Mary Jane (Miner) Alderman
(1833-1871)
Mary Jane Miner was born in about 1835 near Champion, Trumbull County, OH, the daughter of Joseph and Elizabeth (Forney) Miner.
Mary Jane is believed – but not proven – to have married William "Henry" Alderman (1833-1905). He was the son of Daniel and Mary Ann (Durans) Alderman, and was born in Cheshire, CT.
The
Aldermans' wedding took place on Dec. 3, 1857, in Warren. If Mary Jane is the same,
she would have been age 22 at the time of marriage, and he was 24. Their
marriage application from Trumbull County is seen at right.
The Aldermans had two children – Franklin Alderman and William Henry Alderman Jr.
Henry stood 5 feet, 9 inches tall, with sandy complexion, blue eyes and sandy hair. He was a farmer.
During the Civil War, Henry went to Cleveland to enlist in the Army. He joined the 8th OH Infantry on June 19, 1861, under the command of Capt. Kerney. Henry was assigned to Company B. He was first an infantryman, but after becoming ill with "rheumatism," he was detailed as a teamster (wagon driver) in August, while stationed at Camp Pendleton. The following month, the regiment was assigned "among the mountains" of West Union, Doddridge County, WV, "along the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, where the men suffered severely from fever," said the book, General History of Cuyahoga County. "At 'Maggetty Hollow' over three hundred were in the hospital, and thirty five deaths resulted in a short time."
The regiment saw action later in 1861 and early 1862 in Romney, Hanging Rock, Blue's Gap, Bloomey Gap, Cedar Creek and Strasburg in West Virginia and Virginia. Said the Cuyahoga County history, "The regiment was deployed as skirmishers before and after the Battle of Winchester. The killed and wounded during this battle was more than one-fourth of its number."
A rare old photo of the Cedar Creek battlefield, showing
Belle Grove house in the distance
While on a march from Pendleton to Grafton, WV about the first of September, 1861, Henry's leg was broken in a freak accident. Writing about himself in the third person, he stated: "His team & wagon got mired or stuck (swamped) in the mud & while he was trying to extricate them he was [run over] by the wheel of the wagon on the left leg below the knee, injuring and fracturing the front bone of the leg & fracturing the ankle joint, that there was nothing done for the same but what he doctored it himself."
Henry bitterly wrote the following, many years later:
I went 3 or 4 times to my regimental dockter and told him how I was how I felt and he told me to go to my quarters that all I wanted was to get excused. There was not a man that worked more than I did. I was detailed as wagon master and worked night and day ... untill we got to Fredericksbur V. and thare the men built a shanty of logs in the bank and thare I grew wors and my Captain Wm. Kinney was sent for... The reason I did not receive treatment by Regimental Surgeon for nearly a year prior to going to Hospital was because I was detailed to care for Wagon train & there was no Regt'l Surgeon with us, & in trying to be nervy & hold out, to the end, I did not give up as sick until I was "played out" entirely...
Henry also began to suffer heart palpatations and later kidney problems after he "had been given charge of 16 wagons & rode on horse back, and as my leg was so swollen and pained me so that instead of letting my legs hand down, I rode with my left leg on top of the horse on a blanket, & by riding in this position, the back of the saddle injured by back and kidneys, this was during the fall of 1862. I continued to ride in this manner & care for or look after the 16 teams until my leg, heart, kidneys & hydrocele became so bad that I was taken down entirely sick & used up.
Fellow soldier and teamster Henry G. Thirwachter was an eyewitness to another serious injury that Henry suffered. Thirwachter wrote: "I was present at Newport News in the the first part of September 1862 when [Henry] was hurt by being kicked with a mule and saw him where he was kicked in the head which was cut badly by the mules' shoe and at the same time he was kicked in the groin."
George W. Crosley also saw the injury take place, and said the kick of the mule "was 3 inches, the cut being through the scalp and deep enough to reach the scull." He also noted that the mule's kick to the groin caused a hydrocele, a buildup of fluid in the scrotum. "I helped carry him back and wash him up," Crosley wrote. "He stayed with the wagon train until we got to Falmouth, Va., some time in December 1862 just after the battle of Fredericksburg when he was sent to the hospital."
