The principal argument against the proposition that the Robert Dibbell we see in Glastonbury is the same Robert Deeble who has a son named Thomas in Massachusetts is that the two men came to America in different ships, perhaps as much as a year or two apart. If they were father and son, why did they do that? Many Dibble genealogists believe that the John Dibbell baptized in Glastonbury, with father Robert, also came to America, but to date we have not found a passenger list for any ship that has his name. If that John was in one of the Massachusetts colonies at the same time as Robert and Thomas, there certainly could have been other Robert and/or Thomas Dibels/Dibles/Deebles, not found on passenger lists, who settled in the neighborhood as well. Later in our story we see Robert and Thomas following separate paths again. If they were prone to disagreements, that might explain them sailing on different ships at different times--if they were indeed the same men.

Even further along the road to conjecture, we have two interesting baptism records from Devonshire County in England. Both of these records are found in the International Genealogical Index (IGI), which is a project of the Mormon Church of Latter Day Saints. The IGI has been divided into two parts; "community contributed" records, which come from anybody who knows how to submit data, and "community indexed" records, which are supposed to have been transcribed from official government or church sources.

Among the IGI "contributed" records, we find one for Thomas Deeble, son of Robert Deeble, with a christening date of 1613 in Exeter, Devonshire. This date lines up with the age of the Thomas who sailed with the Hull company, taking into consideration the fact that a christening did not always occur within a few days or weeks of a child's birth in those days.

The IGI "indexed" records include a Thomasine Deeble, daughter of Robert Deeble, who was christened on April 11, 1613, at St. Andrew's church in Plymouth, Devonshire. Some people have speculated that "Thomasine" is a transcription error and that Thomasine is actually Thomas. If so, this baptism date also corresponds to the age of Thomas on the passenger list. However, this parish register also has a Frances, daughter of Robert, baptized in March 1622; she would only have been about 14, not 24, when the Hull company sailed.

Plymouth is an attractive town for Robert and Thomas to come from, because the first church in Dorchester, Massachusetts, was established in Plymouth, Devonshire, in 1630.

In any event, most Dibble genealogies give 1613 or 1614 for the year of Thomas of Dorchester's birth, but that can be calculated by working backward from his age on the passenger list.

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Recovering Old Dates

"Robert Dible" appears on the passenger list of the Recovery, which is dated March 31, 1633.

There are issues with English recorded dates generally in the 17th. century, and with the date of the sailing of the Recovery in particular.

When you see a date given as "some year/the following year" in old records, as in "1633/34", this doesn't necessarily mean that someone was uncertain about the date. This is actually common usage in 17th. century English and American records. At that time, New Year's Day was March 25. Dates between that day and the following March 24 were all reckoned to be in the same year. Also, although the "new-style" Gregorian calendar began to be used in Catholic countries and colonies in 1582, it wasn't adopted in England or its colonies until 1752, when the start of the year was also changed to January 1, by which time dates had slipped several days from the "old-style" Julian calendar.

People who could write, and especially those who kept records, were usually aware of the differences between calendars in effect in different places, and they adopted so-called "double dating" to convey this knowledge.

In this document, when a date seems certain, I have made the assumption that the "real" year in which a date before 1752 falls is determined by the modern calendar, with its start on January 1. So, for example, I show March 20, 1633/4 as March 20, 1634, because if it was in Gregorian 1633 the recorder would have rendered it as 1632/3. Following the same logic, I give March 31, 1633/4 as March 31, 1633, because the recorder didn't write "1634/5".

But there is no certainty about the year in which the Recovery sailed.

The passenger list for the Recovery is dated March 31, 1633 (no double-date). However, one source claims that the ship could not have sailed before April 30 of 1633, because one of the passengers on the list witnessed a lease in England on that date. This source also says that another passenger appears in a record for April 3, 1633 in Dorchester, MA. It would have taken the Recovery anywhere from three to eight weeks to make the voyage, depending on weather and the navigational skills of the captain, so nobody could leave England on March 31 and turn up in Massachusetts on April 3 of the same year. If the Dorchester records are correct (and they may not be, because some of them weren't actually written down until a few years after the first settlers arrived, and all handwritten records from this era are subject to error both by the original recorder and by whoever transcribed them to printed media much later), then this passenger apparently went back to England in the spring of 1633 and returned on the Recovery in 1634. Finally, this source cites the diary of "William Whiteway of old Dorchester in Dorsetshire [England], who wrote: 'April 17, 1634, Mr. Newburgh [sic] of Marthwoodvale and many others set saile from Waimouth towards New England.' Mr. 'Newburgh' was more precisely, Mr. Thomas Newberry," another Recovery passenger. This source is not completely reliable. Portions of the Whiteway diary are online at Google Books but, unfortunately, the entry cited is not among them. The source cites the date of the first appearance of Recovery passenger Thomas Newberry in Dorchester, MA records as September 1, 1634. However, the Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical Society's History of the Town of Dorchester, Massachusetts has him receiving a grant of land in March of that year. That would only be possible if the Recovery had arrived in 1633, unless, of course, somebody made a wrong assumption about a double date somewhere along the line.

