SSGS newsletter January 1998

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South Shore Genealogical Society

S. S. G. S. NEWS
January 1998

Untangling a Genealogical Mystery-ROTHENHAUSER
Sometimes there are mysteries that appear to be unsolvable. One of these mysteries concerns members of the following families: RHODENIZER, NAUGLER, FRELLICK, ZWICKER and their descendants. In 1777, the spellings could be ROTHENHAUSER and NAGLER, phonetic spelling even by clergymen.
The problem could be the result of improper recording of data, and in one instance, copying.
MARIA ELISABETH ROTHENHAUSER, born May 13, 1777 at First Peninsula, was the daughter of Phillipp Georg Rothenhauser and his wife, Anna Maria Barbara Brant. She was christened on May 19, 1777, Zion Lutheran Records, Lunenburg, N.S., and confirmed in 1792, same records.
1. Maria Elisabeth married May 14, 1797 Johann Daniel/David Zwicker, born 1772 at Mahone Bay, N.S. {ref: Dutch Reformed Baptist Church Records}. Maria had nine (9) children, the last born April 21, 1815, but she died "in childbed" May 1, 1815 at Blockhouse, N.S. Reports state she is buried at Mahone Bay. (The baby died May 1, 1815).
2. Maria Elisabeth is also recorded as married to Johann Georg Naugler on December 7, 1802 at Lunenburg, N.S. He was born December 21, 1777, died November 17, 1840. The couple were part of the Lunenburg to Queens County exodus about 1825, settling at Western Head, Queens County, N.S. Present day family members reside there.
Their family increased, with church records available through Trinity Anglican Church, of which Grace Anglican Church was a parish church.
Maria Elisabeth died on May 8, 1846, age 69 "in childbed" as found in an older Trinity Anglican Church record, with burial in Grace Anglican Cemetery, Western Head. {Her husband had died six years previously}.
Is it possible for the same person to have married both men --- some family may have an answer, which is why I am sending it to the editor.
Also, the only male Rothenhauser at that time was her father, Philip George and his wife had eleven children, as found in church records. To date we have not found that Maria Elisabeth was a twin --- it seems records were copied, which adds to present confusion.
I will correspond with other connected families: Conrad, Wentzel, Feener, Spindler, Schenk, Rafuse, Slauenwhite and researchers. The problem might be solvable - we hope!!
The Rhodenizer family, my mother-in-law's, has many branches in Nova Scotia and the United States -- I will include all members if data is received.
Hoping to hear from researchers and family members -- even the internet has not solved the above mystery!
Muriel M. Davidson
254 Crestview Avenue
Brampton, Ontario L6W 2R8

Common expressions of an earlier time are strange to many today. The following two items, found in an October edition of the Bridgewater Bulletin in 1899, are a good example. Do you know what was meant?
They were in Mahone Bay news.
Miss Hattie Zwicker met with a painful accident one day last week by falling off her wheel.
Mahone is booming in the matter of electric light, and almost all the stores and many of the houses and also the Presbyterian Church is lighted by the electric fluid.

Influenza Cases
...Bridgewater Bulletin October 29, 1918
A.B. Hunt of this town (Bridgewater) received a telegram stating that Mrs. Hunt was taken from the train at Saskatoon and placed in hospital in dying condition from influenza. She and her mother were on a trip west when she was attacked by the disease. Mr Hunt has left for Saskatoon.
Mrs. J.A. Miller is recovering from an attack of influenza.
A particularly sad case is that of Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Wile of Wileville who are both very low, together with two children. Miss Hogan, a nurse of Halifax, is in attendance and Mrs. Simpson of this town is giving valuable assistance. Mrs. Wile gave birth to a daughter a few days ago.
Mr. and Mrs. Mel Seamone and four or five children are down with influenza.

