Henry Miner
(1807- ? )
Henry Miner was born in about 1807, most likely at Maple Summit near the border of Fayette/Somerset County, PA, the son of Frederick and Elizabeth (Sechman) Miner Sr. As a boy, he moved with his parents to Sego, Perry County, OH.
The rest of this biography is conjectural, based on evidence found to date, but is not yet proven with precision.
Henry is believed to have married Matilda Morton (1808- ? ). The ceremony took place on March 10, 1833, in Muskingum County, OH, by the hand of J. Goshen. This marriage is recorded in the book, Muskingum County, Ohio, Marriages Book II, published by the Muskingum County Genealogical Society.
Matilda was a native of Maine. Her parents are not yet known.
The Miners had four known children, and perhaps more -- Samuel Dawson Miner, Robert Sanford Miner, Eunice "Flora" Cummings Sayle and Catherine "Kate" Hill Newton.
During the 1830s through the 1850s, when the federal census was enumerated, the family resided in Putnam Township, Muskingum County, OH. In 1850, Henry was listed as a "boatman."
In 1852, the family migrated to Indiana, settling in or near Attica, Fountain County. They were among of a number of cousin-families to migrate as pioneer settlers of Indiana in the early to mid 1800s.
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Attica's Perry Street |
When the census was taken in 1870, the Miners lived in Logan Township, Fountain County. Henry, age 61 at the time, made a living as a "bridge tender." Henry is believed to have died sometime in the decade between 1870 and 1880.
Matilda survived Henry, and made her home with their married daughter Kate Hill in Delphi, Carroll County, IN when the federal census was taken in 1880.
Their final fates are not yet known, but they purchased lots in the Riverside Cemetery in Attica, IN, and it's presumed (but not proven) that they rest there for eternity. Evidence circa 1888 suggests that Matilda may have spent her final years in California with one of her sons or daughters.
~ Son Samuel Dawson Miner ~
Son Samuel Dawson Miner (1837-1906) was born on April 7, 1837 in Putnam, Muskingum County, OH. As an adult, he stood 5 feet, 5 inches tall, and weighed 150 lbs. He had a dark complexion and brown eyes, with dark brown hair. Before the Civil War, he worked as a clerk in a merchant store. After the war broke out, he served in two Ohio regiments -- the 88th Ohio Infantry (Company A), enlisting in Lafayette, IN; and the 9th Ohio Cavalry (Company A), enlisting in Zanesville, OH. While in the line of duty at Waynesboro, GA in the fall of 1864, he was thrown into a ditch by his horse, and then crushed by the horse, in a charge ordered by General Kilpatrick against Wheeler's Cavalry. The freak accident injured him including "a weakness in the rectum," he wrote. He was bedridden for two months in Knoxville in 1865, and never fully recovered, suffering extreme hemorrhoid problems in later years. After being discharged at the end of the war, he moved to Knoxville, TN.
Samuel married Louise Lones in Knoxville in 1864. The Miners had three children -- Harry Miner (born 1865), Maude G.
Abbott (born 1868) and Charlie Miner (born 1870).
Samuel and Louise spent the first seven years after the war in Knoxville. There, he was a partner in a business venture with Major Lewis Bowlus, a friend from their old military regiment. The company included a pottery at the foot of Gay Street near the Tennessee River, which produced stoneware. A typical river-side mill in Knoxville, during the Civil War, is seen at right in a rare sketch published in Harper's Weekly.
According to research done by P. Edward "Eddy" Pratt, an attorney and collector in Knoxville, Samuel sold a part interest to his brother Robert, who in turn sold an interest to Hugh French. The operation was located in a warehouse in what was then and still is now the main business district of Knoxville. The pottery apparently was destroyed in March 1867 during a week-long flood in which the Tennessee River swept away bridges and businesses. While the warehouse itself was not destroyed, there was sufficient damage to end the pottery business.
The
Bowlus, Miner & French company produced the rare, excellent example seen
at left, one of only two known surviving pieces. It is stamped, "Bowlus, Miner &
French, Manufacturers, Knoxville, Tenn." (Click for an enlarged
view -- our "Photo of the Month" for June 2007.)
