Payne Family (Click for Family Tree)

For generations reformers tried to get women to trade in their restrictive Victorian clothing for looser garb. The madness of tight corsets that moved bones and internal organs, long dresses that carried the filth of streets filled with excrement of horses and chamber pot contents thrown out a window, big heavy hats that compressed women’s neck bones from the weight, multiple layers that overheated women in the days before air conditioning, etc., made movement for women challenging. No manner of  logic, cajoling, or even science was enough for the ‘modern’ woman to not follow the whims of fashion and the required-by-polite-society need for modesty.

Bicycles changed all that! Women would not ride very far if they could not breathe deeply due to a corset, or if their long skirt got caught in the spokes of the wheels. Those huge, heavy, unsymmetrical hats would definitely put them off balance too.

Bicycles were a great form of exercise, and a way for women to have a bit of freedom. The author of this piece suggests that the bicycle was the biggest influence on women deciding to wear clothes that offered more comfort and “larger freedom of action.” Her conclusion was that this change would bring to women a “life of higher opportunity and realization.” (Love that.)

There was most probably a wealth of causes for these changes, including the women’s suffrage movement. The bicycle surely did play a part, though there was one article in an old newspaper that stated women who rode bicycles were actually prostitutes going off to visit their customers! Casting aspersions on a woman’s reputation was definitely a way to keep most from taking advantage of newfound freedoms.

At least one of our ancestors, Lynette Payne, had the courage to ride a bicycle and she even wore bloomers! She is said to have been the first woman in Newton, Iowa, to ride the new contraption, and Lynette was a suffragist as well.

Lynette had grown up in liberal Berkeley, California, and many commented on her sophistication after she moved to small Newton, Iowa. Sure wish that we had more photos of Lynette in those early years- would really love to see her on her bicycle! Pure madness, indeed.

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1. Bicycle Dress Reform. The Pacific Unitarian, Vol. 6, No. 5, Page 129. March, 1898, San Francisco, California, via GoogleBooks.
2. Victorian clothing and its dangers are discussed in the BBC’s “Hidden Killers of the Victorian Home.” Thankful that corsets are no longer required…
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy7iUoWi_-U
   The BBC also made “Hidden Killers” episodes for the Tudor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zSyjyLAWWM) and Edwardian (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7kxUyvkXjw) eras. The Tudor episode discusses death by drowning (40% of Tudor deaths), including the weight of women’s clothing once wet that often led to drowning.
3. Maureen Taylor, “The Photo Detective” has a number of books that show clothing from various eras to aid in photo identification, including two coloring books: Victorian Hats: A Coloring Book, and Coloring the Past: the 1860s. Her books are available on her website, MaureenTaylor.com, or on Amazon. She also has a blog at http://photodetective.blogspot.com. Maureen’s classes and webinars are wonderful as well if you are interested in old photos or vintage clothing.
4. Family photo of Lynette (Payne) McMurray.

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McMurray Family, Payne Family (Click for Family Tree)

OK, did you chuckle just a little when you read the title of this post? Or did the thought of ‘correcting internet errors’ elicit a loud guffaw??

Yes, me too, but I am SO motivated to take on this task- I hate junk genealogy!!

And yes, I must have a Sisyphus Complex- hopefully without my having the deceitfulness and hubris of the original Greek mythological character.

In this case, it is about Edward B. Payne (affectionately known as EBP in our household), my great genealogical obsession. I would roll a stone uphill to make sure he is remembered correctly. (Well, for a while, anyway, and depending on how big the stone is, how round it is, and how steep the hill, how hot it is outside, and…)

In the excellent “A History of Berkeley, From The Ground Up,” Dr. Frank Payne is mentioned a number of times. He apparently was an early physician in Berkeley, and his name can be found in the Alameda County Voter’s Registration Lists next to the name of Rev. Edward B. Payne. I had wondered how the two were related, but had never researched that particular question in detail. So when I saw that this article stated, in Chapter 14 under “Dwight Way Station”:

“…the Reverend Payne (the brother of Doctor Payne, Berkeley’s erstwhile physician),”

I became very motivated to document the relationship and see if I could get this statement corrected. Despite Edward’s magazine article, “Spectres on the Overland Trail,” which is most likely totally fiction, he did not have a brother who is known to Payne researchers- he only had 2 sisters. One sister died at age 11, and one stayed in the east and married. I have never found any inkling of a second male child in the family.

It turns out that I do have more information about Frank and his family than I realized, plus a few other New England Payne lines. Ancestry.com states the relationship of the accountholder to a person in the tree, but what I found was confusing: Frank Howard Payne (1850-1904) was my “brother-in-law of 1st cousin 4x removed.” But WHICH cousin? That would take a lot of time to figure out. Thankfully I have been clicking on all sorts of things on (trusted) websites since a lot of them no longer highlight with a mouse-over to signify a hyperlink, and sometimes good intel results. This time, by clicking on that phrase, Ancestry provided me with a list of people and relationships that were used to determine the connection. Mercy Hitchcock and her husband Peter Payne were thus the common ancestors.

