I just tracked down their marriage. She was a teenaged button maker in 1880. Louis is twice her age when they marry. I don't know what happened to her - she just disappears after the marriage. I know much more about her younger sister, Lottie - she married three times, Louis is a witness to the first marriage, had a son by her first husband and died in the midwest. I don't think she has any descendants - as far as I can tell her son never married.

So Julianne here's the deal. You can do the temple work, but I need some information from Utah. I can't get there anytime soon. I need collaborators. I have people who might do it for me, but they aren't related to the individuals I'm researching. You are. You have a vested interest. You can stop being a seagull. You can get a lot more out of this than just names and dates. Contact me. I will inundate you with information. You can make some field trips for me. May be I can make some field trips for you. (Nation Archives, Library of Congress) We can work something out.

Apple Fries at Legoland Florida

I just returned from a family vacation to Florida. We spent a week in Disney World and then spent a few days with friends visiting the Gulf Coast. The last day, we stopped at Legoland Florida. Legoland Florida was a good match for my children. We like Lego - my wife is an AFOL.₁ Each child has an ample collection of the bricks. In the past, we have taken our children to two Lego Kidfests and Legoland Florida was on their list of things to do while visiting Florida.

We were not disappointed. The park geared toward younger and more timid children, which suited my children well. After Disney, the pace of the smaller park was welcome. We were able to take in most of the park in a day without being hurried. There were no long waits for rides and we were able to ride everything our children had requested. Rides tend to be smaller and slower than at bigger theme parks - there are no big fast roller coasters, but rides have just enough thrills for younger children.

My children particularly liked the driving school where they could earn a "driver's license" after operating electric cars on a closed track. They also enjoyed the hanging coaster "Flight Trainer".

The adults enjoyed looking at the Lego models throughout the park and talking with a "Master Builder" about how the models are maintained. We also enjoyed a quiet walk through Cypress Gardens which included looking for lizards native to central Florida.

We did not visit the water park which has a separate admission, but were told by friends in the area it is very popular with Florida residents who can purchase an annual pass. We also didn't have time to visit the World of Chima or watch any of the shows.

If you decide to go to Legoland Florida, make sure you try some apple fries. Apple fries are made from granny smith apples peeled, cored, cut into sticks, and deep fried. Fries are then coated in cinnamon sugar and served with whipped cream or caramel sauce. We bought an order when we arrived and picked up another two to go as the park was closing.

One downside to Legoland is an upper age limit of twelve on some rides. My oldest who turns 13 next week would not have been able to ride some of the rides had we gone two weeks later. I think he would have been very disappointed. Also, unless you are looking for a park specific item, you are better off shopping at home than purchasing Lego at the park.

With Legoland Florida building an onsite hotel, scheduled to be open sometime next year, it would make a good destination for a family trip if you have young children or Lego fans.

¹ Adult Fan of Lego

Carrie Pearson - Found!

Until yesterday, I have posited that Carrie Pearson could be a fiction created by Louis Edwin Granger. She existed on secondary family records and in genealogies that relied on him to report them. There was no birth record, no death record, no marriage record - nothing. I was able to piece together a slim picture based on secondary sources -

• Carrie Pearson may have been born about 1845, lived in New Orleans and married Granger about 1865, presumably when Granger was stationed in New Orleans with the Union Army.¹
• Louis' wife during the war may have had a brother named George, who was a trader in New Orleans²
• My grandmother, Louis' granddaughter, had told my father this crazy story that Louis had shot his first wife after catching her in bed with another officer.

This was not much to go on, and there aren't many primary civil public records on-line for Southern states during this period.

So last week, I got my first lead. I went to the National Archives in Washington, DC and pulled the record for Louis Edwin Granger's court martial. I found a few interesting things:

• Granger was represented by a lawyer by the name of Eliphalet Pearson.
• In his closing statement after being convicted he wrote: “In conclusion the accused would state that domestic afflictions and calamities not proper to be disclosed but with which some of the court are familiar and which had their influence in the settlement of debts with a view to keep these matters from the public gaze - may have led accused to acts of indiscretion, but he believes himself utterly incapable of knowingly defrauding his fellow man or that government under whose auspices he has been acting, and under whose banner it has been his pride and glory to act.”
• The court martial materials contained a letter detailing and act of adultery from his unnamed while Louis was working with the Freedman's bureau.³

I found it very interesting that the lawyer has the same name as the alleged first wife. I decided to research Eliphalet Pearson. I found that Eliphalet Pearson was a rather famous early educator and minister affiliated with Harvard University. There was also an Eliphalet Pearson who was rather prominent from Indiana. And there was an Eliphalet Pearson who graduated from Dartmouth. This last Eliphalet Pearson became a lawyer moved to New Orleans in 1865.⁴ According to the 1850 Federal Census and the 1855 Massachusetts Census, there is a young woman living in the house named Caroline Pearson. Who was born about 1845 in New York. And a young man named George Pearson.