Leaving Knoxville in 1872, Samuel migrated westward to Kansas; and thence to Fort Scott, CO; San Juan Country, CO; and Fresno (1895), San Francisco (1896-1899) and Oakland, CA (1899). In 1903, while residing in San Diego, San Diego County, CA, he worked in the oil business and as a real estate agent.
At
right, a postcard image of San Diego from about the time Samuel made his
home there.
Samuel died in San Diego on Dec. 4, 1906, or on Jan. 9, 1906 (the dates differ), at the age of 69, of "acute alcoholic poisoning." His official death certificate gives his father's name as "Samuel Miner" rather than "Henry Miner," with "Mrs. E.F. Barlow" as the source of the information, so this disparity is being explored further. Samuel's final resting place is believed to be the Masonic Cemetery in San Diego. Samuel's pension paperwork file still exists today in the National Archives in Washington, DC, with a copy in the Minerd-Minard-Miner-Minor Archives.
~ Son Robert Sanford Miner ~
Son Robert
Sanford Miner (1840-1918) claimed his own birthplace as Putnam, near Zanesville,
Muskingum County, OH. He came
with his parents and brother to Fountain County, IN in 1852, at the age of 12.
As an adult, he married Angie Sherman
(1848-1935), a native of Maine, on June 8, 1869 in Fountain County, IN. He was a
veteran of the Civil War, having first served in the 10th Indiana Infantry, Company G.
His tour of duty lasted from Sept. 18, 1861 to Sept. 19, 1864. Said the San
Jose (CA) Mercury newspaper, he "served his three years' enlistment ...
as a member of Co. G, 10th Indiana Infantry volunteers. He was honorably
discharged with the rank of first sergeant. After his discharge he re-enlisted
for the period of the war, and became a member of Hancock's veteran corps,
enlisting in Nashville Tenn., his total service in the Army being four and a
half years." In later
years, Robert applied for and received a federal pension in later years as
compensation for his Civil War disabilities.
In the 1870 federal census, they
lived in Attica, Fountain County, with a two-month-old son Ralph W. Miner, at a
time when Robert was employed as a clerk in
a grocery store. From there, said the Mercury, he went "to Illinois,
and then became a resident of Fresno in this state. In 1900 he returned to
Chicago, and in 1903 came to San Jose, where he has since resided." By 1910,
when Robert was 69, they were still in San Jose, Santa Clara County, residing at
310 South Eighth Street. Robert passed away on Oct. 14, 1918, at the age of 72.
He was laid to rest in Oak Hill Cemetery, with pallbearers including C.L.
Burdick, W.B. Coates, J.P. Fulmer, S.A. Seymour, L.A. Talcott and S. Williams.
His obituary, published in the San Jose and Fresno newspapers, said he
"will be greatly missed by a large number of warm friends, especially those
of the San Jose families of old soldiers, he at the time of his death being an
honored member of the Sheridan-Dix Post, G.A.R." After his
death, Angie began receiving the federal pension payments and then sometime
before 1930 married Henry P. Salisbury ( ? -1934), himself a Civil War veteran of the 15th Kansas
Cavalry.
Henry died in Santa Clara County on Jan. 7, 1934, and Angie passed away the following year, on March 25, 1935. Angie's brief obituary was published in the Oakland Tribune newspaper. The file of Robert's pension paperwork today is in the custody of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Miners' son Ralph was manager of the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company of Napa, CA, circa 1912.
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| Sketch of Knoxville and the Tennessee River, as seen during the Civil War from Keith's Heights, from Harper's Weekly |
~ Daughter Kate (Miner) Hill Newton ~
Daughter Kate (1849- ? ) married John Hill (1849- ? ). The wedding took place in Fountain County on May 16, 1871. They had at least one son, Charles Hill. In 1880, when the federal census was taken, the Hills resided in Delphi, Carroll County, IN, where John worked as a baker. Residing in their household that year was Kate's 72-year-old mother, Matilda.
Kate later migrated to Northern California and married (?) Newton. She resided in Fresno circa April 1893. In 1900, she resided with her son Charles in the home of her married sister, Eunice Sayle in San Jose, Santa Clara County, CA. She remained in the Sayle residence over the years, including a move to Oakland, Alameda County, CA by 1920.