So the mystery of when the Recovery sailed has never been solved.

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Who's on First?

There is a long-running dispute as to which is the oldest English settlement in Connecticut: Windsor, or Wethersfield.

The Wikipedia page for Windsor has the first settlers arriving in 1634, and it has the migration of the Warham party occurring in 1635. There are numerous errors on the Wikipedia page, however, beginning with the statement that Reverend John Maverick also accompanied this party. Although he was a principal organizer of the group, he never made it to Windsor. He was, in fact, dead and buried before the Warham party left.

History of the Town of Dorchester, Massachusetts, published in 1859 by a "Committee of the Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical Society", says, "In the summer of 1635, some Dorchester people had already reached the river and sat down at a place where William Holmes and others, of Plymouth, had erected a trading house two years before (at Windsor)..." This would place the first settlers in Windsor in 1633. This history also gives the Warham party's arrival date as the spring of 1636.

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The House That Thomas Didn't Build

Dibble researchers have frequently reported that Thomas Dibble, Sr. did not build the house he was "ordered" to build in Dorchester, because he went to Windsor, Connecticut. For example, Van Buren Lamb, in a 1951 letter, wrote, "He did not build his house but went with the Rev. Wareham's party, which followed Thomas Hooker to Windsor, Conn." However, there is no direct evidence for this contention.

We know that Thomas was told to build this house within a year of December 17, 1635, when he was awarded about 1.5 acres next to his father Robert's lot. We also know that less than a month later, the two Dibbles were awarded at least another 30 acres of land (though we don't know if that was a joint grant or if they were each given 30 acres) in the area that bordered the town of Roxbury. Thomas doesn't appear again in the record until, possibly, April 9, 1640, when he was then in Windsor, CT. (The precise record states, "Aprill the IXth. 1640. ... These were made Free :- These inhabitants of Wyndsor: .. Tho: Dyblie". Researchers have assumed "Tho Dyblie" and "Thomas Dibble" are the same person.)

There was already a European hamlet at Windsor, CT in November 1635. Warham's group arrived in the spring of 1636, but Thomas was still in Dorchester in May 1637, when he made freeman there. Thomas Dibble appears on a list of founders of Windsor maintained by the Connecticut State Library; the Library's website indicates that the list includes people who arrived by the end of April, 1636. However, the original compilers of the list, Descendants of the Founders of Ancient Windsor, Inc., say that "Founders are individuals who appear on records pertaining to Windsor by the end of 1641."

December 17, 1635 to April 9, 1640 is a long time to go without a house, especially in New England during the "Little Ice Age". Did Thomas live with his father during this time? Did he build a house on his 1.5 acre lot, or perhaps on the 30-acre site near Roxbury? Or did he go to Windsor in 1637 and live with someone else for three whole years while the local leaders pondered his behavior and finally made him eligible, as a freeman, to own land there in 1640? Nobody really knows for sure, though the latter would seem to be the least likely story.

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The Great Dying

When the first large group of settlers arrived in what is now New England (known in the United States as "The Pilgrims"), they found recently abandoned villages, and the decomposing bodies of large numbers of people, all around them. This is not a story that is usually told to schoolchildren when teaching about "the first Thanksgiving". But as William Bradford, religious mystic and on-and-off governor of the Plymouth Colony, explained in his diary, "... the people not many, being dead and abundantly wasted in the late great mortalitie which fell in all these parts about three years before the coming of the English, wherin thousands of em dyed; … ther sculs and bones were found in many places lying still above the ground, where their houses and dwellings had been; a very sad spectackle to behould." Bradford believed that this devastation indicated that God intended to give the land to the settlers.

