John CARLSON vs Eric HELSTEN

In July I was looking for some paperwork on Edward DAKIN.  I was looking through a notebook with old documents from the family.  I found something written in very light pencil.  It seemed to be evidence taken in a court case of "John Carlson vs Eric Helsten,  8 September 1866 before Reynolds Justice".

I e-mailed Chris and asked her if this was her John Carlson.

Chris:  "That's my John! Can you send me a copy?"

Next e-mail:  "So excited I can't think straight!!!!

Yes- he came to Conn. in 1858 and was bonded to your Eric for 7 years!

This would be the first solid evidence other than a handwritten note from his 2nd wife - my great -grandmother - telling about his indenture - but not naming Eric specifically.

This is what I looked for for so many years - solid evidence of where he was between 1858 and his 1867 1st marriage."

I wanted to share the document with Chris as quickly as I could.

I tried scanning it.  It was so light that the scanner didn't pick up the writing.  I did take a couple of photographs (above) but those were hardly readable.  The final solution was to photocopy it and enlarged it.  I sent Chris a copy of the enlargement to see if she could decipher any better than I can.

I spent the weekend trying to transcribe the multiple pages with the interviews of various people.  This was a court deposition! 

I'm not quite sure why Eric Helsten had this copy of the court deposition.

John Carlson had arrived from NY unexpectedly when Eric had asked for an apprentice and John came along with the worker.  Eric talked of his arrival without even a clean shirt to wear nor the ability to speak English. He fed, clothed him and tried to teach him English in addition to having him work.

By the end of the weekend I was convinced that John had been rather young, age 15, when he came to Eric and probably wanted to be treated more like a son than a worker.  There was some testimony of what I think might be sledding when they were told not to do it with Eric & Mary's son William and getting injured. This sledding injury might be the basis for his injured foot and limp.  Also, I'm not sure he stayed the full 7 years, if I read this document correctly.

My transcription of the document is 4 pages long and has lots of missing words and sentences.

Chris has the document now along with the photocopies.  She is spending this weekend with her daughter to try to improve on my transcription of the document.  I'm looking forward to reading it once they finish.  I figure two sets of eyes are better than one, you have someone to help guess what a word might be.

Stay tuned for the update on the translation of the transcription of the document.  

Also, this raises a whole new question:  what happened with the court case?

John CARLSON, his suit of clothes, and our hunt for information, part 2

Chris was disappointed that the letter that had offered her hope of finding SOMETHING about her great grandfather didn't turn out to be written by the correct person.    She had already traveled to Gaylordsville last year and had tracked down all the local records she could find for Eric HELSTEN (land records, vital records, historical society, etc).  What could we try next?

Chris made a generous suggestion.  What about translating the 6 letters from Sweden written to Eric during the years just before  John CARLSON came through the time he was in Gaylordsville?  Maybe someone would mention John and say something about his apprenticeship and Swedish family.  That would be from 1858 through 1863.

These letters are not the easiest things to read, even if my language was Swedish.  Eric was from a large family, he was one of 13 children.  As many family members who happened to be around in one part of Sweden at a time would take one piece of paper, fold in half, and each write to Eric.  So, the  letter pictured here was written in December 1863.

I scanned the 6 letters, she printed and mailed them to Sweden and over the next three months they were translated.

We learned a lot about how tough life was for those in Sweden.  We learned the everyday nitty gritty of life and trying to get by.  I learned more about each of the siblings. BUT we DIDN'T learn anything about John Carlson and his family!

John CARLSON, his suit of clothes, and our hunt for information, part 1

John Carlson in his suit

As I mentioned in my last post, John CARLSON was to get $100 and a suit of clothes when he finished his apprenticeship.  The family story with this picture is that it is the suit that he received.
John went to Chicago about 1866 or 7, so he must have come to the United States in the late 1850's.

My GGgrandfather Eric HELSTEN had saved all his letters from his family after he arrived in 1845 until he died in 1903.  When my grandmother died in 1974, I found all the letters tied together in a desk drawer.  She never told me about the letters (and what I've learned from them is another story) and I don't read Swedish, so I took the letters home and saved them.  A few years later I worked with a wonderful woman from Sweden, who translated a bunch of the letters.

I spent a weekend reading all of the translations that I had to see if any mentioned John Carlsson.   No luck.  Then I decided to look over the other letters to see if I could recognize the name John Carlsson in the body of any of the letters.  Chris suggested that I not only look for  John, but also look for Johan, Carl, Karl, or Charles.  Those were other names that he went by.

Then I found a letter dated 12 February 1856 from Jonas Augustus Carlsson written in Swedish from Brookfield, Connecticut.  Chris was ecstatic.  Carl Johan Augustus Carlsson was her great grandfather's name in Sweden!  This would put him in the the US two years earlier than she thought he came, but maybe he did come then.

Chris wished she might have some had writing to compare it to, but all she has is a signature from 40 years later.

I scanned the letter and e-mailed it to Chris [isn't modern technology great?] and she sent it to relatives in Sweden to be translated.

A couple days later Chris sent me the translation with a note.  His wasn't her great grandfather!  This Jonas Augustus Carlsson talks of missing his parents and siblings in Sweden, but does comment that life is tougher there so even though it isn't great here, it is better than there.

