1820 Cranberry, New Jersey Census Substitute

There are no extant United States Federal census population schedules for the state of New Jersey prior to 1830.1 Therefore, any surviving list of inhabitants before that time will be a welcome addition to the scholarship for genealogists and historians researching in the Garden State who are trying to pinpoint residents of a particular community. I recently discovered one such list for Middlesex County.

While reviewing early newspapers for any mention of my New Jersey Carson family, I ran across an entry for one General Charles Carson of Cranberry, New Jersey, nominated as a Representative to the 17th U.S. Congress.2 Despite the fact that my ancestor shares a name with this man, I am unaware of any relationship to him at this time. It is possible my ancestor was simply named for this officer in the War of 1812.3 The mention piqued my curiosity nonetheless because of the sheer number of names included in the article. It appears to be a comprehensive listing of adult male residents of the town of Cranberry, Middlesex County, New Jersey and can stand in as a census substitute.

Responding to an article dated 19 Sep 1820 in which Carson’s character had been allegedly impugned, sixty male petitioners of the town affixed their name to a letter sent to Messrs. Tuttle & Co., presumably the editors or printers of the newspaper. I have transcribed the complete article below.

From The Centinel of Freedom, published in Newark, New Jersey, dated 25 Sep 1820, p. 1, col. 4. Courtesy New Jersey State Archives.

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.
Messrs. Tuttle &. Co.

   A publication has appeared in your paper of the 19th inst., wrote no doubt with an intent to injure me in public estimation. In justice to the feeling of my friends, my family and myself [illegible] following a place in your paper.

CHARLES CARSON.

  We the undersigned, inhabitants of the village of Cranberry, in the county of Middlesex, state of New Jersey, understanding that a publication has appeared in the Newark Centinel derogatory to the character of Gen. Charles Carson of this place, wherein the writer makes the following remark — “I trust his standing at home will be inquired into by the gentlemen who compose the Convention.” In justice to the individual whose character is thus publicly assailed, we have no hesitation in saying that we believe him to be a man of the strictest veracity, in whose honesty and integrity we have the fullest confidence.

Cranberry, 25th Sept. 1820.

  Nathaniel Hunt, Samuel Disbrow, George Barclay, Amos Shaw, Cajah Voorhies, John W. Perrine, William Jordan, Aaron Disbrow, John N. Lewis, Aaron D. Shaw, James Clarke, Elias Bayles, Joshua Edwards, Rescarrick Ayres, William H. Mershon, Cornelius Voorhies, Timothy Horner, Reuben Vanderbeak, Clement Hooper, Peter Sutphin, John Voorhies, Joseph M’Chesney, Charles R. Brindly, Andrew G. Vankirk, Henry Silcox, Daniel Ervin, Joseph Conover, Aaron Dewitt, jr., William Newton, jr., Lewis Carman, John Jordon, Ralph P. Lott, John Van Dyke, Matthew Gilland, William Logan, James Debow, William Newton, Aaron Lane, John Clark, Jacob Brown, Ezekiel Ervin, Joseph M’Chesney, jr., James Vanhart, Randolph Hunt, John Vankirk, Horatia Sansbury, Syrennes C. Henry, Aaron Dewitt, David Conover, Peter Conover, Joseph Mount, John Voorhies, jr., Amos Coriell, Geo. Naphey, Okey H. Vankirk, Anthony Appleget, George Shaw, Henry Perrine, James Stephenson, George Davis.

   We do hereby certify, that Gen. Charles Carson, was born in the village of Cranberry, and has resided therein ever since, and that his recommendation is signed by all the free white male inhabitants of said place above the age of twenty one, with the exception of one young man who is from home at the time.  [Emphasis mine.]

NATHANIEL HUNT,
JOSEPH M’CHESNEY.


Sources:

1 Alice Eicholz, ed., Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources, 3rd. ed. (Salt Lake City: Ancestry, Inc., 1992): 448.

2 “A List,” Centinel of Freedom (Newark, New Jersey), 19 Sep 1820, p. [2?], col. 4.

