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Bornyasz Family Tree |
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Bornyasz Unknown Pictures Bronson Brown Riesinger |
Some Facts about the Thorn Smith Family Written by Mary Ellen Smith Cady Father was born in Saratoga County, May 6, 1804, on the farm where his grandfather, Thomas Smith settled when he came from Dutchess County to Saratoga Co9unty about the year 1770. This farm is still owned by his descendants. When father was 21 he started out for himself. He wandered around for awhile and finally brought up at Oaks Corners, Ontario County, New York, and hired out to Uncle Leonard Weston (husband of Aunt Alma) to learn the carpenter's trade. There he met Mother and the result was they were married about 1830 with no capital but willing hearts and ready hands. They settled down at Oaks Corners within a mile of where Mother was born on October 4, 1808. The first arrival in the new home was a very diminutive boy. They named him George. I am prepared to believe that he was small as I have often seen the mittens and shoes that were made from him when he was two years old. Mother kept them a god many years, then gave them away as souvenirs. Mary Ellen came next, then Caroline, William, Charles, Lewis, Thomas and lastly Thorn. It should have been a sharp family that began and ended with a Thorn. After we got so we could all go to school at once, which we did for two years, we elder ones felt ashamed because there were so many. Mother said, "You needn't feel bad because there are so many -- you all got common sense and clothes enough to cover your nakedness." When your father was about seventeen, he took a severe cold which caused him a long spell of sickness. He had spasms occasionally for about a year, then erysipelas set in so that he was out of school about three years. The neighbors prophesied that if the spasms didn't kill him, they would destroy his mind. After he got so he could go out a little, he went one day to take a walk. He got tired and sat down by the roadside. Two of the neighboring men passed by while he sat there and he heard one of them say, "What a pity about that boy." He understood what they meant and came home very much grieved to think they thought him foolish. We know that spasms do have that effect sometimes but in his case I think he retained all the sense that nature gave him. When I was about eight years old I perpetrated a joke on myself. It was a pretty cold morning and I didn't want to go to school. I asked Mother if I couldn't stay at home. She said, "Get ready and go up on the hill, and if you find it too cold you may come back." The first I thought of the cold or of going back was when I arrived at the schoolhouse door, so I concluded to stay at school. When Caroline was about a year old, there was a German family moved in next door to our folks. They had no children, but a grown up daughter. They took a great liking to Caroline and often came over and borrowed her for a few hours or half a day. Afterward they moved away about a mile and a half. They often came and got her and kept her two or three weeks, made clothes for her to wear while she was there, and kept them for her. They taught her to knit. She was so proud of her work, she wanted to bring it home and show us, so the old man took her in his arms and she carried the knitting. After they had gone on for quite awhile she discovered that she had lost her ball, and she called out, "Oh, Uncle, I've dropped my ball." Sure enough there was the knitting but the ball was back out of sight, so she had to wait while he retraced the yarn back to the ball and returned. After a few years Mother took up millinery to help out the finances. It was more than Father could do, working at carpentry, to fill all the mouths and cover the backs with anything but the plainest kind of clothing. So, Mother took it upon herself to clothe herself and the girls and furnish her own pin money, and the family sewing early fell to my lot. Caroline was more at home with the housework. The last year we all went to school I had to mend every evening to keep the boys in shape to appear at school the next day. One evening the teacher, a young man, called and stayed so late that I couldn't finish the coat that I had begun by trimming the hole - getting it ready for the patch. So the child, I think it was Charles, had to wear the coat in that condition. The boys each had their time of getting lost. Once William came up missing on a summer evening. Mother took a light and went out of door to look for him, and found him clinging to the top board of the fence fast asleep. Charles got sleeping in the afternoon and sent into the closet and laid down and went to sleep. When Mother missed him she sent us all to look for him. While we were away she had found him, but to try the strength of our affection set us out again. Both he and William were quite young then. Lewis once ran away while yet in dresses; he went down to the railroad about half a mile. A neighbor of ours saw and knew him and brought him home in his arms. Lewis told him about meeting a train and it threw dust in his eyes. Thorn, too, had his turn of getting lost. One Sunday afternoon we girls were talking of going down to our old house and Thorn said, "Let me go." He was about six years old. Before we got ready to go, some young people came in and we forgot all about going. After dark Thorn was missing. No one knew where he was. After looking over the premises and not finding him we were all thoroughly alarmed. We began to compare notes as to where we last saw him. Finally, it came to our slow brains about the walk, so Father and several of the boys took a lantern and went down and looked the house over and found him upstairs asleep in the window where he had sat and watched for us. In 1850 we moved into the Tavern. Our neighbors thought it a great pity to take so many boys where liquor was to e sold and so it was, but I don't know as they ever received any harm from being there. None of them but your father and Charles ever worked in the bar room and I don't know that they ever tasted a drop of liquor while there. If we had any occasion to send any of the other boys into the bar room, they would always have to hunt their hat before they went as they would if they were going to a neighbors. Of course, it didn't make them any better. I should hate very much to have a boy of mine go to such a place and would not allow it if I could possibly hinder it. But Father did what he thought was