The quote indicates to us that this deadly epidemic was known to people in England before the Pilgrims came; and scholars have remarked that it was reported by visiting European traders and individual settlers living here and there in the region, who apparently were not affected by it. This differential in survival rates between Native Americans and Europeans is one of the principal reasons why it is believed that the deaths were caused by one or more diseases transmitted to the Native Americans by Europeans; diseases to which Europeans had developed some immunity, but which the natives had not. The most commonly-suspected culprit was smallpox inadvertently passed on by human carriers, but more recently leptospirosis, a disease carried by shipboard rats, has been suggested. Yellow fever, typhoid fever, and other diseases have also been proposed. It was probably a combination of them all.

This horror was not limited to New England. For example, early French and Spanish explorers reported the existence of substantial Native American towns, with much industry and commerce, throughout the Mississipi and Ohio valleys and the region now including the states of Alabama and Georgia, when they visited those areas in the 16th. century. By the time English settlers began moving into those areas in the mid-to-late 1700s, no identifiable traces of those people remained, although there were several large earthen "mounds" in those river valleys. (Archaelogists for many years believed they were ceremonial burial centers, but more recently they have come to realize that they are, in fact, the remains of the towns described by the early explorers.) Scholars now believe that anywhere from 40 million to 100 million people were wiped out across North and South America within a very brief period of time shortly before large-scale European settlement began.

No indications have been found that the settlers who came to Dorchester, Boston, and other areas around Massachusetts Bay beginning in 1630 witnessed anything like what Bradford saw in Plymouth. But then, it was ten years later, time enough for many things to decay beyond recognition, and time also for the native population to begin to recover somewhat.

However, it is certainly clear that if the plagues had not come, those settlers may have received quite a different reception, and may have judged it wise not to push things too far. That doesn't mean they would have abandoned their racist beliefs in their own superiority and entitlement, or their determination to control the land, but it might have led to a history more like that of India, where the Europeans established a few coastal colonies (Bombay, Goa, Calcutta) and extended their power inland by using local leaders as surrogates.

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Marrying Miriam?

Nobody knows for sure who Thomas Dibble Sr.'s first wife was. Many genealogies give "Mary" or "Miriam" Grant, of Dorchester, MA. However, the only record of the marriage that might be reliable comes from New England Marriages Prior to 1700, by Clarence Almon Torrey. The record reads, in its entirety:

"DEBLE, Thomas (1613-1700) & 1/wf ?Meriam/Miriam __?__ (-1681); b 1637; Windsor, CT"

There is no last name. The formatting, numbers and abbreviations are standard for these types of records; they should be read to mean:

Thomas Deble, who lived from 1613 to 1700, married his perhaps first wife, whose first name was "Meriam" or "Miriam", last name unknown, and who died in 1681, in Windsor, CT. The "b 1637" notation could mean "bans published", which means the marriage occurred in 1637 ("b" normally means "born", but if Torrey knew her birth year he would have put (1637-1681) after her name).

According to Ancestry.com, Torrey got his information from "thousands of books and journals in the library of the New England Historic Genealogical Society". Those books and journals would have included family genealogies, whose accuracy varies wildly. It is unlikely that he got it from any official records. No official record of this marriage was found when the Mormon Church began its great work of compiling this type of data, or when the great New England indexes of town and church records were being developed.

Van Buren Lamb believed that Thomas' first wife was Miriam Grant, a sister of Matthew Grant, whose Old Church Record is considered a primary source for early Windsor records. He may have gotten this idea from Brace Knapp, who wrote to Lamb in 1981 to say that Grant referred to "sister Dibble" in his diary. The diary is online but there is no such reference in it. Lamb cites the Old Church Record for much of his information on Thomas' family. The references to "sistr Deble" (and one to "sistr Fylar") are in this document, in a list of people who were "taken into communion" in the church and who were still living on December 22, 1677, and they are the only two women who are referred to in this manner. Some Matthew Grant genealogies give his sister Miriam married to a Dibble, and at least one shows that he had a second sister, so perhaps Knapp's supposition is correct, though there isn't enough objective evidence to be sure.

There are official records of the deaths of both of Thomas's wives, but, sadly, the first wife's name is not given in them. Thomas had a daughter named Miriam, and she may have been named after her mother. But he had two other daughters, Hepzibah and Joanna, so who knows?