In 1917, she signed an affidavit with her brother Robert testifying in the Civil War pension application of their sister Flora.
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St. James Park on North First Street, San Jose |
~ Daughter Eunice Flora (Miner) Cummings Sayle ~
Daughter Eunice "Flora" Cummings Sayle (1842-1939) moved from Ohio to Knoxville, TN, and thence to Northern California in the 1870s. Her first husband was Dr. Ralph Wardlow Cummings (1832-1880), a native of Minnesota, and the son of Asa and Phoebe (Johnson) Cummings of Maine. The wedding took place on March 13, 1865, in Knoxville, following Ralph's discharge from the Army at the close of the Civil War. Performing the ceremony was John A. Bowman, a hospital chaplain.
Ralph was a widower, whose first wife Alice Illsley Waterhouse had died on Dec. 5, 1857, without having had any children. One of Ralph's sisters had married Rev. Joseph Rowell, who was a lifelong friend of Alice, Ralph and Flora, and later testified on Flora's behalf in a question over Ralph's Civil War pension.
Ralph was a graduate of Bowdoin College and the New York Medical College (1856) who became editor and publisher in 1858 of the Maine Medical and Surgical Journal. During the Civil War, he served with the 23rd Michigan Infantry and later as surgeon of the 1st Colored Heavy Artillery. From July 28, 1862 to March 31, 1866, he was first sergeant and assistant surgeon of the 23rd Michigan, always present with the regiment except for February 1864, when he was on detached service in Knoxville, TN, examining recruits.
Following the war, Ralph was a life insurance and claim agent in Knoxville, TN (1867); a pharmacist in Minneapolis, MN (1870); and associate editor of the Minneapolis Evening Times and News newspaper (1873). Sometime between 1873 and 1880, he moved to California and is said to have edited a newspaper in Benicia, 35 miles northeast of San Francisco. (Reference source: The Cummings Memorial database on Ancestry.com)
The Cummingses had six children -- Ethel Morton Wright, born in Tennessee in 1868; Malanie Noyes Cummings, born in 1870 in Michigan; Kate Weil Cummings, born in 1874 in California; Theodore Melville Cummings, born in 1877 in San Francisco, Agatha Gray Southern; and Ralph Wardlow Sayle Cummings. Daughter Agatha was born when the family lived in the Colony Tract of Central California in May 1878, and present at the birth were George A. Fuller and Lucy Jane Rucker. Son Ralph Jr. was born in Alameda in May 1880, with Sarah Oliver and Ethel M. Wright witnessing the birth.
Flora and Ralph and their family eventually resided at 209 Gough.
Sadly, Ralph died in San Francisco as he neared his 48th birthday on Aug. 17, 1880, of "disease of brain," stated his death certificate. He was laid to rest in the Oakland Cemetery. Three of the children also died young -- Malanie on Sept. 28, 1880, just a little more than a month after her father; Kate at age two on July 8, 1876; and Theodore at the tender age of four days on June 12, 1877.
A
year after Ralph's passing, on May 31, 1881 in San Francisco, Flora married her
second husband, Judge Claudius Galon Sayle (1826-1910). He was the son of Samuel and
Olivia (King) Sayle and a native of Carroll County, TN, where he had grown up on
his father's plantation. Performing the ceremony
was Flora's former brother in law, Rev. Joseph Rowell, pastor of the Mariners
Church. Witnesses were Sarah Cummings and Phebe B. Weil, both of San Francisco.
Claudius also was a widower, his first two wives Corilla (Stevenson) Bacon and Amanda Newton Burke having passed away at young ages.
He is profiled in the book, Memorial and Biographical
History of the Counties of Fresno, Tulare and Kern, California, Illustrated
(Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company), which was also published verbatim
in the History of Fresno County, California (Wallace W. Elliott &
Co., 1882).