Surgeon's eyewitness sketches of Henry's war wounds to his scalp, left, and leg
In December 1862, Henry was admitted to the Second Ward Hospital in Alexandria, VA, near Washington, DC. A medical inspector wrote that his illness resulted "in very great enlargement of the knee and ankle joints of the left limb" and that this rendered Henry totally unfit for further military service. Just after the new year, on Jan. 3, 1863, while at Campbell Hospital in Washington, he received an honorable discharge, and began the voyage back home. His regiment went on to major action at Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and The Wilderness, among many other battles.
Upon his homecoming, Henry began a long recovery. "The first year after arriving home the leg was badly swollen," he wrote, "and very painful inasmuch that I was compelled to use crutches which were used about one year and since that time [I] have been able to get around a greater part of the time without them."
The Aldermans resided in Braceville and Warren, Trumbull County, immediately after the war. Later, they migrated to Indiana, where they were residing in Jamestown Twp., Steuben County at the time the federal census was taken in 1870. Their residence was just a few miles from the Michigan state line.
In the 1870 census, Mary was marked as being unable to read.
Sadly, Mary died at age 38 on Feb. 16, 1871, in Nevada Mills near Jamestown, Steuben County. Friend Salmon Parker of Nevada Mills once wrote: "I was a near neighbor of William H. Alderman and his first wife Mary Alderman since the year 1867 and I distinctly recolect the death of Mary Alderman in February 1871 and was one of the Pall Bearers at her Funeral." Parker's wife Caroline wrote that she "was at their house and helped take care of her in her last sickness and was present at her Death and at her Funeral."
Henry Webb of Angola wrote that he was acquainted with Henry and Mary and "was at their home during her last sickness, and at her Funeral."
On Jan. 14, 1872, at age 38, Henry married his second wife, 33-year-old Desdemona (Baird) Briggs (1836-1909). The ceremony took place a few miles over the state line at Arnolds Corner, Gilead, MI, performed by Emanuel Gilbert, a justice of the peace. Witnesses were James and Julia Gordon of Steuben County.
Desdemona was a native of Ohio. In an interesting twist, she divorced her first husband, William H. Briggs, in Steuben County, IN, about one week before she married Henry Alderman. The divorce decree is on file in the Circuit Court Office of the Steuben County Courthouse.
The Aldermans went on to have two more sons -- Simeon M. Alderman and Lewis A. Alderman.
While
in Bronson, the Aldermans continued farming, though it is not known if they
purchased any land outright. Henry also was a loyal member of the local Hackett
Post of the Grand Army of the Republic, a national organization of Union Army
veterans. Wells Knapp, the commander of the post, once wrote: "I was
accustomed to meet William H. Alderman nearly every week for a number of years
in the regular meetings of our Bronson Grand Army Post and that he was in my
store about every week for a number of months." In March 1886, the members
of the post signed a certificate stating that Henry was "a poor man with no
visible means of support and also know he is disabled that that extent this --
he is unable to do any manual labor to speak of. He has no family
physician." The certificate is seen at right.
He is known to have attended a GAR encampment in Cleveland, OH in the fall of 1901, where he saw members of his old regiment, Henry G. Thirwachter, of Lipsic, OH and Joseph Evans of Cleveland. Wrote Evans: "He is nearly blind and has to be led about."
As he aged, he was increasingly unable to work and thus earn an income. In November 1877, he began receiving federal pension payments of $6 per month as compensation for his wartime injuries. Over the years, at regular intervals, he filed appeals for increases, most of which were rejected due to lack of hard evidence.
Neighbors Monroe Maybee and Squire Bard testified that they knew Henry well, had been frequent visitors to his home, and that he was totally unfit for performing manual labor. In 1891, Dr. Levi Sanders of Bronson testified that he had tapped Henry's hydrocele:
... on an average of three times a year for the last eight years... I should think that he is fuly incapacitated for manual labor to full three fourths from leg and hydrocele. He cannot do hard labor. the work that he can do is light. He hasn't done any heavy labor since I have been acquainted with him.
