Alexander Storie's Christmases

Thanks to the generosity of Judy Bauer, I have had the pleasure to read some of her great and great-great grandfathers' diaries, that of Alexander Storie (1814-1896) and of his son John (1863-1944). The diaries passed down to her grandfather, Bill Storie and then to her mother, Rae Storie Vandenbord before passing on to her. I thought I'd share a few Christmas day entries from Alexander Storie (unfortunately, John's diaries are more challenging due to his handwriting, so it might be awhile before I decipher those).

Alexander Storie's farm was up Pink Street, now the Tom and Joan Burns farm.

Here's what was going on in Alex's life 140 years ago, covering Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Note that he doesn't actually mention that it's Christmas:

December 24
Stil moderate with weather. Boys at School. A little snow wind Southerly in AM, N.W. in PM.

December 25
A moderate winter day. Boys storing up ice under the new barn. They went to the fistival (sic) at Brushland in the evening. Wind N.W.

Alexander's Christmas five years later in 1879 was unique - one of the few times he spent it outside of Bovina. He and his sister Mary Ann Storie went to visit family and friends in the Fond Du Lac area of Wisconsin:

December 25
Stil cold wind NW. Alex and family and M. Ann and I went in Sleigh to His Fathers. William and family, Alexander Coulter and wife and Mrs. Jane Roberts were there also, making 12 in all and 3 of themselves making 15 to dinner. Had a fine turkey dinner. Went home with William.

There are a number of Alexanders in Alex's life and in these diaries. It took a bit of detective work to sort them all out. In this entry, the Alex he mentions first is Alexander Brush, grandson of one of Bovina's earliest settlers, also named Alexander Brush. And this Brush's father was named Alexander, too (it was at this Alexander's house that they had their Christmas dinner). The Alexander Brush (1834-1900) with whom they went in a sleigh for dinner was a nephew of Alexander Storie, Alex Storie's sister Jane (1808-1842) being the first wife of Alexander Brush, Jr. The William mentioned I think is Alexander Brush's brother. He died in Fond Du Lac in 1900.

That's not the end of the Alexanders. The Alexander Coulter mentioned is not a descendant of the early Bovina settler, Francis Coulter, but was the son of James Coulter, another Coulter family that was in Bovina in its early days, and his wife Esther Brush. Esther was the daughter of the early Bovina settler and sister to the Alexander Brush who hosted the Christmas dinner. Alexander Coulter died in Fond Du Lac in 1893. (So it seems likely that the family spent most of this Christmas dinner trying to sort out how they were related to each other!)

One hundred and twenty five years ago, in December 1889, Alex makes a bit more mention of Christmas:

December 24
Ground froze quite hard in the morning but calm and thawed during the day and come on rain after night. John and Bell went to Brushland in the evening to see a Christmas Tree. James C. came home did not get here till some time after night about 8 o'clock. The night was very dark with heavy showers.

December 25
Calm warm and pleasent in the morning. Clear calm and sunshine all day. We all went to Mary Ann's for our Christmas dinner. Mrs. Mary Coulter and children, Mrs. Jane Liddle and Samuel Storie and family were there also to dinner. There was fifteen in all. 

The John mentioned probably is Alexander's son. Bell may be Belle Miller, who sometimes helped on the farm. Belle was the daughter of Michael Miller, who lived just down the road from the Stories. James C likely is his son, James Cowan Storie.

The Mary Coulter mentioned probably was the widow of James Coulter, born a Rotermund. Jane Liddle was the widow of Thomas Liddle and was a Coulter, a sister-in-law to Mary Coulter. Jane was related to Alex, her mother being Margaret Storie (her father was Walter Coulter). The Samuel Storie (1847-1922) mentioned is Alex Storie's nephew, son of his brother, also named Samuel.

One hundred and twenty years ago saw a smaller Christmas dinner at home:

December 24
Cold last night. Sunshine in the morning. John doing the chores. He went down to Mr. Millers towards night and bought a turkey for Christmas. He went to Brushland in the evening. James C came up in the evening. Harvey came with him.

December 25
Clear and quite cold in the morning. The ground white with snow but moderate. We had our Christmas dinner by our selves with Harvey and Jas. C. John and James C. went over to Sams in the evening.

