We don't have money to drop on this project, so we're taking the long way to compile our information.
A closer reading of A BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY OF GREENE COUNTY, PA by Samuel Penniman Bates gives us some information. Even more than what's on Family Search although an entry on Adeline Mestrezat there is tied to that very book.
Family search only lists three children whereas Bates' material gives us six children when it tells us about William Long, the eldest son of Adeline (Mestrezat) and Samuel Long. Our G-something grandmother Clarissa's memorial tells us that Clarissa was one of several children connected to Samuel Long.
So according to what we're piecing together...William Long was the older brother of our Clarissa Long. Clarissa went on to marry Henry Fox (born abt 1832) and they had a bunch of children among whom was our Pappy--Elias Fox. See, there we go tumbling about in the family tree soon as we get a clue.
William Long, the Biographical History tells us, was a farmer and stock grower. And he wasn't the only one in the area listed as either a stock grower/stock dealer. Leads us to wonder more about stock tending in Greene County as a historical place where people were dealing in agriculture and labor. Reading through the biographies in Bates' book en masse gives us a sense of place. Large acreage, stock supply. We can imagine a bird's eye view at the time of William's birth in 1831. And look back on that in hindsight after the Civil War.
In general we see that the longer people stayed in place the more real estate value they accumulated either by purchase or by being positioned in a family to be the asset manager.
We also see that William and his son, Merritt Leonard Long were listed as Democrats and this book of Bates' came out in 1888. We might deduce that the Longs who'd lived through the Civil War and Reconstruction were anti-Union and so may have been racists or even old school "masters." But we don't know that by simply reading some evidence written in the available language of the day like political party labels.
Genealogically, the sketches give us William Long as son of Samuel (born 1801) and who died in 1886. And there is a reference to Samuel Long's parents both being born in Ireland. Samuel Long and his second wife, Adeline (maiden name: Mestrezat) were "natives of Greene County and residents therein until their death, which occurred in Perry Township" (Bates). The information tells us that the children of Samuel Long were from this second marriage.
Elsewhere [insert familysearch citation] we found the name Jemima as his first wife. And we have in our heads a cloudy mix of cultural creations that have us somewhat daunted here. What if our relatives were slave holders? And mean and nasty people? What if they were the ones having sex with captives? What if there was that kind of stuff going on? Can't make apologies for the people of the past. And can't go back and change things. So we have to brave on and try to see what was what with our people in the past. Finding out about ancestors is kind of like knowing famous people. What is it exactly a third party is trying to see? Trying to say? What's the point of a claim to fame when that claim is not much more than witnessing somebody else actually being famous?!
We're not out to plug our Southern kin into the dead horse position here. We're just trying to piece together our Quilt which is a very human understanding of very human humans. It's got good stuff in it and it's got hard stuff in it. If it's got bad stuff in it, there's not much we can do about other peoples' doings. That's a way to try and take an objective perspective. Of course, there's no telling what kinds of reactions contemporary people will have to the past. Something that seems like water under the bridge to one person might be an emotional hot button for somebody else. Just "plain old facts" might string together to make a story people don't want to know about. And what about matching facts to actions and philosophies? It's people, afterall, who stack the facts about our lives and these make our stories. Some facts seem to happen to people while other facts are made by hand by individuals and groups of people. And some "facts" turn out to be more temporal than others. Somebody's convictions, for example, are like personal facts on top of vital statistics and other numerical data.
William Long was born near Garard's Fort but came to own 400 acres near Mount Morris. At the time of his birth Greene County was more pioneer-like than urbane. He was reared on a farm in Whiteley Township.
As was, presumably, Clarissa. Unlike the children of itinerant preachers and military men, farmers' children were more settled down from the get go. When we find Clarissa on the Census of 1880 (already married to Henry Fox) she's 46 years old, so we believe she was born in 1834. That's about three years younger than brother William.
William received his early education in subscription schools. We're able to learn more about that online these days.
Family Search only lists three children of Samuel and Adeline. William, Harriet, and MaryAnn. On that list Clarissa would've come in between William and Harriet (who was born in December of 1843). MaryAnn's birth year is listed as 1854. That's 23 years after William!