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The Case of Israel Dibble and Deborah Bartlett

The primary source for this disturbing story is a set of very difficult-to-read handwritten court documents in the custody of the Connecticut State Library. I am also indebted to Jo Edkins, whose transcription of the documents contains more detail than I was able to decipher. You can read her interpretation of the story at: http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/genealogy/earlydib/case.htm

Edkins was able to make out some of the text on the back of the document that records Samuel's and Hepzibah's change of testimony (I was unable to read any of it). Her transcript includes the lines, "Israel took her by the arm & layd her downe & would have forced her but she said she would cry out He sayd he would stop her mouth with his Glove".

It is not unusual for people to delay reporting a rape to the authorities, but the first thing that was reported was a complaint of adultery by Bartlett against his wife. He knew something had happened immediately; he confronted her right after the event occurred, though in the presence of Israel and his brother. If she had told him as soon as they were alone together that it was rape, why did he not go to court the next day (Thursday, January 23, 1668) and charge Israel with rape? If he didn't believe her, why did he wait until March 1 to charge her with adultery? Of course, one likely explanation is that they tried to reconcile and failed; perhaps the relationship took that long to deteriorate to the point that he was angry enough to go to court and see her flogged or perhaps even hanged. There is no indication of a subsequent divorce, but that record may have been lost. It also seems possible that Bartlett simply waited until the first day that court was in session that year. In many small communities in the early days of settlement, court was in session only for specific brief periods of time.

If there was an assault, it also doesn't make sense for Deborah to have first confessed to adultery. She may have felt ashamed in either case (it is not unusual for rape victims to feel shame), but surely it would be at least marginally better to be seen by the Puritan townsfolk as a victim of rape than as a willing adulteress.

Edkins advances the attractive supposition that Thomas rallied the family to collaborate on their testimony to protect its reputation as a whole and the life of Israel in particular.

Still, it is quite strange that, with all of the other records extant, there is no record of the court's disposition of the case. Both rape and adultery were very serious crimes in 17th. century Connecticut; a guilty verdict on either charge would have had catastrophic consequences. This leaves open the possibility that the judge (or Magistrate--his name was Henry Wolcot[t] Jr. and he was a member of the House of Magistrates, the upper house of the state legislature) didn't think any of the witnesses were credible.

Samuel and Hepzibah seemed, at first, rather eager to get their older brother in trouble. And Israel was visiting in Benjamin Bartlett's house. Bartlett had just left to get some cider. So (according to Israel's sister Miriam, but not to Israel himself), Israel goes to get cider, too? In his own cellar, tramping through the snow in the orchard? Miriam actually testified that she hung up Israel's wet and dirty pants two days in a row, and added that the snow was very deep in the orchard. Benjamin Bartlett, while accusing his wife and reporting that she had confessed, also allegedly told Thomas Dibble Jr. that he thought "that which was sed to be dun was not dun where she sed it was but sumwhere else". This sort of thing is the reason why modern courts don't permit hearsay testimony. The judge may have listened to all of this for a while, then thrown up his hands, decided they were carrying on some sort of family feud, and tossed them all out of court.

On the other hand, the weight of the wealthy and influential Thomas Dibble and his family upon this small town must have been considerable. Seeing that they were determined to stand together, Wolcot, an elected office-holder, may have decided that it was above his pay grade to go against them (or, in the colorful English saying, he was a "Jobsworth") and pronounce one of them guilty.

There are a couple of other minor mysteries in the case. One of the documents has testimony from a "Jone Dible aged 55 years". No one has been able to find a candidate for this person. The age is the same as that of Thomas Sr. Thomas had a daughter named Joanna, but she is believed to have died young. Perhaps this was the shadowy older son of Robert Deeble, John Deeble (though he would have been closer to 65 at this time, if he was there--and there is no reason to believe he was). Perhaps the clerk simply meant to write "Tom" and botched the record. Also, Israel's brother Ebenezer gave testimony and his age is recorded as "21 years or there about". Ebenezer was 26 at the time, but maybe he looked younger to the clerk.

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George and Thomas on Long Island

The notion that George and Thomas Dibble, sons of Israel Dibble, moved to eastern Long Island, New York is a conjecture, though one that is backed by considerable circumstantial evidence.

