Amos Stout Drake and Catherine Whaley Drake

I hate dead ends.  Some folks who study genealogy call them "Brick Walls."  But that seems a little too optimistic.  The phrase implies that one can smash through the brick wall or get a ladder a scale the wall or find a stile or something.  Maybe "dead end" isn't the exact perfect word to describe where I've come with Catherine Whaley.  More like a cul-de-sac.  I keep going round and round and round.  Never gleaning any new information.  I keep slogging over everything I know, hoping that I'll come across something that I missed that can send me off in a new direction.  Then checking and double checking anything I can think of hoping that maybe possibly someone has put up some new data that might help me.  I can't be the only person in the universe who is stumped with Catherine Whaley Drake, wife of Amos Stout Drake.

One of the things that makes me crazy is that many people don't attempt to validate or invalidate information that they find in other peoples family trees.  Sometimes it makes me doubt my own research and I feel I have to go over my own facts again and confirm what I'm pretty sure is the "truth."  I followed some of the "shaking leaf" hints on Ancestry and found about 10 other trees that have my Catherine's death date wrong.  Sometimes errors occur when the people who reported the death are not "family" -- maybe a neighbor, who doesn't really know much about the deceased.

So here I state for my own tree: Catherine Whaley Drake died on 27 Feb 1880.  That's probably why she didn't show up in the 1880 United States Census.  At FamilySearch.org, I found found the death record for Catherine Drake.  You can find it too by looking in "Michigan, Deaths, 1867-1897."  GS Film Number: 2363668, Digital Folder Number:  004207951, Image Number:  00541.

Here is the info I gleaned:  Catharine Drake died 27 Feb 1880 in Amboy, Hillsdale, Michigan.  She was a female, 81 years old.  Widowed and she did housework.  At the time of her death, she was 81 years, 5 months and 6 days old.  That should give me her actual birthdate.  Whoever did the reporting, did not know the name of her parents.  Whoever did the reporting, stated that she was from New Jersey.  Sigh.

In 1850, John Stout Drake was 25 years old and a farmer.  His wife, Lucia -- another gal who is making me crazy -- was 23.  They lived next door to John Stout's parents, Amos Stout Drake and Catherine Drake.  On the day the 1850 United States Census was taken Anna R Drake is enumerated at Amos and Catherine's house.  She is 4 months old.

Could the census taker have made a mistake and drawn the line in the wrong place?

At John and Lucia's house are the other children:  James A Drake who is three years old, and Emery E Drake who is 2 years old.  So the info gleaned from that very simple census, James A was born in 1847 and Emery was born in 1848.  I think this changes in the next census...  Maybe Anna was really staying next door at the Grandparents.  Maybe Lucia was being overwhelmed or she was sick or???

Regardless, In 1850 Amos and Catherine have a full house.  Besides Anna, there are:  William Drake (age 22), Cyrena (age 12), Catherine (age 7) and a whole bunch of Bakers:  Charles (44), Juliette (41), James (18), Ester (16), John (13) Cynthia (7), George (4), Charles (3).  I still don't know how we connect with the Bakers.  We share a cemetery with them, and those Bakers above are living not only in the same place, but on the same land and house.  I also have a very old bible that has Mary Baker on the front page and down in the corner is written "for Duane."  That is what they used to call my dad.  And there has  been no other Duanes in the family.

In that 1850 United States Census, Amos is listed as a farmer and that he was born in New Jersey.  Catherine was born in New York.  William and Cyrena were also born in New York, while the littlest Catherine was born in Michigan.

On the same page as Amos and Catherine and John and Lucia, and the Bakers are the farming families Clark and King.

10 years later, in the 1860 United States Census, the Amos and Catherine household has declined.  The only other person in the house is Catherine, grown up, and at 18 she is a school teacher.  Amos is 59 and still farming.  He says his farm is worth $2000, with a personal estate worth $793.  What's interesting is that Catherine as a personal estate of $32 -- and she's the only woman on the page that has any personal property.

Farms owned by others in the area, enumerated on the same page as Amos and Catherine are valued as follows:  $500 (James Garrison), $600 (George Salmon), $1000 (Horace Wright), $1000 (Alden Nash), $1600 (James Smith), $700 (Thomas Sawyer).

I need to find out what a "personal estate" actually is.

James Smith, the man who's farm is valued almost as much as Amos'?  Black family.  It's hard to fathom that the there were free blacks farming in Hillsdale County, Michigan in 1860.

That 1860 Census states that Amos was born in New Jersey, Catherine (the mom) was born in New York and daughter Catherine was born in Michigan.

In the 1870 United States Census, the Kings and the Clarks show up again as neighbors of Amos and Cate Drake.  Where were they in 1860?  Did Amos and Cate move to another part of Hillsdale County, then return?  How can I find out where they all were physically located in 1860?

In 1870. John Stout Drake has a new woman in the house -- an Elinor Drake.  Also in the house are Bird A and Alfred B -- and I've pondered over this before.  Even tho the enumerator lists them as Bird 13 years old and Alfred as 11, I propose that they are the same child.  Other children are Ann, Mary Serenus, Jane and Lucy.

Living next door are Amos J Drake.  and his wife, Mary.  Their children are Hiram A (2) and Carrie E (6/12).  Amos J happens to be James Amos, first born of John Stout and Lucia.  This custom of naming children after grandparents, then calling them by the middle name until said grandparent dies.

Skip a farm down and there we find Amos Stout Drake, now 69 and his wife, Cate, 70.  Amos' farm is valued at $3500 with a personal estate of $2000.  Here, Amos' birth state is listed as New York -- which has always been New Jersey up to this point and Catherine's birth state is still New York.  Living with Amos and Cate is Catherine who has married a man named Woods.  He isn't enumerated, but son Frederick Woods is there and he's three years old, making him born in 1867.