Bates also mentions Allena.
Harriet grew up to marry David L. Cowell in 1864. She was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
And in the sketches we also see Lemleys and Headlees. You remember them?! We met some of their kin in West Virginia.
Of course, we have to understand that biographical sketch books were a phenomena of nearing the 20th century. Like marketing plotting a region's phonebooks in the later days of the 20th century...there was some generalizing. Elsewhere in our family tree we had creative types who wrote the entries for this type of biographical sketching! But you can imagine that not every family had someone to pitch in a sketch to these broad projects.
By way of saying that date disparities between biographical sketches and census information are quit common. This is why people have the most luck in research when they give space on either side of their dates. Adding five years on either side of a window, for example, helps open up the possibilities.
And we have this rare photograph of a "Grandma Fox" compliments of the collection of Sherry Candy Lane which we believe is that Clarissa Long who married Henry Fox (born abt 1832).
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| Believed to be Clarissa (Long) Fox married to Henry Fox |
A cursory browse at the Long-Mestrezat connection on Ancestry.com seems confusing! For example, they list a Samuel Long who married Adeline Mestrezat but that Samuel Long was purportedly born in 1793.
Guess I'm not surprised. I'm not a member of that website so I don't feel I can trust the freebie info, like maybe members get the real information and the freebie stuff there is scraps and leftovers. 'Sides, the other day a colleague was telling me that Ancestry.com had her connected to just about every famous person that's ever existed. I know it's a small world, but some of this technology that's cramming stories together is TOO small. Crammed together like that the boundaries blur and the details tend to get shaved and shoved into packages which may or may not be the truth.
We took our clues to our Census readings...
MESTREZAT! The maiden name of the biological mother of Clarissa Long. That's a huge piece of information for our family tree. And knowing that her first name was ADALINE helps us identify her in the household of Samuel Long on the US CENSUS 1880. That is where we learn that our Samuel Long's parents were both born in Ireland.
Knowing that Clarissa's mother's name was ADALINE also explains why Henry and Clarissa named their first child, ADALINE (Elias's big sister).
On that Census of 1880 are also listed WILLIAM LONG and his son Merritt Leonard Long whom we'd heard about in the entry of Bates' HISTORY. That history tells us that William's father died only six years after that 1880 census and that Adaline Long had died in 1880 although we found that she was recorded on the 1880 census as being 80 years old. So Adaline (Mestrezat) Long was born in 1800. And Samuel was a year younger having been born in 1801 according to the 1880 Census.
The US CENSUS 1850 has him seemingly born in 1800 since he's recorded as being a solid 50 years old. In that year we find Samuel not in Perry Township, but in Whiteley Township (house #146, family #146) and he is married to "Jemima Long." I am not sure that this clarifies for me the confusion about his marriages. But his household list tells us that William and Clarissa Long were connected in 1850.
There they are...William is 18 years old and Claressa sixteen. Allena is 12 and Harriet is eight years old. There is also a 63 year old woman who lives with them and her name is Nancy Freeland. Either they were ALL "white" or the census recorder just didn't bother to record any other "color" on the sheets for Whiteley Township. Jamima is aged 45 on this 1850 Census so she would've been born in about 1805. And we can read further in the Census to see that the Freelands are neighbors. Alfred and Rachel Freeland and more children.
Claressa is our direct relative in that Census snapshot. And there she is at 16 years old.
The townships in the area saw some rearrangement from 1781 onward. And from 1775-1780 Greene County PENNSYLVANIA was part of Virginia!
I think we can see Samuel and Adeline's homestead on Historic Map Works' 1876 Atlas map...
Click here to view the map in a separate window!
Like I said, I seem to find him there along the edge of Perry Township. And if Clarissa Long was the neighbor of her husband Henry Fox (as it says in her memorial article) then we might consider that the JOHN FOX listed there near Samuel Long was the home of Henry's parents: "Captain John" and Catharine Fox.
What we find in the census readings is that Captain John and Catharine lived in Perry Township, Greene County, Pennsylvania so as far as locating them on one of these HISTORIC MAP WORKS panels we may have other options...like finding them in closer proximity to Catharine's parents: Peter and Mary (Thomas) Fox whom we seem to find in the central area of this map.
