Goose Island

It's not on the map anymore.  In 1802, it became South Lima, New York.  At one point it was called Hamilton Station, that's when there was a train up to Rochester running through. It's near Bronson Hill, which is technically in Avon.  It's all so confusing because New York state was just getting started. Nobody knew what to call anything. The Seneca had their names for places, and some of them stuck. Conesus. Geneseo. Canandaigua. 

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OK we're still underground. Worm's eye POV.  Notice that the soil feels extra moist. This area used to be swamp. Geese loved it here. We're bumping into other worms, chunks of old glacier, composted vegetation, here a potato, there a carrot, then smack dab into an extra large onion. The size of root vegetables grown in this neck of the woods became postcardworthy. They owed it all to goose dung, the magic ingredient. 
 
Henry Osborne raised children as well as potatoes.  By 1871, the year my great-grandfather entered the picture, Henry had seven children already. He was in his fifties. He'd been farming his 3.5 acres for 30 years. Three daughters were still living at home. So was his wife.  So was the mother of my great-grandfather, not his wife.

Mucking about in the past

In 1852, Henry Osborne had been living in Goose Island, a village founded on goose dung (muck, as they called it), for at least 12 years. Then the Erie railroad built a depot there.

He was farming the right place at the right time. Goose Island (later Hamilton Station, later South Lima) became the heart of the local economy. "More carloads of produce were shipped from South Lima in a year than from any other place between Rochester and Elmira." (Livonia History)

In old newspapers at FultonHistory.com, I've found one mention of Henry.

Henry Osborn of Livonia Center raised 71.5 lbs of White Star potatoes from 1 lb. of seed. Good!

                 The Mount Morris Union, Thursday Oct 18, 1883

"Good!" I love that. Short and sweet.

Onions were the main crop until 1894. Then they went to town with celery. The details of root vegetable cultivation in South Lima NY in the 19th century are pretty fascinating, and not entirely off the subject. I've been curious about how Henry supported all those children, his sickly wife, his mother, and a "mistress" on 3.5 acres of land in a house the size of today's garage.

It was the local dirt.

When they went to town

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In the 1850's, when the railroad came to Livonia, it missed the center of town. Therefore, the town of Livonia moved closer to the train. Thereafter, Livonia Center, no longer the center of town, was known as Livonia Center and the business end of town was Livonia.

Looks like car day.

Where Commercial Street crossed Big Tree Street, we lived down the hill three houses. I remember because I was learning to count. I had the run of the neighborhood, which I enjoyed because everyone adored me. Everyone knew me because they knew my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, and my great-great-grandfather. I was Livonia royalty. 


Here's our car in front of our house on our street.

Conesus Lake

As regional manager of the Rochester Ice Company, my grandfather, Harry Osborn, peddled ice to homes all around Conesus Lake. He also owned a farm at the foot of the lake, in Lakeville, NY. The Lakeview Fur Farm. He raised mink, turkey, my father, and my aunt.

This is the house that Harry built. He had help from his brother-in-law, Harold Harvey. This was my first home.

That would be Harry, mowing off to the left. Supervising, his daughter Rae and his first grandchild, Charles Thomas.

When they went to the fair

For four generations, from 1840 to 1950 Henry's sons, grandsons, a great-grandson, and a great-great granddaughter lived between Conesus and Hemlock, the two westernmost Finger Lakes.

Hemlock was once known as Slab City, which was mercifully changed to something lovelier that celebrated trees. It was a happening little village at the north end of Hemlock Lake, south of Livonia Center. It was regionally famous for its World's Fair.

My father, Charles, was born in this house in Hemlock on June 30, 1917.

A wild goose chase

According to a fellow family researcher, Henry Osborne was (still is, if you want to think about it this way) the son of a Stephen Osborn born in East Windsor CT in 1794. This Stephen married Polly Parsons in 1816. They migrated to Ossian NY with his father, Elijah. In 1836, Stephen divorced Polly and married a Sue Hungerford. In 1838, they moved to Michigan, taking three sons from Stephen's first family by Polly; all except Henry.

