The Miracle of Connections, and Wendy's Great-Great-Great Grandfather

  I have no first cousins. All my life, people have been stunned and confused when I told them that. I've even had people respond, “That’s impossible.” Unfortunately, it’s not. My parents were both only children, which means I have no aunts or uncles. Yes, I had great-aunts and great-uncles, but think about it. If both parents are only children, you have no aunts, uncles or first cousins. It is a serious loss. 

     Like everyone, though, I have many second, third, fourth….etc. cousins. We are all related to, and connected with, so many thousands of people without knowing it. I am in touch with a few of my second cousins. What is amazing is that I am in regular contact with a fifth cousin, Wendy. Or is it sixth? It gets confusing. Wendy and I share the same fifth great-grandparents, Israel Taylor (1769-1841) and Mary Blair (1774-1834). That we connected at all is a miracle of the internet, something possible through family history sites. 

     After we’d been corresponding and sharing information, I discovered that my third great-grandfather, Myron Fitch Barbour, and Wendy’s third great-grandfather, William H. Taylor, went out to the California Gold Rush together. They left their homes in Indiana and traveled to New York where they caught a ship, the Rising Sun, bound for California. It was a long trip around South America in those days. William was the uncle of Myron’s wife Jane Suttenfield Barbour, but they were nearly the same age. Jane’s mother, Laura Taylor, was the oldest child in her family, and William H. Taylor was her baby brother, born when she was 22 and having her third child - Jane. 

     I think Myron and William would be amazed that one of their great-great-great grandchildren is in touch with one of the other’s great-great-great grandchildren. I’ve told the story of their travels in my biography of Myron so I won’t get into the details here. I wanted to focus on the rest of William’s life. 

 William H.C. Taylor - Childhood

     William’s parents were from Sheffield, Massachusetts. His paternal grandparents, Israel Taylor Sr. and Elizabeth Marr, both died in rural New York in 1796. Sometime after Israel and Mary’s 1793 marriage and the 1795 birth of their first child, Laura, in Boston, they had the first of five children born in New York. So it is likely they joined his parents when they moved to New York. Israel Jr. and Mary had five children there. If records are correct, they had twins Elvira and Marshall in Detroit in 1811. Here their story picks up with oldest daughter Laura.

     Family history accounts say that Israel Jr. was on a “business trip” accompanied by his daughter. They were captured in the War of 1812 then released, and Laura eloped with a soldier, William Suttenfield. (Of course, with Elvira and Marshall being born in Detroit a year earlier, the whole family relocated to Detroit and it was not a business trip.) William Suttenfield was subsequently posted to Piqua, Ohio. Israel Jr. followed William and Laura, settling his family there. William H.C. Taylor was born in Ohio in 1817.

     Laura and William Suttenfield were next posted to Fort Wayne, Indiana. It was literally just the fort - not a town. But after William got out of the Army in 1816, he decided to stay put and built a two-story log tavern outside the fort.

     By 1822, Israel and Mary moved their family to the rough “outpost in the wilderness” that was Fort Wayne. It seems that Israel was always seeking something, and the grass must have continually seemed greener elsewhere. He was appointed fence inspector in the community. Probably around 1831, he made his last move, to the new town of South Bend. His son Lathrop Minor Taylor platted the town with partner Alexis Coquillard that year.  

     A teenage William Taylor settled into their new home and was probably taken under Uncle Lathrop’s wing. Lathrop had gone into business with his very successful Fort Wayne brother-in-law, Samuel Hanna, and had a fur trading and mercantile business in South Bend. Samuel employed another Taylor brother in South Bend, Edmund Pitts Taylor, who went by “Pitts,” and probably another brother, Marshall Taylor. 

     William Taylor’s mother Mary died in South Bend when he was 17. His father remarried the next year at age 66 to a 34-year old widow. A little sister, Nellie was born when William was 20 years old. 

Marriage and Going West

     Records are sketchy, but around 1846 William married Sarah Anne Smith, possibly back in Fort Wayne. What’s puzzling is how these two got together. She was from Ontario County, New York, and her parents still lived in Potter in Yates County. All of her siblings at the time of her marriage lived in New York also.