3 Although called a General in this article, he was a Captain of the 15th U.S. Infantry in the War of 1812, a rank he held from March 1812-April 1813. It is unclear when or whether he may have attained the rank of General. See Francis B. Heitman, Historical Record and Dictionary of the United States Army, 1789-1903 (Washington, D.C. : Government Printing Office, 1903), 1: 286; digital image, HathiTrust Digital Library (http://www.hathitrust.org/ : accessed 25 Nov 2017).

Proof, in the Form of a Letter

proof-in-the-form-of-a-letter-title

A cousin shares a Civil War letter that confirms the death of my ancestor, Charles Carson, in 1863

Many of the men in our extended Carson family enlisted when called to defend the Union in the Civil War. My ancestor, Charles Carson of Trenton, New Jersey was not among them. He would have been 37 years of age when the war broke out, but for some unknown reason he did not enlist. Whether he suffered from a physical infirmity, or whether it was due to family obligations – he had a wife, and by varying accounts either six or eight children at home – we may never know. Perhaps his skills as a sawyer were needed on the home front. What is known is that many of his kinsmen did serve, and it is through the records they left as a result of their service that has allowed this researcher to paint a much fuller picture of the extended family.

Charles Carson married into another Carson family when he took Caroline Carson as a bride in Monmouth County, New Jersey 29 Jun 1845.1 Caroline’s younger sister Amy Carson married a man of Germanic descent, William Hausman, who later went off to war, serving in Co. E. of the 21st New Jersey regiment.2

In 2008, William McGovern, a Carson descendant through the Hausman’s daughter Bertha, reached out to me via the GenForum message board, and informed me of the existence of a letter written by William Hausman and his reference to Charley Carson within it. McGovern thought I might possibly be able to identify Charley. In 2016, he gave me permission to publish the contents of the letter. I am still not clear whether McGovern owns the original letter, or whether he has only a copy.

William Hausman was convalescing in the Tilton Army hospital in Delaware when he learned of the death of Charles Carson and penned a response to his wife on the back of a song sheet3, probably distributed that night at the event he describes in his letter. Oh, how I wish that her letter to him had also been preserved to know her thoughts and feelings on the death of her brother-in-law.

I offer a complete transcription of the letter below. Emphasis mine. Note that the letter had only about seven words per line; I have not maintained the exact formatting due to the nature of its presentation on this blog. The spelling and punctuation is as it appears in the original, however.

***

               Tilton Hospital     June 10th, 1863

Dear Wife

          I now take this opportunity to send you a few lines to inform you that I am well, and hope these few lines may find you and the Children the same. I Received your letter From the 3d day of June on the 5th, and I was Glad to hear that you was all well, but I was sorry to hear that Charley Carson was Killed, and I think it is very bad for his family. A man is apt to Get Killed at home, as well as the Soldiers in the Field of Battle, we have heard that General Hooker, has crossed the River Again, I think its likely that our Regiment is over Again with him, but if they have Another fight, I will not be in it this time, All the soldiers in this Hospital had a Good Ride free off Expence, yesterday to a Union Meeting at a place called Dover, About 50 miles From here, we had a very nice time

[p. 2]

and came back to the Hospital last night About 9 Oclock, All the soldiers had a Good Dinner From the Cizens of that place I Expect to be home next week. If you get this letter you need not to answer It. I have got a pretty Good Job in the Kitchen, and my time passed away very fast and I Get plenty to eat, they had not men Enough, and the Doctor asked me if i would not help them, and I sayed yes, and I have been in there ever since
send my love to you and the Children
no More at present

From Your Affectionate
Husband
William Hausman

Thank you to my cousin William McGovern, who provided a copy of the letter to this researcher and allowed publishing of the content of same.

Happy Independence Day today. We owe a debt of gratitude to all who have served and are serving to preserve our freedom, and to their families who sacrifice so much in their absence.


Sources:

1 Monmouth County, New Jersey, Marriage Returns, Book D-1, Folder M, Carson-Carson, 1845, County Clerks Office, Monmouth County Archives, Freehold; copy provided by John Konvalinka, CG, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE], ca. Dec 2004.