This always struck me as fishy. Divorce wasn't that common back then. He took all her sons with him except Henry? Wither went Polly? There's no record of her until 1870, when she's living with Henry in Livonia NY. The census records that she was born in Connecticut. So Bob went looking for a Stephen Osborn who married a Polly from CT at about the time Henry was born, 1814-1818. Thanks to impeccable record keeping by Connecticut, he found one in which names and dates fit. And this Stephen went west to where? Ossian NY. He's there in the census of 1820 and 1830.

It's the perfect genealogical storm of right names, right dates, right migration pattern; right neck of the upstate New York woods. I thought he was right. I've spent the past couple of years tracing Osbornes from East Windsor CT, and I've grown to know and love them.

Now I find out that Polly Parsons Osborne died in 1837. So she couldn't have been the Polly Osborne living with Henry in 1870 (unless they had her propped up in the corner with Jerusha).  Sad, but rather a relief, since I didn't like to think about my poor great-great-great grandmother wandering around the wilds of western New York state after being divorced by a husband who then married a younger woman and took their kids to Michigan. And it certainly puts Stephen in less of an asshole light.

I am officially hot on the trail of a new Stephen.

East Windsor Osbornes, I may run into you later.

Wild about Harry

Grandson of Henry Osborne, Harry Osborn. Note the drop of the e, which causes so much confusion while tracing Osbornes.

Where the saga so far crops up in the middle is my grandfather, Harry, born 1895 in Rochester NY. I'm just wild about Harry. Who wouldn't be. My grandmother was. Just look at him.

He never got any less adorable.

Harry had a hard life, but I always remember him laughing, smiling, beaming at me. Injecting himself with the insulin he needed to live. He was relatively successful by Livingston County NY standards. Had a farm.  Raised mink. Managed the local ice company. Volunteered as a fireman. Kept the brotherhood as a Mason. Not sure if he went to church, although it was right across the road.  But no matter. Lots of good people never set foot in church. Harry raised a good man in my father. He was a top-notch Grampy. 

He liked roast beef. He pronounced it rrrrROAST BIFF. Like a big Dutch giant, he roared and rolled that initial r for as long and loud as he could, just because he could. And because it utterly delighted me and my sister.

We often ran into Harry, holding court on the porch of The Commercial Hotel with other local farmers, small businessmen, volunteer firemen. Brother Masons. Gramp could consistently be counted on to give me a nickel and tell me to go buy an ice cream cone. I don't know what my mother did with all those nickels. I never got any ice cream cones.

Harry was born in 1895, his mother died in 1900. His father had to support two small children, which he did by becoming an insurance salesman. He couldn't earn a living and still be at home to care for two little kids, so it was given to their mother's mother, Cornelia Kusse, to watch them. By every account we have, one, Harry was a handful. From orphan, he graduated to borderline juvenile delinquent and was finally evicted from his own grandma's house after roasting a live rabbit. Or let's pray, trying to. Let's trust that Grandma Kusse was alert enough to smell something furry in the oven and the rabbit came out just slightly singed, but still alive. Never liked Harry much after, though.

In census records of 1910, Harry and his sister Floss (Florence) live with their father. At age 15, Harry is listed as a machinist. Perhaps this is how he learned how to carve up dead horses, the best food for raising robust mink.

At some point after 1910, the kids went to live with their father's brother, Uncle Bill, back in Livonia Center.  Uncle Bill, for those of you who have been following, was once known as Willie Whaley. I blame no one for not following. This family is damn confusing.

One summer's day around 1915, Harry attended a chicken barbecue in Lakeville, NY and met the woman who became my grandmother, Ruth Vandia Punch. By 1917, he was living in Hemlock with his wife and new baby, working for the city of Rochester public works department. Here is where they lived.

Here, the whole gang. Notes ("Everybody Happy") by Ruth Punch Osborn, the lucky gal who married Harry. The gang's all gathered around my father Charles, born in June, 1917. As important to him as his parents were his Aunt Floss, Harry's sister, and her husband, Harold Harvey. They never had kids, so my father and his sister Rae were their children. This is one of just two photos I have of my great-grandmother, Ruth's mother, Anna Sans Punch. She's the one wearing the tie.

Harry named his son after his father, Charles. The bastard he may have been, and technically was, Charles E. Osborne senior found some place in his son's heart and his name was honored in the next generation.