MUNSON TALES: Love, Abolition, Suffrage, and Frederick Douglass (Clan Ephraim) Part 2

Part 1 can be found here

The Civil War came and his sons Frederick, Lewis, and Charles all served in various capacities. Finally, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863 and all slaves were free, if in name only. Frederick, on the other hand, met with Abraham Lincoln in 1863 and 1864 on the treatment of black soldiers and how to mobilize the southern slaves in the war effort for the Union. Come the election of 1864, Douglass endorsed John C. Fremont as he was deeply disappointed in Lincoln for not moving fast or hard enough.

In 1865, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were passed, changing everything for former slaves, but again, mostly in name only. They were free, but not really free at all.

During reconstruction, Douglass took some political appointments. He was on the board of the Freedmen’s Savings Bank. His next political enemy was the Klu Klux Klan, freshly rerisen from the ashes of the South to end the progress blacks may have made in the few years following the War. He supported U. S. Grant for president and started his last newspaper, New National Era, in hopes that his country would live by their agreement for equality.

U.S. Grant affixed his signature to the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (the Klu Klux Klan Act) and the second and third Enforcement Acts.

In 1872, Douglass got a surprise—he was nominated as Vice President with Victoria Woodhull as President on the Equal Rights Party! He never acknowledged this honor. 

He did serve as a presidential elector in New York and delivered the electoral votes in Washington D.C. 

Coincidentally, Mary Pitts was at that time teaching black children at the Hampton Institute of Virginia.

Mary Pitts Douglass

Later, she found herself in Anacostia in 1882 when she moved in with her uncle who lived next door to the Douglass family. 

Mary worked with partner Caroline Winslow to publish the feminist newspaper, The Alpha, the newspaper of the Moral Education Society in D.C. Caroline was the 5th woman to graduate from medical school in the United States. 

Douglass’ Rochester home also burned down in 1872. Arson was suspected. It was a big loss of belongings and all of his volumes of two of his newspapers. He decided then to move to Washington D.C. He and his wife built their final home above the Anacostia River in D.C. They called it Cedar Hill. They expanded it from 14 to 21 rooms and bought some adjoining property that would extend the property to 15 acres.

Douglass’ newspaper had failed and the bank went bankrupt. Douglass was struggling financially. President Rutherford B. Hayes named Douglass the United States Marshall of Washington D.C., and he was confirmed in 1877.

An older Frederick Douglass

He was also appointed Recorder of Deeds in D.C. in 1881. In 1882, his beloved wife died. 

Douglass hired Mary, the daughter of his good friend Gideon Pitts, as a recorder of deeds clerk in 1882. After a period of mourning, he started working with famed Ida B. Wells, journalist and co-founder of the NAACP. 

Mary later went to work for Douglass helping him complete his final autobiography and handling his correspondence. Their shared intellectual pursuits led to a relationship that culminated in their 1884 marriage. This, of course, was anathema to nearly everyone. 

Mary brought her new husband to visit her father and he refused to let Douglass cross the threshhold of his home. Douglass’ children were furious, but particularly his oldest daughter, Rosetta Douglass Sprague.  

Frederick and Helen Mary and Mary's sister

Rosetta had warned her father not to get involved with the Freedman’s bank, and now this.

In 1888 he became the first black man to get a vote in the Republican National Convention. And by “a” vote, he got one. Still historic. He continued to lecture and urge other African-Americans to turn away from the idea of going back to Africa. In 1889, President Hayes named him Consular General to Haiti, the first black-run country, a position from which he resigned in 1891 when he discovered that the U.S. had every intention to take control of the country.

On 20 Feb 1895, after giving a speech to the National Council of Women in D.C., Douglass went home and had a massive heart attack that took his life. 

Despite the feelings of others, Frederick and Mary lived a  happy 11 years together. Frederick’s body was taken to Rochester after his service at the Metropolitan AME Church for burial. He was buried beside his first wife. Mary would eventually be buried there also, without fanfare, in 1903. 

The children fought the will, which had some technical errors. Mary was to be the beneficiary of the house and property.  She proposed to the children that she be allowed to live in the house until death and then the house would become a memorial to Douglass. The children disagreed and had it sold—to Mary. Mary spent the last eight years of her life speaking and organizing his papers to keep her husband’s place in history alive. She started and funded the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association. At her death, the National Association of Colored Women raised funds to buy Cedar Hill. 

It is now run by the National Park Service.

