194 Adams Street

This is a tale of sloppy research (corrected over time), and strange connections.

Last year, while preparing for a research day in Brooklyn, I decided it would be fun to see some of the addresses where my ancestors lived.  I compiled a list from the family tree and checked through my options, using Google Street View to get a sense of what each address looks like now and whether there's any chance it could still be the same as it was in the 19th century.  Many, of course, were clearly rebuilt, while a few did seem like they could date back that far.  I took that quickly-assembled list on my trip and photographed a number of those spots on a lovely spring day.

One of the addresses I wanted to visit, despite the building being gone, was the location of #194 Adams Street - the home of Mary Mix and Frederick Harrison, their children, and his parents Harriet Hotchkiss and Justus Harrison.  They moved there from #20 High St (which I've previously discussed), probably in the second half of 1843 or the first half of 1844.  It is likely that at least four of Mary and Frederick's children were born in that house - Mary Ellen (my fourth great grandmother) may have been born there or at #20 High St.  Her younger siblings - Frances J, Frederick E, Henry H, and Edward - were almost certainly born at #194 Adams St.  Their older sister Harriet had been born in New Haven.  Unfortunately, Frances J, Frederick E, Henry H, and Edward all passed away young.  I suspect that Mary and Frederick moved to Lafayette Ave after losing three of those children at the Adams St address.  The family appears in city directories at #194 Adams St up until the 1853-54 edition, and then at #28 Lafayette Ave in the 1854-55 edition (published in 1854).  Mary Mix Harrison passed away in July 1854, likely at the Lafayette Ave address, as did Edward no more than two weeks later.

With so many significant family events happening at #194 Adams St, I made a point to stop by and take a photo at the location indicated by Google Maps, which was near the intersection with Johnson St:

On returning home from my trip, I checked over the details of this location once again, and noticed something I had missed... there's a statue of Henry Ward Beecher on Johnson St, at the far end of the block that I photographed.  It's hidden somewhere in the trees - and I had to kick myself a bit, given the family connections to Beecher, thinking I might have been able to include it in the shot if I had done better prep work and known it was there.  I also recognized the building on the right in my photo - it's the Federal Building and Post Office, which figures in the Atlas Iron Construction story.  See my past post about the Post Office Annex, which was constructed on the rear of that building in 1892.

This was all intriguing, and as I double checked the details, I found that I had made an even bigger mistake... maps of Brooklyn from 1874 and 1880 showed #194 not at Johnson Street, but halfway between Nassau and Concord Streets!

The 1880 map also showed a Gothic Hall immediately across the street from #194, which intrigued me.  It turns out that was a large hall used for lectures, concerts, balls, and so forth.  One online article shares that this was the premiere performance venue in Brooklyn in the early 1840s, "slipping to second-class status with the building of Montague Hall" in 1845, after which it "developed something of a rough reputation, what with its rowdy fireman’s balls and Irish Benevolent Society receptions."  I began wondering what the Harrison family might have felt, living across the street from such a venue.  Even more intriguing, that building had been originally built as the Second Presbyterian Church - the same church this family attended, in a different building, as I discussed in a recent post.

 

As I continued to dig into this exciting new set of details, I realized that I was still on the wrong block!  Checking earlier maps of Brooklyn to see what the block might have looked like while the Harrisons lived there in the 1840s and 50s, I saw on an 1855 map that #194 Adams St was actually located between Concord and Tillary Streets.  Oops!

I've put together a version of the 1855 map to the right.  This stitches together three map files, marks the correct location for #194 as of that year, and includes both Gothic Hall to the north and the intersection with Johnson St where I took my photograph to the south.  The pink shading and single dot for the building at #194 indicate that it was a first class brick or stone dwelling, with a coped slate or metal roof.

This stretch of Adams Street has now been widened and replaced by Brooklyn Bridge Boulevard.  The Federal Court Building takes up the full block between Concord and Tillary Streets.

In the end, my sloppy work and mistakes have at least led to an interesting story - as well as a reminder to myself to prepare better even for "smaller" research items.

I also checked for more details on how and when the street addresses changed... and learned that there was a massive renumbering effort undertaken around 1870, covering almost every single address in Brooklyn!  There's a fascinating, interactive online article about this from The New York Times.

Learning about that gave me a stronger basis for checking the details of other pre-1870 Brooklyn addresses with family connections.  I'll have more findings to share about those, soon.

 

Sources:

The 1880 Atlas of the Entire City of Brooklyn (which led me astray), by G.W. Bromley, available from the New York Public Library.

The 1855 Map of the City of Brooklyn, by W. Perris, available from the New York Public Library.