Judge Sayle achieved wealth early in his life in a coal mining venture on the Kern River in what is now Mariposa County, CA. He later went into merchandising in Los Angeles, and was elected one of the first Supervisors of Tulare County, CA in the mid-1850s. In the fall of 1860, he was elected Judge of Tulare County, a position in which he served until the completion of his term in January 1864. In 1864, as the Civil War raged, he was elected District Attorney of Fresno County, which he held for eight years. In 1879, he was elected as a member of the first legislature after the adoption of the New Constitution of California.
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| Flora and Claudius Sayle's marriage certificate, on file today at the National Archives in Washington, DC |
Flora and Claudius resided in Fresno in a "little home" at the corner of J and Tuolumne Streets. When he celebrated his 55th birthday in 1881, Claudius legally adopted his young stepson, Ralph Wardlow Cummings Jr. Said the History of Fresno County, "He fixed his adopted name as Ralph Wardlow Sayle Cummings; he being the only boy, he did not want to take his father's name away, hence he left Cummings after Sayle."
The adoption matter was important because young Ralph "was crippled in 1892 by a bad fall from a horse," wrote his sister Agatha. "He is also mentally deficient tho not an idiot by any means but he is entire dependent on others for his maintenance." Because of Judge Sayle's great wealth, it was assumed that he would always provide for the boy. "But he lost all his money before he died and Mamma was dependent on her pension for the support of herself and Ralph," Agatha said.
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| Stereoview of the heart of San Francisco's business ruins, showing the remains of the Call and Rialto buildings at the intersection of Second and Howard Streets |
On April 18, 1906, the Sayleses would have experienced the tragic effects of the San Francisco earthquake. It lasted only about one minute, but registered 8.25 on the Richter scale. Hundreds of people were killed, and hundreds of thousands of others were left homeless.
Controversy enveloped the family later in 1906, when the judge's sons in law H.E. Wright (married to Ethel) and Rev. Ward (married to Agatha) brawled over the paternity of Wright's daughter Marguerite. Wright's wife informed him that their brother in law Rev. Ward was claiming to be the father of the Wrights' daughter. Furious, Wright traveled to San Jose by train and asked Judge Sayle to verify the rumor. When confirmed, Wright then sought out Rev. Ward and punched him twice in the face, whereupon Ward "struck Wright on the head, inflicting a gash," reported the Oakland Tribune. Rev. Ward, "who was on his way to the First Baptist Church, fled to the station house and thence to the house of Judge Wallace, where he swore to a complaint against Wright. The latter deposited bail. Hundreds witnessed the trouble, and San Jose has something to talk about for a month."
Claudius passed away on May 11, 1910, at their home at 330 South 5th Street in San Jose. He was buried at Cypress Lawn Cemetery near San Francisco.
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| San Jose's Market Street, circa 1909 |
Eunice resided at 3215 Florida Street in Oakland, and later with her married daughter Agatha at 1242 17th Avenue in San Francisco in her last years. She died at the age of 96, of pneumonia and hardening of the arteries, on Jan. 30, 1939. Her remains were cremated, and she was laid to rest in the Mt. View Cemetery in Oakland.
- Daughter Ethel Cummings (1867-1944) married H.E. Wright ( ? - ? ). H.E. was a onetime tea merchant and bank clerk in San Jose. She resided at 1096 Pine Street in Oakland circa 1939. She died in San Francisco at the age of 77 on Jan. 18, 1944.
- Daughter Agatha Gray Ward Cummings (1878-1969), a "noted singer," was married twice. Her first husband was Rev. (?) Ward ( ? - ? ). They had a daughter, Marguerite Ward. Circa 1905, the Wards "went East, and he preached while she sang. They quarreled and she returned home. A divorce suit was brought, and troubles have been brewing ever since," said the Oakland Tribune (Aug. 5, 1906). By 1910, Agatha was remarried to (?) Southern. She resided at 1242 17th Avenue in San Francisco circa 1939. She died in San Mateo County, CA at the age of 91 on June 19, 1969.
- Son Ralph Wardlow Sayle Cummings (1881-1960) died in San Francisco on July 6, 1960.
More will be added here when learned and proven.
Many thanks to Krystal Kelley and Eddy Pratt for freely sharing a wealth of their research material.
Copyright © 2006-2007 Mark A. Miner