Finding Emily Bird

Emily Aurelia Bird was born 24 December 1807 or 1808 in Massachusetts to Col./Rev. Nathaniel Bird and his wife Hannah Bullard. There are a LOT of trees on Ancestry that include Emily and her siblings; a lot of people have contributed to profiles on FamilySearch. No one had anything about Emily's life after her marriage to Elias Hubbard in 1829 in Westfield (Chautauqua County), New York.

Emily was a mystery for as long as I can remember. Until yesterday. Several unique documents answered at least part of the question of what happened to Emily. How I discovered her is another case study in persistence, luck, familiarity with known details, luck, the explosion of online resources, and luck. Or maybe a few nudges from the other side.

That nudge started yesterday when I was looking for the box containing my research on the Annie Dean Diary. Before I found the sought-after box, I came across a document in my Grandpa Bird's handwriting, an inventory of papers found in Marion Irene Bird's lap desk after she died in the Iroquois Theatre Fire in 1903. He probably made the inventory in the 1970s while visiting Warrenville, Illinois.

It lists cards and letters to James and Frances Bird McKee and Marion Irene Bird in the 1870s and 1880s, but it also is a list of major life events gleaned from the correspondence. I thought it could be helpful - or at least interesting - to have the information connected to the individual profiles in FamilySearch. I scanned the pages to a PDF, uploaded the file to FamilySearch Memories, and set about tagging the people mentioned.

Daniel D. Fisher, his wife ("Mrs. Daniel D. Fisher, neé Carrie McKee), his daughter Pauline, and her husband, Lt. George Marion Brown were easy to locate - I was familiar with their names and how they were connected to James and Frances McKee. Pauline and George's daughter Daphne was the subject of one of my first blog posts. Since there was no marriage date in their profile, I used details recorded from the lap desk and added that. 

Then I came to "M/M H.B. Hemenway, at home, Wed. Sept. 24, and the address of 933 Washington St., Buffalo, NY." A notation in my grandfather's handwriting said, "1879-1884." (September 24th was a Wednesday in 1879, 1884, and 1890.)

I had no idea what H.B. might abbreviate, so I was stuck with using initials alone. A quick Google search landed me on the Buffalo City Directory of 1896-1897, a Buffalo History Museum asset on the New York Heritage Digital Collection website. The address matched the one in the lap desk: 933 Washington St.

Working backward from 1896, and since the 1890 census isn't an option, I searched the 1880 census to see if I could find them in Buffalo. No luck. (Still can't find them in the 1880 census. Still looking!)

My next stop was Newspapers.com where I searched for the surname Hemenway (thankfully not a very common name) in Buffalo, New York from 1850-1900. As I scrolled through the results, I ran across this mention of the death of Emily B. Hemenway, mother of Henry B. Hemenway. A first name! Henry! And his mother's first name! The address of 933 Washington for the funeral confirms the connection.
Death of Emily B. Hemenway, 1883 New York 05 Mar 1883, Mon The Buffalo Commercial (Buffalo, New York) Newspapers.com

Armed with the information that H.B. Hemenway was Henry and his mother's name with Emily, I searched the FamilySearch Family Tree. At this point, I had no idea I was about to answer a question I'd had for decades. I was just trying to figure out who H.B. Hemenway was and why his wedding notice might be among Marion Irene Bird's papers.

I quickly learned that Henry B. Hemenway was Henry BIRD Hemenway. His mother was almost certainly my long lost Emily Bird, sister of my 4th-great grandfather Frederick Bird. Henry Hemenway and Marion Bird were first cousins.

I wasn't 100% certain yet, though, because there were two profiles for Emily in FamilySearch, one with a New York birth in 1803 and the other with a Massachusetts birth in 1808. Here's where it gets amazing.

Years ago I was captivated by a very old, very interesting book (or at least part of a book) with pages of handwritten notes about Bird family members in New England.  It belonged to my grandfather Marion Taylor Bird, who got it from his father, Frederick Joel Bird, who was the nephew of Marion Irene Bird. After my grandfather's passing, boxes of his genealogical records, include that manuscript, came to me.

The pages were torn from their binding - the portion I have starts on page 365! And the manuscript is really old. It isn't clear who gathered the information or when, but the pages include transcriptions of headstones and correspondence with Bird family members who provided, by memory, names and dates. It also includes pages of ahnentafel-style charts, including one for my 4th great grandfather, Nathaniel Bird (b. 1763, Connecticut). The most recent events I have seen included in the manuscript are in the early 1870s.

A few years ago I had FamilySearch scan the manuscript and add it to the FamilySearch Digital Library. I have the original but have donated the digital rights. The title we concocted when I dropped it off for scanning isn't unique enough to make it easy to locate: Bird Family of New England, 1800s. The first image (right) shows the torn binding as well as the tight scipt.

Image 5 is the summary page for Col. Nath'l Bird, listing his ten children and their children.

The bottom of page 5 has details that support the conclusion that Emily Bird Hemenway is the daughter of Nathaniel Bird and Hannah Bullard. 

As is often the case with information provided from memory, some of the details in the handwritten document aren't quite right, e.g., Emily's place in birth order and year of birth. Those details can be confirmed in other records. What is helpful is this notation:

Twice md [married] 4 ch (children) 3 died 

She is a widow in Buffalo with her son b. 1844.

Henry Bird Hemenway was born in 1843. Close enough! He lived with his mother in Buffalo for several decades. And he gave his only daughter the middle name Emily.

A nice corroboration is in the brief newspaper mention of her death: 

Westfield N.Y. papers please copy.

While birth records of any kind are scarce for the early 1800s, Emily's existence, her approximate year of birth, and the birth order of her siblings is confirmed in a summary of Nathaniel Bird's Revolutionary War pension file.

(US, Revolutionary War Pensions, 1800-1900, M804, NARA catalog ID 300022, Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service, compiled ca. 1800 - ca. 1912, documenting the period ca. 1775 - ca. 1900, NARA, Record group 15)

There are still open questions to resolve:

• Is the Elias Hubbard who died in 1850 in Buffalo the one Emily married in Westfield in 1829? Emily is not mentioned in that Elias Hubbard's will, which would mean he is either the wrong man or that they divorced.
• When and where did Emily marry Rufus Hemenway?
• Where are Emily and Henry in the 1880 census?
• Are there any records of the three children Emily bore that did not live to adulthood?