2  For the 1857 Hausman-Carson marriage and his unit number see William Hausman (Pvt., Co., E, 21st NJ Inf., Civil War), pension no. 143,808 (Invalid), Case Files of Approved Pension Applications…,1861-1934; Civil War and Later Pension Files; Record Group 15 : Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs; National Archives, Washington, D.C.

3  A very similar example is here: “Mother, is the Battle Over?” song sheet, (publisher Charles Magness, 12 Frankfort St., N.Y., [n.d.]), digital image, Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/resource/amss.hc00018b.0 : accessed 4 Jul 2017).

Another Cousin Connection, and Two Wills

Carson Family Group Sheet (Pt. 5.)

This fifth installment in a series brings the story up to the mid-2003 time frame when I was first corresponding with two other descendants of Charles and Caroline Carson of Mercer County, New Jersey who were also researching the couple.

While I was beginning to flesh out and execute my research plan to determine the date of death of my ancestor, Charles Carson (detailed here), I was also beginning to correspond with a cousin, Jean (Carson) Owens.

As I alluded to in the prior post, we crossed paths initially on GenForum, an early online message board system. Message boards were the next iteration of the ubiquitous printed query sections found in many genealogy society newsletters and in some newspapers with columns dedicated to genealogy. As precursors to modern social media applications, message boards were a popular way to learn of and correspond with other people who shared your interests on any of a variety of topics. GenForum was a genealogy message board where genealogists connected with others researching the same surnames or geographic areas or similar broader topics, such as the Civil War or a particular genealogy software program. As a formerly vendor-neutral site, GenForum was my message board of choice, one that I preferred and continued to use long after Ancestry.com got in on the action and started their own separate system.

And so it was that cousin Jean and I found one another in the fall of 2002, each of us posting about our respective connections to Charles and Caroline Carson of Trenton, New Jersey. The couple lived in the area before and during the American Civil War. Then, Charles Carson disappeared from the family, while Caroline Carson continued to live in the area at least until 1881. I would later discover that Caroline lived in the south Trenton area as a widow for more than fifty years, until her death in 1915, but that is a story for another day.

On the other hand, Jean had compiled information from her own research and correspondence with several others who had shared family bible records, charts, and photographs with her over the years. They had reached altogether different conclusions about the family history than I had, believing that our common ancestor was named Charles C. Carson, born September 1824, in either New Jersey or Indiana, died in 1896 in Washington Twp., Mercer Co., New Jersey, was buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery and that he was the son of Eli and Hannah Carson. I did not dispute that a man with this basic information may have existed. I simply did not believe that he was the father of my ancestor, Andrew Carson, b. 11 May 1855 or, by extension, his brother, Jean’s ancestor, Charles Henry Carson, b. 10 Sep 1852.

In those early days, we communicated with one another almost daily via email, sharing the latest tidbit of information that bolstered our respective pet theories about the identity of Charles Carson and his wife Caroline. The more research I did, the more certain I became that records belonging to another man or men named Charles Carson had been incorrectly linked to my Charles, who had likely died 24 May 1863, not as a casualty of the Civil War, but in Trenton, New Jersey following a sawmill accident. Now I just needed to prove my hypothesis.

Probate records survive for this time and place, so I consulted the New Jersey Index of Wills, Inventories, Etc. where I found this entry among the Mercer County items:

     Carson, Charles, 1421K.  W. 1863. Inv. 1863.1

Decoding this told me that probate packet no. 1421 for Mercer Co., New Jersey existed as of 1901, and it contained both a will and an inventory from 1863. Bingo. My next task was to learn where the probate packet was in 2003. I did not have to look far for it.

