The Bass Family

The oldest birth recorded in the Reese Bible is "Lovell Bass was born December 31st 1798."  Just below that, in the same handwriting is the entry "Mary Harwick was born Sept 11th 1800."  It is easy to assume that Mary Harwick is Lovell Bass' wife.  We know from the marriage page that Adam Reese married a Mary Ann Bass.  The 1830 U.S. Census has a Lovill Bass with a wife, 2 male children and 1 female child living in Warren, Herkimer County, New York, the same town that Adam Reese grew up in.


  The bible contains only two pictures of people named Bass.  One of them is a young lady identified as Lucy Bass, and the other is a bearded man named William W. Bass.  There is no other clue as to their relationship, but I take a reasonable guess that William is Mary Ann's brother.  This proves right.  I find in the 1850 U.S. Census that William W. Bass, a schoolteacher, is living in Warren, Herkimer County N.Y. with another brother, Edgar C. Bass, a medical school student.  The young men are living with the Bell family, apparently relatives of Adam Reese's mother, the former Elizabeth Bell, who is also from Warren.  Henry Bell is Elizabeth's brother (Adam's uncle).  Henry's wife Mary is 49 years old.  This is possibly the Mary Bell recorded in the bible as dying in 1878.
   It takes me a lot of research and time to link these people with the proper relationships.  What we get from this is that the only Bell recorded in the bible, Mary Bell, is Adam's mother's sister-in-law who still lived in New York.  This means that Adam's mother, Elizabeth, was receiving family news in Wisconsin from New York and relaying the news to whoever was writing it into the bible.  Elizabeth Bell Reese dies in 1881 in Wisconsin, which the bible does not record.  But by this time the bible is in Illinois with Mary Ann.  


  Dr. Edgar Bass marries a Lucy L. Brand.  This is the Lucy Bass pictured in the bible.  Another document confirms that Lovell Bass and Mary Harwick are the parents of Dr. Bass.


  Amazingly, I find on Ancestry.com another picture of William W. Bass.  It seems to be the same bearded man pictured in the bible, just a little older.  The huge beard is full but graying, the eyes still piercing from under droopy eyelids.  


The pictures of some of Adam Reese's in-laws, and Mary Bell's death notation suggest that someone was in correspondence with the family back in New York, receiving news and the occasional portrait.

The Berties

There are 3 pictures in the bible of persons with the last name of Bertie, and like the Hillikers, someone wrote the names on their portraits but these people are not mentioned in any of the handwritten births/marriages/death entries.  There is no hint of the Berties' relationship to the Reese family.

I have now, with certainty, traced Samuel Reese Sr. and his family back to 1840 to a farm in the town of Warren, Herkimer County, New York, several years before they departed their native New York state to go to Wisconsin.  Adam Reese has 3 brothers and 3 sisters.  As we saw in yesterday's post, one of his younger sisters, Lucretia b. 1830, will eventually marry Adam’s friend, William C. Hilliker.  Now I’ve discovered that another of Adam's younger sisters, Matilda b. 1834, will marry in Wisconsin a man from Scotland, David Smith Bertie.    I’ve located their burials on Find a Grave and attached their photos from the bible. David Bertie has a an elaborate headstone.  It appears that he is buried with their 5 year old son Everett, who died years earlier.  http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Bertie&GSiman=1&GScid=88628&GRid=8352345&

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Bertie&GSiman=1&GScnty=3005&GRid=8352346&

David Bertie and Matilda have a daughter Rosine Bertie b. 1854 in Beaver Dam, Dodge, Wisconsin.

 Get this.  Rosine grows up  and marries a Eugene Anderson.  They have a son and move to Seattle, Washington.  Rosine lives a long life and passes away in Seattle in 1947.

But let's don't jump to conclusions.  We haven't traced the bible's path yet.  There are other possibilities for it getting to the west coast.

 I have to go to my real job.  Stay tuned.

The Hillikers

The Reese bible contains several portraits of people with the last name of Hilliker, a strange sounding name.  None of these people or anyone with a similar name is recorded in the bible on the births, deaths, and marriages pages.  I wonder who they are, but there is no hint.  I start searching Adam Reese's daughters in Ancestry.com databases to see if I can get a hit for one of them marrying a Hilliker.  I get nada, so I move on to Adam's granddaughters, however unlikely that seems.  His granddaughters thrived in the early 1900s and these pictures seem much older than that.

   What I love about genealogy is how these things happen.  The Hillikers are a dead end, so I change directions and switch to trying to trace the Reese family back to New York, before they take their pioneer spirit to the Wisconsin wilderness.  This is just a random search for post-Revolutionary War New York farmers.  I stumble across a reference of a William C. Hilliker, a widower from Herkimer County, New York, who marries a Lucretia Reese in Dodge County, Wisconsin in 1848.