We learned in our correspondence with the Cornerstone Genealogical Society that Henry's folks, Captain John and Catharine were cousins.
Catharine was the daughter of Peter Fox and Mary Thomas, and "Captain John" was the son of Joseph Fox and Jane "Jennie" Wilson. Without more detailed information I cannot be certain that this couple had children of their own. Even with reports of births that did not happen in hospitals with blood work and members of communities present for the affair we cannot be 100% sure about biological connections.
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Have a look at the Census via family search...
Samuel Long's family in 1850
In this post place we'll also put "a newspaper article that was written in memory of Clarissa Long a year after her death" (correspondence 13 JUNE 2011, Yeager to Lane) which we obtained from Cornerstone Genealogical Society.
The correspondence tells us that Claressa "married to Henry Fox at the age of 18, and after their marriage they moved to Miracle Run" (later in West Virginia).
We look more at Henry and Clarissa in our Miracle Run website too which you can get to by clicking the link below on this website.
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The Mestrezats which Bates gives us in the History came to Greene County among the earliest settlers about 1795. These were natives of France and had lived briefly in Carmichaels (in Cumberland Township) then settled in Mapletown. These were Charles Alexander Mestrezat and Louisa Dufresne. Dufresne may be confused in some family histories with old Hollanders like Depues but that's drifting. Charles and Louisa are said to have had eleven children including Jean Louis Guillaume Mestrezat whom people called William. Jean Louis was born 11 MAY 1809 in Mapletown. And that was only six years before his father Charles Alexander died.
Jean Louis (William) Mestrezat was reared in Mapletown, learned the gunsmith trade, some farming, and carried on a mercantile business. At the time the Bates History was written he owned 330 acres, was a Democrat, and had been a school director for fifteen years. He'd married MaryAnn Hartley and they had five children...C.A. Harriet married Samuel Hudson; S.L. was an attorney at Uniontown, PN; Charlotte Amanda married the Honorable M. John of Colorado; and J.L.G. was a cattle-dealer in the West.
William's mother Louisa had died in 1849 but she was alive at the time of William's marriage to MaryAnn Hartley (in 1843) whose parents were of Irish lineage (Hannah Leslie and Mathias Hartley).
Two years before Jean Louis (William) was born to Louisa and Charles Alexander, Frederic Mestrzat had been born in the September of '07. The biographical sketch of William shows a discrepancy in the year in which Louisa and Charles came to North America from France. Frederic's says 1793 while William's reports 1795. Frederic was the sixth child and the second son of the eleven children. He attended the subscription schools taught by teachers hired by parents by the year and a half. This "select" education influenced Frederic to be involved in securing good educational advantages for his Township as an adult.
You can read the book The Hoosier Schoolmaster by Edward Eggleston to gather a sense of schoolmastering in the day. It's a "classic."
Frederic Mestrezat learned the hatter's trade and dealt exclusively in wools and furs. And he, too, had married before his mother died. In the April of 1833 Frederic married Miss Martha Hull. Miss Martha's people were of Delaware and of Scotch-Irish and German origin. Her mother was Sarah Grove and her father Lemuel Hall or Hull). Frederic and Martha had six children (four of whom were still living in 1888ish). John A. was a carpenter; Mary A. married B.F. Mercer; Aline A. married Wm. W. Shaffer; and there was Caroline A. Frederic and Martha's eldest son was educated at Morgantown, West Virginia and was in the 14th Pennsylvania Calvary, Company E. But he was captured in a battle at Sulphur Springs on the 27 of August 1863 and he was taken to Belle Isle, Richmond. From there he was removed to Hospital No. 21 in Richmond where he died on the 27th of March 1864. Frederic was Republican in politics. He was a worker in the Sabbath-school and for his church. He joined his wife in her lifelong congregation later in his life--the Presbyterian Church of Greensboro.
Born in the first decade of the 1800's sure does make for a big age difference between Clarissa Long and Frederic and Jean Louis. Clarissa wasn't born until 1835. Which is one more clue suggesting that Adaline Mestrezat was a sibling on Charles Alexander and Louisa's list of eleven children.
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