(At first it was hard to understand the above chart, but then I realized it is sort of an hourglass, with one family at the top going back generations to the center point, which is the common ancestor. One then follows down the other family line from that ancestor.)

From the helpful chart, I could ascertain the relationship of Frank and Edward.

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1.   “A History of Berkeley, From The Ground Up” copyright 2007-2008 by Alan Cohen, http://historyofberkeley.org/chapter14.html. Accessed 3/12/16.
2. “Spectres on the Overland Trail” in The Overland Monthly, Volume XIV- Second Series, July-December 1889, p654-7, December 1889. https://books.google.com/books?id=l3hAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PR3&lpg=PR3&dq=%22Spectre+on+the+Overland+Trail,%22&source=bl&ots=JJHvzz85AU&sig=5zRj89fSb3fV0AdBHbOef4ls6m0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQ8qr3gbzLAhWJ4SYKHSqwCJEQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22Spectre%20on%20the%20Overland%20Trail%2C%22&f=false
3. Ancestry.com: censuses, voter registrations, vital records, etc.

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McMurray Family (Click for Family Tree)

Tuesday’s Tip:

Do the math.

Review the timeline.

The family story that has been passed down is that “General Proctor” and his daughter Mary Proctor came to America from England at “the close of the war.” (See “Mystery Monday- The McMurrays in America“) For years we had thought that they were speaking of the Revolutionary War, so these index listings, found when researching Henry Horn, another McMurray ancestor, were intriguing. Could General Proctor have fought in the American Revolution? If so, which side was he on?

And what was his first name?? Since these officers are from Pennsylvania, and Mary Proctor and her husband settled in Pennsylvania, could one of them be her father, ‘our’ General Proctor?

Looking at this mystery again, though, makes a few lightbulbs go on- sometimes a bit more information or even time will help data make sense. We do know that Mary Proctor and her husband William McMurray were living in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, by 22 May 1819 when their son and our direct ancestor, Henderson McMurray, was born. Mary was 26 years old, and William 30.

Oops- we need to do the math. Since Mary was born in 1793 and William in 1789, “the close of the war” would have to be the War of 1812 if the letter from Aunt Ibe Raugh was speaking of an American war. Mary and William were not even born when the American Revolution was happening.

Doing the math and then looking at the timeline makes us realize that these officers are most likely not ‘our’ General Proctor.

The rambling mind of a genealogist, of course, wonders if any of these officers could be the brothers or cousins of Mary’s father, who induced them to immigrate…

The 1850 US Federal Census for Allegheny Twp., Blair County, Pennsylvania, states that William was born in Ireland, and Mary in Pennsylvania- NOT England, as in the family letter. The 1860 census for the same place states again that William was born in Ireland. Unfortunately Mary passed away in 1851, so we have no other census to note her birthplace. Was she born in England or Pennsylvania? Or in Ireland, as some unsourced Ancestry.com trees and her Find A Grave memorial state? This will need more research, though we have already looked for many years.

Keeping the math in mind and a timeline in view, it makes us realize that possibly we need to be looking at the War of 1812 records just in case General Proctor served in it, at the very end. If so, which side would he have been on? As an Englishman, did he come over to fight for the king and then decide to stay and become an American? Or did he fight in the war for the Brits and then, returning home, decide to bring his daughter back to America with him and start a new life? And was he really a General??

If we could find a marriage record for Mary and William, or names of any of her siblings, that might help us find out just who ‘General Proctor’ was, and we can go from there. Any other ideas?

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1. Mystery Monday- The McMurrays in America at http://heritageramblings.net/2014/04/07/mystery-monday-the-mcmurrays-in-america/
2. The Battles of Trenton and Princeton by William S. Stryker, Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1898.
3. 1850 US Federal Census for William and Mary (Proctor) McMurray- Year: 1850; Census Place: Allegheny, Blair, Pennsylvania; Roll: M432_755; Page: 259; Image: 520. http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1850usfedcenancestry&h=645319&ti=0&indiv=try&gss=pt

4. 1850 US Federal Census for William McMurray- Year: 1860; Census Place: Allegheny, Blair, Pennsylvania; Roll: M653_1078; Page: 14; Image: 18; Family History Library Film: 805078. Ancestry.com.                                                                  5. Find A Grave memorial #128118060 for Mary J. Proctor McMurray- http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=128118060&ref=acom

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McMurray Family, Horn Family (Click for Family Tree)

We last left Henrich Horn, our Hessian ancestor, hanging- thankfully, not literally, but that could have been the case had George Washington’s troops not protected their POWs from an angry mob.

