Week 2’s theme is “King”, in honor of Elvis’ birthday week. For me this was an easy choice, because I have something of a “gimme”: my third-great-grandfather on my father’s side is named King Austin.
Why would anyone give their kid a name like “King”, without having aspirations of some kind of incredible music or sports career? King Austin was born near Christmas (27 December 1805, in Dutchess County, New York), so perhaps it had religious significance, being born so close to Jesus’ assigned birthday? The answer, alas, is more prosaic. King’s father Jonathan Austin had a stepmother named Ann King, and he likely named his youngest son (child #12) in honor of her.
King’s story isn’t unusual – in fact, it’s pretty representative of stories from 19th century New York. Families moved around to get better land. Men married and had children; women bore children and often died in the process.
King’s family moved from Beekman, Dutchess, New York and settled in the area of Harrisburg, Lewis, New York, sometime between 1800 and 1810. There is a even a family cemetery called Austin Cemetery near present-day Denmark which houses not only King’s parents Jonathan Austin and Mercy Goodspeed, where more than half the cemetery is comprised of related Austins. Jonathan was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, serving as a private in Captain James Maline’s militia (not to be confused with a much more well-heeled major from Boston of the same name).
King was married first to Catherine Mellen, probably in Harrisburg, Lewis, New York, in the early 1830s. She was the daughter of Henry Mellon and Mary Koch. They had one son, Nehemiah, born 16 April 1834 in Harrisburg, but tragically Catherine died one week later. Nehemiah was born star-crossed; around the age of nineteen, in 1853, he disappeared. It was the middle of the California gold rush, and family legend had it that he went west to try to strike it rich, but was never heard from again.
The next year, King married Matilda Hodge, and this marriage lasted fifteen years and produced six children: Harriet, Catherine, Palmer, Charles, Edgar, and George. However, history may have repeated itself with George’s birth on 14 April 1850, as Matilda died nearly two months later, on 20 July of the same year. For the second time, King was a widower, but this time with seven children under the age of sixteen to look after.
His last marriage was to my third-great-grandmother, Eliza Williams, daughter of William Williams (let’s hear it for naming originality) and his wife Eunice, whose surname I have not yet determined but was actually likely Williams as well. Eliza was born 13 September 1813 in Pittstown, Rensselaer, New York — a matter which has caused genealogical controversy as my identification of Pittstown goes against “conventional wisdom”. Her only son, Dempster Christie Austin (20 Dec 1853-7 March 1927) wrote a big essay in a major genealogical book about his mother and identified her place of origin as Patterson, New York, located in Putnam County. I won’t bore everyone with the details, but trust me: Dempster was mistaken. He was in his eighties and wrote the essay more than fifty years after his mother’s death. It’s Pittstown. If you want to be bored, please contact me and I’ll be happy to regale you with my flights of genealogical reasoning.
Eliza, as it turns out, was also a widow. She had been married to Matthew Greene and had six children by him, four of whom lived past early childhood. Matthew Green had died before 1850 and Eliza still had two young children living at home with her. On 3 Nov 1851, she and King married.
Thankfully, Eliza broke King’s streak of losing wives to childbirth complications, and lived until 5 February 1885, outliving King by four years. King himself died in 1881 at age 79. Both are buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Adams.
Sadly, my second-great-grandfather Dempster Christie Austin had similar luck his father in regard to wives. My second-great-grandmother Emma Waite died giving birth to her third child on 5 September 1880. His second wife Emma Saunders died a week after giving birth to her second child in April 1892. His third wife Louisa Bristol had no children and while she died seven years before Dempster, they were married for 37 years. And even more sadly, their experiences in this arena were not uncommon for the day.