Louis and Lewis

Lewis Samuel Hills (1836-1915) and Louis Edwin Granger (1840-1899) on the surface lived parallel lives: both men were born in Massachusetts. Both men moved to the Utah territory: Lewis in 1862, Louis by late 1871. Both married the first daughters from polygamous Mormon families. Both nominally opposed polygamous relationships. 

Most biographies of Lewis Samuel start with his arrival in Utah in 1862. He was an orphan - his father died the year he was born, his mother died when he was 4 years old. He was the youngest of four surviving children: Julia, Oliver, Harvey and Lewis. Oliver drowned in 1846 at the age of 18. Julia, Harvey, and Lewis moved west arriving in Iowa by 1860. Lewis may have filed a patent for land in Iowa as early as 1856. He worked for a time in the Land Office in Council Bluffs. He traveled to Utah with his brother, sister in law and niece. There is speculation he and his brother were dodging the draft. While this may have been the out come - Lewis was in Utah during the remainder of the war; Harvey was in Oregon. This may or may not have factored into their decision to leave. The draft was not instituted until 1863. Lewis integrated into the Mormon community: he joined the LDS Church, married the daughter of Robert Taylor Burton, the Presiding Bishop and became a leader in the local business community eventually becoming the president of one of the local banks. The family's internal story is he stopped going to Church when Brigham Young pressured him to take a second wife. His wife vetoed the idea. By all accounts the two men still had an amicable working relationship after than. After the death of his son, Lewis endorsed the life insurance company in ads in the local newspapers. He had enough clout by the end of his life, that he attempted a run at Utah's seat in the House of Representatives as a Gold Democrat. He did not win but was endorsed by the business community.

In 1862, Louis Edwin Granger was already serving in the Union Army. He would go on to fight at Antietam and  Fredericksburg before joining a Colored Unit as an officer in Louisiana where he participated in the Red River Campaign. In New Orleans he married his first wife, Caroline Pearson, the daughter of a Massachusetts lawyer who had moved south for his wife's health. After the war Louis served in the regular Army in North Carolina. He left the Army under a cloud - he was sentenced by a court martial to serve time at Dry Tortugas for selling is pay check to two different individuals. I suspect he avoided serving time by reimbursing the Army. Before he arrived in Utah, he had married, divorced, married again; possibly fought another insurrection; and been arrest for passing bad checks. He likely arrived in Utah with the objective of getting rich in mines west of Salt Lake. He married his third wife, Miriam Vilate Decker, the eldest daughter of Charles Franklin Decker and the granddaughter of Brigham Young. When he was not successful in the mines, he move to San Francisco where he made several attempts to win fortune and fame: he started a periodical using the same name as a publication on the other side of town. He registered several deeds for mines that were likely already played out. He attempted to write plays including an sordid expose of the Mormon community that was largely panned. When his wife had enough she returned to Salt Lake, divorced him and remarried. Louis would marry three other women. There is no evidence for a divorce from his second wife and he was in the middle of a divorce from his fourth wife when he married the sixth. He had several more run ins with the law sketchy business practices: selling goods for a company that had fired him, selling stock for a company he did not own. There are ads warning about his business practices in at least two languages - English and German, and multiple locations. 

I speculate the differences in the two men's lives were largely caused by the how they experienced the Slaveholders Rebellion.  Louis Granger was directly engaged in the conflict and his later instability may have been caused by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Lewis Hills avoided the conflict. 

The Mysterious Jennie C. Granger

About a year ago, I found an interesting and short blurb in the legal notes of the Chicago Tribune:

Louis E. Granger was ordered to pay alimony to Jennie C. Granger.₁

OK, so who is Jennie C. Granger? Who is Louis E. Granger? It's taken the better part of a year to partially answer these questions.

My great great grand father, Louis Edwin Granger. was living in Chicago at the time - his daughter Gladys was born in Chicago a month earlier.₂ Upon doing a quick search for Louis E. Granger with a wife named Jennie C., I found a marriage record for Beatrice Genieve Granger.₃The maiden name for Jennie Granger is Jennie C. Niles. The births for both parents are listed as United States. 1920 and 1930 Census records indicate Beatrice G. [Granger] Tator's father is from Massachusetts and mother is from New York.₄ Louis Edwin Granger was born in Hardwick, Massachusetts.

Looking through digital papers from New York, I was able to piece together a picture of Jennie C. Granger's family. I knew from her obituary₅ and personal notices around her 1932 death, who her parents were, when and where she was born and who were some members of her family. Here is what I had:

• Jennie's parents were George W. Niles and Lucy Randall.
• Jennie was born in Berlin, Rensselaer county, on May 21, 1859.
• She died March 18, 1932, at the house of her sister, Mrs. Elmer Melio in Round Lake, New York.
• She had lived in Saratoga County, NY for twenty years. She moved in from New York City.
• Her daughter, Beatrice G. Tator, son-in-law, Dr. Tator, and grandson arrived to attend the funeral.
• Her sister, Mary L. N. Curtis, travelled from Florida to attend the funeral.
• At some point she may have been married to a Louis E. Granger from Massachusetts.
• Their daughter Beatrice was born some time in May of 1882.₆
• Jennie or a proxy was in Chicago to sue for alimony.

