John Hosea Mead - work in progress

I ran the Niagara International 5k this weekend with some other ladies and we all decided to walk through the Drummondhill Cemetary in historic Lundy's Lane. It was nice to be with people who share my interest and fascination in old cemeteries. We weren't there long, but long enough for me to discover a few people that I wanted to get to know better. The first stone that caught my eye was for 11-year-old John Hosea Mead, only son of Hosea and Lucy Mead. A few things interested me about John: his unique middle name, the fact that the stone seems to show that he was born in 1811 in the USA, died in 1852, and that was 11 years old when he died. The numbers don't add up. It is however very possible that the 4 in 1841 has faded on the stone.

The first thing I did was look up exactly where Clyde, Wayne County, New York is located geographically. According to Wikipedia, it is a small village in the Town of Galen and between Rochester and Syracuse.(1) Quite a distance from Niagara Falls. I did some google searches for John and didn't come up with a lot, other than pictures of his stone.
 I decided to search Ancestry for his parents in the 1851 census and didn't have any luck there either.
 According to the Niagara Falls Public Library, the Welland Tribune contained news for Chippawa and Drummondville area. (2) The Welland Public Library does have an index of records, but only from 1872. (3) I contacted the Niagara Falls Public Library to see if they can help me determine if they had a microfilmed version of the 1852 newspaper that would have serviced the area. The librarian was only aware of newspapaers that dated back to 1872. I explained that there were a number of papers prior to that in the Niagara Falls area and sent her the LAC link for their own reference!

  I poked around the 1851 Census but I can't seem to find the family yet so I decided to work back and focus on Clyde. I found a couple of things. From the Fulton Postcards website (awesome website btw) I discovered an announcement to dissolve the co-partnership between Hosea Mead and William C. Ely, dated Nov 8, 1845. It appears that they had some sort of stand where they sold goods. William was going to continue to sell goods "a little cheaper than they can be bought in this place hopes to receive, as heretofore a large share of public patronage." (4) The announcement appeared in the Clyde New York Eagle. I then found an obituary for who I can only assume is Hosea Sr. He died in Clyde on Wednesday, Aug 11, 1847. This announcement appeared in the Geneva Gazette. (5) Further research uncovered a cause of death (Palsy) and that he was 34 when he died. (6) Poor Lucy lost her husband and son within 5 years of each other.
  Armed with this new information, I returned to the 1851 Census and searched instead for Lucy. I found Lucey Mead immediately in the Census for the Village of Chippawa. I found her, with her children Caroline, aged 13 and John, aged 11. She was turning 34 on her next birthday. All three were born in the United States and were Presbyterian. (7) This at least tells me that John was born in 1841. The stone must be incorrect or the 4 too faded to properly read.
  I looked for Lucy in the 1861 census without luck. Rather than leave the grave of her only son I suspect that she remarried. I tried to search for Caroline in the 1861 census to see if she might be living with her mom and a new husband but no luck there either.
  Determined to not give up, I've started to research the history of the Drummond Hill Cemetery to see if I can find information about someone who might have already done some research about the people buried in the cemetery. I may have found something that will help. Apparently William C. Dalton, the Sexton of the cemeteries kept a journal of the burials with some interesting background on the deceased. (8) So, I contacted the Niagara Falls Public Library and asked if they could look at the journal and let me know if there is mention of John. Cathy got back to me pretty quickly.  She provided me with a link to the Niagara Falls Cemetery website.  From this link, I discovered that John was buried the day after he died and  it provided me with the plot location, but not much else.  A few hours later, she sent me a couple of scanned images of information about John.  One from was the book "Historic Drummond Hill Cemetery transcriptions", which also noted that this date of birth was 1811. The other was an image from Dalton's book. The scan was a typewritten copy and provided disappointingly little information.  The image has three columns of information without a header.  The first column seems to be the burial date, the second column is the name of the deceased (John Mede) and the last column is the age of the deceased.  In this case, John is recorded at 15 years....,   I would like to see a copy of the original journal entry instead of a typewritten index...  


1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde,_New_York
2. https://www.nflibrary.ca/nfplindex/start.asp?db=cari
3. http://www.welland.library.on.ca/digital/search.htm
4. http://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html
5. http://wayne.nygenweb.net/vitals/obits6.html
6. http://wayne.nygenweb.net/vitals/deas1847.html
7. 1851 Census of Canada East, Canada West, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Year: 1851; Census Place: Chippawa, Welland County, Canada West (Ontario); Schedule: A; Roll: C_11757; Page: 31; Line: 7
8. https://www.niagarafalls.ca/city-hall/municipal-works/cemetery/locations-and-histories/drummond-hill.aspx