The names in this entry showed up in the 1889 entry, except for Harvey. I have yet to figure out who that might be.

The 1894 diary is the last one to which I have access. This was Alexander's next to last Christmas. He passed away in February 1896 at the age of 81 (though his obituary below from the Delaware Republican for February 15, 1896 says he was 83).

Bovina's Scottish Borders Origins

In preparation for my November visit to the Scottish Borders of Scotland, I thought I’d mention a few of the Bovina Families who came from there. I wrote about the Borders last September during a previous visit there. Go to http://bovinanyhistory.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-scottish-borders-and-connection-to.html to see that entry.

I’ve already written about the Coulter family in a previous blog entry. Go to October 17, 2010 blog entry for information about this family (http://bovinanyhistory.blogspot.com/2010/10/bovina-pioneers-francis-and-nancy.html).

Robert Gladstone, who was born in 1777 in Teviothead-Glednest, Scotland, married Ann Ray around 1802 and came to Bovina in 1817. They had eight children. The Gladstone family were members of the Associate Presbyterian Church but had a falling out with the church when dancing was held at their son Walter’s marriage to Isabella Biggar in 1834 (more information about this incident can be found in this blog’s entry for October 23, 2010 - http://bovinanyhistory.blogspot.com/2010/10/gladstones-and-biggars-clash-with.html).

The Hilson family’s roots go back to one John Hilson, who was born in Scotland in 1827, the son of Alexander and Elizabeth (Nesbit) Hilson. The names John and Alexander would continue through their descendants to the present day. The Hilsons came to Bovina relatively late in its history. John Hilson emigrated in 1850, landing in New York and coming directly to Bovina to settle. He farmed for a number of years before becoming a noted merchant in town, establishing his general store in 1867. The store he founded continued through his son Alexander, grandsons John and James and great grandsons Alex and Jack. (see the Bovina NY History blog entry concerning John ‘Old Jock’ Hilson and his death in 1896: http://bovinanyhistory.blogspot.com/2013/07/stories-from-bovinas-cemeteries-old.html)

Also emigrating to America and settling in Bovina was John’s brother William Hilson. He was not in Bovina all that long when he died at the age of 45 in 1856.

James Hoy was born in Scotland in 1745. Around the age of 30, he married Agnes Robertson, who came from Jedburgh, Roxburghshire. They had 6 children, three born in Scotland and three born in Washington County, NY. It was his grandson, John R. Hoy, born in 1831, who came to Bovina. John was a Civil War veteran, dying in Bovina in 1901. His son, David Fletcher Hoy, is the gentleman who did all the research on early Bovina families (see the blog entry for October 6 of this year for more on Davy Hoy).

David Laidlaw was born in the Scottish borders in 1785. He married Helen Knox Hart, also from the borders, in 1825. They had eight children, all born in Scotland. The family came to Bovina sometime after the birth of their last child in 1846. Helen died in 1855 a the age of 60, her husband five years later. David may have been related to Mrs. Thomas Miller (see Miller family information below). David’s grandson Adam had the farm where Marie Burns now lives.

Thomas Liddle was a native of Scotland, born in Liddlesdale, Roxburghshire in 1785. He emigrated to this country in his youth and settled in Bovina, where in 1804 he married Margaret Archibald, a native of Lanarkshire, Scotland. She was eight years his senior. They had eight children. Margaret died in 1857 at the age of 80, survived by Thomas, who lived another decade and died at the age of 83 in 1868. His farm was on Bovina road. It stayed in the family for three generations before it was sold out of the family.

Brothers David (b 1795) and William (b 1791) Miller settled in Bovina about ten to fifteen years apart. They were sons of Thomas Miller and his wife Agnes Laidlaw from Hawick, Scotland. Thomas was active in his local church near Hawick in a place called Roberton. He was for a number of years the ‘beadle’ of the church – basically a lay assistant for the minister. Thomas and Agnes had five chidren. As well as the aforementioned sons, David and William, there were two other sons, John and Berry Shaw, and one daughter, Christina (sometimes referred to as Christain). Berry Shaw and Christina also came to America about the same time as William, but John stayed in Scotland where many of his descendants can  be found today.