Israel had three sons who lived to adulthood: Josias, Thomas, and George. Josias was named in his grandfather Thomas Deble Sr.'s will, which is dated February 17, 1700; his two brothers were not. According to Van Buren Lamb, Hartford County, CT court records list Josias as "late of Windsor, now of Saybrook 5 Sept 1700", a month or so before Thomas Sr. died. After listing Israel's children, Lamb also cites a genealogist named Perry, who "says children went to Easthampton, L.I." I was unable to find the original source of this statement.

If Thomas was only disposed to leaving his property to relatives who were living in the area, that doesn't necessarily exclude Josias; "late of Windsor", recorded in September 1700, could mean that Josias left Windsor after February 1700 but was still living there when Thomas wrote his will.

Also, there is no mention of anyone named Dibble (under any spelling) in the East Hampton, Suffolk County, NY (Long Island) tax list for 1683. After that, however, there are several mentions of a Thomas Dibble and a George Dibble in East Hampton records.

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The Abigail Reacher

Actually, while the quick second marriage makes a good story, it may not be true.

And so we come to the weakest link in our conjectural chain from Robert Deeble to Lt. Jonathan Dibble, the mother of all leaps of guesswork, if you will: Abigail, George of East Hampton's alleged second wife.

Several genealogies report that our George Dibble (son of Israel, grandson of Thomas, great-grandson of Robert) married a woman named Abigail in January 1706, the same month in which George's wife Mary Buil died. Many more genealogies (ancient Dibbles are popular ancestors!) record the parents of Lt. Jonathan Dibble as our George and a woman named Abigail. Most published genealogies do not report authoritative sources for their claims; in fact, they tend to simply copy unverified information from each other.

If we were to completely eschew these genealogies as sources, we would be at a dead end. There is no authoritative government or church record of a marriage between George and a woman named Abigail.

However, we have these facts: Mary Buil married a man named George Dibble in East Hampton, Suffolk County, NY, and she died in January 1706. On October 28, 1711, the Rev. Nathanial Huntting baptized a boy named Jonathan, whose father was "George Dibbles", in East Hampton.

Since we would like the George whose ancestry we have painstakingly built up to be the father of this Jonathan, we must find a way to explain how he could have had a child some five years after his wife died.

Van Buren Lamb had a binder page which showed George's marriage to Mary Buil, and a child, Mary, from that marriage who was baptized on January 20, 1706. This Mary was shown to have died on March 25, 1709. But this marriage and child were then crossed out, and a marriage to "Abigail" was added. We don't know why he crossed the entire first marriage out. The binder page also says, "Late of Huntington, L.I. with Timothy Conklin and Thomas Corey". In the upper left-hand corner of the page, where Lamb usually cited sources, there is only "East Hampton". This can't be the Records of the Town of East-Hampton, Long Island, Suffolk County, New York Vols. 1-5, which does contain some Dibble information, because there is no mention of Abigail in that document. Lamb did think that information about two or more George Dibbles had been confused by his sources, so he wasn't certain about any of it. (Having finally obtained Westchester Patriarchs: A Genealogical Dictionary of Westchester County, New York, Families Prior to 1755, by Norman Davis (1988), I can state that the Mary and Abigail Dibbles mentioned in that book are given there as the children of John Dibble, son of the King Philip's War hero Ebenezer.)

But if Mary Buil died in childbirth, leaving a newborn daughter, George definitely had a good reason to remarry as quickly as possible, according to the thinking of the time.

He might not have had a good reason to stay in East Hampton, however. A probate record for a will for a George Dibble, recorded on February 2, 1741 in Stamford, CT, says he was "late of Huntington, L.I." and was survived by a wife Abigail and a son Jonathan, among other people.

Huntington is right across the sound from Stamford, but it's a good distance west of East Hampton. "Late of" in this context almost certainly means that Huntington was the last place he lived, so why was his will probated in Stamford? We can only speculate: Perhaps his only living relatives were there. Perhaps he was visiting them when he died unexpectedly.

Two public genealogies give Abigail's last name as "Corey" or "Cory". Probably they got this from Lamb. Fortunately for us, there is a Corey family genealogy online.

That document has, indeed, an Abigail Corey, daughter of John and Mary (Cornish) Corey "from The Town Records of Huntington", who was born on November 13, 1670. There is no further information about her, so she could have married George--but she would have been around the age of 40 when Jonathan Dibble was born. Not impossible, but also not likely in those days.

