I was going to post something about the 1860 census here, but after a somewhat frustrating experience looking for information on my ancestor, Thaddius Actford Butterfield, I made an unexpected and, for myself, exciting discovery. My ancestor's name is spelled in different sources as either Thaddius or Thaddeus and is sometimes abbreviated Thad. While I was fooling around with databases in Ancestry just before bedtime last night - or so I thought! - I found Thaddius A. Butterfield listed as Omnibus proprietor in Rochester, New York. Thaddius did indeed live in Rochester, New York. He was by profession a printer and newspaper publisher, as I had determined from multiple censuses. So I assumed "Omnibus" was a newspaper of some sort. Then, I thought, 'What if the publisher of this guide that I was looking at literally meant omnibus, as in a vehicle for public transportation?' I knew that if the literal definition, rather than the literary definition, applied, that the Thaddius A. Butterfield listed as Omnibus proprietor was not my Thaddius A. Butterfield. Perhaps there was more than one Rochester in New York in those days?
I saved the record anyway, knowing the record probably did not refer to my Thaddius A. Butterfield and entered Rochester, New York into Wikipedia. Sure enough, there were two Rochesters in New York - one in Monroe and the other in Ulster county. My Thaddius A. Butterfield had lived in Monroe in 1840 and by 1850 was found in Racine, Wisconsin, publishing another newspaper. The so-called omnibus proprietor lived in Ulster county in 1849. Case closed. The omnibus proprietor could not have been my Thaddius A. Butterfield, right? Wrong. There are nine years between 1840 and 1849 and a man can move a lot in that amount of time. There's no law against living in two different towns of the same name.
Given that logic, I decided to return to Ancestry and see if I could find anything else on Thaddius A. Butterfield in the New York State databases. When I returned, I had a hard time finding the databases. I had just been to that site a few minutes ago and the databases were not where I left them. The darn things were playing a game of hide-and-seek with me. So I poked around and eventually found them again. Nothing more on Thaddius A. Butterfield, Thaddius Butterfield, or even Thad Butterfield.
So I tried Google. Good old Google.
Not like it was in the old days...
Now they have books! So I typed Thaddius A. Butterfield into the Google Books search engine and Voila! Stuff about Thaddius Butterfield - all sorts of stuff and many different Thaddius Butterfields living at the same time my Thaddius Butterfield lived.
Suddenly, something caught my eye:
1841, dau. of Thaddeus Ackford Butterfield and Rebecca J. Webb. In 1845 Edward
went to Calhoun Co., Mich. In 1853 to Adams Co., Wis., and expects in Fall of ...
That was him and that was it - the discovery I thought I would never make. The discovery I thought no one would ever make. Most of the descendants of Thaddius Actford Butterfield who are researching their heritage are the descendants of Thaddius and his second wife, Cleora Greene Hammond. (Or is that Cleora Hammond Greene? I forget which.) They are either unaware of the first marriage or don't have a clue as to who his first wife was. She is an unknown. As a descendant of Thaddius' son, George A. Butterfield, Thaddius' first wife is not as unknown to me. I had discovered through census records that her name was Rebecca J., but I did not know her maiden name. To me, she was Rebecca J. Unknown, mystery woman. Staying up past my bedtime - 12:30 a.m., to be precise - changed all that. I had been wrong all this time. Rebecca wanted to be found and her name is Rebecca J. Webb.
Thanks to Burhans Genealogy, a book written in 1894 by Samuel Burhans concerning genealogies that, for the most part, had nothing to do with my own. Fortunately for me, George A. Butterfield's sister, Frances, had married into Samuel Burhans' clan - she had married a Van Wie. Otherwise I might never have known Rebecca J.'s maiden name.
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