Challenging history

So I did some more research today.

Like I said I have a one track mind. I work weird hours, at all hours on things if they really interest me.

My dad has a Billy Club/Police Night Stick that he was told came from a relative that was a New York City Police Officer. He had thought it came from his father's mother, who was the oldest child in her family. How exactly she would get a night stick from a relative I don't know. The way my dad had thought he had understood it doesn't make all that much sense. I just don't see how his grandmother would have ended up with a night stick.

It makes much more sense that the night stick actually came from my father's great, great grandfather who was a police officer in New York that we recently found out about. I think it makes more sense for the night stick to have traveled from a father to a son, to a son, to a son, than for it to have gone some convoluted route involving mothers. I know this is sexist, but these times were sexist...I don't think women normally get billy clubs passed down to them.

Another one of my crazy theories is that my great grandpa got the night stick from his father or relative as a gift when he became a fireman, or became a "man"...before he got himself disinherited. I would think that this Billy Club would have had to have been given to my great grandfather before he was disinherited if the club came from that side of the family, and not another.

We also heard that this New York City police officer or another relative police officer we don't know about, threw three people into a well.

I wonder if there is any attachment between this and the Orange Riots that broke out in New York City in the 1870's that took place between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants. It's plausible, but I had also heard the three thrown into the well may have been Italian. (Hopefully I don't have a tragic accident because of this now..Sopranos joke there) Either way it wound be interesting to read about the riots since it would appear that a relative could have been involved as a police officer in trying to restore order to the riots.

I also found out that my relatives lived around what is now the Upper East Side. They were certainly not rich, as in 1870 my great great great grandfather wasn't listed as owning property and had an estate property worth $600. His son apparently had estate property worth $1,000. They lived in the 19th Ward in Manhattan. The financial figures seem to be in the middle of those on the census document I saw.

One premise that I will challenge, and be interested to learn about is who disinherited my great grandfather for marrying an Irish Catholic. He was apparently disinherited upon his marriage, although we are unsure if it was because he married an Irish person, or a Catholic or both. We will probably never know. There was a five year difference between the birth of my great grandpa's first child and the death of his father (great, great grandfather Orrin). In other words, it would appear to me based on the records that I have seen and logic, that chances are fair that his father didn't live to see his son marry an Irish Catholic.

What confuses things even more is that it would appear as if there was a divorce that took place between my great grandpa's parents before my great grandpa went and married an Irish Catholic.

If there was a divorce or death before the wedding it would have probably left my great grandpa's ties to his father's family with his Uncle Chauncey. Chauncey seemed to be a well to do person in society. He was a treasurer in a club. Today I found out he owned a market, the "People's Market" on Main Street in Stamford. My family knew that a relative had owned a Market in town, but we didn't know it's name or where. Solved that mystery today.

Chauncey might have had a good business mind and realized that he might have wanted to distance himself from my great grandfather for at the time embarrassing the family. It's just a theory, but if the records confirm my assumptions it would seem to be a plausible alternative to his father disinheriting him.

I want to find Orrin's grave! That would help with dates. Somewhere I saw his death date as 1902, when my great grandpa was 14. Somehow I don't think my great grandpa was married at 14.

I read about Chauncey and Orrin and found out that they were also interested in their genealogy because they apparently traveled to a huge reunion in Stonington, CT in 1881. It's seriously amazing what you can find on google...including a picture of Chauncey and the store that he owned. Google also helped me find a book written about Stamford that mentions Chauncey as someone who was the descendants of one of the oldest families to be from the Greenwich/Stamford Connecticut/New York Border.

So guess what...so am I! We were lucky enough to be some of the descendants of the oldest settlers of some of the most valuable property in the entire country. We were not lucky enough to benefit financially from that fact. Hence why not having a job lined up yet is quite troublesome.

Chauncey was apparently born in Connecticut, but moved to New York to be educated. (Imagine leaving Greenwich today to be educated in New York City...times change)

Forgetting about Chauncey now...who was also apparently a jeweler later in life according to my grandpa's story (Coming second hand from my father...who apparently said his dad remembered being a young boy and seeing Uncle Chauncey at the train station to go into New York to work as a jeweler)

I've been told that my Grandpa knew everyone in town, and I believe it, seeing that his mother had six other live siblings (four died at childbirth/youth too) who also had large families. My grandpa probably had at least 20-30 cousins if not more. I'm probably related to half the Irish people in Stamford somehow. Maybe all the Germans, which is what I am mostly.