Notable Women Ancestors: Raising New Yorkers

The Scottish immigrant William Lamb found his bride about 1872 when he married Mary Louise Wurster. He was 37, a Civil War veteran, and established as a builder in New York. She was born in New York, the daughter of Bavarian immigrants William and Catherine Wurster, and about 28 years old.

Her family was living in Plymouth, North Carolina in 1850 where her father was a tailor. Her three year-old sister Caroline was born in NC, as was her infant brother Frederick. The census has not yielded further info in 1860 or 1870. What took them from New York to North Carolina and back again?

She had her first child, a daughter, Louisa, in 1874. More daughters followed in two year increments: Janet in 1875, Jessie in 1877, Gertrude in 1879, and Katherine in 1881. When she was 36 her last child was born, a son, William Frederick. The family lived on Rodney Street in Brooklyn and employed a servant and a nurse in 1880. Her brother Frederick lived nearby, with their father and another house full of young daughters: Emily, Louisa and Carrie. Frederick was the owner of a foundry. Their father died in 1881.

The family business prospered and her husband served on the boards of banks and churches. Her brother became Mayor of Brooklyn in 1892. About 1899 her daughter Louisa married Thomas Lamb, possibly her first cousin, and moved to Delta Colorado where they employed five men raising stock. In 1901 daughter Janet married Clarence Lowes at home.

Mary Louisa lost her husband, William Lamb, October 3, 1903. He died peacefully at home, according to an account in the New York Times. She survived him by nearly 20 years. In 1910 her remaining children still lived with her, now in Queens. Janet lived next door with her two children. Clarence was treasurer of a bank. Gertrude and Jessie were gone by 1920, but Catherine and William remained with her. Catherine had taken a trip to Europe in 1909. William graduated from Williams College in 1904, studied at Columbia, and received a degree from Beaux Arts in Paris in 1911. He went on to become a prominent architect in New York.

Her brother Frederick predeceased her in 1917. She died in 1922, leaving an estate of $67,847.oo.

Frankly, My Dear, We Have to Give a Da**

It always seems like striking gold to find interesting details about women in the family. That is not to say there weren't plenty of interesting women, but they often fly "under the radar" in the easily accessible records.

I will continue to connect my nephews' Lamb family back through time to the Rhetts in future posts. Today I am taking advantage of the fluid nature of a blog to put up a few thoughts about their cousin, Alicia Rhett, who played India Wilkes in Gone With the Wind.

Alicia's name sprung out of internet searches around Barnwell Rhett (1800-1876), South Carolina Senator and "Father of Secession." He was a very visible symbol of South Carolina and of the south, and as such, appears to be the inspiration behind Rhett Butler's name in the novel. The Rhetts, a maternal line, were among the founders of Charleston.

It is then fitting that his great-granddaughter was a part of the epic that brought the southern perspective to so many, through the eyes of Hollywood.

The child Mary Alicia Rhett is found in the 1920 census of Wilmington, Delaware with her widowed mother, Isobel M. Rhett and grandmother, Mary Murdock. Isobel and Mary said that they came from England in 1895. Their names are found on sailings from Liverpool on the Teutonic in both 1894 and 1897. Isabel was naturalized in 1914. Since the child was born in 1915, it is likely the mother was naturalized by marriage to an American citizen, the unnamed Mr. Rhett who was born in South Carolina.

A widow in 1920 could likely have been the wife of a World War I soldier. Searching the WWI registration cards yields the name of Alicia's father: Edmund Moore Rhett, born April 7, 1878 and residing on Rodney Street with his wife Isobel. He was a chemical engineer for DuPont. Findagrave.com yields a photo of his gravestone, giving his date of death as October 10, 1918, but no more information. The year of birth is off a year from his WWI info. Delaware death records state he died of influenza in Delaware, so he was not a war casualty.

Alicia lost her father when she was only 3. In 1930 she and her mother lived in Charleston. It was in Charleston that she was "discovered" and hired for GWTW, the only movie she made. She was later known as a portrait painter, and was still living there in 2010.

Building New York

William Lamb was born 23 March 1835 in Campsie, north of Glasgow, Scotland. He was likely named after his paternal grandfather, who was also William Lamb. He arrived in New York about 1837 with his parents Jane Mckay and Thomas Lamb.

