Hello,
I 'm planning to visit Delaware (from my home in Massachusetts) for 3 days next month, May 23-25 just for the purpose of finding out more about my family connections in Delaware. I have been working with ancestry.com and related resources and am really excited about having a chance to visit. I hope you can help me do some advance planning to use my visit well. Here are the family connections in Delaware that I know about ( I have more details on them, but am just giving you the names an rough dates at this point):
Margaret [Lightpipe] Van Houten moved to the Delaware area in the 1840s from New Jersey after her husband David Van Houten died. She brought 8 or so children, some adults, one of whom was Peter R. Van Houten. Peter and his 2nd wife Sarah Thrall are buried in Sunbury Cemetery in Delaware. Peter had a daughter from his first wife (Alice White), Mary Rebecca W., who was raised by Peter and Sarah. Peter and Sarah soon had a daughter of their own, Alice J. Van Houten (b. 1855 in Delaware, OH), my great-grandmother. She took some classes at Ohio Wesleyan Seminary, married a dentist in 1875 (Alonzo Lumbard, b. 1847 in Ohio) and they were living at 1 David St. in 1880. They had two children, Charles V. and Mary. After Alonzo died, Alice moved to Pleasant Hill, MO with her two children to marry Paul Lawder (b. 1865 somewhere in OH), my great-grandfather. Paul Lawder's father, John Lawder, was living in Delaware,OH in a boarding house in 1850, possibly as a student, before he became a lawyer. John Lawder was born in New Philadelphia, OH. From 1888 on, the my direct family story moves to the Kansas City, Missouri area, but there were lots of Van Houten cousins still in the Delaware area.
I have a few daguerreotypes that I'll bring with me. The principal artifact that I have is a hand-written diary of Peter R. Van Houten, Methodist-Episcopal itinerant minister in the years 1845-1851. The diary was dictated by Peter since was blind and is mostly a dry account of his preaching travels, where he stayed overnight, the verse he preached on, and the locations. The tone changes dramatically in the final pages where he recounts the bedside conversations with his dying wife, his first wife Alice White (b. in PA, died and buried in Sunbury Cemetery in 1851). I can send you my transcription of this part of the diary if it is of interest to you.
So, that's the outline! I would love to see any locations in Delaware (the cemetery, the college, the street locations where any of them lived), the general feel for the town in the latter half of the 19th century. And I'd like to know more about your research resources. I'm curious how the Van Houten Lawder connection came about, possibly through the church connection. Paul Lawder's mother was an active volunteer in the ME church in Missouri. One puzzle is why educated young widow, Alice V.H. Lumbard, goes to Missouri to marry the somewhat younger and deaf-since-birth Paul Lawder. I am imagining Paul's mother, Marion, reaching through the Ohio ME church connections for a suiitable wife for her hard-to marry son. (Marion and her husband John Lawder actually had 4 deaf children, the oldest three of whom were born while the family was still in Ohio). Anyway, the stories go on. I did have a chance to visit the Kansas City, MO area, including Pleasant Hill and Harrisonville, last June and enjoyed picturing the Lawders there. They came as Ohioans taking advantage of the defeated confederate state of Missouri.....
Any suggests that you have for my visit or for research that you might be able to do in advance for a fee, I'd be interested in.
Many thanks,
Jaymie Chernoff
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