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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