I still had no indication whether this Louis E. Granger was or was not my great great grand father. I even tried sending a letter to an individual who could be one of Jennie's grandsons. Last month, I tracked down a lead in the Troy Daily Times:

Col. L. E. Granger, late recorder of the United States mint at San Francisco, was married last week to Miss Jennie Miles of Hoosick.₇

Louis Edwin Granger was living in San Francisco starting in about 1877.₈  According to the 1880 census Jennie Niles is living with her mother and step-father in Hoosick.₉ She is listed as a school teacher. So it looks very likely, Jennie C. Niles of Hoosick is the fourth wife of Louis Edwin Granger.

Update 11 February 2015: I found a divorce announcement in the Chicago Inter-Ocean, dated September 16, 1887. Next stop. Cook County Circuit Court Archives.

Notes:
¹"Legal Notes", Chicago Daily Tribune (1872-1922); Feb 11, 1890; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune (1849-1990) pg. 9, accessed 17 March 2014
²See "Illinois, Cook County Birth Certificates, 1878-1938," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/NQT9-JJC : accessed 4 February 2015), Gladys Granger, 10 Jan 1890; citing Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States, reference/certificate 3424, Cook County Courthouse, Chicago; FHL microfilm 1,287,896. and "Illinois, Cook County Birth Registers, 1871-1915," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/N7QQ-SM9 : accessed 4 February 2015), Gladys Granger, 10 Jan 1890; citing v 21 p 82, Chicago, Cook, Illinois, Cook County Courthouse, Chicago; FHL microfilm 1,287,734.
³"New York, County Marriages, 1908-1935," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/V6HP-QYL : accessed 4 February 2015), Arthur Earl Tator and Beatrice Genieve Grauger, 08 Jun 1911; citing , New York, United States, county offices, New York; FHL microfilm 1,287,480. and "New York, County Marriages, 1908-1935," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/FFT4-2BT : accessed 4 February 2015), Arthur Earl Tator and Beatrice Genieveve Granger, 14 Jun 1911; citing Saratoga, New York, United States, county offices, New York; FHL microfilm 1,287,474.
⁴See "United States Census, 1920," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/M4YR-NZ6 : accessed 4 February 2015), Beatrice Tater in household of Dr. A E Tater, Summit Ward 1, Union, New Jersey, United States; citing sheet 12B, family 245, NARA microfilm publication T625 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 1,821,072. and "United States Census, 1930," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/X4NX-FS4 : accessed 4 February 2015), Beatrice G Tator in household of Arthur E Tator, Summit, Union, New Jersey, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 0153, sheet 2A, family 30, line 50, NARA microfilm publication T626 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002), roll 1389; FHL microfilm 2,341,124.The 1900 census lists both parents from New York. At that time Beatrice was living with her Aunt, Mary Curtis.
⁵"Round Lake", Ballston Spa Daily Journal; April 2, 1932; Old Fulton County Postcards (http://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html accessed 30 May 2014) pg. 3. "Round Lake News", The Saratogian; April 1, 1932; Old Fulton County Postcards (http://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html accessed 30 May 2014) pg. 9. "Village shocked by two deaths", The Saratogian; March 29, 1932; Old Fulton County Postcards (http://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html accessed 30 May 2014), pg. 10. "Round Lake", The Troy Times; March 29, 1932; Old Fulton County Postcards (http://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html accessed 30 May 2014) pg. 2.
⁶Beatrice birthdate is something of a mystery. I don't currently have a birth certificate, but census records and her marriage record indicate May 1882 as the best guess for her birth. May 1882 is the date given on the 1900 Census, and she is 28 when she marries Arthur Earl Tator in April 1911. Later she would claim birth dates in 1884 and 1886. She consistently lists her birthplace as New York City.
⁷Troy Daily Times; October 4, 1880; Old Fulton County Postcards (http://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html accessed 30 May 2014) n. p.
⁸Louis registered to vote 31 July 1877 in San Francisco. See California State Library, California History Section; Great Registers, 1866-1898; Collection Number: 4 - 2A; CSL Roll Number: 44; FHL Roll Number: 977100
⁹"United States Census, 1880," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MZF8-PYH : accessed 30 May 2014), Jennie C Niles in household of Marshall Haynes, Hoosick, Rensselaer, New York, United States; citing enumeration district 160, sheet 254D, NARA microfilm publication T9 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), roll 0922; FHL microfilm 1,254,922.

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