However, there's another candidate:

Jacob Corey of Southold, Suffolk County, NY married Ann Tuthill. They had a daughter named Abigail. Southold is on the north "fork" of eastern Long Island; East Hampton is on the south "fork". It is much closer to East Hampton than Huntington. Unfortunately, there is no birthdate given for this Abigail. However, genealogies almost always list offspring in birth order. Her oldest brother, Jacob Jr. was born in 1673. Her oldest sister, Ann, was born in 1678. Her youngest brother, John, was born in 1686. Between Ann and John appear two girls without birthdates, Jehoida and Abigail. Abigail's name has the notation "a witness in Southold, 28 April, 1708". That's not a birthdate. But the source that the author of this Corey genealogy cites is an official government record, the 1698 Census of Southold. Now, census records are not 100% accurate, but this makes it very likely that an Abigail was part of the household of Jacob Corey in that year. The order in which these names appear suggests that Abigail would have been born between 1678 and 1786. If she was born in 1679 (as some genealogies suppose), she would have been about 29 in April 1708.

And she would have been about 32 when Jonathan was born.

One published genealogy actually gives Abigail's parents as Jacob Corey and Ann Tuthill. That genealogy's author probably followed the same train of conjecture given here.

Another of Lamb's binder pages contains even more tantalizing information: It shows the marriage of an Abigail Corey to a Jacob Platt of Huntington. It also shows a marriage, in 1713, of this same Abigail Corey to George Dibble. One of the witnesses to the will mentioned above was a Platt. Another survivor mentioned in the will was Mary Dibble.

There is a tradition among Platt family historians that Jacob Platt's widow Abigail did indeed marry a George Dibble (there are other linkages between the Dibbles and the Platts as well). Unfortunately, the usual date given for Jacob Platt's death is 1713--well after Lt. Jonathan was born--which is what Lamb had for the marriage. Fortunately, though, a bit of digging shows that this date is not certain. Some of the earliest published Platt genealogies say that "little is known" about Jacob, including when he died. It seems that 1713 is the latest possible year for his death, which is tied to a guesstimated birth year for his son Benoni, who is said to have been born, and named, after his father died. Also mentioned in George's will was his wife's son Benoni.

We have to say that there is no definitive proof that the George of Huntington, and the Abigail and Jonathan in his will, were the actual George, Abigail and Jonathan that we are looking for. But if they were, then it may have been Abigail, with an infant son and no means of support, except, perhaps, her parents in Southold, who was in need of a quick marriage, and it all could have happened in 1711 or so.

The final problem though, concerns the records of Rev. Nathaniel Huntting, who, as pastor of the church in East Hampton, was quite meticulous in recording births, baptisms, and deaths. He recorded the death of Mary Buil, but not the birth of her daughter Mary, nor that Mary's death three years later. And he did not record a second marriage for George Dibble. The fact that Abigail witnessed something in Southold in April 1708 could be a clue; perhaps the family was living in Abigail's hometown and going to church there. Unfortunately, there are no mentions of them in the Southold town or church records that are available online. Nor would this explain Huntting's omission of the birth of Mary, who, it seems, probably survived well into adulthood.

We do know that sometimes Puritan couples simply "married themselves"; that is, they conducted a solemn formal ceremony of marriage, but did not have anyone officiate, and the only place such marriages were recorded, if they were recorded at all, was in the family Bible.

This is the sort of genealogical conundrum that separates the women from the girls. Either you believe this story, or you don't. I would like to believe it. It is at least plausible. But in truth, nobody knows.

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By George, Who's Your Daddy?

There are four candidates for the father of Lieutenant Jonathan Dibble. Two are named George, and two are named John.

Both of the Johns have been identified by different sources as the man fingered by the Reverend Henry Griswold Jesup, in his Edward Jessup of West Farms, Westchester Co., New York, and His Descendants (the "Jesup book" that Minnesota Dibble historian Ora Conley Dreher wrote about; the full text of this book is now online).

H. W. Brainard, who may have been a professional genealogist, prepared a set of documents in the early 1930s showing that this John Dibble was descended from Robert Deeble through Robert's son John, who, Brainard said, had his own son John. This second John, Brainard believed, was the father of our Jonathan Dibble.