As a child he would have been witness to his father's work ethic, his mother's housekeeping, and the arrival of his siblings, five of whom grew to adulthood in New York. His brother Thomas was born in 1841, although a New York death record suggests that the family lost another son in 1837, shortly after their arrival. Thomas shared his name with their father and maternal grandfather.

By the time the 1850 census was taken, William was already working as a clerk at 15. His father was a mason, and there were children at home: Thomas, 10, Catherine, 8, Jane, 4, and Elizabeth, 1. The families in the neighborhood included more masons from Scotland, as well as Irish, English, and American-born blacks. Ten years later, William and his brother Thomas were both masons. According to "A History of Long Island" he apprenticed under Thomas Gibbons.

Foreign-born William served in the 47th Regiment of Volunteers during the Civil War. He enlisted with the rank of Sergeant in A Company on May 27, 1862 and left for Fort McHenry, Baltimore on the 30th. He was elevated to Captain for bravery in the field. The Company mustered out September 1.

The brothers formed a business partnership: W & T Lamb with offices in Brooklyn and New York. Over the succeeding years they secured contracts for many significant buildings, including schools and banks. William continued to live at home until his marriage in 1872 to Mary Louise Wurster when he was about 37. She was the daughter of Bavarian immigrants, born in New York in 1844.

The couple had five daughters and a son, arriving at regular two year increments between 1874 and 1883. With improvements in health and circumstance, no children were lost at birth. Their children were: Louisa, Janet, Jessie, Gertrude, Katherine and William Frederick. In 1880 the census tells us that they employed two servants. Thomas lived nearby on Rodney Street with his wife and son, the third Thomas Lamb, and a Danish servant. Mary Louise's brother Frederick Wurster had a foundry, also in Brooklyn. While the Lambs prospered in construction, Wurster went into politics and became the last mayor of Brooklyn in 1895.

William Lamb was active in his Presbyterian Church and a trustee for several banks. He remained active in Veteran's organizations. He frequented the Hanover Club and had traveled to Europe with friends. When he died in 1903, the New York Times said he was "one of the most widely known building contractors in Brooklyn."

The Lambs rose from their immigrant roots to New York's high society at the turn of the 20th century. They provided for their children such that a daughter could tour Europe, and a son attend Williams College, Columbia and Beaux Arts in Paris. Nonetheless, William's life was at least 10 years shorter than his father's!

Sorting the Lambs

Although there are many individuals in my own lineage that haven't yet appeared in this forum, I will digress into my sister's in-laws, whom I started to unravel a couple of months ago. Although many of them were prominent for one reason or another, my search is for details which would help understand their family relationships. For my nephews: Will, Brendan, Colman and Owen; this is your gene pool!

The Lamb family fore-bearers arrived in this country about 1837 from Scotland, according to the 1900 U.S. census. Thomas Lamb, 33, his wife Jane Mckay, 24, and their two-year-old son William had come from Campsie, Stirlingshire, just north of Glasgow. Their marriage in 1834 and the birth of their child are recorded there. I have not found their arrival at Castle Garden in New York.

New York is where they settled and where they are found in the 1840 census. What brought them across the sea? Siblings have not been discovered in this country. Campsie is a hilly region, characterized by the Campsie Fells rising to 1,500 ft. It was a mining region. In later years Thomas' occupation was stated to be a mason or stone setter. Did he escape the prospects of a working life underground?

They had five more children in New York. A death was recorded in 1837 for a son of Thomas Lamb, which could have been the sad fate of their second child. Their children living to adulthood include:
William b. 1835
Thomas b. 1841
Catherine b. 1842
Jane b. 1846
Elizabeth b. 1848
Jeanett b. 1854

By 1870 the family owned their home in Brooklyn. Although the sons had established themselves as "builders" by then, all of the children still lived at home. A mystery appears in the 1870 census, when two young children were also in the household. In 1880 they are identified as grandchildren, but it is not clear who their parents were. The girl was born in St. Louis Missouri in 1865 and is called Estella and then Flora Eves in succeeding census records. The boy, born in 1868 in New York, was called Alfred and later, Thomas Eves. In 1900 he was again called Alfred F. Lamb. Any of the daughters would have been old enough to bear these children, but none of them changed her last name. Perhaps further research into the New York State census records will add details.

