When exploring the world of your ancestors it pays to remember the
differences between their lifetime and ours. The town they knew was undoubtedly
very different in their day. Knowing their geographic landscape will make your
search easier.
While tracing my family history I discovered that my great-grandfather's sister
had lived in my hometown. She was the only ancestor of mine to have done so,
and I wanted to know more.
Ernestine Frisch came to America in 1884 at age 21. When she married Fritz Schwab,
an ice peddler from Providence, the 1887 marriage index listed her as a resident
of Lincoln. Before then she was absent from city directories, as many women
were. Since other female family members lived at home until they married, it
is possible she worked as a domestic in a private home.
Lincoln was established as a town in 1871. At the time town leaders in northern
Rhode Island wanted governments that focused on the interests of their own villages.
Since traveling to town meetings was problematic, the larger towns were divided.
Lincoln took its name from the popular president who was still mourned years
after his assassination and the end of the Civil War.
A complicating factor was that when Lincoln broke apart from the larger town
of Smithfield, tiny Central Falls was part of Lincoln for a time before it became
its own city. The addition of that square mile makes it far more confusing to
determine where Ernestine Frisch Schwab might have lived.
Today many of the Victorian homes remain in the area. The likelihood is strong
that the house where Ernestine lived still stands. It's even possible she lived
on the street where I grew up since many homes on the street were built in the
1870s. It's also possible she lived in what is now Central Falls.
Obscurity also shrouds the final resting place of Lavinia Williams Keene, my
five-times-great-grandmother, descended from Rhode Island's founding father
Roger Williams. I know little about her except that other family members lived
in northern Rhode Island. In an old volume on local cemeteries I discovered
that Lavinia was buried "to the east of the road by the river." Today,
no cemetery exists near the Blackstone River in that area.
Lavinia died in 1856, recently enough for her gravestone to remain. I found
a small historic cemetery that runs east of River Road in the town. There were
headstones from the late 1700s and 1800s with engravings that time had made
indecipherable along with tombstones that had been broken off at the base. I
also found the graves of ancestors related to Lavinia by marriage, increasing
the chance that she was among them.
Once you've learned an ancestor's address in a nearby city it's essential to
make a point to drive by the house. For years, I rode by the clapboard house
at One State Street in which three generations of my French-Canadian ancestors
had lived.
The opportunity to obtain a picture disappeared when I drove by one day and
saw a crane taking down what was left of the house. On the spot where my ancestors'
house once stood is now a modern office building. Had I not seen the house when
I had the chance I would merely be guessing where the original home once stood.
The more precise we can be in pinpointing the paths our ancestors walked, the
clearer our picture of their lives will be. Learning about the places they lived
can help cut through the confusion of obscure references and the changes brought
about by time.
Karen Frisch has spent years getting lost in cemeteries. With a background in Victorian studies, teaching, and writing, she has traced her lineage back thirty generations. Her interest in genealogy began as a child when her grandmother gave her a collection of old photographs from Scotland.
Ancestry Daily News
