Just When You Think You Know the Whole Story...

Imagine my surprise, having traced my 2^nd ggm through a life in Brownstown, Wayne, Michigan—birth as Minerva Armstrong, marriage to Garret Garretson, a Union Army volunteer in the 24^th Michigan, to burial in the Garretson family plot, only to find she had another husband along the way.

When I requested a copy of Minerva’s Federal Military Pension Application and supporting documents from the NARA. I learned some unexpected facts.  For example, while Garret’s unit was fighting at Gettysburg, he was laid up in a Pennsylvania hospital.  He survived and returned to his wife Minerva and daughter Jennie in Brownstown, where he died in 1877. 

Sometime after that, Minerva moved to Brainerd, Crows Wing, Minnesota where she was living when, in 1883, she married Charles L. Chamberlin, a doctor who worked in the logging camps in the area.  While the one Minnesota Marriage Index lists their marriage as occurring on April 18, copies of the original license and marriage certificate in the NARA Pension packet confirm it occurred April 25^th.

Charles died in Brainerd on March 14, 1892.  Sometime after that, Minerva returned to Brownstown where, in 1901, she applied for restoration of Garret’s pension (certificate #184929 paid at Detroit and suspended upon her marriage to Charles Chamberlin in 1883). 

These pension records are the only place I’ve found actual documentation of this Garretson “detour” in Minerva’s life.  Now for some additional sleuthing! 

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Who Knew Louie?

Certainly I didn’t.  He was my tall, gray-haired, elegantly smiling grandfather and he died when I was three.  I didn’t know much about him at all.  Apparently his daughters, my mother and her sister, didn’t really know his story either.  There’s always the legend—the story that makes good telling in every family…

                In this case, it was Louis (then Carlos Luigi) and his father Battista Rossi coming to America in 1906.  Louie (he only used Carlo Luigi once more that I know about).  Papa didn’t like it here, so he went back to Italy, leaving Louie with friends in Rockford to fend for himself.   (Imagine, the story went, being 12 and on your own in a foreign country.  I can hear my mom saying that more than once.)   Louie’s 1950 obit in the Rockford Register Star (information family supplied of course) said he had lived here 44 years.  Problem is, neither of those things proved to be true.

                Grandpa did come in 1906; he just didn’t stay.  He and Battista appear in Ellis Island records in 1906, going to Rockford.  Papa was a laborer, and Louis was in Rockford, according to annual city directories, through at least 1909.  He may have been in Rockford for the 1910 US Census, but that’s still a little questionable, though there is a Louis Rossi about age 19 boarding with Tom Fedeli and his family.   (The Fedelis, not so much Tom, but Andrea, Rosa, Arturo and Santina were a big part of my own family, but that’s another story—and some new leads to follow-up.)  Then a funny thing happens—Louis disappeared from US records.

                So, at some point after 1909, he also went back to Italy.  I know this because I have his 1915 Italian passport with all the details of his re-arrival in the US that year. I know this, because he reappears in Rockford City Directories, most often living with Andrea Fedeli and his family.

 Perhaps it was an artifact of growing up in the Depression that my mom and aunt never would have thought the family would have had enough money for anyone to come and go back and come back again.  But Louie did.  (And so did his father, who sometime before 1915 returned to join his brother-in-law in Rockford, making no mention of Louie still being there—again, another story for another time.)

                So, now I know Louie—at least a little bit.  And I have new questions about the story of his marriage in 1919 too.  That one had Grandma Rossi, orphaned at age three, coming to join Louie as an unknown, sight-unseen “correspondence bride” in 1919.  But, given the fact that a teen Louie went back to the little Italian village, that could be just another story too.   It’s certainly something I want to explore.

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A Bit More on the 24th Michigan

Turns out I may have been a bit too flip in my last post about Garrett Garretson and his 24th Michigan Regiment Volunteer Infantry experience. It was definitely no camping trip!

It turns out that the regiment fought at least ten major Civil War battles before even getting to Gettysburg on 01 July 1863. Four hundred ninety-six of them arrived that morning. "On the morning of July 2-3, 1863, 99 answered roll call." Those left went on to campaigns in The Wilderness, Spotsylvania and other places before being reassigned to garrison and guard duty in Springfield, IL in February of 1865. The 24th was also the regiment selected to escort Lincoln's body when it arrived for the funeral.

This gives me a whole new line of events to look at while I research by great-great grandfather. And to think his daughter was always talking to my own dad just about her family's connection to the American Revolution. Seems like the Civil War connection will prove even more striking, and perhaps more accessible for some in-depth research.

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Goin' Camping with Great-Great Grandpa...

Having found GGG Garretson’s Civil War record a few weeks ago, yesterday I got another great discovery. There is a 24th Michigan Volunteer Infantry reenactor group alive and well and kicking off its 150th Civil War anniversary celebrations with an encampment in Hastings in mid-July. So here I am, retired and getting excited about going camping with great-great grand dad this summer!   Who woulda thought...


I’ve been to a few of these before—Civil War and even Revolutionary War camps. But this is the first time that I have a personal interest in questioning the participants, getting their views on the historic events. Who knows, perhaps one of them actually portrays my GGG, though since he was merely an enlisted man, I’d be surprised by that. But here’s the real treasure—and reason for going. They have a picture of 50+ GAR regimental vets on their web site. I’m anxious to see if there is a record of exactly who is pictured.