MUNSON TALES: Love, Abolition, Suffrage, and Frederick Douglass (Clan Ephraim) Part 1

On 14 Feb 1818, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, who would later become known as Frederick Douglass, was born in what was most likely his grandmother’s cabin on the property of his owner. The scenic property was on the shore of Cheseapeake Bay in Maryland. Frederick would later become the most influential African-American and abolitionist in the United States in the days before the Civil War.

His mother was an enslaved woman and his father was reportedly white, though the definitive identity
of his father was never ascertained.  As often happened, he was separated from his mother in his infancy and raised by his grandmother, a slave, and grandfather, a free black man.  His mother worked on a property twelve miles away. It might as well been 100 miles. He saw her only a handful of times before she died when he was seven.

He was separated from his grandparents and moved to the Way House Plantation and then moved again, in a series of exchanges, to the Baltmore home of Hugh & Sophia Auld in 1828. Douglass reported Sophia had a tender heart. She ensured he had a bed to sleep in with sheets and blankets and that he was properly clothed. According to Douglass, city slaves were almost free men and treated far better than plantation slaves. When he was about 12, Sophia also began to teach him to read and write, but was quickly influenced by her husband, Hugh, to shut it down.  Douglass caught on that literacy must be the pathway to freedom and success. He began to teach himself. 

First wife Anna Murray

Douglass ended up in a couple different new situations in the coming few years, one of which was a brutal time on a plantation where the oveseer believed all slaves needed to be broken. By age 16, he was beaten frequently by the overseer until he fought back and was returned to Hugh Auld. Auld then sent him to William Gardiner to do ship caulking. Also while here, he met Anna Murray, a free woman. She encouraged him to consider escape and he saw freedom on the horizon. In 1838, he escaped disguising himself as a sailor and with papers of a free black sailor and money for traveling from Anna. He jumped a train and then a steamboat to Philadelphia to “Quaker City,” an abolition stronghold, and then to a abolition safehouse in New York City. Eleven days later, Anna arrived with all they needed to start life together. They were married on 15 Sep 1838. His career as an abolition speaker and writer began almost as soon as he arrived. Anna and Frederick started their family with the arrival of their first daughter, Rosetta. Three boys and another daughter would eventually join her—all born into freedom.

He was not only a dedicated abolitionist, but also supported equality for women and the suffrage movement. By now, his work took him all over the free places he could go.

Gideon Pitts, Jr. was an faithful 19th-century abolitionist. He was an “Underground Railroad” conductor who hid slaves in his basement along the route to their next stop. He lived in Honeoye, New York, and was a close friend and supporter of Douglass. Pitts provided financial aid to him and even hosted him in his home starting in the 1840s when Douglass spoke in his area, which he did often. Gideon’s wife, Jane, was the great granddaughter of Ephraim Munson, namesake of Clan Ephraim.  The couple also fought for suffrage.

Jane and Gideon had five children, the oldest of whom was Hellen “Mary” Pitts. Mary attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, one of the “Seven Sisters,”  and graduated in 1859. Mary returned home and continued to work with her father against slavery and for the woman’s vote.

Douglass' daughter Rosetta

In the meantime, Frederick Douglass spent a few years  living in England in the mid 1840s, where he convinced abolitionist Thomas Clarkson to abolish slavery throughout the English Commonwealth. One of his fans led the charge to raise the money to have him freed from owner Thomas Auld in 1846. When returned to the U.S. in 1847 he took the 500 pounds his British friends had given him to start his first abolitionist newspaper, the North Star in New York.In 1848, he was the only person of color who attended the first suffrage convention where he started his long friendship with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. He began using his paper to push for women’s rights.

Part 2 tomorrow

[There is so much more to Frederick Douglass' life and I encourage you to read more about him to learn just how much he impacted the world in which he moved.]

MUNSON TALES: Eureka! A straight barrel at last! (Clan Jabez)

It was quite a treat to run across a story from Clan Jabez. The clan is very small. I want to start with Henry Munson’s mother, Lucy Munson. She was the oldest child of old Jabez Munson, great grandson of Thomas Munson. Lucy, who has no husband referenced in The Munson Record, Vol. II, also doesn’t seem to have a husband on record elswhere either.  She had one child, born 29 Jun 1807 in Hamden, Connecticut. Hamden was then known as Whitneyville. His name was Henry Munson and he was an industrious individual.  

He married Jane Ford on 29 Jan 1834 in Hamden. The couple would go on to have six children.

At this time, there were two big gun manufacturers in the area, Colt Armory in New Haven and in Whitneyville, the Whitneyville Armory. Among Henry’s many talents was as an armorer and expert gunmaker. He worked for Whitneyville Armory for many years, but also had other businesses operating at the same time, including his farm. 