At this point I was very excited. I didn't have anything definitive - it was all circumstantial, but also very interesting. I found Eliphalet died in 1870.⁵ I looked for graves for Eliphalet Pearson in New Orleans. Findagrave directed me to Greenwood Cemetery. At Greenwood cemetery, I found Eliphalet Pearson buried at 11 Mulberry Cedar Aloe. The site was shared by two other people: Selone Pearson - a badly transcribed index for Salome Pearson, Elipahlet's wife, and Carrie Granger. Most likely the Caroline Pearson/ Carrie Pearson who married Louis Edwin Granger.

Notes:

¹ Granger, James Nathaniel; Launcelot Granger of Newbury, Mass and Suffield Conn.: A Genealogical History, p 368-369.
² "The Luck of Louis Granger. War's romance illustrated by grateful Scotchman - bequeathing $50,000 to Union Officer." The Daily Picayune (New Orleans, LA) Monday, May 02, 1887, pg. 4, Issue 98, col E.
³Record Group 153: Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Army), 1792 - 2010, Series : Court Martial Case Files, compiled 12/1800 - 10/1894, War Department. PP-479.
⁴A memorial of the class of 1827, Dartmouth college, Dartmouth College. Class of 1827, Jonathan Fox Worcester, Centennial anniversary of the College, 1869, p. 51; Bench and Bar of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Volume 1, William Thomas Davis, Boston History Company, 1895, p.450.
⁵General Catalogue of Dartmouth College and the Associated Institutions(1880) p. 27

Solving the fund manager dilema

Nassim Taleb pointed out a problem with assessing fund managers in The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. A certain number of fund manager's are going to do better than the market through dumb luck. Telling whether your fund manager is an exception or not is made more difficult by the fact that under performing managers are fired and new fund managers are added to the pool.

The math for static pool is straight forward: Start out with 1000 fund managers. Assess them at the end of the year. Fire the half that didn't beat the market. After the first year you have 500 survivors. After 2 years 250. After 3 years 125. And so on. If we let S be the number of survivors and P be the size of the initial pool of managers and t be the number of years, the equation would look something like this:

S = P(2)^-t

And of course you can easily generalize this to allow for different drop criteria by adding a factor ρ for the ratio being kept:

S = P(ρ)^-t

So what do you do when the size of the pool is changing? While I'm not directly solving the fund manager problem, I am solving an analogous one with books. Here is the scenario:

• A pool of electronic books is made available to library patrons
• When a library patron accesses a book the library pays a rental fee for a short term loan
• After a set number of loans the library purchases the book outright and the book remains as part of the library's collection
• Books are added to the pool as they become available
• Books are removed from the pool, for example a later edition is published and replaces the existing edition
• No purchased books are removed from the pool

How much money do you need to set aside to cover the costs of the rental fees and the purchase fees?
Which is really a bunch of related problems:

• How many books will I purchase? At what cost (% of list price)?
• How many books will I rent? How many times? At what cost?
• How many books will be removed from the pool before being purchased?

In each of these cases I can use the same equation except I need to measure the size of the initial pool, P, the number of survivors, S, at time, t, to calculate my rate, ρ. Measuring the number of survivors is easy - count the number of items that meet the selected criteria at time t. For example the number of books rented at least once after 100 days. I've been grappling with how to measure the size of the initial pool. What is the correct size for the initial pool? I think I have an answer:
count the number of items that have been in the pool at least that long and were not removed from the pool before reaching that age. So what do you think? Is that the right way to do this?

By the Book

By the Book is a delightful short story by Michael J. Farrell. I'm not going to review it - go read it yourself. It's in a collection called Life in the Universe from Stinging Fly Press.

The story dovetails nicely with the questions I've been asking professionally:

• What should we be weeding from a collection? 
• Why do patrons select the books they do? Why do researchers? 
• When is there enough? When is there too much?

My great grandmother liked reading Sienkiewicz. My father decided to reread some of the things she had read to him as a child. They were gone - weeded from the public library's collection because no one still reads Sienkeiwicz - Polish novels no longer are interesting. And no one's heard of them. And if they have, they can't find them because Polish spellings are so different from the way an English speaker would transliterate them. Should I at least try to find a copy and give it whirl for nostalgia's sake?