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What Did You Do in the War Great-Great Grandpa?

After being stuck for a time, I recently located my second great grandfather’s military history records. It was a shocking discovery for this man about whom I know so very little. Suddenly he went from being ordinary shoemaker up near Detroit to having been part of some of the biggest battles of the American Civil War!

Garret Garretson of Brownstown, Wayne, Michigan was part of the 24th Michigan Infantry, organized 15 Aug 1862. They fought with joined the Army of the Potomac at Fredricksburg, Gettysburg (Culps Hill, etching right), Chancellorville, Petersburg... Disease was almost as big a killer among the 2104 men of the 24th Michigan (109) as those killed in battle/died of their wounds (267). In the course of the war, 28 members of the regiment found themselves in Confederate prisons.

The history of the regiment was written by Henry A. Morrow, Col. Twenty-fourth Michigan Volunteers (himself among those who spent time in a Confederate Prison) and Capt. J.D. Wood, Assistant Adjutant-Gen.

I bring this up because I’ve been working on creating richer biographical sketches for my ancestors—something that takes them beyond just being a series of dates and puts them in a temporal and social context that helps me better grasp who they were and how who I am may related to things learned and passed on from some of them.

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Where and Why Did Great Grandpa Roam?

Great grandpa Edgar N. Rowe was born in New York in 1854, though some census records erroneously list him born in Wisconsin in 1855. By age three, his parents William Thomas and Margaret Rockafellow Rowe had moved to Wisconsin, where his ten younger brothers and sisters were all born.


 In his mid-20s, Edgar returned to his paternal family roots in Rensselaer County New York. His grandmother Susanna Link Rowe and at least one uncle had farms in and around Schodack Center according to this 1876 map (courtesy of K. Grimm). Yet, Edgar wasn’t living with them when the 1880 Census taker came calling. Instead, he boarded with the family of Anna Snook, her daughter, and her son John and his wife and daughter. (There were several Snook families with New York roots in and around Kenosha County Wisconsin during those years, though I have yet to determine which, if any, might have been related to Anna.)

Questions remain:  Why didn’t Edgar live with his Rowe relatives when he went back? Did he farm his family’s land or that of others? He must have had some sense of attachment to the family and the land because he and his wife returned to Schodack Landing at least once. That’s where their twin sons Lloyd and Floyd were born August 13, 1892.

For the 20 years between the 1880 and 1900 Censuses, Edgar seems to have dropped out of sight. Where was he? Who were the people around him? Was he the adventurous sort? Did he stay in one place?

When they took the Census in the summer of 1900, Edgar was back in Lake Geneva, Walworth, Wisconsin. In November of that year, he made a trip to Detroit, Wayne, Michigan where he married Jennie M. Garretson (see previous post). He was 46 years old; Jennie was 43. (The story goes, according to their granddaughter Janet, they met through a newspaper column. If that’s true, I’m descended from “correspondence brides” on both sides of my family! More on that when I get to the Italians.) From there, it was back to Wisconsin and within 10 years to Rockford, Winnebago, Illinois where he died on July 10, 1946.

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What Did Great Grandma Jennie Do?

When great grandma Jennie lived with the JB Crouse family In Hartland, Livingston, Michigan in 1880, she listed her occupation as “milliner.” Now, everyone knows that’s a hat maker, right? Not so fast. Up through the 19th Century, a milliner might, indeed, make hats, but she—and it was almost always she—might also be a seamstress, a designer, an entrepreneur. (Think Coco Channel, for one famous example!). In fact, the millinery was the forerunner to the modern day department store back before paper patterns, standard sizes and ready-to-wear.


In the milliner’s shop, any woman (thought most patrons were middle and upper class) could find anything from everyday hats to fancy gowns, from farmer shirts to aprons, from watches to table settings. The milliner sold just about anything related to women’s fashion, accessories and the home. There weren’t many occupations open to respectable women in the late 1800s. Being a milliner could be a ticket to independence. Small wonder only house maids were more plentiful among working women of the time. Most milliners were under 25. They spent up to seven years as an apprentice learning the trade, and there was a definite pecking order among the small group of employees in any millinery. (Most shops employed two or three people.)

By the time great grandma Jennie called herself a milliner in the 1880 Census, she was about 23 years old. Her father, Garret Garretson, a shoemaker by trade, had died about three years earlier. Her widowed mother Minerva still lived in Brownstown, Wayne, Michigan, where the Garretson family had been among the town’s leading citizens. Uncles, aunts and cousins—they all still lived there as well, but Jennie had left on her own and moved halfway across the next county.

Jennie may have learned the rudiments of the millinery craft in the Garretson family shoe shop. Most girls of that era were taught how to sew routinely at home in the 1860s and 1870s, so she may have learned there. Or she may have served an apprenticeship in someone else’s shop before striking out on her own. (Perhaps that was her role in Hartford?) I’m still checking on all that. By 1880 Jennie was living a county away from the rest of her family. She was boarding with a family and paying rent.

It was a heady era In the United States. People were beginning to recover from the depression of 1877. The transcontinental railroad was done. Edison had bought the patent for the electric light bulb, and Bell invented the telephone. Out west, the US Cavalry was still hunting for Geronimo…And in Hartland, Livingston, Michigan, my great grandmother had struck out on her own, independent in terms that most modern American women understand, making her own way in the world…

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