What to do with an Antique Bible (1856) (Vanity)

freerepublic ^ | 4/25/2022 | myself

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Here's Mr. Monsour's land patent:
Date: 1/1/1859
Meridian: 5th PM
Township: 113N
Range: 019W
Aliquot: NW¼SW¼
Section No: 6
County: Dakota

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Often, over four, five or six generations, the connections to ancestral family names are no longer obvious. I get notices from Ancestry and MyHeritage all the time that they’ve found new distant (deceased) relatives and it’s very rare that there are any family names I recognize. That could be the case here.

There are quite a few existing family trees in Ancestry with Henry Alfred Monser in them. You might recognize some of the family names or people in them.

[Michael.SF.]

Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions and great research.

In discussing with my wife we believe that the Bible was likely a gift from one of the Monser’s daughters to my wife’s mother. She was a nurse, who often took into her home elderly patients for hospice care. This would have been in Minneapolis at some time between 1935 and 1954. That time frame matches the appropriate ages of Henry and Sarah’s daughters twilight years.

The connection with Washington, is likely a dead end, as there is no connection there.

You guys have been great!! Thanks again to all!

[HKMk23]

If any of this rings a bell, you can query me on FReepMail.

Here’s a last tidbit I’ll toss your way, though; one other surname:
Henry Monser’s great grand daughter Helen Leonora Durnham married a man from St. Louis by the name of Thomas Brooks Harvey Jr. in Sacramento, CA in 1940. She passed away in Scottsdale, AZ in November of 2009 and was laid to rest alongside her husband in St. Louis, Missouri where he had grown up.

None of their children appear in the family tree, which means either they had none (very unlikely) or they are still living.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

While not of any immediate use to you, I find it interesting to see the land where my ancestors homesteaded. I've got a lot of homestead records in Canada.

Here is the BLM link to Land Records for Henry Alfred Monser. He didn't have much land -- only 38 acres. It would have been hard to make a living on such a plot.

Here are the Google Earth maps of where Henry Alfred Monser homesteaded in Minnesota:

Henry's land is shown in the orange box...

[HKMk23]

OK. ONE more:

Sarah’s granddaughter, Katherine Currie, married into the Neilson family in Cook County, IL in 1916.

The only daughter from that union, named Mary Frances Neilson after her grandmother Frances, lived and Minneapolis, MN and passed away in November of 2015.

So, there are your target surnames:
Archer, Durnham, Currie, Neilson, Harvey, Bailey, Boyle and Murray.

Keep an eyeball on your FReepMail.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Here's a list of family names I pulled out of family trees managed by other people. These are the names of direct descendants of Henry Alfred's two daughters and his widow's children by her second husband. Henry Alfred's two daughters had three half-sisters and two half-brothers, a total of seven children. This led to this list of family names. Do any of these ring a bell with you? The bible could have been handed down to any of the seven children.

• Archer
• Bailey
• Benson
• Boyle
• Brackenwag
• Byron
• Crandall
• Currie
• Delano
• Dixson
• Durnam
• Eckles
• Harris
• Johnstone
• McFall
• McMillan
• Murray
• Neilson
• Ruth
• Spelman
• Thurman

Sarah Jane Dixson. Married at 18; widowed at 24 (she was quite the looker). It looks like this photo might have been taken around the time she was widowed -- she looks real melancholy.
b 25 May 1840 • Moulinette, Stormont, Ontario, Canada
d 11 March 1926 • Biloxi, Harrison, Mississippi, United States

Sarah had a grandchild June Archer who married twice. Her second husband was Francis Joseph Boyle. Note that one family tree on Ancestry is managed by Sue Boyle Fessenden. Maybe you could contact Sue and see if she has any information.

[HKMk23]

Sue is also on familysearch and I have a contact request pending. It depends greatly on how often people are on the site; sometimes it’s very intermittent, so there’s going to be some catch-as-catch-can in this process.

I’ve also run across a Megan Archer, a Kathy Murray and a Peter Smith; all contacted. so, we now wait and see.

[HKMk23]

So, here’s a kind of genealogical tech question for you:

In this Monser / Archer family business, you brought up the surname Spelman, even though she married into the Archer family, and none of her progeny would be Spelmans.

So, you piqued my curiosity throwing the Spelman name into the hat. I’m curious as to the rationale there.

[21twelve]

“Henry Alfred’s two daughters had three half-sisters and two half-brothers...”

I’m guessing from the two half-brothers? But what do I know. I have older second cousins once removed (I think that’s what my wife said they were) but I just called them “uncles”!

[ProtectOurFreedom]

I’ve run across rare situations where divorces have occurred and women reverted to using their maiden names or didn’t take their husbands names. Or they were widowed and took a new husband’s name. It’s a lot more common these days, of course.

In my family tree, I’ve even found cases where a man has had a completely different surname which I’ve been unable to figure out. I’ve seen a lot of cases where somebody else made a mistake and that mistake was blindly copied by other people. I’ve also found that people make errors on taking data from census forms. Sometimes an unrelated person from the next line (next family) gets added to your family. Or a lodger in the house gets added to your family.

These are odd cases, so you are right. I’d put “Spelman” at the bottom of the priority list.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Very good! I didn’t go far enough to look for people who could be contacted. I know what you mean about hit or miss on contacting people. Most of the systems tell you when a person last logged in.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Good morning. You wrote "I think my first choice would be to get the Bible back into the hands of the family." I can certainly understand that viewpoint. The problem is that you might find 20 to 30 descendants alive today and how do you figure out which one should get it? The most direct descendant? The one with the most interest? Who would have the most claim to it?

The best solution might be to have it in a museum where everybody could enjoy it rather than having it locked away in some individual's basement for the next 30 years and then having that person's kids unceremoniously thrown out in the trash when Mom or Dad passed away.

I just noticed that the photo posted by Sue Boyle Fessenden on 20 Jan 2013 appears to be [possibly] a pic of a museum photo exhibit. It doesn't appear to be a family photo because of the nice wooden frame. This is just a wild guess, but perhaps Sue Boyle Fessenden took a picture of a display case at the Dakota County Historical Society Museum. KKMk23 wrote to Sue via Ancestry and it will be interesting to hear what she has to say (if she responds).

In my own family research, I've contacted a few Historical Societies in the U.S. and Canada and always found the people to be extremely helpful and willing to do research for me. If you have the time, I'd call the Dakota County Historical Society and strike up a conversation with them. You never know what you might learn.

If you like, I'd be happy to call them for you.

Please keep us updated!