     Early in his marriage William was probably back in Fort Wayne working for brother-in-law Samuel Hanna. William and Sarah’s first child, William Henry Harrison Taylor, was born in 1846 and family trees on Ancestry.com say his birthplace was Fort Wayne. It makes sense to me to think that William H.C. developed a close relationship at this time with his “nephew,” Myron, who was actually six years older, in part by living in the same town. 

     It amazes me that these two left wives and children to go out to the Gold Rush. But they did, and they certainly weren’t alone. Men spent their life savings, borrowed money and mortgaged farms to get out to California, and many left their wives and families behind. William and Myron took the most expensive way to the gold fields, the “gentlemen’s way” when they took passage on the Rising Sun. 

     There are so many unknowns, details lost by not being written down. Myron returned to his family in Fort Wayne, and except for a few years in Chicago after Jane died, he spent the rest of his life there. A story on the Find-a-Grave website for Sarah says that William dropped his wife and baby William off with her parents, Peter and Betsey in New York. Later, according to this source, Peter took his daughter and grandson out to California to reunite with William, and Peter sought his own gold fortune. It makes sense to me. Peter and Betsey’s last child was born in 1852. The family story was that Peter arrived in California and was killed in an accident or homicide in 1854.

     However it happened, William stayed out west and probably never saw his siblings again. He and Sarah settled in Yuba County, California and had three more children together, Mary Ellen; Horace, who died as a baby; and Charles. Yuba County was founded in 1850 and is today called “California’s gateway to the historic Mother Lode country,” on its official website. Sarah was buried there in 1878 with a double gravestone shared with baby Horace, never forgotten after twenty years. 

Nevada

     William and his wife separated several years before her death. In 1870, William was living in a boarding house - a saloon, actually, in Wadsworth, Nevada. Wadsworth today is on the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation. The land was set aside for a reservation for the Northern Paiute in 1859 but was not surveyed until 1865 or officially given the status of a reservation until 1874. This uncertainty allowed white settlement, and it wasn’t until 1968 after a series of court battles that the tribe had 1859 set as the official date of their reservation, significant because it granted legal rights. 

     What would draw William there?  The Central Pacific Railroad reached Wadsworth, 35 miles east of Reno, in July 1868. The building of the railroad is a fascinating history. An excerpt from an article from Nevada Magazine gives a lot of background on the landscape and conditions of this area: 

     The country east of Wadsworth was a desert, and it afforded little that could be used in the construction of a railroad. With the exception of a few cords of stunted pine and juniper trees all the fuel had to be hauled from the Sierra Nevada Mountains. There was not a coal bed anywhere along the line and there was not a tree for 500 miles that would make a board. There was no water after leaving the Truckee and Humboldt Rivers. In the mountains east of Wadsworth small springs were developed. When water was obtained it was carefully conserved and piped over miles of desert to the lines of the railroad. Most of the water used on the Nevada construction work had to be hauled in water trains to the end of the track and from there in tank wagons to the gangs working ahead.

     To expedite the construction work, about 3,000 men were sent 300 miles in advance of the track to Palisade Canyon in Elko County. There, workmen were supplied by teams and wagons hauling materials over the desert. Another construction force carried the grading from Wadsworth east. Ties were hauled hundreds of miles to places where construction gangs were pushing the line eastward.

     It was a daunting trip even with the railroad. The Washoe Valley was described as a haven for those who made the eastern journey to California over the desert plains of Nevada, arriving to have “their eyes drink in the beauties of the rich, rural scene, meadows of waving grass, watered by a clear mountain stream, forest of majestic pine and regal fir, rugged mountains and silvery lake.” 

     On the 1870 census, people living near William were from all over - Bavaria, Prussia, Russia, Scotland, Ireland, New Brunswick, “Off Cape Horn,”  but it is very noticeable how many Chinese men were there. Most are listed as “laborers,”  others cooks, and one ran a laundry. I just can’t decipher the enumerator’s handwriting where he wrote William’s occupation. On the 1875 Nevada census, he was working as a clerk. He became deputy postmaster sometime after his arrival. An 1878 newspaper article explained slow mail service, pointing the blame at the service on the mail cars on the trains. That was the year Sarah died back in California.