David came to America first. He settled in Bovina before 1819 and had a farm established by 1821 in the area of Bramley Mountain. He filed a declaration of intent to become a citizen on February 28, 1821 but didn’t apply to take his oath until May 29, 1840. David was married twice, first in Bovina in 1819 to Agnes Thomson, then, sometime after Agnes's death in 1829, to Isabella Turnbull. He had five children by his first wife and two daughters by his second. David Miller died in 1883 and is buried in Bovina.

William came to America in 1831, possibly traveling with his brother and sister, as well as his second wife, Isabella Dickson and his three children. He was a tenant farmer at Muselee, in the Scottish Borders before emigrating. He also purchased land on Bramley Mountain, starting with 100 acres, in 1833. William was active in the community, serving as a road commissioner for some time and was active in the United Presbyterian Church of Bovina. He died on January 29, 1870. His wife died on December 13, 1882, aged eighty years. Both are buried in Bovina. All of his children settled in Delaware County.

The Ormiston name is one of the prominent Scottish Borders names, believed to have originated from a place name in the borders. It is believed that the Bovina Ormiston's are descended from "the Black Laird," James Ormiston (1522-1573). He was one of the conspirators in the murder of Lord Darnley, the husband of Mary Queen of Scots. He was knighted by the Queen in May 1567, about 3 months after the murder. By December he had been convicted of treason and his estate was forfeited. Ormiston was captured at Jedburgh in 1573 and hanged in December of that year.

The first Ormiston to come to the United States was James' five-greats grandson, William Ormiston. He was born in Scotland in 1780 on a tenant farm called Bonran, not too far from Hawick. He married Jane Graham around 1801. About a year later, he came to America, staying for a time in Philadelphia where he had an uncle. Their first child was born there. By 1804, they were settled in Bovina where the rest of their seven children were born. William’s father pleaded with his son to come back to Scotland, but William showed no interest in doing so. Janet died in 1856 and William in 1864. They were both members of the Association Presbyterian Church and are buried in the old church cemetery at Reinertsen Hill Road. (For more on the Ormistons, go to http://www.dcnyhistory.org/familyormiston.html where you will find a couple of histories written by Lloyd Ormiston about his family. Lloyd was an uncle to the Davidson brothers.)

William Richardson was born in in Tiviothead, Roxburghshire in 1828. He came to the United States in 1849. He lived with the David Laidlaw family and worked as a farm laborer. In 1862, he enlisted in the 144th NY Infantry and served until the end of the Civil War. He married Isabella Sloan and would have three children with her before her death in 1874. Their eldest daughter, Elizabeth, is the mother of Isabell Irvine Russell. An aside – when I made my first visit to the Scottish Borders I hired a taxi to take me to the Roberton church where my ancestor, Thomas Miller (mentioned earlier), had served as beadle. There was something in the driver’s speech pattern that immediate made me think of Isabell Russell. I couldn’t explain exactly what, but it seems that Isabell likely picked up this pattern from her Grandfather Richardson. She would have known him into her adulthood – he died a few months after her marriage to Cecil Russell in 1916.

This postcard shows a house in Scotland that Richardson once lived in. The note on the back is by David Hoy, obtained during his 1908 visit to Scotland.

William Storie was born in Roxburghshire in 1761. By 1802, he was in Bovina and married to Mary McCune, a native of what is now Northern Ireland. They had six children. William died in 1814, when his youngest child was six months old.

Walter Stott was born in Scotland in 1771. He married Jennet Ormiston, who was born in 1765 in Wilton, Roxburghshire. They had three children, all born in Scotland. They emigrated to the United States. Their sons Walter and George both settled in Bovina. Walter married Scottish native Mary Neish while George married Bovina native Ellen Storie. For more on the Walter and Mary Stott family, look at this blog entry for July 21, 2014 (http://bovinanyhistory.blogspot.com/2014/07/stories-from-bovina-cemeteries-stott.html).

The Strangeway family comes from the eastern area of the Scottish borders near Berwick. Christopher Strangeway was born in Allanton in 1814. He came to America with his father Thomas probably when he was a teenager. The family settled in Middletown, NY. Christopher bought a farm on present day Route 28 in Bovina. Married to Margaret Thompson in 1836, they would have seven children. Among Christopher and Margaret descendants are Ruth Coulter Parsons, Celia Coulter and Jack and Alex Hilson.