The only source Brainard cites is Jesup's book, which says, "John Dibble, who possibly may have been the ancestor of Jonathan, was an early settler in the most northerly part of the town of Stamford [CT], which subsequently became a portion of Bedford in the colony of New York. This section of about 7,700 acres was purchased of the Indians and known as the 'Hopground' or hop vineyard, and sometimes called the 'Vineyard.' 'Upon the 4th of February, 1702, the town of Bedford sold to John Dibble, Cross's vineyard purchase for 18 pounds.' In January 1703-4 he makes an independent purchase in the vicinity from the Indians, and in 1704, when the town secured a confirmation from Governor Cornbury of New York of the first patent granted by Connecticut in 1697, his name appears in the list of resident proprietors."

There are several problems with Jesup's book. For example, the source he cites for the list of names on the patent confirmed by Governor Cornbury, A History of the County of Westchester, from Its First Settlement to the Present Time, by Robert Bolton, Jr., makes no mention of this patent or of this John Dibble.

More immediately important, Jesup only says that this John Dibble "possibly may have been the ancestor of Jonathan". He doesn't cite it as a certainty, and he gives no source for his information.

So Brainard's only source for his claim that a John Dibble had a son named Jonathan Dibble born in 1711 in Stamford, CT is a source that merely speculates, without any factual basis, that this might be the case. This case is closed. But for more on the issue of Robert's son John and his connection, if any, to Dibbles in early colonial New England, see John Dibble, Son of Robert Deeble.

The next candidate is the John Dibble who was born to the King Philip's War hero Ebenezer Dibble (son of Thomas, grandson of Robert) in 1673. Van Buren Lamb says this John, with his brother Wakefield, came to Bedford. However, Lamb also says he moved to Mt. Washington, MA, and died "before 1710" in Deerfield, MA, making him an unlikely father for a boy who was baptized in eastern Long Island in October, 1711.

(To further complicate matters, Westchester Patriarchs: A Genealogical History of Westchester County, New York, Families Prior to 1755, by Norman Davis, describes this John son of Ebenezer as the John who bought the "Hopground" in 1702. Davis also reports that he sold it in 1704. Combining this with Lamb's information, it would seem that this John was not in the Bedford/Stamford area for very long at all.)

Third up: George Dibble, a great-grandson of Robert Deeble through Robert's son Thomas, and Thomas' son Thomas Jr. This George has a better claim than either John right off the bat, because the record for the baptism of Jonathan on October 28, 1711 in East Hampton, Suffolk County, NY, which was written by the minister who baptised him and is highly likely to be correct, gives the child's father's name as "George Dibbles".

Van Buren Lamb speculated that George Dibble, son of Israel (see below), had been mixed up in the records with this George. But Lamb has this George being born on April 13, 1687. This would most likely make him too young to be the George Dibble who bought land in March 1703 in East Hampton, Suffolk County, New York, where Jonathan was later baptized. He would have been 16 at the time. Under English common law, he was past the "age of discretion", which allowed him to witness wills or land sales, but he was still an "infant", unable to make most kinds of life decisions on his own. "Infants" could own land (they often inherited it), but they could not sell it. They could buy land conditionally; they had to confirm the sale when they reached the age of 21, at which time they could legally change their minds. So no one in his or her right mind would sell land to a teenager. Also, Lamb has George son of Thomas Jr. dying on April 28, 1709, in Windsor, CT.

We can't be certain that these birth and death dates are correct. I don't know where Lamb got this George's death date. The only documentation for his birthdate is from James Savage's A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England. This is a commonly-used source. But Savage says that in addition to official records that he viewed himself, he relied on "friends" to submit additional data, and he implies a less than critical acceptance of those submissions. One would expect his citations, if correct, to appear in the other most common source of ancient New England records, the Barbour Index, since they both collect the same records, but this George does not.

But if these dates are correct, this George would have been dead for over 2 1/2 years on Jonathan's baptism date of October 28, 1711, a date which, I emphasize again, has to be considered reliable. We could, for the sake of argument, assume that the child was conceived on the day George died and grant a birthdate for Jonathan around February 1, 1710. In those days, people often would wait quite a while to make sure an infant would live before going ahead with a christening, but this scenario asks us to believe that Jonathan's mother waited almost one year and nine months. That's a very long time. Too long to really be credible, I believe.

That leaves George Dibble, great-grandson of Robert Deeble through Robert's son Thomas and Thomas's son Israel. Although we have no firm evidence for this particular George being Jonathan's father, we do know that there was a George Dibble who would have been the right age living in East Hampton at the time of Jonathan's baptism.