For details on Gothic Hall:
The Brooklyn Theatre Index Volume I, by Cezar Del Valle, p1.
"Montague Hall" at Whitman's Brooklyn.

Williams Family Members in Green-Wood Cemetery

Here's the complete list of Williams family relatives buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY:

 

Section 173, Lot 21543 

Henry Clay Williams Sr., 6 Oct 1838 - 16 Sept 1896.

Mary Ellen (Harrison) Williams, 29 Oct 1844 - 3 Oct 1878.  His first wife.

Francis Eastman Williams, 1 Apr 1873 - 28 July 1873.  Their third child.  First buried in Lot 4259, then moved.  See this post.

George Montgomery Williams, 11 Apr 1875 - 30 Oct 1875.  Their fourth child.

William Street Williams, 22 Dec 1876 - 21 Dec 1877.  Their fifth child.  See this post.

Mary Haskell (Sellers) Williams, 22 Mar 1840 - 10 Apr 1911.  His second wife.

Alice Eliza (Corbett) Williams, 1 Mar 1872 - 14 Sept 1901.  First wife of Frederick H. Williams (Mary and Henry's eldest child).

Harriet F. Williams, 28 May 1898 - 16 Apr 1926.  Eldest child of Henry C. Williams Jr. and Ella (Jenness) Williams.

Helen A. (Garcia) Williams, 11 Dec 1876 - 19 Mar 1936.  Second wife of Henry C. Williams Jr.

Virginia Mary (Garcia) Williams, 5 Jul 1895 - Aug 1977.  Daughter of Helen A. Garcia and Manuel Garcia.  Adopted the Williams name.  See this post.

Burial order: Francis, George, William, Mary Harrison, Sarah, Henry, Alice, Mary Sellers, Harriet, Helen, Virginia.

Section 184, Lot 25828

Sarah Dulany (Addison) Williams, Nov 1805 - 26 Dec 1886.  Wife of Dr. Benjamin Franklin Williams (Henry C. Williams Sr's half-brother).  First buried in Lot 21543, then moved.  See this post.

Mary Florilla Williams, 18 Nov 1838 - 23 Nov 1917.  Their elder child.

Franklin "Frank" Ezra Williams, 26 Jul 1843 - 11 Sept 1911.  Their younger child.

Burial order: Sarah, Frank, Mary.

Mother and Daughter in Green-Wood Cemetery

To round out this mini-series about Green-Wood Cemetery, I have the answers to two more mysteries to share.  The first is the identity of the person buried under the stone reading "Mother".  The second is the identity of Virginia M. Williams, the final family member who is listed as buried in this lot, that I hadn't previously been able to identify.  These answers are connected - but not one and the same.

 

When I first did research on this family lot, I associated the "Mother" marker with Helen G. Williams, whose burial record states she is in the right rear corner, which matches the location of that marker.  As I revisited all of this information recently, I began to question that association.  Helen Garcia married Henry "Harry" C. Williams Jr. on 12 Dec 1916.  They had each been married before, and each had a child living from their previous marriage.  Searching for more details, I couldn't find any evidence that Helen and Harry had children together.  They are listed in the 1920 and 1930 US Census, neither time with any children living with them.  While their marriage certificate lists their ages in 1916 as 30 and 46, and the 1920 Census lists their ages as 34 and 50, I am certain that she was a decade older (making those either mistakes or deliberate attempts to come across as younger).

It seemed strange to me that Helen would be designated as "Mother" in the Williams family lot, if she didn't have a child with Harry Williams.  Then again, there weren't any other good contenders for who was buried under that marker... Henry C. Williams Sr.'s two wives - Mary Harrison, who had children with him, and Mary Sellers, who raised those children - both have markers of their own.  Alice Corbett Williams, another mother, also has her own marker.  I wondered if Sarah Addison Williams might have been buried in this lot with the "Mother" marker before she was moved to another lot which her children purchased (as I recently detailed in this post).  But if that was the case, why would her "Mother" marker have been left behind?

I was left, for a time, with a big question mark next to the designation of the "Mother" marker belonging to Helen G. Williams.

I then turned to the final mystery in the lot - that of Virginia M. Williams.  Who was she, and where did she fit in the family tree?  She was buried in August 1977, which complicated the search since Green-Wood doesn't make the full scans of their burial records available for that decade yet.  I tried searches for an obituary or any other clues on who she was, and came across a listing for her in the Social Security Death Index, which gives her birthdate as 5 July 1895, and also gives her SSN.  Using that, I filed a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request for more details - the first time I've done that.  And it paid off!  Her Social Security application, filed in 1943, shows that she was born Virginia Mary Garcia, the daughter of Manuel Garcia and Helen Garcia (which was both her maiden name and her first married name).  By 1943, Virginia was going by the name Virginia Mary Williams.

