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.