In 1893, Dr. S.M. Cornell of Bronson also treated Henry's hydrocele and wrote that he "has been under my observation more or less till the last three years when I have operated by aspiration every three months & some times at shorter intervals, obtaining at least a pint or more of fluid each time."
At a date not yet learned, Henry suffered a stroke, and was stricken with paralysis. Longtime friend Wells Knapp wrote: "I visited Mr. Anderman quite often during his last sickness and allways found Mrs. Alderman doing all that she could for her husband."
Henry
passed away in Bronson at age 71 on Jan. 18, 1905. His funeral was handled by
Bushnell & Turner, undertakers, and he was laid to rest in the Bronson
village cemetery. His grave marker in Bronson, of standard issue military
variety, is seen here, with his name inscribed as "WM. H.
ALDERMAN." At the time of death, he had been receiving a monthly pension
payment of $12.
Because the Aldermans were without a substantial source of income, Desdemona petitioned the federal government to receive his pension payments. In an affidavit written in April 1905, she wrote:
I have no property real or personal of any kind whatsoever including bonds, stocks or investments. I have no monthly income nor annual income and no person has been legally bound to provide for my support. I further state that my husband the soldier had no insurance, and that he never made his will, at the time of his death he did not own any property real or personal.
To help with Desdemona's cause, several friends testified that they had known her and her husband for many years. These included Wells Knapp, Robert and Eliza C. Hurst, Caroline Parker, Lyman Carpenter and postmaster J.E. Watson. Friend John E. Hoopengamer of Bronson wrote: "She is without means of support, excepting a very little that she gets from her son who earns when is is able to work $1.50 per day. My way of knowing her circumstances is by way of my office as Supervisor of Bronson township, in which she lives, and by my haveing oversight of the poor of this township."
Eventually, Desdemona was awarded the pension, and began receiving a $12 check every month, paid from a U.S. pension agent in Detroit.
Controversy arose in February 1909 when the Pension Commissioner in Washington, DC, made the allegation that Desdemona was "not the legal widow of the soldier ... on the ground that it is legally and conclusively shown by evidence on file in this Bureau." The commissioner wrote a letter to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior recommending that she be dropped from the pension rolls. This came about with evidence brought forward by special examiner M.V. Bermer, who stated:
At the date the soldier presumed to marry the pensioner, he was the lawful husband of one Elizabeth J. whom he married in 1854 and from whom he was never divorced. By reason of this fact it is held said marriage was void at inception and as Elizabeth J. survived the soldier, the pensioner's relation with the soldier never became matrimonial. She was never the soldier's lawful wife and hence has no status as his widow.
Desdemona's reaction to this news cannot be known. Just a month later, she died on March 4, 1909. It's presumed she rests beside Henry. The Department of the Interior sent her a letter on April 27, 1909, almost two months after her death, stating that her marriage was void, and that the allegedly legal wife was Elizabeth J. North who was still alive and residing at 235 Santee Avenue in Findlay, Hancock County, OH. There is no other evidence in Henry's pension file on this issue. The original file is at the National Archives in Washington, DC, with a copy in the Minerd-Minard-Miner-Minor Archives.
Son Franklin Alderman (1864-1898) resided in Bronson. He passed away on April 13, 1898.
Son William Henry Alderman Jr. (1868- ? ) also lived in Bronson. He married Catherine Malova ( ? - ? ), also spelled "Malovey" in later years. They had three children -- Henry Alderman, Claude Alderman and Pearl Patricia Kessler. Pearl married Ertman Kessler, and had a son, William Kessler.
The fate of son Simeon Alderman (1873- ? ) is unknown.
Son Lewis (1882-1963) was 18 years younger than his eldest half-brother,
Franklin. He married Emma Llewellyn (1897-1954), who was 15 years younger. They
resided in Bronson, and had at least two children -- Howard Alderman and Wilma
Alderman (1919-1940). Lewis was a laborer in an automobile factory in 1920, when
the federal census was taken. He suffered the death of daughter Wilma in 1940
and of wife Emma in 1954. Lewis passed away in 1963. He is buried in Bronson,
with his grave marker seen here.
For more information on this family, contact great-great granddaughter Carol Bentley.
Copyright © 2005-2006 Mark A. Miner