In the early 1870s the sons married and began their families nearby. In 1880 Elizabeth identified herself as a teacher. She later married Fred Sperry, a lawyer. Details of the other daughters are unknown. Thomas Lamb died between 1880 and 1900, living at least into his 70s. His wife Jane lived into her 80s.

Judging from the facts available in public records, the immigrant Lambs lived the American Dream as did so many people who populated the melting pot which was nineteenth century New York City. They worked with their hands, saved and purchased property, and saw their children and grandchildren live lives that they could likely not even imagine in their youth.

GI Joe

I recently wrote to the National Personnel Records Center to see if they had records of my father's military service. The request can be made on-line for next of kin through NARA's web site. I wasn't surprised to find that the records were "lost in the July 1973 fire that destroyed millions of records here." NARA followed up with a request that I provide information to help them reconstruct their data base.

Luckily, I have a significant file of documents, including original signed flight reports and his discharge from both World War II and the Korean War, newspaper clippings, and his uniform.

Joseph C. Szymanowicz enlisted in February of 1943, prior to his graduation from Northampton, MA High School and prior to his 18th birthday. He began his service at Fort Devins 30 August 1943 and trained in Miami Beach with the Army Air Corps. He was sent to radio school in Sioux Falls SD for 20 weeks and then to Yuma AZ for gunnery training, at which time he was promoted to Corporal. After 20 days leave at home in Northampton in September of 1944, he was assigned to a B-24 Liberator at Westover. The crew spent the rest of the year flying out of Chatham Field in Savannah GA, before shipping out of Norfolk VA, arriving in Naples, Italy 21 February 1945.

They flew bombing missions over Austria. Few fliers survived more than the 22 that they completed, according to Ken Burns' PBS series "The War." They were disabled over Yugoslavia and forced to land in a field. When they returned to their base in another aircraft, the alarm was raised. Dad said his buddies had already raided his hoard of chocolate bars in their absence.

His Separation Qualification Record states that he "Sent and received radio messages using army equipment, code and procedure on air to ground basis using international morse code. Sent 27, received 25 words per minute. Made minor repair on military radio equipment. Did some Radar work. Manned right waist machine gun in 22 missions over Mediterranean Theatre with 15th AAF." He was honorably Discharged at Westover Field on 5 November 1945.

The men from his bomber got together periodically over the years and kept in touch at Christmas. The bond that they formed over those months in Italy lasted for the rest of their lives. Dad died 26 April 2000 at the age of 74. My son carries his screaming eagle patch with him in Afghanistan today, where he is also in the 101st Airborne. Miss you, Dad!

See the World

Historic research often makes us think in a completely new way about events that we thought we understood. Civil War enthusiasts may favor a general or a campaign, and the imagery of mass casualties is striking. I have a Civil War story in my family history, complete with documents from the soldier's file. But some recent research I did for a friend gave me a new slant on Naval service during the Civil War.

John J. Lambert was 36 when he was enumerated in the 1860 census of Kittery, Maine with his family, which included his wife Hannah and seven children . The older children were born in New Hampshire. Kittery is a coastal town on the New Hampshire border. I was able to follow the family in the census from 1850 to 1900, when John was 74, widowed, and living with a grand daughter in Kittery.

Although I didn't expect to find an 1890 record, an Ancestry.com search turned up the 1890 Survivor's Schedule, which listed John Lambert among the veterans. Instead of a Company or Regiment, his listing contained the word "Kearsarge."

A Google search yielded a series of descriptions of the steam-powered sloop of war, and later name-sakes. John J. Lambert was a fireman on the ship which was built at the Portsmouth Navy Yard. She was 201 ft. long with 34 ft. beam and 14 ft. draft, built under the 1861 American Civil War emergency shipbuilding program and launched September 11, 1861. John served from January of 1862, when she was commissioned and soon after left for European waters, under Captain Charles W. Pickering, hunting for Confederate raiders.

A book entitled “Civil War Papers Read Before the Comendary of the State of Massachusetts, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States” published in 1900, gives a first-person account of its duty. They sailed to Spain and kept watch on the CSS Sumpter at Gibraltar for several months, then spent the later part of the summer of 1862 in the Atlantic waters around the Azores. From December to March they were in the Spanish port of La Carracas being repaired. They spent several months off Brest, waiting for the CSS Alabama. John Lambert's record says his service ended in October of 1863, before the decisive battle with the Alabama in June of 1864.