In the later middle years of his life, he took a contract to make guns for a customer. Being a man who wanted to do a good job, he found himself having trouble making a barrel that was bored on center of the cylinder of steel.  The custom had been to weld the pieces of the barrel together. He thought on it and come upon a brilliant idea for a small device that would hold the barrel while the bore ran and make it dead center down the barrel! This “little machine” revolutionized the gun making industry.  

Unfortunately, he did not pass “Go” and collect millions of dollars because he never bothered to get a patent.  

A longtime Democrat, the War of the Rebellion caused Henry to change parties to the Republican. He served two terms in the state legislature and served in every position of import in Hamden. During the Civil War he spent a stint helping recruit troops to meet the state’s quote to serve the Union and as was reported, did it better than anyone else. 

Henry’s wife passed away in 1864. He never remarried, but his children remained close by.   

In his post-gunmaking years, he was part of Munson, Morse, & Co., a saddlery in Hamden which he started in 1871. He began purchased many properties throughout Whitneyville, including a piece of land that was ultimately purchased by the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. which they used for munitions storage.

Sadly, in 1888, Henry received word from the Guilford police that a body had washed up on the shores and was discovered by fisherman. Henry realized from the description that the body was probably that of his son Robert and went to Guilford to find that it was indeed his son. It was believed that the body had been in the water for up to one week. The marshall believed Robert died of either suicide or accidental drowning. Henry told the inquest that his son had left two weeks previously to look for work and they had heard from him once during his absence. Robert was supposedly going to Bridgeport. He never reached that stop. The loss of Robert left only two surviving children.  

Henry retired about 20 years before his death and spent his last years living with one of his two surviving children, Mrs. Eunice Gorham. He helped people in Whitneyville settle up their estates and did it faithfully. His son Henry Whitney Munson, Jr., became superintendent of the Whitneyville Armory in 1871 and in 1903, having previously taken on his father’s properties and opened up Munson Realty in 1903.

Henry died at age 86 in 1893 of pneumonia that lasted 30 hours. His estate was far from meager, listed at $100,000!

A little segue for historical context:

Eli Whitney of Whitneyville 

Eli Whitney (d. 1825) and his son Eli

Whitneyville was named after Eli Whitney, the inventor of many things, but most famous among them, the cotton gin. 

Sadly, the cotton gin adventure did not travel the trajectory Whitney and his partner had hoped. It made little profit and what little profits he had were eaten up in lawsuits for patent violations.  The partners also had not planned to sell the unit, but to have farmers come to them for cotton cleaning. 

Whitney died in 1825 but the armory continued on without him. His two brothers ran things until his son, Eli Whitney, was old enough to  run it himself. That happened in 1842. He modernized the facility and ultimately sold the armory to Winchester Repeating Arms in 1888.

Lost In a French Village 1962

The opportunity to get my mom to tell me stories is dimming. I took her to a doctor's appointment this week and asked her about a photo she had sent me earlier. 

Two things you have to know about her is that 1) she's the best genealogtist you'll ever meet; and 2) She is now like a mad scientist with ChatGPTs image AI. 

The photo she sent was this one. It's of my dad and Gerald Getty, one half of the Getty twins. My dad went to school with them and they went through print production classes together in high school East High in the 1950s. Harold, the other half of the Getty Twins, was in the Air Force in England at the same time Gerald and Larry were in the Army in Germany. This would be the 1961-1962 period. Harold had met a beautiful English Rose and the wedding was set. The Army boys got their pass, their wives, and Gerald's car and that's where our story begins.

Mom and Dad would have been 19 and 23, so Gerald and Betty were about the same age. Gerald was driving his little junker car and off they went. They had to drive to Calais, France to cross by ferry into England. That went well. They got all the way to Carol’s parents’ house unscathed. 

Mom and Dad spent the night in their guest room while Gerald and Betty stayed at a relatives’ house nearby. 

Everyone was excited, until….the company commander refused his permission for them to marry so the wedding had to be called off. 

So, back they started for Germany. They made it a ways before the car conked out. This was in a rural spot near a super tiny French village. It was nighttime. Unlike now, when they could have found a pension or an AirBNB, they found nothing in the village. No car repair, no restaurant, and no place to stay. 

They knocked on doors until someone agreed, via the quartet’s awful French and the even worse English skills of the villagers, a place for each of them to stay. The bed that was provided to my folks collapsed in the middle. It was a sleepless night. 

In addition to all sleeping situation, they hadn’t eaten since morning and they had about 50 cents between them. The family gave them leftover cake and water to drink. 

