I have been spending the last couple weekends with the Clow family of Centerport. My idea of spending time is chasing the various family members through time as they moved and married and moved again. The family came from Schaghticoke in Rensselaer County, NY and moved to Centerport in the late 1830s and ’40s. They were a family of mechanics and inventors who set up a agricultural tools manufacturing business along the banks of the Erie Canal in the small settlement of Centerport. (If you don’t know Centerport, it is half way between Port Byron and Weedsport, or in the center of the county.)

The canal was supplied with water by way of a small feeder canal and the Clows either built on top of this stream or next to it. Some of the records show that Charles Clow was paid a small sum each year to look after the feeder. The company made grain cradles which were a fancy type of scythe that gathered up the plants as they were cut. I found a couple drawings in a period catalog. The business also made grain forks.

I became interested in the Clow’s again (I had investigated the family back in 2006), as an article said that George S Clow died at the home of his niece Mrs. Mary Stickle of Weedsport. I had been investigating Mary’s mom, who was Mary Armstrong, since she was the second wife of James White. James White’s first wife was Martha Anne Peck of the Centerport Peck’s. So how was George Clow related? Well, his mother was Ann Stevens, and Mary Armstrong’s mother was Mary Jane Stevens. In one of the online genealogies, George S Clow, who I thought was likely George Stevens Clow was listed as George Seneca Clow. And in the 1850 census, I find a listing for a Seneca Stevens.

There are also some other interesting ties. George’s grandmother was Sarah Seaman. Sarah’s father was Benjamin Seaman and Sarah named one of her sons Benjamin. The older Benjamin had a brother named Andrew, who married Sarah Knight after his first wife, Miss Van Vleck had died. I say Miss as no one knows her name. Andrew’s son Samuel Seaman had a daughter who married Jacob Devore, a man I had been studying as he was a boatman on the canal. He also married for his second wife Effa Grace Cheal. Grace Cheal was Ted Wilt’s grandmother. I had been building a Wilt family tree and had studied Grace and her family and found that her mother was Margaret Van Vleck. Was she related in some way to Jacob’s grandmother Catolyne Van Vleck ? It is questions like this that keep me from doing much else around the house.

Getting back to the Clow family, I found that three of them married three of the Yates family. So that sent me off chasing the Yates and I found that a Yate brother and sister married a Clow sister and brother. Catherine Clow married Cornelius Yates and their daughter Stella married Lewis Peck, and they lived in Grand Rapids. Another Peck, well actually, I already had added Stella by way of the Peck tree. Daniel Clow married Anna Yates and their daughter Helen married George Strunk. Nothing unusual there. Well in the Van Vleck family I had added a Jane Ann Van Vleck who married a William Strunk, and the alarm bells went off again. Well George is the son of John, and his uncle is the William who married Jane Ann Van Vleck. And they all moved to Janesville, Wisconsin, which is where Daniel Clow moved in 1848.

All are now part of the PBFT.