This week in #52ancestors I got to explore guardianship records when an ancestor died intestate leaving minor children. Thomas Hiram Mount was born on 11 April 1812 in East Windsor, Mercer County, NJ. He was one of four children of Hiram (1786-1847) and Margaret Allen (1790-1865) Mount.
He lived in a house purchased by his father in 1834 (online information incorrectly names his father as Ejirain) on One Mile Road in East Windsor where he brought his wife Catherine Fisher when he married her 14 January 1835. She was known as Kate. They had twelve children, nine of whom survived them:
- Rebecca Ely Mount (1836-1898)
- Mary Elizabeth Mount (1838-1849)
- Margaret A. Mount (1840-1900)
- John Mount (1842-1871)
- Mary Jane Mount (1844-1917)
- Hiram Mount (1846-1920)
- William Mount (1848-1923)
- Addison Mount (1850-1851)
- Susan Matilda Mount (1852-1918)
- Thomas Addison Mount (1855-1935)
- Catharine Fisher Mount (1859-1929)
- George C. Mount (1861-1911)
Thomas operated a brickyard and kiln, Thomas H. Mount and Company, at “Buzzard’s Point,” the intersection of Dutch Neck Road and Stockton Street.
On the last Census taken before Thomas’s death, the household consisted of Thomas and Catharine, son Hiram (age 23), son William (age 21), son Addison (age 15), daughter Matilda (age 17), daughter Catharine (age 11), and son George (age 8). There are also two female servants, Anna Dutchess and Dina Laning.
Kate Fisher died on 9 July 1872 and is buried at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hightstown, New Jersey. When Thomas died shortly thereafter (8 September 1876), he did not leave a will. His son Hiram returned to New Jersey from Ohio and with his sister Rebecca E. Applegate and brother in law Vincent Van Nest, applied for letters of administration. There are a few confusing pieces here as various documents seem to mix the identify of Thomas’s sister Rebecca with that of his daughter Rebecca. Rebecca Mount (1814-1892) married and Abijah Ely and then married George Cox. Thomas named his daughter Rebecca Ely Mount, after his sister. That Rebecca married Enoch Applegate. Both seem to be entered into various records as Rebecca Ely Mount, which is most confusing.
Hiram requests a complete inventory of his father’s farm and holdings. One intriguing bit is the “heap of mail” at the depot, making it sound as though no one made it into town to pick up the mail for some time before Thomas’s death. This is entirely possible as he died of a fever and the household may have been focused on nursing him.
Although there is nothing in the estate record to point to a guardianship, there were two minor children:
- Catharine Fisher Mount. She is assigned to Rebecca Mount Cox in the guardianship record but by 1880 is living with Rebecca Ely Mount, married to Enoch Applegate
- George C. Mount. His guardian of record is Hiram Mount, and he goes to live in Bethel Township, Miami County, Ohio with Hiram and Lucy Chamberlain Mount.
Thomas Hiram Mount buried next to his wife at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hightstown, NJ. Three of his children appear to have moved west to Ohio (Hiram, Thomas Addison and George), the remainder stayed closer to home, most dying in Mercer County.
Lois Buttles was born on 17 March 1782 in Granby, Connecticut to Jonathan and Lois Viets Buttles. Even in 2018, Granby is described as a rural town, located in the foothills of the Litchfield Hills of the Berkshires…and… the outskirts of town are filled with dense woods and rolling hills and mountains. Imagine it in the 1820’s. Lois married Samuel Platt Whitney on 10 March 1799 in North Granby and they preceded to have 12 children, all but one living to adulthood.
In 1870, they celebrated their silver wedding anniversary at the home of their son John Viets Whitney. This story not only made the local Geauga press paper but also appears in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Telling My Story 