Friday, March 14, 2008

KNOXVILLE, OVERBAUGH, FETTERLY, BRADLEY

I am not sure who should get credit for the above photo.

West Mountain Methodist Episcopal Church Cemetery



The earliest stone in the West Mountain Methodist Episcopal Church Cemetery is dated 1816. The M. E. Church florished during the second half of the 19th century. Apparently not used after 1900. Now the abandoned cemetery is owned and annually maintained by the Town of Berne. Records in the Berne Town Hall.


MORE ON KNOX:

William Hooker, 1827

  • Now that I already know the answer, that Union Street south of Berne on many mid 19th C. maps of New York State is an error and was really Knoxville (hamlet of Knox) to the north of Berne, I was able to do a better Google search to confirm that answer. I found four references:

A History and New Gazetteer: Or Geographical Dictionary, of North America ... - Page 374

by Bishop Davenport - United States - 1843 - 592 pages

The Annals of Albany - Page 269

by Joel Munsell - Albany County (N.Y.) - 1854


Historical Collections of the State of New York: Containing a General ... - Page 51

by John Warner Barber, Henry Howe - New York (State) - 1842 - 608 pages

Gazetteer of the State of New York: Embracing a Comprehensive View of the ... - Page 164

by Frank Place - New York (State) - 1860 - 739 pages


  • Here is a 1917 post card of East Berne that I have not seen before. It is available on eBay.

The second building from the right is what is now Maple Inn. Originally built as Overlook House, it later became Dyer Inn. There are more early post cards showing the inn on the Warners Lake Association site. One of them even shows this same scene but in a different year.
GENEALOGY:
  • Roberta (Overbaugh) Mattimore contacted me the other day offering to exchange information on her Overbaugh ancestors. I replied in part:
    I am an Overbaugh descendant, but I do not study all Overbaughs - only ancestors and descendants of folks who settled in Berne. That said, there are a lot them that I am interested in. That includes you and your ancestors.

    I have just produced a report of your Berne area ancestors on your father's side. It has 54 pages with 1322 people. I don't always all all siblings in each generation as it is just too many people.

    You are descended from Johann Peter Oberbach through his son George. (Was George's wife Catrina Spawn or Catrina Schmidt or both?) I am descended from Peter [brother of Johann Peter] via his daughter Anna Maria who md. Johannes Dietz who both massacred by the Indians in 1781.
  • Had an email from:
    Susan Ward Merk
    Ward-Spittler-Metz-Lyon Family Heritage Center
    http://seiz2day.com/sbmerk/family
    "
    I am descended from William Ransier who fled to Canada from NY and had a daughter Catherine who married my g-g-grandfather Seth Lyon. See my family website at http://seiz2day.com/sbmerk/family/trees/lyontree.html"
  • Had a very nice exchange of emails with Judy North and Linda Borst Hogan who are researching Linda's Fetterly / Fetterle family. Linda is descended from John Fetterly b. 1751 who md. (Anna) Maria Paabst. I had not known that they were Loyalists and after the Revolution had moved to Ontario, Canada, as had Anna Maria's parents and siblings. (Along with a great many other families from the Berne / Knox area.) In doing further research on this family I found that a number of early records misspelled the family name as Vedder.
It is my opinion that Fetter and Vedder were pronounced very similarly in German. Featherly, Fetterly, and Fetterle are Americanized forms of the German name Federle. (Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4.) Federle is a diminutive of the name Feder, which means Feather. (There is also the Dutch family Vedder in the area, but that is a different family entirely.)

Continuing my research I found that Johan Adam Papst, father of Maria Papst, served in Butler's Rangers and was awarded land in the eastern part of Upper Canada according to George Cloakey. John Papst, b. 1777, youngest brother of Maria Papst, died in 1869 in Osnabruck, Ontario. Maria's sister Elisabeth, married Gotlieb Otto, a distant cousin of mine, and they too moved to Osnabrouck (spelling?). Another brother, Rudoph Papst moved to Upper Canada.

  • My brother, Ralph, Town Historian, wrote me that he believes the article in the Berne Historical Project site on Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Bradley may have been written by our distant cousin Marty Milner for something the they were doing in the late 90's or early 00's.

  • 1 comment:

    Anonymous said...

    "Fetterly" - definition - Americanized version of German "Vetter" - meaning a lesser male relative, not father or brother, but uncle or cousin. The name is taken to mean "Little Cousin" in most sources.