It was late spring of that year when cousin Jean introduced me (via email) to another cousin, Mona Carson, also a descendant of Charles through his son Charles Henry Carson. I learned she already had a copy of the will that she mailed to me. I was on cloud nine, that is until I actually saw and read it for myself. Confusion set in when I read that this man’s will was dated 28 May 1863. How could that be? My man had died four days earlier, so would not have been alive to have signed a will on that date. And, yet, this was the only probate file in Mercer County for a man named Charles Carson who died in 1863. What were the chances of two men with the same name, dying in the same month in the same county with one of them having a probate file and the other with no apparent surviving probate record? Of course, I knew it was theoretically possible, but what were the odds? There had to be another explanation for the four-day discrepancy between the purported death date and the creation of this will.

carson-charles-1863-will-snippet-clerks-copy
A portion of the clerk’s copy of the will of Charles Carson, with the date 28 May 1863 emphasized. The right edge of the image shows this copy came from a book.

Analysis of this record revealed that this was the clerk’s copy of the will. It was not the original. When the will was brought into court to be probated, the clerk recorded what should have been a faithful copy into a register that stayed in the local office. Perhaps that was true here, but the only way to know for sure would be to obtain a copy of the original probate packet. After much discussion with said cousins about the meaning of this find, cousin Mona reached out to the New Jersey State Archives to see if they could locate the original will.

This is where my memory is a bit hazy and my “paper trail” runs out. All my email correspondence from this time is missing to cross-check the exact chain of events. Suffice it to say, cousin Mona was able to get a copy of both the original will and the estate inventory. She sent a photocopy of both items to me and to cousin Jean for our review and input. Although I was uncertain of the exact origin of the photocopies, this certainly looked more like what I expected to see, with what appeared to be original signatures, and even a fragment of blotting paper to cover an ink spill.

photocopy of original 1863 will of charles carsonBottom portion of the second copy of the Charles Carson will showing that it was drawn 23 May 1863, the day before his death. The will was proved 31 Jul 1863.

Clearly, the clerk simply recorded the date the will was written and witnessed incorrectly into his register. In the photocopy of the original shown above, the date reads: The 23d day of May AD 1863 — the day before Charles died. It may seem to be a small point, but the discrepancy had to be resolved if I was to meet professional genealogy standards.2

Now that I had determined that the date the will was drawn and proved aligned with the timeline I had established from other direct and indirect sources, I was able to move forward with a closer reading of the contents of the will.

The will was relatively brief. I imagine they hastily gathered witnesses and quickly had Charles Carson recite his wishes as to his earthly estate, suspecting he might succumb from his grievous injuries at any moment. In his will, he made two provisions beyond the usual directive to discharge debts and funeral expenses. They were:

Item 1. “I give bequeath unto my beloved wife Caroline Carson the use of all my household Goods and furniture of every kind and description empowering her to distribute the same or any part thereof to such of my children as she shall Think proper…
Item 2. “I give and bequeath unto my wife Caroline Carson all the ballance of my Estate[.]”3,

Carson appointed his “loving friend” William G. Bergen, Esq. as his executor. John D. Rue, James Carson, and Henry C. Kittinger witnessed the will. It was unclear then, and frankly, is unclear now, whether this witness James Carson was his brother-in-law or possibly even a sibling or half-sibling. More research is needed to establish that connection with any certainty.

These facts can be gleaned from a careful reading of the will:
1.  Charles Carson stated he was a resident of the city of Trenton, New Jersey.
2.  He was a married man with a wife named Caroline Carson.
3.  Since he refers to “children” he clearly had more than one child living at the time, although he failed to give any of their names.
4. He apparently owned no real property, as the term bequeath refers only to personal property.

All facts align with my earlier hypothesis, and there are no discrepancies. Having the will and probate packet allows me to say definitively that my 3rd great-grandfather Charles Carson died after 23 May 1863 (will written) and before 31 Jul 1863 (will proved). However, due to the nature of his death, it was noted in the local newspaper and reportedly occurred 24 May 1863. Thus, online references to this Charles Carson with a death date of 1896 are false and trees with that information should only be used with healthy skepticism.

I wish to thank my cousins Jean and Mona here formally for their friendship, and for continuing to motivate me to solve the mystery surrounding the origins of our mutual ancestors, Charles and Caroline Carson of Trenton, New Jersey. 