     In 1880 he was listed as a “clerk in a store” on the census and identified as a widower. He would never remarry. William built a seemingly nice life for himself in Wadsworth, though. He was well-regarded and was elected justice of the peace several times, earning him the title Judge Taylor. He was an ardent Republican and attended local conventions. He also was amongst a group of men who worked to organize a “McKinley and Hobart Club” to support their presidential choice. There were many such clubs organized around the country. 

     In 1884 a fire broke out in the depot and in minutes the post office and Wadsworth Hotel were in flames. The town water supply came from wells and the buildings were wooden and old; nothing could be done in time to save them. Four-fifths of the town was burned to the ground, and though it was April, snow fell on the newly homeless residents, adding to the misery. Afterwards, as the town rebuilt, it was improved. Many brick buildings and residences were constructed. “The town is lined with neat residences, lawns and trees and bids fair to become one of the prettiest villages in Nevada,” an 1888 historical book said. The railroad got in the spirit by planting hundreds of poplar, cork elm and locust trees and planting lawns around their properties. In 1888, a new church and $4,000 schoolhouse were underway. There was a population of two hotels, one of which, the Nevada House, was where William would make his home in the last years of his life. There were two grocery stores, a meat market, barber shop, shoe shop, blacksmith shop and a “great amusement hall.” There was a dairy farm outside of town that supplied the town’s needs and ranches that raised hay. 

     The main employer was the railroad, though. Wadsworth shipped borax, salt, soda, wool, trout caught in the Truckee River and lakes, and stock from ranches several hundred miles around. The railroad employed men in its coal shed, machine shops, round house, freight depot, passenger depot and offices, car shop, ice house and library. 

     Although William was an old man by now and complained of rheumatism, a square dance call printed in the paper in 1893 shows an example of entertainment that took place in the amusement hall, and the spirit of town residents:

Cowboys’ Delight

Fall and balance; swing and run;

Four to two and two comes down;

Lady in center and five hands round;

Ladies swing out and gents swing in;

Five up and go it ag’in.

Swing out; run away with the swing;

Hold and balance; all balance;

Now partners run away with the hall,

Everybody dance; salute the lady you dance with’

Final promenade, the cowboys’ huddle.

     When William died in 1899, the newspaper said, “During his many years residence among us he acquired wide acquaintances and the friendliest of feelings and esteem were entertained toward him by all who knew him. He was one of the landmarks of Wadsworth, a part of the community, always interested in the doings of the town.” The obituary said he had good and true friends who administered to his every want and comfort in his final illness, and a nurse was present. No survivors were listed; it sounds as if he had no contact with his children. But he had a proper Victorian funeral, so very important in his day, with a floral tribute in the shape of a pillow, one in the shape of a cross, and many bouquets. 

     

Sources:

     Griswold, Bert. A Pictorial History of Fort Wayne, Chicago, Illinois: Robert O. Law Co., 1917.

      “Trails to Rails, Roads and Skyways - The Railroad Comes to Nevada,” Nevada Magazine, https://nevadamagazine.com/issue/january-february-2018/5110/#:~:text=On%20June%2019%2C%201868%2C%20the,on%20July%2022%20that%20year.

     Hummel, N.A. General History and Resources of Washoe County, Nevada, Published Under the Auspices of the Nevada Educational Association, Reno, Nevada: Evening Gazette Job Print, 1888.

     

Newspapers:

“Slow Mail Service,” Reno Gazette-Journal (Reno, Nevada), 23 Dec 1878, p. 3. 

     “Republicans Attention!” The Wadsworth Dispatch (Wadsworth, Nevada), 19 Aug 1896, p. 4.

     “Death of W.C. Taylor,” The Wadsworth Dispatch (Wadsworth, Nevada), 1 July 1899, p. 1.

Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023