52 Ancestors – 52 Weeks

The writing prompt for Week 25 is Unexpected. During the past two plus years I’ve been researching my family tree I have found a number of unexpected events and people that are part of my family history. This week I am writing about a discovery I made in my paternal grandmother’s line, the Carews, who emigrated from Ireland to Canada and the United States in the early to mid 1800s.

In October 2019 I received an email message from Susan Davis Hanson of Spring Valley, Wisconsin. She had recently discovered her second cousin Kathy Kalina, with whom I had been in touch and sent my compilation of the Carew family. Kathy gave Susan my contact information.

Susan has collaborated with an historical researcher/writer for almost 20 years and thanks to him and his access to the National Archives in Washington, D. C.  which provided her with Civil War pension records of one of the persons involved, she blasted through a 150-year-old mystery in her family line. The details of her discovery follow.

“CAREW/”CAREY”/HUNT/”THOMPSON” LINEAGE”

My maternal grandmother was Mary Blanche “Dot” Thompson Steffens born in 1879 in Lime Springs, IA. She always said she knew nothing about either of her parents’ heritages except that her father John Thompson was a blacksmith and her mother’s maiden name was Mary Carey. I detected yearning for her not knowing more, and I was puzzled how one line of my family had no history while others I traced had an abundance. I did think it was sweet, though, that Mary Carey Thompson named her oldest child Carrie which I thought was a tribute to her birth family.

Two years ago I joined Ancestry.com and was thunderstruck to learn I was 37% Irish. There was never a hint of Irish ancestry I’d ever heard about in my 72 years. I rechecked the census records for Lime Springs, IA and gleaned some clues I’d overlooked. John’s and Mary’s parental ancestries were recorded as English, Canadian, and/or Irish (never the same any census year) which shed some light. He claimed to be Episcopalian while Mary was listed as Presbyterian.

I’d always thought “Carey” was my best chance at unraveling this mystery. It wasn’t. For the fun of it, I plugged the name “John Thompson” into FamilySearch and got a hit for “John Thompson Hunt” who died and was buried in Minot, ND in 1912. I clicked on the find-a-grave link which had a news clipping about his death and a photo of his gravestone. The news item mentioned how private a person he was, even to his family, and the names of two of his three surviving children (my great-aunt Carrie Thompson Linderman and great-uncle Ray Thompson). My grandmother Mary Blanche Thompson Steffens was not listed. I learned he was a Civil War veteran from Wisconsin (where I live) and had been with General Sherman on his March to the Sea. Eureka! I had the right man, but why did he now have the surname Hunt?

I went back to the Lime Springs census again, and in 1895 there was a column for Civil War service. The company and regiment – Co. C, 21st Wisconsin Infantry – for John Thompson was the same as on John T. Hunt’s gravestone.

This is where pure luck and serendipity enters in. I collaborate with a historical writer/researcher specializing in Civil War topics. Better yet, he lives close to the National Archives and goes there for information. I prevailed upon him to see what there was about John Thompson Hunt. Shortly thereafter I got a packet of papers – mystery solved and the cat was out of the bag! This helped me find more things to flesh out the Thompson (Hunt) family.

John Thompson Hunt was born in Quebec in 1833. His father, John Hunt, was born in Ireland; his mother, Helena Melady Hunt, was born in Quebec of Irish parents. Mary “Carey” was born in Peterborough, Ontario in 1846. Her parents came from Ireland to Canada as small children in 1825. John and his family and Mary and her family both lived in Northport (Mukwa), Waupaca Co., Wisconsin in 1860. John T. Hunt was a blacksmith with a wife and infant son. Mary was 14 and living in her parents’ household.

John did not apply for his Civil War pension until 1906 though eligible many years before. I have copies of five depositions given to the pension board to verify his service. The first deposition was from his wife Mary. Her name was NOT Carey but Carew. What a difference one letter made! John abandoned his wife, child and blacksmith business in the fall of 1868 to “elope” with Mary Carew. Lime Springs seemed to be his planned destination. They never married; the lies and cover-up began; and Thompson became their new last name. In their invented lives together, they became upstanding citizens of Lime Springs, members of the Masonic Lodge and Eastern Star, and raised three respectable children. Mary was embarrassed, ashamed, and petrified her children would find out the truth. She feared an earlier pension application would reveal “the secret.” Mary Blanche never found out, but her sister Carrie and brother Ray must have been privy to it toward/at the end.

The other depositions were from three Northport men who all enlisted with John T. Hunt in August of 1862 and served in the same company. The fifth was from his closest friend in Northport. Each mentioned the elopement which must have been the talk of the town and a humiliation for Mary’s Irish Catholic family. She is not mentioned in the obituaries for two of her sisters and may have been disowned.

(John was taken prisoner at Stone’s River, TN January 1, 1863, taken to Libby Prison in Virginia, and paroled October 3, 1863 after signing an oath he would not take up arms against the Confederacy again until “duly exchanged under the cartel agreed upon by the two Governments (sic).” He rejoined his company and became the regimental blacksmith for its ambulance corps. Then came the March to the Sea, probably his participation in the huge victory parade in Washington, D. C. in June of 1865 and going home to Northport.)

There was communication between Lime Springs and Northport after their departure. Mary mentioned seeing the notice of John’s wife divorcing him in a paper “from home.” She also said she’d known John’s wife in Northport. The divorce did not inspire John to make an honest woman of Mary, although she asked him to. The postmaster in Northport recognized John’s handwriting on letters he sent to John’s close friend Samuel Kerr there, took note of the Lime Springs postmark, did some investigating, and spilled the beans in 1879. Samuel got the first letter from John a month after they’d left. Samuel’s letters to John kept him apprised of his wife, son, and events in Northport. Later in 1879 Samuel visited John in Lime Springs for four weeks and saw that “he was living with Mary Carew as his wife and they had two children then.” (My grandmother Mary Blanche would be born in November of that year.) Another of the depositions described Mary Carew as “smart and stylish” and his wife (Sarah A. Foster Hunt) “slouchy and coarse.” Mary was smart in appearance and smart enough to confound her descendants by changing Carew to Carey!

The saga goes on. John and Mary “Thompson” along with daughter Carrie Thompson Linderman and family moved to Minot, ND about 1905. John, in his 70’s, filed a claim for a homestead and “proved up” on it. He swore on the paperwork he was “native born” (New York) among other stretches of the truth. He died in a hotel lobby, a stop on his regular constitutional to visit with the proprietor, in Minot in 1912. He is buried in Minot. After that Mary lived with Carrie’s family and moved with them to Glentana, MT where she died and was buried in 1930. Her gravestone only says “Mother” which avoided the discrepancies in her life. Her obituary in the Lime Springs, IA newspaper perpetuated her “story” to the very end with false names for her parents Patrick and Ellen Sullivan Carew who were called “Joseph and Eliza Carey” and a fake date and place for her “marriage” (Waupaca Co., WI in September of 1868 – about the time they took off for Iowa) which never happened.

I feel sorry for my grandmother, her brother and sister thinking they had no relatives while growing up when they really had two sets of grandparents, many aunts and uncles and probably dozens of first cousins. And it took only 150 years to figure it out.” Susan Davis Hanson, 6/16/2020

Footnote: According to Ancestry.com, Mary Carew/Carey/Hunt/Thompson is my 1st cousin 3x removed. Susan Davis Hanson is my fourth cousin.