Eric HELSTEN, Mary HEARTY and his apprentice John CARLSON

Mary HEARTY

Last February, I was checking to see if anything new could be found on my GGgrandparents Eric HELSTEN or his wife Mary HEARTY.  Eric came from Uppsala, Sweden in 1845.  Mary came from Dorsey, Parish Creggan, County Armagh, Ireland around the same time.  They were married in Patterson, NY 12 August 1849 and moved over the New York/Connecticut line to Gaylordsville, CT.  In 1842, Eric was apprenticed as a tanner in Sweden and so it was not surprising to discover that when he settled in Gaylordsville that he started a tannery in 1853.

I discovered someone else was searching for Eric and Mary.  I was pleased.  I am descended from their daughter Caroline Matilda HELSTEN who married Charles H EVANS. I don't know what happended to two of their four children, Mary Louisa HELSTEN and William HELSTEN.    Maybe one of their descendants was searching.

Eric HELSTEN

So I sent a message asking how she was related to Eric and Mary.

However, it was someone NOT descended from Eric and Mary.  It was Chris Finland who was searching her ancestor John CARLSON [Carl Johan Augustus CARLSSON].  John was an orphan who came from Sweden after his grandparents, who had been raising him, died.  John was apprenticed to Eric HELSTEN. Chis has a paper saying that John got a new suit of clothes and $100 for his 7 years of apprenticeship as a tanner and shoemaker.  Chris didn't know anything about John's early years but figured that maybe Eric was a distant relative or family friend who had taken him in -- how else might he have gotten here from Sweden?

John's mother was from just south of Uppsala and Eric came from Uppsala. Chris has been searching for years.  She has found relatives in Sweden, traveled there, and had been working on a family tree for Eric HELSTEN in hopes of finding a connection, anywhere.  No success.

This has led to our working together to see if we can find anything about  John CARLSON and to figure out his relationship to Eric HELSTEN.

wonderful site to check out

There is a wonderful site at U Conn for historic maps, mostly in Connecticut were I spent time investigating today, thanks to my new-found DAKIN researcher, Melanie Marks.

That's where I found the map of  Kent (I showed a piece of it in the posting on South Kent 1874 map below).  They have labeled it 1867 (as in the Beer's book), however, some folks are saying that the Kent map was from 1874,  and since Edward DAKIN probably wasn't in Kent in 1867 and didn't buy the store until 1872, I think the 1874 date is probably more accurate.  Also, it is similar to the map for Waterbury, labeled 1874.  Maybe the maps were both part of the same series.

Check it out.

South Kent in 1874

Here is a piece of an 1874 map showing the store and post office next to the depot for the Housatonic Rail Road.  The post office and general store were in a house.  SO, was Miss Fanton renting a room from Edward DAKIN?  Edward DAKIN bought the house where the store was located, we think in 1872.

It looks like the label for the building is
"Miss E. Fanton & E. Dakin
Store & P.O."
I don't think it is two buildings (one with Miss E Fanton & E Dakin and the other with the store) since there seems to be a line from the names to across the road to one dot (next to the one labeled "Depot" and there are not two dots on the east side of the road.

So, who is Miss E FANTON?
There were other FANTONs in So. Kent, as well a just over the town line in Gaylordsville.

A Fortuitous E-mail Waiting in Spam!

A number of years ago, I corresponded with a wonderful person who was writing a book on early Kent, Connecticut families.  She had traced their families from town records listed in Connecticut files.  I, of course, bought her helpful book:  Francelia C Johnson, A Register of Some of the Families that have lived in Kent, CT.  1739-1999, 2000.  I learned about her work when I wrote the Town Clerk in Kent CT inquiring about the availability of birth, marriage and death certificates for my SMITH and DAKIN relatives and the helpful clerk asked if I'd like to be put in contact!  Would I like to talk to her?  ABSOLUTELY Amazing!

Recently, I was trying to see if there were any new records available in Kent CT about my DAKIN ancestors and so I wrote to the Kent Historical Society.  I was hoping that the Historical Society might have information on Edward DAKIN, the first postmaster in Sourth Kent and his wife Mary Alice SMITH who was a school teacher there.

Unfortunately, and fortuitously, my e-mail ended up in the SPAM of the Historical Society.  A while after I wrote, the historian was looking for an expected e-mail which hadn't arrived so she looked in the Spam mailbox and discovered my letter!   She contacted me and we started talking about what records weren't destroyed by fire (as some school records had).

The next day, Melanie Beal Marks, of Connecticut House Histories, LLC, stopped by the Kent Historical Society to continue some work she was doing on some local families who owned the homes she is currently researching.  One of the houses was originally owned by the CHASE family.

Edward DAKIN had sold his General Store/Post Office to Wm GEER in 1882 who sold it to Fred CHASE in 1883.  Since Melanie was descended from Preserved Fish DAKIN who had lived just over the border in Oblong NY before moving to Ohio, she wondered if this Edward DAKIN  was also from just over the border in New York.

I got an e-mail from the Historian, saying she couldn't believe it!  Two people asking about Edward DAKIN on consecutive days, after years of no one asking anything about him.  Did I want to contact this other person?  Did I want her contact information?  ABSOLUTELY!!

Melanie sent me some information, I sent her information.  It turns out that her Preserved Fish DAKIN was the brother of my Paul DAKIN.  Her Hiram DAKIN and my Edward DAKIN were 2nd cousins!

We have joined forces along with Melanie's sister on researching the DAKINs.  It turns out there was one more connection.  My great grandfather Edward DAKIN married Mary Alice SMITH; Fred CHASE (part of the family she is researching) married Mary Alice's sister Clara Wright SMITH.

Definitely a fortuitous e-mail and question and a wonderful Historian who recognized the connection and put us together just as the Town Clerk had done for me years ago!