After being marched victoriously by American troops through some of the streets of Philadelphia, the march had been cut short by an inflamed mob that the American escorts felt they could not control. They locked the ~850 Hessian prisoners of war in the American barracks for safety. The POWs, including our Henrich, would have worriedly awaited the next move by their escorts from Washington’s troops.

The first Battle of Trenton, where Henrich and his comrades had been captured, had increased the morale of the patriots so much that it turned the tide of the American Revolution. Little did the POWs know that while insults, rotten vegetables, and rocks were being thrown at them as they marched through Philadelphia, Washington had marched back to Trenton with his troops for another engagement. The Continental Army won that battle, then moved on to Princeton, New Jersey, where Washington was also victorious.

The British traveller Nicholas Cresswell, definitely a Tory, commented,

“The minds of the people are much altered. A few days ago they had given up the cause for lost. Their late successes have turned the scale and now they are all liberty mad again.”

He later wrote, after another British loss,

“It is the Damd Hessians that has caused this, curse the scoundrel that first thought of sending them here.”

(That ‘scoundrel’ would be good King George. Those would be treasonous words, had not the British had bigger fights to manage on the North American continent.)

The British and Hessian soldiers were in such a panic at their unexpected losses to the ragtag Americans that they thought they saw Washington and his troops everywhere.  It was in this atmosphere of changing fortunes that the Trenton prisoners were marched from Philadelphia to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Washington wanted the POWs far away from the front, and Lancaster fit the bill.

Philadelphia is about 80 miles almost due west of Lancaster, and it would take over 20 hours to walk today. In January of 1777, however, it took four days, without snowplows and on roads that would have been icy and rough. The cold and tired prisoners arrived in Lancaster on 6 January 1777, probably around mid-day.

Lancaster was the largest interior American city, with 3,300 residents in 1775, and many German-Americans had lived in the area for some time. The Hessians were taken to a barracks “built of brick, with three wings, and surrounded by a stockade.” The stockade had log cabins on each corner, and walls twenty feet high. There were already some British POWs in the barracks, and the Hessians were given the center wing for themselves.

One Hessian recorded in his journal that everything was “peaceful and quiet.” Maybe now the captured Hessians would get a bit of recuperation after their travails of the last few months.

To be continued…

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1. Featured image: A Map of Philadelphia and Parts Adjacent, With A Perspective View of the State House. Philadelphia: Lawrence Hebert, 1752
   source: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3824p.ct000294
2. Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett, 2004. Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for History, this tells the story of the crossing of the Delaware and the Battle of Trenton, mostly from the American point of view. This is an excellent book, and very well-written.
3. The Hessians and the other German Auxiliaries of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War by Edward J. Lowell. Harper and Brothers Publishers, New York, 1884.
4. AmericanRevolution.org: “The Hessians,” chapter VIII, an excellent read- http://www.americanrevolution.org/hessians/hess8.php
5. Journal of the Fusilier Regiment v. Knyphausen From 1776 to 1783, possibly by Lt. Ritter? See http://freepages.military.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~amrevhessians/journal1.htm#navbar
6. Henrich Horn http://freepages.military.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~amrevhessians/oh/hwardhorn.htm
7. Hessians Remaining in America: http://freepages.military.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~amrevhessians/a/amhessians10.htm#navbar
8. Wikipedia articles:
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_House_(Philadelphia)
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Trenton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_battle_of_the_Battle_of_Trenton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_von_Knyphausen
9. The Hessians. Mercenaries from Hessen-Kassel in the American Revolution, by Rodney Atwood, Cambridge University Press, 1980.
10. The Hessians and Other German Auxiliaries of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War, by Edward J. Lowell, Harper & Brother, New York, 1884 Republished by Forgotten Books, 2012.
11. A Generous and Merciful Enemy. Life for German Prisoners of War during the American Revolution, by Daniel Krebs. University of Oklahoma Press, 2013.
12. Four days between Philadelphia and Lancaster: “From Paths to Roads to Highways to Canals to Railways” at http://lancasterhistory.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=372&Itemid=740

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McMurray Family, Payne Family (Click for Family Tree)

Today is “Susan B. Anthony Day” and we should all be celebrating her birth that occurred 15 Feb 1820. She was a tireless worker for women’s rights, so any of us who are female, our mothers, and their mothers, plus the mothers of those mothers, (depending where you are on the generational spectrum) all owe Susan B. a big “THANK YOU!!”