for the best. We stayed in the Tavern five years, then moved into our own house. Father took what money he had, $800.00, and started west to find a home for us. He finally chose a farm in Portland. He paid $400.00 down and was to pay $100.00 every year for ten years or 100 bushels of wheat. It was almost always paid in wheat, because wheat was seldom a dollar a bushel. Once it was down to 50 cents. He bought a yoke of oxen and some farming tools and put in 19 acres of wheat, then came home for us. You asked when and how Grandfather came to Michigan. There was nothing unusual in the vent and I haven't it down in a black and white but I have it in my mind as clear as if it happened yesterday. We started for Michigan November 22, 1855. We left Oaks Corners about early candle light. The whole town was at the depot. (it wasn't a very large town) to see us off - glad to see we were going perhaps. I remember shaking hands with all but one old man and wondered why that was, for I knew he was there and I wanted his Blessing. Afterward I found out that he took another young lady for me and gave her the counsel I had coveted. Our train was late and as we came near Rochester we learned that there had been an accident: a train had been derailed and lay at the bottom of a steep embankment. We had to wait at Rochester several hours. There were other movers going the same way we were: one family was about as large as ours. When the train that we were to take arrived some of the family climbed into the car and hollered to the rest to come one. One boy, a little brighter than the rest, kept his eye on his father and as they continued to call he said, "I shan't go til Dad goes," which has been a byword with our family ever since. That is a trait of the Smiths, our family especially. If they hear anything that sounds peculiar they repeat it til it gets to be a byword. The car that we were in lacked drinking water and there was one little fellow that was very thirsty and after asking for a drink several times, he began to cry, "Oh, I shall choke, I shall choke." He kept it up every little while all night, 'til everyone in the car wised that the poor little boy had a drink. We came through Canada by way of Niagara Falls and stopped over one train to see the great cataract. We landed in Detroit on a Saturday afternoon. We stopped at a hotel near the station while Father went in search of the man he had hired to meet us and take us and our goods to Portland. He soon found them and they advised us to go to the Grand View Hotel where they were stopping. We stayed there until Monday morning. Then we started on our journey in lumber wagons - our household goods in one and the family in the other, sitting on trunks with a rocking chair perched on the back of the load high above everything. The roads were perfectly horrible. We often got out and walked because we were afraid to ride. We stopped in Howell over night with Dr. Wheeler's family. He was a cousin of Mother's and a former resident of Oaks Corners. The last night out we spent at either Dewitt or Wacousta. Lansing had lately been made the Capitol of Michigan. Friday afternoon we arrived at the Gott farm. It was he of whom Father bought the farm. It was later called the Woodberry Farm. It was two and one-half miles east of Portland. There were only a few scattered houses interspersed with many stumps. When we got to the turning in place, Father said, "Well, here we are." We looked around in amazement for all we could see was a large field -- nothing to be seen but stumps. We afterward learned that it was a wheat field newly sown, and that it was no new think in this country to drive through it. About eighty rods over the hill, on the bank of the Looking Glass River was the house we were seeking. For some reason which I have forgotten, we stayed there about a week, then moved into our one room log house - the only building on the place excepting a log shed which was used as a barn. The house was about forty rods from where the road was laid out and 80 or more rods from the Looking Glass River which cut off a little corner of the farm. I think there were a hundred and five acres in the farm, fifty cleared, which was situated about three miles east from Portland. As soon as we got settled our folks, seven of them, went to work to clear ten acres of very heavy timber land to put into heat the next fall. The timer, which would now be a fortune in itself, had to be burned, then logged, that is: they had to get together what didn't burn and burn it for it never all burnt the first time, though it made a fearful fire. In about four years they had cleared thirty acres, which made eight acres of tillable lad. Wheat was the principle crop. Everybody put in all the wheat they could' til the ground froze. When we had been there about three years we began to have fever and ague. We all had it - not all at once - though there would be four or five down at a time. While some were convalescing others would be coming down. I remember at one time when they were plowing the wheat it took two to plow - one to drive the oxen and one to hold the ;low. Out of the sever there were only two who were able to work. When one of the two gave out the one who was best able, took his place so the plow was kept moving. It wasn't like whooping cough or measles - have it once and done with it - but it kept coming over and over again til cold weather usually. I had it five times that first siege. We were afraid to take quinine then as we take it now. People warned us before we came here not to take it, but there was no other way. There were but few framed houses in the county; the log houses all looked alike outside and in: one room with two beds in one end separated by the enclosed stairway. Ours was not enclosed but little better than a ladder. As son as Father could bring it about, he took some logs to mill and got some board sawed. As soon as they were partly seasoned, he partitioned off a bedroom t one end of the room and made some partitions upstairs. Mother was handy with hammer and saw and one day when she was alone she went to work and enclosed the stairs and made a cupboard under them. On another occasion hen Father was to e away from home a day or two, we got some of those boards and sealed the room and papered it. We thought we had a nice surprise for Father and were quite proud of our handiwork. The boards had been out of doors in the snow and were not dry when we put them up, or yet when we got ready to paper. We got the paper all on before Father