With Virginia Williams buried in the same family lot (without any marker of her own, nor any indication from my research that she had children), it makes sense after all that Helen Garcia Williams was buried under the "Mother" marker.

I searched for more information about Virginia's life, and found that she married a Peter Lafroscia on 19 Feb 1916.  She was 20 and he was 24.  This is clear evidence that Helen Garcia was 40 at the time of her marriage to Harry Williams later that same year, and not 30.  

In the 1930 Census, Virginia and Peter were living separately - I have been unable to find Virginia's listing in that census (under any of her possible last names), but Peter was listed as a brother-in-law living with Charles and Teresa Anastasio.  He's marked as married in that census.  Both Virginia and Peter appear in the 1940 Census (Peter still living with the Anastasios), both marked there as divorced.  She was using the last name of Williams at that point, and apparently for the remainder of her life.

Another Williams Family Plot in Green-Wood

When I first researched the details of the Williams family plot in Green-Wood Cemetery, one of the mysteries was the identity of a Sarah Williams buried there.  The name stood out to me because that was also the name of my mother at the time.  But who was this Sarah?

With the improved burial records now available on Green-Wood's website, I have an answer.  Sarah Williams was first interred in our family plot in December 1886.  She was moved the following year to another plot, co-owned (and later occupied) by two other Williamses, and they are a family group.

Sarah Dulany Addison was born in Nov 1805 in Maryland.  In May 1836, she married Dr. Benjamin Franklin Williams, who went by the name Franklin.  He was our Henry Clay Williams Sr's older half-brother.

Sarah and Franklin's children included Mary Florilla Williams, born in Ohio in Nov 1838, and Franklin "Frank" Ezra Williams, born in Ohio in Jul 1843.

Dr. Franklin Williams passed away in 1849 in Ohio, and was buried there.  By 1880, Sarah, Mary, and Frank were listed in the census for Brooklyn, New York, living at 100 Clermont Ave.  Frank worked as a banker.

Fred Williams (Henry's son, and our first family chronicler) recalled "cousins Frank and Mary Williams" occasionally joining his family for dinner.  He also shared that Frank worked at his father's brokerage at 49 Wall Street in the early 1880s, and was in charge of the payroll there.

Sarah D. Addison Williams passed away of old age on 26 Dec 1886.  As mentioned above, she was first buried in Henry C. Williams' existing plot in Green-Wood.  The following July, her remains were moved to lot 25828, which was co-owned by Mary and Frank.  As far as I can tell, neither Mary nor Frank ever married or had children.  Frank passed away in 1911, followed by Mary in 1917.  They were both laid to rest with their mother.

William Street

As I searched through Sunday School records for Plymouth Church at the Center for Brooklyn History, I discovered an interesting connection. The name William C. Street jumped out at me... because Mary E. Harrison and Henry C. Williams named their fifth child William Street Williams. Up until then, they had used family names for the first and middle names of their children: Frederick Harrison W., Henry Clay W.  Jr., Francis Eastman W., and George Montgomery W.  I believe I have found the explanation for where the non-family name of Street came from.

William Cutler Street was born on 27 June 1839, to Jeanette Atwater (itself one of our family names - I'll come back to this) and Edwin A. Street, who came from the New Haven, CT area. Edwin was a merchant, and his obituary shares that he taught in Sunday Schools for 78 years. An Edwin A. Street is listed as a member of Plymouth Church, joining in 1854 and leaving the congregation in 1858.

William Street’s name appears several times in a record book for Plymouth Church’s Sunday School, as Secretary of the school between (at the very least) December 1862 and January 1864. A William B. Street [sic] was elected as Secretary and Treasurer of the Sunday School in February 1864, then replaced in those positions the following month.

As I mentioned above, the name Atwater also stands out here, since that is one of our ancestral lines. If we trust the information shared by other genealogists on Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com, Jeanette traces back to David Atwater (1615-1692) of New Haven. Mary E. Harrison also traces back to David Atwater - in fact, each of her parents traces back to him separately, as her parents were fifth cousins. They were also fifth cousins to William C. Street. Whether they knew of these connections is uncertain. They may have simply known him as part of the Plymouth Church congregation, and perhaps as someone else whose family hailed from New Haven.

William Street passed away of tuberculosis on 28 February 1874 in South Orange, NJ, only 34 years old. His funeral was held at Plymouth Church, and he was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery. I have not found mention of his leaving a widow or children behind. His burial record lists him as being single.