Finding and using seem to be tightly connected. Advertising, word of mouth, display, wandering the stacks. I read Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age, because I saw it on a prominent display at the public library. I read Britain's war machine : weapons, resources, and experts in the Second World War because I found it in the stacks while looking for something else. Should we take old uncirculated books and display them prominently, rather than send them to storage or off to the discard pile?

Obituary

My great great grand father, Louis Edwin Granger, died a hundred and fifteen years ago this coming April. I found his obituary from the New York times. It is an interesting piece of myth making. Some of  it is verifiably true, some of it is patently false and some of it may simply be wishful thinking. Col. Louis Granger the head line reads. The US army never made Louis E. Granger a Colonel. As far as I can tell, he started using Col. in his professional life in the 1880's. I always figured this use was a marketing scheme like Colonel Sanders. Apparently, his last wife wasn't aware. His official record lists two brevets - one to First Lieutenant for his actions at Antietam, and Captain for his actions at Port Hudson. Lieutenant, Lieutenant Colonel perhaps someone misheard.

Otherwise the Obituary's description of his military career is accurate. The general story arc matches the official record. Boston Guard to Massachusetts Infantry, serving with the Army of the Potomac. A transfer to be an officer with the US colored troops in Louisiana. A stint in North Carolina serving with the Judge Advocate General during Reconstruction. A return to Louisiana to sell off the Army's equipment in Louisiana and east Texas. Discharge, reenlist. While it mentions the end of his service in the army, it does omit he ended his Army career in 1869 under less than voluntary circumstances. The Evening Star reported

Capt. Louis E. Granger, 25th United States Infantry, of Massachusetts, has been dismissed [sic] the service and sentenced to imprisonment at the Dry Tortugas for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, and for misappropriation of public money.₁

His obituary then summarizes the next thirty years in two sentences:

He retired from this position and army life in 1869, and went in the brokerage business.  In 1889 Col. Granger erected a monument in Hardwick, Mass., to the natives of that town who were killed in the civil war.₂

The "brokerage" business landed him in court at least three more times. Once for forgery - possibly related to his discharge in 1869. Once for bad debts while he was living in Utah. And finally in 1898, when he declared bankruptcy. There was also a civil suite in Salt Lake and at least one divorce in Chicago. The monument in Hardwick still stands - it's a bit out of the way but it is still there.

The final paragraph lists his widow in Manhattan, her two daughters and her two stepsons from Utah. It omits his third (?) wife in Boston who had claimed to be his widow from at least 1880 until her death seven year later in 1906. There is also the possibility his first (ex?)wife was still alive as was his eldest daughter. According to our family stories - both had died prior to 1870, but the daughter magically appeared in a couple of articles in Salt Lake Newspapers in 1885. Leaving the issue entirely open. If she was alive in 1885 it is entirely plausible she was still alive when her father died.

The man had successfully created a myth that made a checkered past a bit more palatable. He highlighted the good things, omitted the bad, and exaggerated when it suited his sense of self. Perhaps this is something we would all like to do.

¹The Evening Star, Volume 34, Number 5181, Washington DC, October 18, 1869, pg 1, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov, accessed February 24, 2014

²New York Times (1857-1922); May 1, 1899; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times (1851-2009) pg. 7

Aunt Gladys

My grandmother was named for her father's younger sister, Aunt Gladys. In 1972, my grandparents visited my family and a plan was hatched to visit Aunt Gladys. We piled into my grandfather's Lincoln and were off to visit Aunt Gladys in Florida. I remember visiting a very old woman who was too sick to get out of bed. The mosquitoes in the everglades, the rides at Disney World, and the Spanish fort at Saint Augustine.

Recently, I decided to see what I could find out about Aunt Gladys. First, I found out she was married to a cover artist for magazines  - she was his model for some covers. Paintings of her are kept in art galleries. And she was a pin up girl during the teens and twenties. I discovered she was an actress - she appeared in plays on Broadway, and Silent films. Her mother was also on Broadway. Who knew?

She has connected me socially to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. For example, I am separated from the Civil War by two degrees because I met her - her father was a Civil War veteran. There are only two degrees to Rudyard Kipling - she appeared in a play he wrote. What else will I find looking at old newspapers from New York?

Cheers!

The Data Driven Librarian

I am a spreadsheet junkie. I like data. I also subscribe to the paradigm that data isn't information until it has context. Information isn't knowledge until it can be used for something. In that light all the data cleaning, analysis, and charting is really an attempt to make information out of data. Once the data is information, it can be used to make decisions and take actions.

Using data in this way sits well with my constituents - mostly Engineers and Scientists. I want to know what people are using, what is costs. I want to know what people want. I want to know what is being taught and what is being research and what is interesting. Ultimately, I'm trying to make the best decisions I can.