Where Ruth Ann Swasey James' children were born

I hope to have a summary on each of her children's births.  I'll worry about where they lived later.

I have spent hours looking at census records for one daughter, who lived into her 90s...and everywhere confirmed she had been born in Iowa in 1857. Her mother, Ruth Ann Swasey, was born and died in Rhode Island, so that was a bit hard to believe.

Summarizing how these people are related to me...my great times 3 grandfather Alexander G. Swasey  (1784-1861) had a son, Alexander G. Swasey, (sea Captain) (1812-1866), and a daughter Ruth Ann Swasey James (1828-1908).  Alexander ended up fighting for the Confederacy (as a ships captain) and Ruth Ann's husband William James fought for the Union during the Civil War.

I'm going to first list the 4 children that my cousin has on her James Family Tree. Then I'll try to figure out who the other 3 are who are on my tree. Lots of times grandchildren are put into the places of their parents, usually because of having the same name.  When a census says William D. -- lived someplace when he was 10 years old and he was really William A. -- then I go searching for someone with the correct initial who was old enough to be a head of household...and usually find a cousin, or uncle who was correct.

Parents:
Ruth Ann Swasey James, b. 1 July 1829 Newport RI, d.11 Jan1908 Providence RI.

William Davenport James, b. 5 Aug 1827, New Bedford, Bristol, MA, d. 20 May 1910, Providence, RI

Children:
Lewellen Swasey James Nickerson b. 9 May 1852 New Bedford, Bristol, MA, d. 20 Apr 1928, Rhode Island

Clara D. James Dean, b. 8 Feb 1854, MA, d. 9 Aug 1944, Central Falls, Providence County, Rhode Island,

Alice Creighton James Smith, b. 23 Feb 1857, Lansing, Iowa, d. 8 Jan 1935, Providence, RI

William Alexander James, b. 11 Oct 1860, Mobile, Mobile AL, d. 19 May 1949, Kernville, Kern, CA buried in RI.

Also on my tree, just to list who isn't on the more official one, has the same parents listed, and still needing to be weeded out:

Augusta James, b. abt. 1853, place and death unknown.

Isabela James, b. abt. 1855, d. abt 1930, St. Louis MO.

Elizabeth R. James, b. abt. 1861 Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, US or England.

Well, it didn't take very long to find a census for father William D. James for 1855 in New York, and to find that this was another man completely...born in Ireland, married to Ann, also born in Ireland, who had children Augusta and Isabela. So now I can cross them off my tree completely.

But there's the weird Elizabeth R. born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire...maybe England or maybe US.  I'm going to just delete her from my tree as well. There. A bit rash, but the places she was born being so confused seems pretty safe, especially since she was pretty far removed from my ancestors.

Since my cousin is a California relative, I am interested in the fact that her gg grandfather William A. James had been born in Mobile AL, when most of the family were from New England (with the exception of the Iowa daughter.) And he had been born in 1860.

But it's also interesting to see that his father joined the US army in 1861 till 1865, for Massachusetts. So the family's stay in the south was brief.

So that's as much as I'll delve into today. Where do you think we should go tomorrow? I've just added some more ancestors of the James family, going back further in time. But I think I'd like to first come down to more recent times. They moved to California, after all!

Other family trees

I have my basic 3, my mother's family (The Booths); my father's dad's family (The Rogers); and my father's mom's family (The Swaseys.)

If I spent the rest of my life just filling in new information on those trees, (on Ancestry) I probably wouldn't get finished.

And then I started looking at the wives of my 3 sons...so that's 3 more families to see where they came from. Oh my, they are so interesting. I think only one daughter-in-law is doing her own research, and we got into a mess last week when we found both our trees had the same name. So that's been changed and we can now see the work of the other, and not lose it.

I also have 2 friends who were interested in seeing a bit of their trees, and I don't do much more with them...but trees over on Ancestry have a habit of growing when I'm not looking.

Oh, and I have a fourth cousin who does genealogy on the Swasey tree, she has the same great times three grandfather! I've never met her, and she lives about a thousand miles away in California.

I recently switched back to the Swasey Family Tree (father's mother's family) here on the blog. So I'll stay on that tree for a while. They mainly came from New England, so there are lots of good records available.

So I'm going to spend some time this week looking at my fourth cousin's family. She has some different children in the very first family, which I've been scratching my head about. Her James family started with Ruth A. Swasey who married William D. James. I've got 7 children from them, and she's got 4.

So I started with one of the unlikely ones, read through all the information on a woman who lived until her 90s, and she's definitely a Swasey James ancestor, even though she was born in Iowa in 1857. My question was (of course) how and why did my great times three grandmother who lived her whole life (I thought) in Providence RI, end up having a baby in Iowa?  I still think she might had been adopted.

But I'll give you more information, in a bit more coherent version, tomorrow!