1 New Jersey. Department of State. Index of wills, inventories, etc. in the Office of the Secretary of State prior to 1901, vol. 2. (Trenton, 1913), p. 780.
2 For an excellent overview of some of these standards see Judy Kellar Fox, “Ten-Minute Methodology: “Reasonably Exhaustive”—How Do We Know We’re There?,” Board for Certification of Genealogists SpringBoard (http://bcgcertification.org/blog/2015/09/10-minute-methodology-reasonably-exhaustive-how-do-we-know-were-there/) : posted 17 Sep 2015.
3Mercer County, New Jersey, probate file 1421K, Charles Carson; “Wills and Inventories ca. 1670-1900” roll no. 826, New Jersey State Archives, Trenton. A photocopy of the original will was supplied by Mona Carson [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE], to Dawn Bingaman, Renton, WA, 2003.

Census Comparison Worksheet

It has been some time since I posted about the Charles and Caroline Carson family of New Jersey. I needed to remind myself where I left off with respect to the census information I had collected thus far. I needed a form to see my census data at a glance. With only a bit of searching on Pinterest, I found a promising census comparison worksheet, posted by Jenny Lanctot who writes the “Are My Roots Showing?” genealogy blog.

census comparison worksheet from Jenny Lanctot, found on Pinterest

Jenny has graciously made her census comparison worksheet available for download at this link. Thank you, Jenny. I like this form, in that there is room to record information from up to five different census enumerations for one couple and up to fourteen of their children. It is similar to the way I have previously laid out census extractions in a table in Microsoft Word, but with more columns. More columns equals more data points for correlation, which is a very good thing when you are writing up your research with accepted genealogical standards in mind.

I downloaded her form and began doing the data entry in short order. It did not take me long to realize that I actually wanted to see a bit more detail than the form allowed for, so I began tweaking it just a bit. In the column on the left where the couple’s marriage information is recorded, I added a row to record the marriage officiant by name and role. I added an additional row below Twp. (for Township) to note a smaller jurisdiction, abbreviated as P.O. (for Post Office), since that level of detail is included on some census enumerations. Finally, on the main tab, I also added a row for the street address when known, as this is important for tracking our urban ancestors.

completed census comparison worksheet for the Carson family, 1850-1900The main table in my census comparison worksheet allows me to visualize 50 years of census data at a glance for one nuclear family (in this case, Charles and Caroline Carson of New Jersey). I have hidden the ribbon (using CTRL+F1 in Excel 2010) and the rows near the bottom for more siblings to make the completed worksheet easier to see in this screenshot.

In my example, I chose to only include United States Federal census information, but you could just as easily create a table that includes state census enumerations or non-population schedules such as agriculture or manufacturing. I also chose to input ages, birthplaces and occupations to improve the ability to compare across census years.

The biggest change I made was to include additional tabs in my workbook, one for each census year extracted on the main page of the form. I renamed each tab to correspond with the year, then I attached an image of the actual census page that I had previously downloaded. Lastly, I included a carefully crafted source citation so that I can simply copy and paste it into other documents or blog posts when needed.

census comparison worksheet with census image and citationI added more tabs in my workbook to include an image of the census page and a source citation, one tab for every census year on the main table. This image from the 1870 Federal census shows Caroline Carson living with an unidentified male named Lewis Rainier in Mercer County, New Jersey. We have yet to learn what relationship the two shared.

This is a time-consuming process, and one that I am unlikely to do for every family that I am researching, as I normally would simply extract the relevant census information into a note linked to a census “event” in my RootsMagic database. But, for those families that present brick wall problems, or for those families that I am writing about, it is a useful endeavor. If you have a genealogical problem you have worked on for years without a resolution, then I would recommend compiling your data in a format that allows you to visualize and correlate information differently, such as a census worksheet, a timeline or mind map.

 

Updated 22 March 2018. Follow-up post has link to download the census workbook and instructions for its use.
http://ancestorroundup.com/census-comparison-worksheet-revisited/