got home, but to our chagrin when the boards began to dry, the paper began to crack 'til there was a space half an inch wide between the boards. Afterwards we got some darker paper and cut it in strips about two and half inches wide and pasted the cracks. As the boards all happened to be of the same width, it passed for striped paper and looked very well. When we moved into the house there was nothing but the bare logs chinked with mud and wood and a bench or shelf, made by boring holes in the logs and putting in two flat sticks with a board across, for the water pail. For a cellar there was a hold dug under the house and a trap door to get into it in the middle of the floor. There were three small windows and a front and back door - though we were puzzled to know which was which. Most of the houses in the neighborhood fronted toward the river. The road had lately been laid out and people had been used to coming into the door nearest the river, which we designated the back door. Father told Mother when she came to Michigan she could have all the land that she wanted for a flower garden. So she appropriated the spot directly in front of the house towards the road and after that we always knew which was the front door. The doors had wooden latches. There was a hold bored through the latch and the door, with a buckskin string with a knot in one end, threaded through the hole. To get in you had to pull the string, and when you wanted to fasten the door, pull in the string. The house was on a hill and in order to have a large garden she had to terrace it. In the course of a few years she had a very nice garden, not only flowers but a good supply of small fruits. In order to keep the chickens out of the garden she planted a hedge of wild gooseberries and raspberries around it, which also furnished fruit. The plants and shrubs and finally everything that made the garden what it was, she brought from Oaks Corners when we came. The plants had wintered in the hold in the floor we called the cellar. The goodly supply of seeds, especially of annuals, made the garden pretty even the first year. We had burnt or dug out the stumps, so there was no new country look about it. Your father, the eldest, was about twenty-three when we came to Michigan. Thorn, the youngest, was twelve. After we had been here four or five years, our cousin William Henry Smith (Uncle Thomas's eldest son) came west to buy cattle. Father went around with him to show him where he could find what he wanted. He bought and shipped them East from Detroit. Our boys went with him to Detroit to help drive them. When he came the third time your father went back with him to Schuylerville, Saratoga County, and stayed about 5there and learned his trade of Uncle Joseph. He had learned photography before we came to Michigan and when the war broke out he enlisted from there in the 77th, N.Y. C. B. After the close of the war he came back to Portland and set up a Jewelry Store. Afterwards he married Catherine Shafer of Willmot, Canada in 1870. He died of lockjaw, December 26, 1897, leaving a widow and four children. I commenced teaching school in our district two weeks after we got here. There was no way to get to the school house except to walk or go with the oxen around by Portland - five miles. I walked! Father or your father always went with me through the woods, about a mile, and then I went along a mile and a half on the road. That year the ground was not bare from December 1 to March. In going through the woods I would always get my skirts wet and when i got to the road they would freeze and sometimes it was non before they were thawed out. Two winters of such experience used me up so that I came near having nervous prostration. A couple of years' rest at home set me on my feet again and I went back and taught another term in the new school house in Donby - the same set of scholars - then one term in Portland, the last in the old school house. They were building the new one just behind the old. That summer Caroline first wintered at Mrs. Gott's She went to school in Portland several winters and taught summers. She died of dropsy April 15, 1885. When William reached his majority he started out on his birthday to look for work. He came back in the fall. Afterwards he went to the Cape Cod Fisheries, stayed there two years and spent one winter in Boston. He came home and went again for one year, then bought forty acres and put up building and commenced a bachelor life. This farm was about a mile east of Father's in the town of Westfalia. He afterwards sold that and started another home between our place and Portland and had everything pretty comfortable about him. He lived there along for several years until he had a hard fit of sickness. When he had partially recovered he felt that he must seek a change of climate so he wandered around seeking health, 'til he finally settled in Kansas. There he took up a homestead and a tris (?) claim -- afterward abandoned them and bought a farm and built up a home and remained there for twenty years, or more. He finally sold that on account of not being able to work it any longer and became a wanderer. Charles, Lewis and Thorn left home as soon as they reached their majority. Al l went to work for farmers by the month. When the war broke out Charles and Thorn enlisted. Charles enlisted March 5, 1864, in the 27th Michigan Infantry Co. B. He was wounded in a mine explosion before Petersburg. At the close of the war he came back to Portland. July 25,1 886, he married Melissa Briggs of Sebewer. She died October 18, 1895, of consumption, leaving two children and two having preceeded here. Lewis R. Smith settled in Portland, built a store and followed the grocery business. Thomas enlisted February 22, 1864, in Co. C. 27th, Michigan. He died in Division Hospital at Petersburg, February 2, 1865 and was buried near the hospital. Thorn died of consumption just four years to the day after Thomas: February 2, 1869. A few years (10) after Thorn died, Father sold the farm and built a house in town on the ground previously occupied by the Congregational Church. There Caroline, Father, Mary and Carrie (Charles' children) and Melissa died. Father died February 18, 1886, Melissa, October 18, 1895; Caroline, April 13, 1885. After Father died, Mother lived with her children 'til June 10, 1892, when she died at Georges. I see I omitted to give the date of my marriage which took place December 24, 1863, to John C. Cady, Macomb Township.
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