Catherine Peterson Dolbow
Status: looking for family
Boy, do I have a family saga for you. Whoever finds themselves related to this family stands to inherit a whole bunch of old photographs.
Our story harkens back to the mid 19th century, in Upper Penns Neck, New Jersey.
Catherine Peterson was born about 1790 in Mongtomery, New York to William Peterson and Elizabeth Runion. She married Charles Dolbow.
The earliest we can definitively find Charles and Catherine is the 1850 federal census; prior to 1850, only heads of households were listed. There is a Charles Dolbow in the same location in 1840, but the ages of the other inhabitants don't quite match the ages of his wife and children based on the 1850 census.
In 1850, Charles and Catherine had four children living with them:
Maria, age 23
Firman, age 19
Charles, age 18
John, age 15
This isn't to say that those were their only children. A user-made tree on Geni suggests Charles and Catherine had quite a few more children before Maria: Elizabeth, Isaac, Ann, Catherine, Charlotte, and maybe another named Hannah.
We can see from the 1850 census that Charles and Catherine were quite wealthy - whereas all their neighbors owned 600 - 900 dollars worth of property, sometimes going as high as 1,200, Charles and Catherine owned 2,000. The only family significantly wealthier than the Dalbow family was the Borden family - multiple units of the Borden family, in fact. The census shows that the families of John, Samuel, and Clement Borden owned, together, over $11,000 worth of property.
Ten years later in the 1860 census, Catherine has already passed. She is buried in Saint Georges Episcopal Church Cemetery in Pennsville, NJ.
From the writing on the back of Catherine's photo (see below) we know she had a granddaughter named Maria, who was married to a Hewitt. Lo and behold, there is a Maria and George Hewitt living in Upper Penns Neck in the 1880 census, with their two daughters, Lizzie and Mary. Maria was born in 1849, and her husband in 1848.
But which of Catherine and Charles' children was Maria born to? Well, it wasn't Firman - Firman and Anna, after having Martha, went on to have William, Kate, Gideon, Emma, Laura, and Mary.
What about Catherine and Charles' eldest daughter in the 1850 census, Maria? After all, it would be quite popular to name your daughter after yourself. But this proves untrue: Maria married Charles Groff on 24 January 1856 and the line fades out from there.
So I tried a different approach, and searched for the marriage of George Hewitt to a woman named Maria in New Jersey. I knew this would give me Maria's maiden name, as her parent's would be listed on the marriage certificate. I did find this certificate, in fact, but it only added more questions. Maria, it says, was born to John Clark and Elizabeth.
Could this be Elizabeth Dolbow? If we return to Geni and trust the user-submitted tree, then yes: Elizabeth Dolbow supposedly married a John Clark after her first husband, Thomas Maloney.
Bingo.
So what about Catherine's descendants through her granddaughter, Maria? Could we possibly return the photo to them? Well, let's save that for next post, because, lo and behold, alongside Catherine's photo came a carte de visite labeled "Geo. W. Hewitt."