Not quite three years later, Henry C. Williams (then 38) and Mary E. Harrison (32) welcomed their fifth child into the world on 22 December 1877, and named him William Street Williams. I have not seen anything in the family records which previously explained the origin of this name, but I fully believe they were honoring their fellow parishioner (and perhaps friend) with this name.

Tragically, William Street Williams died one day short of his first birthday. He, too, was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery. Fred Williams recalled the funeral of his youngest brother in his memoir:

Henry Ward Beecher conducted the funeral services and tho I was not yet ten years old, one thing that he said impressed itself indelibly on my mind as he likened this baby to a little bird that hopped onto a limb, sang a few sweet notes, then flew away.

Sources:

The photo above comes from the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims and Henry Ward Beecher collection (1819-1980) at the Center for Brooklyn History, box 58, item 1: Church of the Pilgrims - Sunday School Record Book, 1845-1907. 

William Street's death notice: The New York Herald, 4 Mar 1874, p8.

Edwin Street's obituary: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 25 Jan 1909, p5.

William Street's burial record: Green-Wood Cemetery Burial and Vital Records,  vol 22 no 56.

William S. Williams' burial record: ibid., vol 25 no 69.

Buried Twice - Francis E. Williams

Several years ago, I collected information on family members buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, then visited the family burial plot (I wrote a brief blog post at the time to mark the occasion).

As is often the case, I was left with some lingering questions.  One was around Francis Eastman Williams, the third son of Mary E. Harrison and Henry C. Williams.  He was born on 1 April 1873 and died on 28 July of that same year, just shy of four months old.  He was the first of three children that the couple would lose at a young age. 

When looking into this a decade ago, the records all agreed that Francis (or Frank, as the family called him) died in Morrisania, in the Bronx. I haven't found an explanation for why the family was there - perhaps it's where they were spending their summer.

The cemetery's online database - a wealth of great information - listed his burial as taking place on 1 May 1874.  So where was his body for the nine intervening months?  I tried to search for more details at the time, and came up empty.

I recently saw that Green-Wood Cemetery now offers full scans of their original, hand-written burial records on their website.  After returning to Francis' record and doing some additional digging, I think I have an answer to that nagging question.

In the excerpt from the records shown above, Francis E. Williams is listed at the end of a section of burials from 31 July 1873 (followed here by the line for "August 1").  To the right of his name is the lot number where he and other family members are currently buried: 21543, then his place of birth (Brooklyn) and age at death (3 months, 28 days).  The full record can be seen on the Green-Wood Cemetery website.  It includes other useful information, most notably his cause of death: cholera infantum.

Above his last name, an additional notation has been inserted: "May 1, 74, 4259" with the latter number crossed out.  What immediately jumped out at me was that the record on the line immediately above this also showed number 4259 crossed out, in the same way.

It appears to me that 4259 is a lot number for a temporary burial location.  No less than 170 people were buried there between 1853 and 1874.  Many of those records show the individuals being moved, either to other lots in Green-Wood, or to other cemeteries.  Many of the individuals were children, but not all of them were.

So my current theory is that when Francis died of cholera, his stricken parents arranged to have him buried promptly in this temporary lot at Green-Wood, while they also began the process of arranging their own family lot and grave markers in that cemetery.  On 1 May 1874, they were able to reinter Francis in their own lot - he was indeed the first family member buried there.  May he and his parents rest in peace.

The Second Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn

While I was digging into details about Justus and Harriet Harrison's arrival in Brooklyn for my previous post, I came across this interesting tidbit: the records of the Second Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn show them both joining that church on Sunday 31 March 1839.

The handwritten ledger, covering memberships for the first three decades at that church (1831-1861), was only 150 pages long so I decided to check through the full thing.  Twenty pages later, it lists Justus and Harriet's son George joining the church on Christmas Day, 1842.  Interestingly, his departure from the congregation is listed as his being "Licensed" - a term I didn't see anywhere else in the ledger.  I suspect this is a reference to his ordination as a minister.

As you may have spotted above, Justus' departure from the congregation is noted as his death in 1850.  Harriet's departure isn't noted at all.  She does appear one more time, in an antiquated sort of list... every so often in the ledger there would be an accounting of the "widows belonging to the church", and she is listed in one of these at the start of 1852, giving proof that she was still connected with the church at that time.

Frederick and Mary Harrison didn't appear as members, nor do any of their children appear among the baptisms at this church.  I am curious about their church life.  My current theory is that they attended this church with Frederick's parents while retaining memberships at a church in New Haven.  At always, there is more to uncover.  This church was located at the corner of Clinton and Remsen Streets.

Sources:
U.S., Presbyterian Church Records, 1701-1970, available from Ancestry.com (with a membership).
Image from the Brooklyn Eagle Postcard collection, Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History.