The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 50 No.3 | Dec 2023

Member’s article

A Long Way From Burghclere My paternal grandmother’s mother, Susan Amelia SMITH, was born in Fayetteville, Onondaga County, New York in 1852. Her death certificate in 1917 gave her father’s name as Henry F. Smith and that he was born in England. No information beyond

record in England., but found nothing I could work with. There were just too many Joseph Smiths to wade through. I was also not able to find a record of his arrival in America. I then turned to the New York State census records for the year 1855, the closest after the date of birth of his daughter Susan. I was able to find him listed there in DeWitt, Onondaga County with his wife Roseanne (or Rose) and their five children Sarah E., Melissa, Mary E., Susan A. and George H. The census recorded him as being born in England. But I still didn’t know when he arrived in America. Did he come alone or did he come with other family? I began to look for his parents in America. Looking in the U.S. Census for 1850 for Ononodaga County, New York – the county my great-grandmother was born in – I found a Joseph P. Smith in DeWitt, age 50, born in England along with his wife Sarah, age 51, also born in England and nine children William (29), Henry (26 – hence born in 1824), Georgina (25), Thomas (22), Robert (21), Jonathan (19) and Sarah (18), George (17) and Alonzo (14). All the children but Alonzo were born in England. So I began looking for a Smith family in England with similar names. I focused on Georgina as being the most distinctive. I finally found a Georgina born in 1825 in Burghclere, Hampshire. The age fit and her parents were Joseph and Sarah. I then went down the list of children and found each one, born in Burghclere, and their ages matched the ones in the U.S. Census. The last one born in Burghclere, George, was born in 1833. Alonzo, who was born in 1836, was the only

that had been handed down. With the surname Smith to work with, looking for traces of her Smith family origins in England seemed a very daunting challenge. When I finally got around to seriously trying to research her origins, it took me along a long trail of breadcrumbs. Before even being able to track Henry’s birth in England, I had to track his life in America. From his daughter Susan’s marriage in 1874 at the seminary in Wisconsin where my great-grandfather John Hagerty Eichbaum was studying for the ministry, I was able through the census records to find her family living in a town nearby the seminary. I found the key to following Henry was to follow the list of children in the family. By following Henry and his wife Rose and their children, who except for Susan, fortunately stayed close by their parents, I was able to trace Henry to Minnesota, where he moved after Wisconsin and finally to Washington State on the Pacific, where he spent the last 25 years or so of his certificate told me that his father’s name was Joseph and his mother’s name was Sarah Ralph. Armed with his parents’ names and his birth year of 1824, I began to look for his birth life, dying in 1907 at Hawks Prairie in Thurston County at age 83. His death

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