From this information we can picture the family man from Maine sailing into unfamiliar waters and spending time in Spain in 1863. That is a very different picture of the Civil War than I have every had. How did he return home? The 1890 schedule says he had bronchitis. He lived for more than 30 more years, so his illness was cured. What were the stories he told his children and grandchildren in later years?

Exploring Vermont Records

When my ancestor Samuel Colman left Heath, Massachusetts about 1794 he journeyed to the wilderness in New York State. His older sister, Mary, and younger sisters, Elizabeth and Rachel, also married and began their families about this time. Mary remained in Heath, and Elizabeth and Rachel also moved to NY.

Their parents, Job and Elizabeth Martin Colman, died in the summer of 1805 in an epidemic that also claimed three of the four children still living at home. The probate file names sons John and Benjamin, who had already moved away at that time. Benjamin was listed as being "of Windsor" Vermont, which led me on my first journey into Vermont records.

Benjamin Colman was born in Shelburne, Massachusetts on 9 October, 1780. He was the eighth of eleven known children in the family, most of whom arrived like clockwork every two years. Another Benjamin had been born in 1776 and died a year later along with many other children in Shelburne.

The 1810 census of Stockbridge, Windsor County, Vermont includes Benjamin Coleman. By then he was 30 and is listed with his wife and three boys and a girl, all under 10. The Town Clerk in Stockbridge was able to provide more details about this family. The daughter would have been Rhoda, listed in the town records as born 1 November 1805. Benjamin's sister named Rhoda had died in July. Identifying a five-year-old leads to an assumption that one of the boys might have been older than Rhoda and two younger.

Another daughter, Mary, was born on 17 May 1820. The 1820 census of Stockbridge lists three girls under 10. One could have been the infant Mary, depending on when the census was taken. One girl between 10 and 16 was enumerated in the household, who would have been Rhoda. The two boys listed under 16 would be the two under five in 1810. The older boy is not listed. He could have been 17 or older by then. It is interesting to note that one is checked for "engaged in manufacture."

In 1830 the family is again listed in Stockbridge. In addition, a John Colman is also listed one line removed from Benjamin. There are 2 males 20 - 30 and a 20 to 30-year-old woman and another girl 10 to 15. This could be the older boys who were enumerated in 1810 as under 10, one of whom was married by then. We could extrapolate that John was about 23. Who is the young girl? Benjamin's listing does not include any girls of 10, which would have been Mary's age. Could she have been with her brother? Benjamin's family includes a boy under 10, so their last child would have been a boy. Two girls are 10 - 15 and one is 15 - 20.

In 1831 Benjamin's wife Betsey died at the age of 50. She is buried in Maplewood Cemetery on the Stockbridge town common. In 1832 he bought an acre of land that bordered on the Burying Ground, "the farm that the said Colman now lives in." The land sold again in 1835, when Benjamin was said to be "of Rochester." He had bought land in Rochester in 1834. Rochester abuts Stockbridge to the northwest, and the Burying Ground on the common is fairly near the border.

With four or five children still living at home, Benjamin may have remarried relatively soon. The 1840 census lists him in Rochester with a new wife, with a boy 15 to 20 and a girl 5 to 10. We know his second wife was named Rachel, from her headstone in the Maplewood Cemetery, side by side with Betsey. She is listed in the 1850 census of Rochester with a daughter Rachel J. The value of her real estate was $300. Benjamin is listed on the mortality schedule, but his death was not recorded with the clerk. Seventeen-year-old Rachel had been to school within the year. That makes Rachel's date of birth about 1833, indicating that Benjamin and Rachel had married within about a year of his first wife Betsey's death.

We don't know if Benjamin would have had contact with his siblings in New York state. The youngest, Zur, who survived the illness which took his parents and brother and two sisters, also went west to New York and ultimately to Michigan.

Some of Benjamin's children married and settled around him. John lost a young daughter [Hellen Marr, daughter of John & Eliza Colman died April 13, 1831], who is buried near his mother. Mary married Justin Beckwith in 1849, had a daughter Jennie in 1854 who died at 16 months, and is also buried in the same row. Mary, who died in 1867 at 47, is buried with Justin (d. 1855).

This exercise gives me a favorable impression of helpful VT clerks. Both Rochester and Stockbridge clerks responded by email, quickly, and with vital records and deed information. More digging may locate living relatives from this branch of the family tree.