In the morning, they met up and were told they needed to talk to the one person in the village who spoke really good English. Mom referred to her as Bridget Bardot--I believe she was, well, va-voom. 

They found Bridget Bardot and while she had some English skills she was far from fluent. Suddenly, various villagers wandered in to “help” Bridget Bardot in translating. Frustrating and comical as it was, they finally arranged to have the car picked up for repair and were dropped at a train station in a nearby village. 

They would pick up the car the following week. In those days, you didn’t just get a pass or leave whenever you wanted, it had to be planned and approved and could be canceled at a moment’s notice based on mission needs. I never did hear if he got his car back. 

At the train station, they realized they did not have the money to get to Paris where they could get transportation to Germany. With help from the train people, they contacted the US Consulate in France and they wired enough money for tickets to Paris. 

When they arrived, they had no money to get to Germany, so they took their 50 cent and bought a 10-cent bottle of wine and spent the rest on a loaf of bread to split between the four of them. 

The wine was awful, my mom reported, but it was the best bread they ever had. 

I’m not sure who helped the group get home; I believe it was the USO, but they were funded enough to get four train tickets to Germany. 

This is a photo of Larry and Gerald standing in the middle of the street with their giant suitcases in that little French village where Bridge Bardot lives. I wonder if her English ever improved?

MUNSON: A Meeting of the Munson Minds, Boscobel, WI June 2025

Summer is in full gear, the grandson is off with his parents for summer, and projects galore around the homestead that all seem to have the same urgency are being tended to. Still, I took two days off work this week to meet up with a bunch of cousins I've never met before. My 2nd great grandmother, Mary Ann Munson had a younger brother named Franklin. Franklin and Mary Ann were two of several children of Amos Munson and Mary Ann Kerney who traveled from Trumbull County, Ohio, to Grant County, Wisconsin around 1849. Mary Ann's sister Henrietta and brother Franklin were the only ones to stay in Wisconsin. The cousins I met were descendants of Franklin.

I love Ancestry. It connected Maria and I. She was arranging a trip to Wisconsin to see her family and suggested we all get together. These folks all drove from various locations to meet up with me yesterday. I got to hear great stories about the Munson and Flansburghs, as well as other lines of their family. These folks were warm and had a great sense of humor. Lots of smart-ass going on - I'm inclined to believe it is from the Munson side were I got mine. 

Munson Cousin Meetup
Boscobel, WI Jun 2025

Everyone brought letters (one cousin had a 98 year old cousin write some reminisces just for us). They brought photos (marked with names), photos (not marked with names that we tried to identify), more photos and letters which all came with a story, and lots of of family lore. 

We had a picnic lunch across the street from the Boscobel City Cemetery. Then, we ambled over to the cemetery and their institutional memory, Art, guided us to all the headstones. And, of course, more stories.

I have a lot of work to do when I get home with photos. Everyone was delightful, but I especially enjoyed meeting up with Maria who is bright, funny, and a little nutty about genealogy.

LAY Family: And the work begins

John David "Big Valley"
Dave Lay (Nancy Lay's big brother)

Nancy Lay (abt. 1768-abt. 1860) is the daughter of Jesse Lay, Sr., who is one of several children of John Lay, who died when young leaving his wife Elizabeth alone. There is so much to the Lay family story and for the genealogists among us, trying to sort through the Lay family as various parts made their way through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. There is an extemely short list of names each successive generation used, causing lots of confusion and consternation is sorting them all out. 

Then, I discovered the Lay Family Genealogical Association, Inc., a group who has been operating for many, many years and have several very serious genealogists who have unraveled much of the tree. Unfortunately, and this impression may not be 100% correct, it looks like the active pubhlished work of the organization died out in 2016. The leader of the group, a woman of great skill, died in 2017. Much of this research was published in Lay of the Land, a publication of the group. These are no longer in print. I got a copy from a very generous Wikiteer who also guided me to other sources, including some of his own scholarship.

I am sorting this Lay family information now, but I believe it will take some time to do so.  I also got a couple of resource names that are also out of print: Gilbert Lay's Lay Family Geneaology and Arlie Lay's Lay Family History.

If you have copies of any of these or know where to get them, please let me know by leaving a comment.

SMITH Family: Mary Adaline Smith Hoard Albert Burgos Albert (1890-1949)

The old Fort Jones est. 1852

My paternal grandmother, Verlie Smith, was one of 11 brothers and sisters. She was third from the 

youngest. Her sister, Mary, was the first child, born in 1890. She was married to her first husband Edwin Hoard and gone before my grandmother was even born. No one in the living family remembers her as she had passed away before we were all born in the 1960s. 