In the April 28, 1903 edition of the Bridgewater Bulletin, the following Ten Commandments were printed.
Could they be useful today?
These are the new commandments ten,
which wives now make for married men.
1. - - Remember that I am thy wife, Whom thou must cherish all thy life.
2. -- Thou shalt not stay out late at night, when lodges, friends and clubs invite.
3. -- Thou shalt not smoke indoors nor out, nor chew tobacco round about.
4. -- Thou shalt with praise receive my pies, no pastry made by me despise.
4. -- My mother thou shalt strive to please, and let her live with us with ease.
6. -- Remember 'tis thy duty clear, to dress me well throughout the year.
7. -- Thou shalt, in manner mild and meek, give me thy wages every week.
8. -- Thou shalt not be a drinking man, but live on the prohibition plan.
9. -- Thou shalt not flirt, but must allow thy wife such freedom anyhow.
10. -- Thou shalt get up when baby cries, and try the child to tranquillize.
These my commands from day to day thou shalt implicitly obey.

Funeral of Judge DesBrisay
...Bridgewater Bulletin April 17, 1900
The funeral of the late Judge DesBrisay took place on Wednesday afternoon at 2:30. The body was taken from the house to Holy Trinity Church where the service was held. The pall-bearers were, Arthur Roberts, W. E. Marshall, J.A. Whitford, Robert Dawson, E.D. Davidson.
The hearse was preceded by the school children who were present in recognition of the great interest the Judge had taken in our public schools. The funeral procession was a long one and the church was completely filled. The religious service was conducted by the Revs. W. E. Gelling, A. P. Shatford, W. J. Romilly, G. E. Harris, and T.B.A. Allison. The singing was supplied by Holy Trinity choir augmented by singers from other churches. The floral offerings were many and very beautiful. The interment took place in the church cemetery.

Historical Notes of Queens County
...by Robert Randall McLeod, from Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society for 1912
Among the settlers of Pleasant River, about 1820, was William Hendry, a native of Annapolis Royal, and son of William Hendry, of Scotland. He married Desiah Cole, daughter of Benjamin Cole, and Elizabeth Tupper, of Liverpool. They made a large farm; saw their family grow up, and settle around them.
Peleg Murray, a son of Charles and Hope Freeman his wife, and grandson of William Murray and Joanna Tupper, settled in Pleasant River, and became a successful farmer. He married Miss Elizabeth Gardener, of Barrington. Children survive him, one of them is the Rev. Joseph Murray of Shelburne.
Richard Kempton, of New England, married Fear Curtis, in Liverpool, in 1762, and from that union sprang a numerous race, and the Northern District got a fair share of them. A practical industrious family, making food citizens, and capital men for the new settlement.
Jacob Kempton, son of John and his wife Sarah Snow, married a daughter of Bartlett Freeman, of Pleasant River, and settled in Kempt.
John Kempton, brother of Jacob, married Susanna Dexter, of Liverpool, and settled in Harmony.
David Kempton, another brother, married Rebecca Harlow, daughter of Abner, of Liverpool.
Richard Kempton, son of Francis, of Milton, married a daughter of Richard Carder.
Francis Kempton, brother of Richard, married a Miss Collins.
Thomas Kempton, son of Curtis, of Milton, married first Delight Freeman; second, Mary Saunders, third Amelia Boulsby. Several children are living.
Somewhat later that other settlers appeared W.S. Crocker, a New England man, who married in Annapolis County Pamelia Durland, and settled between North and South Brookfield, where several children grew up, and one son is Dr. L.J. Crocker, a well known surgeon in Augusta, Maine. In fact, his father was called "Doctor" and rode with saddlebags, although he could not back them up with any regulation parchment. When he amputated a finger, the job was done with a mallet and chisel, and that saved all haggling, and was soon over with, and after the things was wrapped up, nature was supposed to take her course and complete the work, which she generally did. He was a dentist whose whole equipment was an instrument that was a cross between a gimlet and a lumberman's cant-hook, and operated like a patent stump lifter. I have a keen remembrance of boyhood days, when he gave me the full value of his 15 pence fee, by getting the thing at work upon a troublesome tooth. In some cases with spleenish patients, who bragged a good deal about bodily troubles that the Doctor could not nail down on some offending organ, he burnt on leg or arm a furious blister, that gave them something definite to think about. It localized their trouble, and the thing being in plain sight, and demanding some care there was a degree of relief afforded. This he called an "issue", whether it was because it brought matter to an issue, or a fee was to be the issue, is unknown to me. At any rate this was common practise, and perhaps that was just as defensible as it would have been to draw a string through the nape of the neck and let it remain there for months and call it a Seton, and do it with a diploma to fall back on. Our quaint old doctor practised long before invisible germs were caught red-handed raising a rumpus in these poor bodies. He never heard of antiseptic bandages and that sort of thing. He fumbled away in the dark, like all the rest of them, and no treatment was founded on the knowledge of the disease, or the certain operation of the remedies. If the latest word of science is true, and the human system is a sort of dynamo, and electricity-bearing ions play a vital part, then there will be a precipitate abandonment of a good deal of useless material of the ordinary medicine chest. At any rate, Doctor Crocker was not much in demand, but he lived past ninety years in the respect of his neighbours and in his own excellent estimation of his medical abilities. Three sons became physicians, and the other son is strongly inclined in that direction; so I take it the father was a natural genius. His operations were somewhat restrained by the lack of a diploma, and this was apparently a bit of good fortune for the community, as it did not give him so many chances to take away cold water, and fresh air, from sick people, and bled good blood from those who needed every drop of it, and dispose of so many blue pills, as if he had been fitted out with a parchment permit to practise.
We are now living in the new dispensation, and medical men do not know quite so many things that are not so. We now keep two of these doctors hot under their collars all the time, with their efforts to stand off the grizzly spectre till a more convenient season; and yet people do not have to move away to die. There are no more inhabitants than there were forty years ago, but they have not the courage to tackle a hard cold with a bot brick, a tub of warm water and a bundle of thoroughwort. It is mercifully withheld from us what the medical fraternity a hundred years hence will think of our methods and means of curing these poor bodies. At any rate we shall continue to employ them till good health becomes catching.
Thomas Waterman, a son of Zenas the elder, married Mary Carder, a daughter of Richard, of Pleasant River, and settled in South Brookfield, where a family was born to them, and some members survive. Mr. Waterman drove the first mail to Liverpool, later to Annapolis. A man of many odd ways, brim full of humerous incidents, and not without a large measure of intelligence. He sometimes contributed prose and verse to the newspapers, and they never required his name to indicate the writer, for they had a quality all their own. I recall a bit of his verse on the Annapolis Valley, that runs in this way:
"Riding through the valley, with the sun ashining bright,
One mountain on the left and another on the right,
With the happy cottages all shaded o'er with trees,
And the sweet perfume afloatin' on the breeze."

