Skip to main content

Following a lead on Martin Woodruff







   I found Martin Woodruff's death noted in the registry at the
Address is 334 Maple Ave.
Wisconsin Historical Society.  It lists his mother's name as Anna and his wife's name as Anna.  It also gives his residence as 344 Maple Ave. in Green Bay, Wi.  This is the first actual document, besides newspapers, that I've found for Martin. I've searched and searched the census records and haven't been able to locate him.  So it's nice to find an address.  Perhaps if I search the city directory for Green Bay at that time, I can find him that way.

The location of Martin Woodruff's grave.









Also, Martin kept popping up in the Find-a Grave database for the Woodlawn Cemetery in Green Bay.  According to a friendly Find-a-Grave user local to the area, there is no grave marker for Martin Woodruff, but the designated spot is shared with a tombstone for the Johnson family.  What is his connection to the Johnsons?  Are they relatives?









1898 Green Bay City Directory, W

     After scouring the Green Bay city directory from 1898, I found no mention of Martin Woodruff.  I decided to see if I could find a neighbor of Martin Woodruff.  I had a sneaking suspicion that he was in the census somewhere, but something was preventing me from easily searching for him by name.  Perhaps his name was misspelled, or the transcriber made an error.  So I started flipping through the pages of the directory for anyone living on Maple Ave, who would have been on the same block.

1898 Green Bay City Directory, T

It didn't take me long to stumble across a Catherine Tiernan at 339 Maple Ave.  She would have been a close neighbor to the Woodruffs at 334 Maple Ave, possibly right next door.  I then searched through the 1880 Census a second time, looking for her name instead.  I found her right away and in the lines right above her name I found Martin Woodruff!




1880 Census, Ft Howard, Green Bay

In the 1880 Census, Martin is living in the Gravy household.  He's listed as the father-in-law to John Gravy, who is living with his wife Sophia, children Anna and John, along with a Frank Woodruff, listed as the brother-in-law.  The census taker's handwriting is hard to read, and the transcriber entered Martin and Frank's last name as Wartsop in the database, which is why it never appeared when I searched Woodruff. This is such an important discovery!  I had no clue before this that Mary Woodruff  had any siblings.  She was not the only child.  Sophia and Frank both list their birthplaces as Bohemia, so they must have all traveled together to the US in 1854.  The 1880 census lists the street as Cherry St, not Maple Ave.  I'm going to assume the street name was changed at some point between 1880 and 1898.  But armed with this knowledge, I double checked the 1898 city directory to look for the Gravy family.

1898 City Directory Ft Howard, Green Bay, G

Now, I have another mystery.  John Gravy is listed at 331 N Maple av, not at 334 Maple av.
Instead of Sophia Gravy, it lists Josephine Gravy, widowed.  Is this the same woman?  Is Sophia a nickname for Josephine?





Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Appleton

The territory where Appleton is today was traditionally occupied by the  Ho-Chunk  and the  Menominee . The Menominee Nation ceded the territory to the United States in the  Treaty of the Cedars  in 1836, with  Chief Oshkosh  representing the Menominee.  In the Menominee language, Appleton is known as  Ahkōnemeh , or "watches for them place".   Fur traders seeking to do business with Fox River Valley Indians were the first settlers in Appleton. Hippolyte Grignon built the White Heron in 1835 to house his family and serve as an inn and trading post. Germans, Dutch and Poles were some of the first immigrants to come to Appleton. Oneida Indians also live in the Oneida reservation just north of town.  Appleton shares its history with Lawrence University, for the two grew simultaneously.  With the financial backing of Amos Lawrence, the Lawrence Institute was chartered in 1847. Samuel Appleton donated $10,000...
Post a Comment
Read more

Wisconsin State Normal Schools

Nineteenth century higher education was mainly reserved for men.  Victorian notions of separate gender spheres assigned rigorous academic pursuits to men. Professors were almost always male and passed on their knowledge to their male students.  As women defied these notions and entered classrooms, they were constantly reminded that they were outsiders in a male world.  In the 1870s, men and women studied separately in some subjects, and some classes segregated female students in the back of the classrooms. Any subjects that were vocational, such as surveying, navigation, agriculture, or engineering were not considered suitable courses for women to study.  In the 1880s and 1890s, women mainly studied in the "modern Classical" and "english" liberal arts courses. Normal schools were teacher-training schools and in the Midwest many normal schools functioned as all-around institutions of higher learning.  Almost always coeducational, state normal schools we...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mary E Woodruff (1843-1920)

Mary Woodruff was born 1843 in Bohemia.  Her father was Martin Woodruff and she had a sister named Sophia(1842) and a brother, Frank(1851).  Mary and her family immigrated to Milwaukee in 1860.   1870 Census of Milwaukee, Wisc. She met and married fellow Bohemian Frank Peshek.  They had seven children together before divorcing sometime after 1882; Sophia (1863), Frank (1868), Mary (1869), John Albert (1872), William (1875), Robert James (1879), and Rose M (1882). By this time, they had moved north, to Green Bay. 1880 Census of Fort Howard, Wisc.   Mary Woodruff remarried sometime after Rose is born, to a Frank Joseph Jolley, who then adopts Rose.  It's unclear what happened between Mary and Frank Peshek, and why they separated.  The Federal census of 1890 was destroyed by fire, and the next census I have to go on is the state census of 1895.  In 1895, Mary Woodruff Peshek is now Mary Jolley and she is living in Appleton, a widow, wi...
Post a Comment
Read more