Joseph Jerome Harrington

In my continuing search for the members of Cassandria Hooper Harrington Rogers Kauffman's birth family, I'm always trolling for new records. Here again is what  know about her. All her records say she was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. But those records don't specify "city of " or "county". In my experience, it's often somewhere in the county. She appears in the 1850 census as a mill girl, married my great, great grandfather and had two children. He went off to the Civil War and died. She lived for a while with members of the Rogers family but eventually remarried.  She was married to William Kauffman and died just after the turn of the century. Her death record in Orange, Ma says father's name "Joseph" and mother's name "Nancy". Her marriage record to my gg grandfather says the same. 

I have never found reliable records for either parent in Massachusetts. There is a marriage in Oxford which for various reasons I have doubts about. I have never found other siblings, a death record, anything I could verify.

My gg grandfather left  behind a packet of letters from the war and in that packet were two letters to Cassandria from her brother: Joseph Jerome Harrington Jr.. The records I ordered from the National Archives refer to his name as Joseph Harrington (alias Jerome). Apparently he went by Jerome. He was a corporal in the 51st infantry. I found a few census records that I believe are him. And I found a death record in a veteran's hospital in Chelsea. It sounds like he was in bad shape at the end of his life. His death record says father's name "Joseph" and mother name "? Green". Parents from Connecticut. So armed with that I narrowed them down to Thompson, Windham County, Connecticut. I found a marriage record with the last name spelled Harrenton, but no birth, no confirmation of family connections and no death.

Once DNA came along I got a few hits for descendants of the Green family. So I'm on the right track. Still nothing for the Harringtons.

So back to Joseph Jerome. I went back to the state death record and found he was buried in Mountain View Cemetery right in Shrewsbury. He wasn't on FindaGrave. So I wrote the town clerk and told him where and when I thought he was buried. What followed was truly and act of genealogical kindness.

This nice guy named Kevin told me first of all there was no charge to look up the lot card. Most cemeteries charge for everything these days. He discovered that Jerome was buried in the GAR plot in an unmarked grave.

Jerome's burial place

The black bar is where we think he is buried. So he went out, did the probe, took the picture and then contacted the veteran's agent to have a small metal marker put on this spot. All on his own initiative. He sent me records he and the agent found including a small obit.

the obit

So Joseph Jerome will get a marker with his name, dates and a remembrance of his service. 

And all this from the kindness of a city employee.

New Discoveries

You may remember that I blogged about this story in 2014. To my mind it was a lesson about not taking the family legends too seriously. A story had made its way through the family about a child born out of wedlock. One of those skeletons in the family closet. But it wasn't at all. Henry James "Harry" Tapply had an early marriage to Gertrude Haskins. He then went off to World War I. Gertrude had the baby and died five weeks later. The death cert. we finally located said "anemia and nephritis", but I felt there had to be more to the story.

Lately, I've been trolling the pages of Chronicling America (a free site) and newspapers.com for family obituaries. And sure enough, I found this short obituary for Gertrude. The interesting part to me was "after an illness of five weeks" and "leaves an infant daughter five weeks old". This means that Gertrude's death WAS a result of some trauma around the birth of baby Amy Eunice. (who became June Walley after her adoption by Bess Tapply and Sam Walley)

I've made a few other discoveries too. There was a nice obituary covering the life and career of Richard "Wink" Tapply and his wife Ruth. He went to art school at the Copley School in Boston. He also was loved and admired for his work in recreation services in New Hampshire.

There was another interesting obit for Kathleen Gabel, Donaldson Tapply's daughter. She served in the Navy, worked as a paralegal, managed a restaurant. And this is a whole branch of the family I knew nothing about.

I really enjoyed reading the obit for Sharon Tapply Foster, Philip's daughter and Kevin's sister. She was apparently a bit of a horse whisperer. She rode and trained horses after her retirement. I wish we had gotten to know one another.

Then there is the remembrance that was in the Globe for William G Tapply. He came from the Thomas J Tapply branch of the family. (Charles's older brother) You may have read one of his mystery books from the Brady Coyne series. They are some of my favorites. I still wonder why the branches of the original Tapply family didn't stay in touch. We have so many Tapply cousins out there.

On the English side there is the obit for another Richard Tapply. This Richard lived in Kent, England, where the Tapplys hale from. He spent 54 years running the Wateringbury Brewery. He got quite a remembrance in the Kent and Sussex Courier.

On the other side of my family, an obit dated 1917 put to rest a long mystery and "brick wall" in my research on my father's family. My grandfather's sister Honora or "Nora" Fitzgerald died at only 43. She was a question mark on my tree for a long time. It appears she had heart

trouble.

Another question mark was the exact death date for Lotta Smith from the Rogers side of my family. A friendly person with access to Newsbank helped me find her obit in the 1966 Worcester Telegram. With a little math I was able to get the date from the article and read a nice review of her career as a singer and soloist. 

The other benefit of searching the newspaper archives is that if you do an open search, you get the occasional family story.

This is a Christmas story from 1947 in the  Rochester, New York paper featuring Deborah Levin and her mother Helen Tapply Flaherty Levin. Helen was Roberta's sister and Nell Tapply's daughter.

This story is from the 1939 Fitchburg Sentinel. Apparently Roberta Flaherty (Also Nell's daughter) was working there as a clerk. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Roberta herself had a hand in composing the article. She was very witty and quite the writer in high school. A cute article.

If you are looking for good or interesting family stories, old newspaper article are the ticket.

Some require a subscription, but others are available through your public library.  Certainly, it's worth giving it a try.