Genealogy Detective, Part II: Which William?
For this post to make any sense at all, read Part I.
Very often, after you finally hit on the one little clue that's the key to a genealogy puzzle, confirmation of it seems to start pouring in from all sides. I can't even remember exactly what I tweaked in the search I'd been running on census reports, but very shortly after confirming that Mary Geisler's eldest daughter was named Catherine Jack, an entry from the 1880 census popped up right in my face: Mary Jack, widow, born 1849, with German-born parents (the Geislers were German), eight-year-old daughter Kate and six-year-old daughter Mary. (And, handily, a sister-in-law Elizabeth Jack sharing the household to give me an additional lead.) It looks like Catherine "Kate" Jack was recorded on the 1880 census twice, once at her mother's house and once at her grandfather's—an unusual but not impossible occurrence if someone changed jobs or went to stay/live with relatives in a census year; I've seen it happen more than once.
And we've cracked it! On the 1875 census, there is David L. Jack, wife Mary, and three-year-old daughter Kate Frances. It's all smooth sailing from here. I find a newspaper item announcing the marriage of David L. Jack and "Miss Mary Guysler [sic] of Albany." I trace David back to childhood via census returns (yes, he had a sister Elizabeth Frances). I find David's Find a Grave page, which has a curious mix of correct and incorrect information—it lists his death date as 1868, based on newspaper items clearly referring to the death of his father, also named David Jack. I find a military headstone record which firmly establishes the death date for David Jr. (a Civil War veteran) as 1878. The description on the Find a Grave page says that his widow Mary remarried to "William Gregory of Watervliet"!
Now, what about the William C. Gregory whose 1912 obituary we discovered in Part I? Was he really Mary Geisler Jack's second husband? I shall quote at length from that highly interesting obituary here, and we shall analyze it:
The death of William C. Gregory at his home...Sunday recalls the assasination of President Lincoln, for Mr. Gregory was in the posse that pursued John Wilkes Booth. Mr. Gregory was a Civil War veteran of note and was long a prisoner at Andersonville,. While there he tried to forget his awful privation and ills of that terrible prison by spending his time carving a bone, which he finally fashioned into a beautiful pipe. This he presented to a prominent Trojan some time ago. He was a friend and admirer of President Lincoln, and he was inexpressibly shocked at the President's murder.
That all sounds pretty impressive, until it occurs to you to look at Gregory's birth date, and do a little arithmetic, and discover that he was only seventeen years old at the beginning of the war. Okay, so perhaps he was a youthful hero in the G.A. Henty and Horatio Alger style. But it's easy to find out...I locate the record for his gravestone in Troy's Oakwood Cemetery, which bears his Civil War unit, the 16th New York Volunteers. It takes about ten seconds to pull up a muster roll for a New York regiment of the Civil War...which I do.
William Gregory, age eighteen, enlisted at Albany in 1861, and was discharged for disability in 1862.
Andersonville Prison did not open until 1864.
It looks like either Mr. Gregory, or his obituary writer, was a teller of tall tales.
But back to our original question: was he married to Mary Geisler? I return to the census returns. In 1910 we find William Gregory, born 1844, with wife Mary and sons George and Joseph, both in their early twenties. (William is a blacksmith—as the obituary has it in a more elevated vein, “more than twenty-five years connected with the forge at the Watervliet Arsenal.") Could his wife Mary be Mary Geisler? I determine no, for a number of reasons. Mary Geisler was born in 1849 to German parents; this Mary Gregory was born in either 1861 or 1871 (depending on which census return you believe) and is of Irish parentage. Even more convincing is that handy column on the 1900 census which states that Mary Gregory is the mother of three children, two of them living—Mary Geisler would be the mother of at least five daughters by that time, not counting the two Gregory sons.
The timeline also rules out the admittedly far-fetched possibility that William C. Gregory could have married Mary Geisler, had three daughters, been widowed, and remarried to Irish Mary in time to have the two sons aforementioned. There just isn't enough time. The 1900 census estimates these Gregorys' marriage date as 1883, which is actually Clara Gregory's birth year, and before the births of Jennie and Irene.
Is there a way to establish this any more conclusively? Yes! David L. Jack's Find a Grave page states that his widow's second husband, William Gregory, served in the same regiment Jack did—the 1st New York Mounted Rifles. William C. Gregory emphatically did not. But something rings a bell in my mind. I remember seeing an entry on an 1890 census of veterans for another William Gregory who lived in Rensselaer County, and double back to check it. This William was in the 3rd Provisional New York Cavalry…which was consolidated with the 1st NY Mounted Rifles! The 3rd NY's muster roll contains an entry for a William Gregory whose enlistment and discharge dates match the ones on the 1890 veteran census record.
So it appears we have established the existence of a second William Gregory, who did serve in the same regiment as David Jack, and very probably married his widow. And as for William C.'s obituary...well, when you take into account the number of pure historical errors it contains, it suddenly doesn't seem at all unlikely that the writer wrongly attributed to him three daughters which actually belonged to the other William.
So in the end, the search for Catherine Hoffmeister's maiden name, leading through a maze of aunts, cousins, grandfathers, half-sisters, wills, obituaries, muster rolls, and newspapers, all boils down to a few simple facts:
Catherine Frances Jack and Mary Louisa Jack were the daughters of David L. Jack and Mary Geisler.
Clara and Jennie Gregory and Irene Tanner (born Gregory) were their half-sisters.
William and Mary Geisler Gregory presumably both died sometime in the 1890s, which would be a logical explanation for their daughters living with relatives in 1900 and afterwards, and Irene being adopted by her aunt.
Only one questions remains: Why was Catherine Hoffmeister's maiden name listed as "Gregory" on her son's baptism record? Since I saw a typewritten transcription, I don't know whether the original handwritten parish record would yield up any more intelligence. But I have a shrewd guess. Since her half-sister Clara Gregory was one of the sponsors, perhaps whoever wrote down the names had been told they were sisters and simply assumed they shared a maiden name.
Extra confirming details to all of this trickled in after I had my Ancestry subscription. I found a Social Security death record for Irene Tanner Magill, which confirms that her parents were indeed Mary Geisler and William Gregory. I found Jennie Gregory on the 1910 census, living in Syracuse in the household of her sister Clara Weinbrecht (and a record of her marriage to James L. Guyer in Syracuse). Clara's first husband was Augustus J. Weinbrecht—not George W. Weinbreck—chalk up another error to the writer of that absurd obituary! Actually, poking around in the newspaper archives again, it looks like Augustus J. Weinbrecht was rather a fishy character...and it seems questionable whether Clara was actually Mrs. Weinbrecht at all, though she may possibly have thought she was... But as they say, that's another story.
images: Troy, New York, where Catherine Jack was born (Wikimedia Commons)