  Lucretia appears to be Adam Reese's sister.  Voila!  I find Adam's father Samuel Reese, with family, a farmer in Herkimer County in 1840.  Genealogists know that U.S. census records before 1850 are not very specific, but even to a critical eye this does look like a good fit.  So the Reese's came from Herkimer County, New York, before settling in Wisconsin.
  Adam Reese b.1818 and William Hilliker b.1815 are close in age, they are both from Herkimer, Co. NY, and they likely traveled together in 1845, with their wives and young children.  William and his 1st wife, Nancy Hall 1813-1847 had 3 kids, Adam already has 2 kids with his wife Mary Ann.
We have a portrait of William Hilliker with who I think is his 1st wife, before her death in Wisconsin.  The other Hilliker portraits in the bible are of William Hilliker's and Lucretia Reese's grown children; Evelyn, Ellen and Charles.  I've traced some of their marriages and children.
  I've found the burial locations for William and his daughter Ellen.  I belong to Find-A-Grave.com which is a another good site for genealogy research and I've uploaded Ellen and William's portraits http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7005264 to their on-line memorials.  http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7005017  One day, somebody researching their family will spot these and I'll get an excited e-mail.
   Herkimer County, NY is a good discovery.  I have info on William's parents and a lead on a possible grandfather for Adam Reese too.  The story goes on.

Reeseville, Dodge County, Wisconsin

Adam Reese b.1819 was a true frontiersman, according to one history book.  He was the son of Samuel Reese b.1796, and Elizabeth Bell b.1797, both of New York state.  In 1846 Adam followed his father Samuel Reese Sr. to the nearly unbroken wilderness of Wisconsin.  Adam, his wife Mary Ann Bass b.1824, and 2 children, Rosetta b.1842 and Charles Henry b.1844 were all born in New York.  Adam was a farmer like his father and brother Samuel Reese Jr. Adam tilled his land in Wisconsin, taught school in winters, and as the county became more settled was elected supervisor.  Aware that the Milwaukie and St. Paul Railroad wanted to find a way around the Mud Lakes, Adam hired a surveyor to lay out a plat of land which he purchased in Sept 1858.  After the railroad was built through his farm, a station was built of which he took charge.  Adam also became express agent and postmaster.  Later the station was named for Adam and his father, Reeseville.  Samual Reese Sr. died in 1875 at his daughter's home and is buried in Reeseville cemetery, in the village of Reeseville, near Lowell township, Dodge County, Wisconsin.

Adam and his wife Mary Ann, had 2 more children born in Reeseville, Ella b.1846 and May Bell b.1862.  In 1869 Adam and his family moved to Sycamore, Illinois where they settled on a farm.

The bible we are researching was published in 1863.  Adam seems to have been an educated man who would be interested in books, and had the means to purchase a large, fancy bible.  So it seems that Adam Reese and Mary Ann were the original owners of this bible.

This leaves me to wonder why the birth and death dates of Mary Ann's father (or who I am assuming is her father) Lovell Bass are retroactively recorded in the bible, but not Adam's parents, who lived near them in Reeseville.  Makes me think that Adam didn't make any entries into the bible.  This practice was apparently started by Mary Ann, or perhaps years later by one of their daughters; Rosetta, May Bell, or Ella. 

A Family History

The binding is loose and the pages show moisture damage, but the clear handwriting neatly laying out births, marriages, and deaths causes me to gulp.   the 1st entry says "Lovell Bass was born December 31st 1798."  Most of the entries are for people with the last name of Reese.  Other surnames are well represented, but the sense is that this bible was in the Reese family for generations.  Men keep the family name going for a while, but the daughters' betrothals spawn children with a new last name.  The names all stand alone.  Nowhere does it say how these people are related to each other or where any of them were born, lived, or died.  I'm sure this won't be too difficult to resolve.  A little guessing at relationships should lead to U.S. Census documents that list the families.

For the genealogy research, I need a starting point, a "Home person".  My brother, who loaned me the bible that he obtained decades ago, agrees that May Bell Reese, born in 1862, appears to be the matriarch.  Using Ancestry.com, I begin a new family tree and commence connecting the names.

I start with a guess.  Adam Reese b. 1818 could be May Bell's grandfather.  Perhaps Charles Henry Reese b. 1843 is her father.  More importantly, I assume that Adam Reese's wife Mary Ann b. 1824 is Lovell Bass' daughter.  This is working, and in a few hours I have the outline of a family.  But later in the week documents prove me partially wrong.  Charles is May Bell's older brother.  Adam is their father.  OK.  I can accept that.

I'm hooked on this now.  I have a regular day job, but before a week is up I've put 15 hours into this, plus got the lawn mowed and took my wife to dinner.