There are other natives of Scotland among Bovina’s early settlers, though many were not from the borders region. If I am missing a Bovina family from Scotland’s borders, let me know.

Foundations of Bovina - the Dean Farm

Most people in Bovina likely have never heard of the Dean Farm.  That's probably because it left the Dean family in the 1880s and was owned for about 40 years by the Storie family.  Yet as late as 1916, it was still referred to as such on tax rolls because the Dean family were among the early settlers of Bovina.  In fact, the family had several farms along what is now Reagan Road.  For a number of years, the road was known as Dean Road, and the school district on East Bramley Mountain was known as the Dean District.  Reagan Road now dead ends, but it used to continue onto Scutt Mountain Road.  On the 1856 Gould Map, there are three Dean farms.

The farm of particular interest for this blog entry was the the farm of brothers James P. and Joseph A. Dean, located in lot 72 of Great Lot 41 of the Hardenburgh Patent.  It's about 300 yards from Scutt Mountain Road. The farm was leased by James Dean (1794-1873), the father of James P. and Joseph A., from James Overing, probably before 1820.  James P. purchased the farm from James Overing's heir, Mary, in 1854.  James P. , born in 1821, had been married to Agnes Atkin but she died in childbirth in 1856 giving birth to their only child, David.  David died the next year.  James never remarried, but lived and farmed with his younger brother, Joseph.  Born in 1833, Joseph didn't marry until the late 1860s.  He and his wife Mary had a son named James G.  The brothers farmed together for around twenty years, but by about 1879, they had moved to Stamford and were working as wagon makers.  James P. died in 1887 and is buried in Bovina.

The brothers leased the the farm for three years to Albert Adee.  During the Adee's time at the farm, the tragedy of Emma Monroe’s suicide took place (see my blog entry for July 17, 2012 for more details).

The Dean brothers sold the farm to Samuel Storie probably in March 1883.  Storie was born in Bovina in 1847.  He held the farm until around 1910 when he passed it on to his son Eugene Storie and moved to Bainbridge.  Samuel died in Sidney in 1922 and was buried in Bovina.  Eugene had the farm for less than ten years, giving it up around 1917 and moving to Hobart.  He became the Stamford Town Supervisor in 1949 and served for 10 years.  Eugene was 91 when he died in 1976.

Storie had turned the farm over to Alfred Luckhurst, who, with his wife, Alma and their three children, were the last people to live there. They purchased the farm from Storie in November 1922, about five years after settling there.  On Halloween night 1927, the house and barn burned to the ground while Mr. Luckhurst was away in Bloomville.  As the newspapers reported, “only a little was saved from the first floor.”  Losses included an organ, where there was $400 stashed away, and over 300 pounds of potatoes that were stored in the cellar.  The property was insured by the Bovina Co-operative Insurance Company.  Luckhurst was allowed $500 for the contents of the house.  He got a further $20 for the contents of the silo, $450 for the hay, $117 for the oats and $150 for the 100 bushels of potatoes in his cellar.  Luckhurst was not paid for the loss of the actual farm buildings.  A payment of $2750 was made to E.W. Storie, with another $1250 to an A.M. Lyons.  It is possible that Mr. Storie and Mr. Lyons held the mortgage and thus the payments went directly to them.  Two years after the fire, the property was sold by Alma Luckhurst.  By then, the family had moved to Bloomville.  Alfred died in April 1942 and is buried in Davenport.  Mrs. Luckhurst died in 1965. 

I took a short hike to the site of this farm on December 15, 2012.  The house and barn foundations still exist.  Of particular interest was the discovery behind the house of a root cellar.  It was too tight a space for me to squeeze into but I was able to take some flash pictures to see what was in there.

This appears to be what is left of the barn.

Some kind of watering pool near the barn.

The house foundation.

Another view of the house foundation.

Another view of the foundation - note the 'insets' on each side of the cellar door.

This turned out to be the root cellar, not far from the house.

This was the opening to the cellar.

I couldn't get into the cellar, but was able to stick my camera through the opening for this shot.

If you know of any other old farm foundations in Bovina, please let me know so we can explore them together!