Even in the midst of his prose he was never quite safe from a visit from his muse. I recall that he was once writing on the crime of throwing sods and bushes and mud into the road, under the pretence of repairing it, when he broke forth into this couplet:
"The bushes rot, the odes decay,
The mud dries up and blows away."

I had always wished that he had added another line or two, expressing a fervent desire that the guilty parties might dry up and blow away.
On one occasion there was a notice of his death put into the newspapers, and unexpectedly fell under his eye. An acquaintance asked his what he thought when he read it. In his jerky way he replied "I knew it was a lie as soon as I saw it."
He once inveigled Mr. Howe into riding with him from Annapolis to Liverpool, in order that he might see, and feel, the bad roads, and thus be persuaded to find some remedy; but when it was over, his noted passenger said that he had been so delightfully entertained by Mr. Waterman's stories that he had not in the least noticed the bad road.
Samuel Verge, a son of Joseph Verge and his wife Abigail Dogget, of Liverpool, married Hannah Foster, daughter of John Foster and Dorcas Smith, of Brookfield, and settled near them, where a large family was reared, and three are living.
Mr. John Seddon, an Englishman, came out a married man, his wife was Ann Luxon, and settled in Caledonia, where the locality is known as Devonshire. They had several sons and daughters, two or three are living. Mr. Seddon died in middle age, but his widow lived to a great age.
Owen Cole, son of Israel and Lois Dogged his wife, and grandson of Benjamin and Elizabeth, married Sarah, daughter of James Harlow and his wife Salome, and settled in Caledonia, where his descendants are yet to be found.
Hallet Cole, son of Hallet and Samuel Millard, daughter of Robert Millard and Anne Crowell his wife, a daughter of Jonathan and Ann Collins, married Mary Burke, a daughter of William Burke and Mary Foster, the pioneer settler of the Northern District, and settled in Caledonia near the farm of Mr. Baxter, where his sons reside. (To be continued in future issues)

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