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.