I tell the story of how I discovered so much about Mary here. The last time I wrote, I did not know what Mary looked like. My Uncle Harold, who sort of helped me unwind the story and who did know her, has since passed away. I still had questions even though the story was mostly told. Today, in a routine records update for her, I opened an entire new part to the story. 

Mary was married four different times to three different men. I think she had a bum picker or maybe she was no prize herself, who knows. Her second/fourth husband Donald Lee "D.L." Albert was the husband I had the least amount of information on, but now I think I have a full picture of him and tracked a total of three wives and four marriages, just like Mary. 

The Edwin Smith Family Late 1920s (Click to enlarge)

Mary's third marriage was to Greek immigrant Peter Burgos. She is living in Michigan with him as early as 1925. They married in Lake County, Indiana in 1937. Mary returned to Iowa in 1942 and stayed with her mom, Kate Smull Smith on Main St. in Plainfield. Then, she worked in Waterloo for a while - about 40 miles away. Her husband, Peter Burgos, who operated the Metropole Cafe in Mount Pleasant, Michigan died in 1943. I believe they were just separated then.  In 1943, she had a small apartment over a store on the on the west side of Main St. when on 06 Nov 1943, a major fire broke out in an empty restaurant on the east side of Main and ended up burning down the entire block of businesses. Mary was the one who called in the fire at 3:45 am that morning. The Plainfield and Shell Rock fire departments could due little due to a water shortage, but were able to protect the other side of the street. This was THE big news of the year in tiny Plainfield and impacted the entire community. It's believed that a faulty electrical switch in the Grover Mabb cafe started the fire. The Tourist Cafe and Hotel operated by Mrs. Gertrude Smith, the Dinilli Barber Shop, post office, R. L. Cagley residence, William Gritzner apartments, and Mabb Cafe were reduced to ash. 

Plainfield Downtown Fire 1943

I wondered these past years, why D.L. and Mary were in Yreka, California. I've been there - you would need a reason. D.L.'s first wife went to Los Angeles after the divorce, with their daughter Ruth. There was a lot of movement to the great Los Angeles area during this time. Jobs were plentiful and the weather was great.  In 1923, D.L., while married the first time to Mary, made an exploratory visit to Long Beach, Los Angeles County, California. D. L. and Mary moved to Long Beach in Los Angeles County, where D. L. worked as a oil worker. That was in 1924. By 1925, Mary was no longer in California. D. L. stayed in Long Beach.

D.L.'s third wife Cora Clark Jones, mother of six, moved to California in 1931, two years after the death of her first husband, B. F. Jones, an auctioneer.  She came from D. L.'s home town in Ladora, Iowa. They married, and in 1931 moved from Long Beach to Fort Jones, in Siskyou County. D.L. farmed and worked as a fireman. D. L. sold baled alfalfa and hay by the ton to area farmers.

Downtown Fort Jones Late 1930s/Early 1940s 

Fort Jones was at that time, an old western town not too far from Mount Shasta in very far north California, near the Oregon border. It's incredibly picturesque. The first structure was built in 1851 and the town primarily served as a trading outpost, supporting Fort Jones soldiers and miners. Other businesses included a bar and brothel. The Fort itself had been established in 1852 and closed in 1858.  Some of the more famous officers who served at Fort Jones included Phil Sheridan (Union), George Crook (Union), John Hood (Confederate), Ulysses S. Grant (Union), and George Pickett (Confederate). 

  

Cora died at Fort Jones in late 1936. Somehow reconnected, Mary and D.L. remarried in 1944 and Mary moved to Siskyou County. They lived there for the remainder of both of their lives. Mary died in Yreka in early 1949 of cancer and D.L., also ill, died at the end of 1949.

Photos Courtesy of the Office of War Information 1945
Downtown Yreka, California

His daughter also ended up living there with her second husband. Ruth Albert Kuebler Trent died in Yreka in 1877.

Mary's Marriages

Husband 1: Edwin Church Hoard m. 1907-div. bef. 1915

  Wife 2: Carla Hansen m. 1915-until his death in 1953

Husband 2: Donald Lee "D.L." Albert m. abt. 1915-div. around 1925 or so

  Wife 1: Mary Hope "Mollie" Nicholson m. 1900-div bef. 1915 (1 daughter, Ruth)

  Wife 3: Cora Clark Jones m. 1931-at her death 1936

Husband 3: Peter Burgos m. 1937-at his death in 1943 (they separated in 1942). She is referred to as Mrs Burgos starting in 1925, but their marriage license was issued in 1937.

Husband 4: Donald Lee "D.L." Albert m. 1944-until her death in 1949