Winter

 

A.I. creation of life along the St. Lawrence River in the style of Grand Wood

On a rainy day recently, I spent some time cleaning the cobwebs on a distant branch of my family tree. I cleaned up the records on Ancestry, removing duplicates and linking them properly. But in doing so, it has caused me to wonder about certain aspects of them.

My 2nd great grandfather Leander Wells is someone I wrote about a few years ago on my blog. He was a carpenter by trade though he died tragically in a railroad depot fire where he was serving as a night watchman. His mother, my third great grandmother is Mary E. Sheldon Wells. I have a number of records for her including her mother's name was Elizabeth Lytle. But I don't have any records connecting her to a father despite it being listed on Ancestry as Winter Sheldon, a name I have always admired. 

Winter Sheldon, possibly my 4th great grandfather, has been a mystery to me. I have only one record of him and that is an army enrollment record in 1838. By 1840, his wife Elizabeth was alone with three children. The 1840 census normally only lists the MALE head of household and when you see a female as the head, it generally means that the male is deceased. Indeed I can find no more records for Winter which also seems to indicate that he is deceased though Elizabeth would leave a paper trail until her death in 1856 and her three children would too. 

What concerns me is that I don't have a single record tying him to Elizabeth or his children and am really not sure how I have his name. I vaguely recall many years ago finding him in a Sheldon family history website and quite possibly that is how I made the connection. Indeed I can still find the site to this day but they too offer no proof of connection. With such a unique name, one might expect that it would carry down among the lines but it didn't, possibly due to his early death of maybe 33 to 35 years old. His oldest child would have been 7 to 9 at his death and so quite possibly remembered very little of his father and thus had no incentive to carry on his name. 

Despite this, there are non-specific connections. Winter served and quite possibly died in the military. The Second Seminole War was going on in Florida at the time as well as a defense of the Canadian border which was less than five miles from his home. His sons William and Daniel both would serve in the Civil War with Daniel dying as a result of disease in Mississippi fighting for the Union. Daughter Mary E. would marry Leander who also served (and possibly deserted) during the Civil War along with his brothers Philander and Alexander. Winter, son William, son-in-law Leander and Philander all were carpenters by trade. Daniel was listed as a sawyer. All of them stayed together as the moved from St. Lawrence County, New York to Dakota County, Minnesota where they joined the Civil War to fight for the Union. 

So it makes perfect sense. It meshes. But I have no proof at all and don't remember how I arrived at the name Winter for sure. I did find an email correspondence I had with a descendant of his son William many years ago but that person wasn't able to offer any proof and seemed to think there was some infidelity somewhere since while his surname was Sheldon and he had no DNA connections with other Sheldons. Perhaps one of these rainy days, I can figure it out again and this time, keep detailed records so I don't have to ponder all of this again.