John
The system' sent me your reply to my query yesterday to the Bristol Family Forum. Your use of the term 'Orphans' is most apt: we've been searching in vain for the parents and ancestors of our great grandmother, Phylinda Bristol, for what seems like forever. Your suggestion that we put her part of our family tree on the 'orphans' site sounds good. Just tell us how to do it.
I have a 'Gaston' database which includes Phylind (duh), and have also committed to gedcom-able format a couple of thousand Bristols whose names came chiefly from a couple of volumes of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record.
This information would not quite be 'orphans', since it includes many well known members of the Bristol family. I'd be more than willing to share this information with anyone probing the Bristol family. Please let me kmnow what I need to do to include my long lost grandma in the orphans book.
Meanwhile, I'd love to get into a colloquy with someone with whom to share a couple of 'clues' I have developed in my search. They have to do with the origins of a 'family' name which I believe was brought to the family by Phylinda herself. Hint: Phylinda named one of her sons (my grandfather) Frank DeForest Gaston. The name DeForest does not occur anywhere in my Gaston ancestry, and I have theorized that it came from someone in the BRISTOL family. And, indeed, a couple of years ago as I was surfing around, I stumbled onto the 'Genesee Country Family File' and found a Mary DeForest BRISTOL! A little digging (a LOT of digging, actually) turned up interesting threads, but not connections to Phylinda. She MUST have known the family of ONE of the two Mary DeForest BRISTOLs I have been able to find so far, but I do need to find someone closer to one or both of those families.
I will be looking forward to hearing from you with instructions about how to include my orphan into your orphans-file.
Thanks for your response
Best regards
Audley D. Gaston (Sandy G) Researching: GASTON, BRISTOL, HAMMOND, 3307 Big Bend Drive LOOMIS, HENRY Austin, TX 78731 512.459.8596 " adgaston@earthlink.net "
John:
I have attached several short excerpts from my collection of Bristol family information. The information in these reports all came from v44 (1914) and v45 (1915) of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record.
There appear to be several separate occurrences of DeForest: the Betts/DeForest note seems to flesh-out the reference in your note to the unknown female whose daughter married a Bristol are Anna Maria deForest who married David Betts and had a daughter, Mary Ann Betts who married William Clark Bristol in 1848, and had 5 children the last of whom was Mary DeForest Bristol (NYGBR v45 1915, p65); Miles Bristol married Betsy DeForest and they had three children, none of whom was either a Mary or a DeForest. (NYGBR v44. 1914. p175; and finally, George Augustus Bristol (1762-1813) m. Mary DeForest Hawley and they had Simeon Bristol (1787-1827) who married Lucy Goodyear; they had several children, among them Mary Deforest Bristol (NYGBR v45 1914, p323).
So we can see that there were plenty of opportunities for the name DeForest to have 'infected' the Bristol family. Anna Marie brought her own surname to the table via her own daughter Mary Ann; Mary DeForest Hawley brought it to the family via her son Simeon Bristol. Mary probably caught it from someone in her Hawley-line.
All well and good, but that still leaves me with the big question: how did my grandfather (Frank DeForest Gaston) get it. The name occurs nowhere else in the Gaston family prior to my grandfather; it makes sense therefore to assume it was a name from from his mother's (Phylinda Bristol) family.
As to Bristols who lived in (or around) the 'Genesee' country (W. New York), one of the most intriguing was Sgt Job Bristol who moved to Cayuga Co, NY from Sandgate, VT, and may have 'moved west' with his sons who settled in Bethany in Genesee county.. I have 'liked' Job as a potential ancestor because of the note on p 172 of v44 (1914) of NYGBR, which says at the list of his children by the second wife ('he is said to have had a third). Was that third wife the mother of the twins Phylinda and Lucinda - don't know.
I have other information about Bristols in western NY, but will have to go digging to find it.
I hope I haven't overly burdened you with all the info, and look forward to further communications with you. Meanwhile, I will post my Bristol GEDCOM to the WorldConnect site
Best Regards
Sandy G.
So far as the orphans Phylinda and Lucinda are concerned, there really isn't very much information (which, of course, is precisely the problem). All we know of them came from an old family bible. We know they were born 24 October 1807, but don't know where, or who their parents were.
Phylinda married Edmund Waite Gaston in Castile, Genesee county, NY on 26 Jan 1934. Later, they moved to Belfast, Allegany Co., NY where my grandfather, Frank DeForest (there's that name - for the first time in the Gaston family) was born. Still later, they moved to Crawford County, PA., and died there 22 Apr 1878 (Phylinda) and 5 Jan 1881 (Edmund). A note in the family bible indicates that Phylinda's twin Lucinda married a W. Stewart, but gives no date or location.
And that, unfortunately is all we have to go on. All that stuff about DeForest is pure speculation based on the information in v44 and v45 of the NYGBR.
I have mentioned Job Bristol as one of the prime candidates as potential progenitor in Phylinda/Lucinda lives: According to NYGBR, Job moved from Sandgate, VT to Aurelius, Cayuga Co., NY. , which is where Edmund's grandfather, David Gaston lived at the time. Is that when the Gastons and the Bristols became acquainted? It's a stretch. Job's sons Anson and Elijah purport to have moved from Cayuga Co. to Bethany in Genesee Co, where Anson is reported to have been Sheriff (NYGBR, v45, p166). The problem with Job, et al., is that there are no DeForests.
