We have been working on the Port Byron Family Tree project for about a year now. As of March 20, 2022, we have entered 4964 people. Although to be fair, with some families I have chased the linage back to the Mayflower or Europe to see how people might be related. I even found that my wife Mary is related to the King family by way of the Wightman family if I chase it back far enough. So there are a few names in the tree that really have nothing to do with the local families unless you happen to be one of the old guard.

Some families go through a lot of pain and heart-break and it is almost depressing all these years later. There are parents that have babies and children die one after, and they end up never having a family. I am always surprised at the number of couples that never had grown kids, or kids at all.

I ran across the Caldwell family by way of trying to tie a photo of Otis Critchett to the Kern’s family. Lock 52 had been given a collection of photos from the family of Lila Kerns Fields and many were labeled. Otis was an outlier as he wasn’t connected at all.

Then I ran across Grace Caldwell, the daughter of DeLancy and Julia (Smith) Caldwell.

Delancy was the son of Hiram and Eleanor Caldwell. A descendant of Hiram’s ran the Caldwell Foundry for a number of years. Well Grace had married Otis in 1893 and together they had one daughter Lillian. In 1916 Otis was driving his new car when he missed a shift and the car rolled backwards over an embankment killing him. After that it appears that Grace was committed to the St. Lawrence State Hospital in Ogdensburg, NY. In the 1920 and 30 census she is listed as a patient there. Her obit says she died in Odgensburg in 1941.

Grace has a sister Blanch who married Ray Holcomb in April 1902 and they lived on the Holcomb farm in the Oaklands. On Christmas day 1902, the family watched as Roy and his brother Fred were hit and killed by a train as they crossed the tracks. It is surprising on how many people and wagons were hit by trains in the days before crossing gates. You need to wonder if they thought they could beat the train or just didn’t hear it. Of course the fact that the family was standing there watching the train hit and kill the men was great headline fodder for the papers.

It might be the bad omens began with Julia’s (Grace’s mom) father Captain John Smith. Capt Smith was a well known boatman along the canal who lived in Port Byron. In 1881 his wife Martha died, so he moved in with the family of Levendar Higley. (I don’t know why.) In 1885, John, who was 68, ran off with Levendar’s wife Emma (Cooper) who was about 28 years old. Levendar and Emma had three kids and Emma took the youngest with her. A number of papers say that the couple “eloped” although she was clearly married. In the Dayton, Ohio paper, it reported that John was a “well-to-do man” of “fine personal appearances” and that Emma was an “attractive woman.”

The couple was found a few days later in Canastoda. This certainly was a scandal, however, the papers really played up this story after John was found dead by suicide a few days later. Some of the papers say that when Levendar was told where they were and asked if he wanted them returned, he said that “No, they will have the worst of it.” This taunt cause John to kiss his “wife” and then go out hang himself. The really story seems to be that John went to a friend’s home and asked about working a farm, and when he was denied, he then hung himself. Of course the papers loved the first story of the good looking older man with the very fine looking young woman ending in death and it made the rounds with headlines like “The End of a Rope!” I found that story in a lot of papers.

I don’t know who Emma Cooper was. In one paper it says that her foster father said that she better not come back. She seems to disappear although I keep looking. Sadly none of this offers the perspective of Emma who was living with a foster father, married and had three kids by age 28. What was Levendar like? What was Emma like? Heck, what was John like?

After all this, Levendar must have divorced Emma as she disappears. He moved to Syracuse. Then in 1896 he marries Carrie Link. Carrie was the daughter of Mary Jane (Ellery) Link. The Higley and Ellery families had grown up next to each other and Levendar would have grown up with Mary Jane and known her daughter Carrie. Carrie was 12 years younger then him. The couple, along with Mary Jane, moved to Syracuse in 1901. Then in 1901, Levendar (and Emma’s) son Charles was sent to Auburn prison for 10 years after a crime. It was said that Charles was having mental issues after his service in the Philippine War. (Likely PTSD) While in prison he developed consumption and was given a compassionate release by the Governor in 1902. Shortly after his release he died at home. In the end, people admitted that he likely was not part of the “un-natural” crime and shouldn’t have been arrested.

Wow. And I still haven’t figured out why the Otis and Grace photos were in with the Kerns stuff!