Various bills have been put forth to make 15 February a National Holiday. A number of social activists already have National Holidays honoring their work- Martin Luther King, of course, and even Ceasar Chavez recently got an official day. But Susan B. Anthony was passed over- again, by Congress and the President. How can that be, when her work benefits 51% of our population, and cuts across economic status and race??  Wherever she is, she is probably just shaking her head… women fought for abolition too, and hoped that they would get the right to vote when African-Americans did. She and her sisters wanted the government to make all Americans truly equal, as stated in the Declaration of Independence. Apparently the “all men” in that document meant that literally- black men got the right to vote, white men already had it, but all women had to fight for many more years to get the “right” to vote. We should not have to fight now to get a day for Susan and the other women who worked so tirelessly for women’s equality.

Okay, you might say, Susan B. Anthony was put on a coin- shouldn’t that ‘count’? (Bad pun- sorry.) They put her likeness on the front of a silver dollar, BUT left the same reverse as on the previous silver dollar, an eagle landing on the moon. They couldn’t design a coin reverse for her too? How does an eagle on the moon relate to woman’s suffrage?

And who wants to use a heavy silver dollar when they can use a lightweight paper bill? Another problem was that the new smaller silver dollars looked so similar to quarters that the public did not want to use them, and vending machine companies fought it. Thus the demand was small and Susan’s coins were only minted for a total of four years; they are no longer available from the US Mint. Congress has, however, authorized the US Mint to issue  a “First Spouse” series- all the wives of US Presidents. While First Ladies have done a lot of good work, it pales in comparison to what the suffragists did, endured, and accomplished. Where is our set of coins for women who worked for a social and political revolution?

It seems that our government just does not want to honor the women who worked for social and political justice.

Even Fox News thinks that Susan B. Anthony should be honored with a National Holiday. There are five states where Susan B. Anthony’s birthday is a state holiday: California, Florida, New York, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.  Oh wait- West Virginia celebrates it on election day but only in even years (??), so does that really count?

Edward Biron Payne (the grandfather of Dr. Edward A. McMurray) may have met Susan B. Anthony; at the least he most likely heard her speak, and read her articles. (He read everything.) In 1895, suffragists in California invited Susan B. Anthony and Anna Howard Shaw of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) to attend their Woman’s Congress. They were pushing to get woman’s suffrage passed by voters in California, and needed help. (A woman’s suffrage bill was passed in 1893 by the CA state legislature, but the governor vetoed it, saying that women voting was unconstitutional.) The Woman’s Congress was held in San Francisco in May, and Edward B. Payne probably took the ferry across the bay and listened to Susan B. Anthony’s words. Edward himself was very committed to equality- he was a Christian Socialist, a Unitarian minister, and journalist. He also had founded a Utopian colony called Altruria, where it was required that the Vice-President be a woman. We don’t know if he knew Ninetta (Wiley) Eames by this time, but Berkeley, California was a small town, so he may have known her. Ninetta was a suffragist, and would later become his second wife.

Susan B. Anthony spoke around the state in support of women’s suffrage, including at a Unitarian Church in Berkeley. We have no proof that Edward was in attendance, but it would be very surprising if he was not sitting in the front row at that meeting or others. We know he regularly attended lectures, and he also gave a series of lectures to support woman’s suffrage. Rev. Payne loved a great philosophical discussion, and a social revolution for the people. I do hope that he got to meet with her and discourse!

A thank you to Rev. Payne and others was published after the vote was defeated. Southern California had passed it, but San Francisco, more populous, defeated the bill. Saloonkeepers and the liquor industry, more prevalent in San Francisco,  were afraid that if women got the vote, a prohibition of alcohol would be next.

All women today in the US should honor Susan B. Anthony on her birthday, and really, every day. Men need to as well- when women have equality, men benefit economically, socially, emotionally. Having the vote is powerful, and we need to honor the suffragists by using that vote in every election.

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1. “Make Susan B. Anthony Day a national holiday” by Phyllis Chessler.
   http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/02/13/make-susan-b-anthony-day-national-holiday.html
2. Susan B. Anthony Day- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_B._Anthony_Day
3. “Brief Berkeley Notes,” San Francisco Call, 19 Nov. 1896, p11, c2, via ChroniclingAmerica.com.
4. National Susan B. Anthony House & Museum- http://susanbanthonyhouse.org/her-story/biography.php
5. Gayle Gullett has done some excellent writing on the California Woman Suffrage movement. She has an article on JSTOR: “Constructing the Woman Citizen and Struggling for the Vote in California, 1896-1911.” Gayle Gullett, Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 69, No. 4, Woman Suffrage: The View from the Pacific (Nov., 2000), pp. 573-593. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3641225
   She also wrote a book on the topic: Becoming Citizens: The Emergence and Development of the California Women’s Movement, 1880-1911.Urbana and Chicago:  University of Illinois Press, 2000. See a review at https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=4314
6. Here is a good resource on the California Suffrage Movement:
   “The California Plan: California’s Suffrage Strategy and Its Effects in Other States and the National Suffrage Campaign” by Lauren Abel
   http://journals.chapman.edu/ojs/index.php/VocesNovae/article/view/636/887

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