< rodbigelow@netzero.net
> 
I was browsing through Internet pages that had to do with Chazy
because my ggg grandfather James Prosper Gilbert lived there many years,
probably from around 1800 until he passed away in 1863. He lived
to be 90 years old. I found your Chazy history pages and your family
home page and enjoyed them very much! I especially liked the Beethoven.
I do not know James' parents names, his brothers and sisters, or many
of his children's names except for my gg grandfather, Jacob Corwin Gilbert.
Some of my distant cousins in Ohio tell me that he married Ruth Conkey.
This brings up my question: when I looked at your family name list,
there was a Ruth Gilbert in the list. She would have been the right
age to be a
daughter of James Gilbert. Do you have any idea if she might
have been?
James Prosper Gilbert was born on 13 Feb 1773, and he died on 10 Apr
1863. I have a letter he wrote his son Jacob dated the day he died, and
it is chock full of names of relatives, most of whom I haven't found on
the Internet yet. There are two exceptions. One is Prosper
Lee Gilbert, born 18 Oct 1819 in North Lake, Champlain, Clinton, NY.
I think he was Jacob's
brother. Jacob was born 5 Oct 1807 on North Hero Island, VT.
My great grandfather, Jacob's son, was also named Prosper Lee Gilbert (born
6 July 1863, d. 12 Sep 1922). So, given the location and the name,
I would say that chances are good that the elder Prosper is a relative.
The other Gilbert relative I found on the Internet was Eunice Gilbert.
My Grandma (Cleda Gilbert) told me that Eunice was James' sister and she
married a Finch, a sea captain. I found a marriage record for her
on the Internet for marrying Duncan B Finch on 28 Dec 1844. If I
assume that this was a first marriage and she was young, she might have
been James' daughter,
not his sister. Grandma said captain Finch sailed around Cape
Horn.
I also have a wonderful letter written in 1851, I think by a Gilbert,
a woman with children who lived in Albany, who described her trip from
New York, across is isthmus of Panama before the canal, up to San Francisco.
She was very descriptive and very well written. English has changed
since 1851! It was a 10-page letter missing some middle pages and
the last page
that had her signature. It could have been Eunice. Grandma
told me who it was when I was young, but I didn't think to write it down.
Could you give me some hints on where I should look to find information
about the Gilberts from Chazy and Albany? I do know that Prosper
Lee Gilbert was living in Albany in 1863 because of what James said in
his letter to Jacob. When is the earliest census for Chazy and Albany?
Where do I have to go to look at it? I just started doing family
history one year
ago, and it has been a lot of fun. I have discovered some Gilbert
descendents in Ohio that I am getting to know by email, and actually got
to meet one of them in person 2 weeks ago.
Thanks so much,
Donna Wendt
d_l_r_wendt@hotmail.com
11208 133rd Ave E
Puyallup, WA 98374
(253) 848-6325
try http://genforum.genealogy.com/gilbert/
I have found your very interesting webpage on Keeseville, NY.
You seem to know a lot of the early history of Clinton County. My
ancestors worked in the woods falling trees etc. Ebenezer Cram was
the father. His son, Elhanan Cram, was killed in Peru,NY on 17 July 1841
by a falling tree that was cut down by his brother, George. Do you
have any record of that event? Also Elhanan had married an Anne Cartwright
in 1824 in Peru. Do you have any records of Cartwrights in that area?
We have not found the name of her parents. After Elhanan was killed,
she married Hugh Whitford and the family moved to Wisconson. Some
of Ebenezer's brothers stayed in Peru. Were marriage records kept
at that time. I will gladly pay you for your time if you can help me.
Please
reply by email. Thank you, Gene Sawyer <genecram@budget.net>
An interesting story about tabby and the Kingsley Plantation can be
found on:
http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/020600/dss_0206tabb.html
Maybe it is a trick of the imagination, or of the green light breaking
in chinks through the moss-strung trees. But the ruins of 24 tiny slave
cabins at Kingsley Plantation have a haunted quality about them, a sort
of vibrating silence that gives new visitors the suspicion that all that
is past there is not wholely past.
Slavery was contradiction for Zephaniah Kingsley
By Colleen Steffen
Times-Union staff writer
Kingsley Plantation - though it was not called that then - was built in
the late
1700s and lived on until the 1920s. But despite its many owners, the person
still most connected with Kingsley Plantation is the one whose name it
still
bears, Zephaniah Kingsley.
Little but the sketchiest outline is known of Kingsley's early life. He
was born
in 1765 in Scotland, came to Charleston, S.C., with his parents in 1773,
then
went with them to Canada after having taken the king's side during the
Revolutionary War. As a young man he traveled all over the world with the
slave trade.
In 1803, he came to St. Augustine, then in Spanish Florida, and pledged
allegiance to Spain in return for land grants. He settled first in present-day
Orange Park, thriving with both mercantile and plantation operations, then
moved to Fort George Island, renting a plantation from John Houston
McIntosh. He bought it in 1817 for $7,000.
Until the 1830s, Kingsley Plantation was home to Kingsley, the African
wife
he had bought as a slave, Anna Madgigaine Jai, and their four children.
The
jungle of trees and vines that so impresses visitors to the plantation
today was
then field after field of cotton, worked by 60 to 80 slaves. Kingsley was
so
successful that he eventually owned more than 32,000 acres of east Florida
and became active in politics after Florida became a U.S. territory in
1821.
But Kingsley is probably best remembered for his views on slavery, about
which he was very vocal. He employed a task system on his plantation, in
which slaves completed a set number of tasks a day and then used the
remainder of their time as they wished. According to Kingsley Plantation
park
ranger Kathy Tilford, he saw slavery not as a permanent, hereditary condition
but thought slaves should have the hope of freedom. It is said he rarely
used
physical punishment. He also advocated ''liberal provisions'' for free
blacks,
something with which a majority of his Southern contemporaries disagreed.
''But he was a slave-holder, and you really can't get around that,'' Tilford
said,
even if his particular brand of slavery sounds less cruel than other kinds.
That
is why Kingsley was and remains a complicated and controversial figure.
He died in 1843 in New York, after relocating his wife and sons to Haiti
and
selling his Fort George Island plantation to a nephew in 1839. Though he
is
said to have had doubts about slavery in his old age, because of the prejudice
his children faced, he owned them until the end of his life.
from: http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/020600/dss_0206king.html
also see: http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/21.htm
for more info on Kingsley.
back to History page 1
go to History page 3
< rodbigelow@netzero.net
>