We also have the circumstantial evidence of the will of a George Dibble who died before February 2, 1741. The probate abstract says:

"Dibble, George, late of Huntington, L. I., weaver, will dated Apl. 25, 1721, probated Feb, 2, 1741, mentions his wife Abigail, and children Jonathan, Josiah, Mary; wife's son Benoni. Executrix his wife. Witnesses Samuel Smith, Samuel Smith, Jr., and Epenetus Platt..."

We don't have any information on George of East Hampton moving about 75 miles west to Huntington. But this George could have been the East Hampton weaver mentioned in Hedges' History. The will was probated in Stamford, CT, which is just across the Sound from Huntington. "Late of Huntington" almost certainly means that was George's last permanent residence. But if his only living relatives were in Stamford, that might be a reason for probating the will there. Or he may have been visiting them when he died.

So of the four possible candidates, this George is the best option.

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George Redux

The trouble with the Georges rears its head again in southwestern CT.

Our Jonathan was commissioned Ensign in the Stanwich militia in 1743, at the age of around 32. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1747, age 36. The George who helped found Stanwich made Captain of the same outfit in 1734. From this one conjectures that he was considerably older than Jonathan.

We have to assume that he was not Jonathan's father. Based on several points of circumstantial evidence discussed in earlier footnotes, it seems very likely that Jonathan's father died in 1741 in Huntington (Long Island), Suffolk County, NY, and probably never lived in Stamford.

So George of Stanwich may have been the son of Thomas Dibble Jr., whose family, by all accounts, remained in Connecticut. That George was born in 1687 and would have been about 47 in 1734. We don't really know when he died (despite Lamb, who gave his death date as April 28, 1709 without citing a source, and who admittedly felt that two or more Georges had been confused), so that makes him a candidate. However, that also, perversely, makes him a candidate for father of Jonathan. There are more Georges, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. And that's where we'll have to leave it.

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Shooting the Bull

There is some dispute on where the Bull's Head Tavern really was, and on whether any portion of it survived into the modern age. Most sources say the tavern was at 50-52 Bowery, just south of Canal St. in lower Manhattan, in today's Chinatown. At least one source says it was a bit further south, at 46-48 Bowery.

According to Michael and Ariane Batterberry's 1999 book, On the Town in New York: The Landmark History of Eating, Drinking and Entertainments from the American Revolution to the Food Revolution, there were actually two Bull's Head Taverns. The "New Bull's Head Tavern" was moved "several miles up the Boston Post Road" from the old one, "in the Manhattan countryside". In lower Manhattan, Bowery St. was part of the Boston Post Road. However, this move seems to have been made after 1786, allowing time for George Washington to stop at the original tavern on November 25, 1783.

The building at 50-52 Bowery became the site of the Atlantic Gardens, a German beer garden, in 1858, owned by a man named Kramer. It is said that this famous bar was the place where the song "Bicycle Built for Two" was first sung. Kramer expanded the building, and, it is thought, the original Bull's Head portion was eventually removed.

In 2013 a controversy erupted as plans were being developed to demolish the Chinese restaurant located on the site to make room for a new hotel. Someone got access to the cellar and took a photograph of what appear to be hand-planed ceiling beams consistent with an 18th. century building, and he claimed this was part of the original Bull's Head Tavern. If that was true, it would have been the oldest surviving structure in Manhattan. The city Landmarks Commission said that the site, although interesting, being a cellar had little visual interest for the city and refused to get involved. Some elected city officials said they wanted to try to preserve the site, but in the end, the demolition went forward. The ceiling beams have been preserved and may yet be displayed in some fashion.

In his 2009 book Shadow Soldiers of the American Revolution: Loyalist Tales from New York to Canada, Mark Jodoin says that the land that Jonathan Dibble owned on the west side of Chatham Square was actually the land that was leased to the owner of the Bull's Head. 50-52 Bowery is on the west side of the street, and Bowery does border Chatham Square on the west--but the two locations are 2-3 blocks apart. Perhaps it was all one big parcel. But Jesup, who seems to be Jodoin's source, made a distinction between the Chatham Square land and the lease for the Bull's Head. Perhaps Jodoin has jumped to an unwarranted conclusion here, or perhaps Jesup omitted a detail.

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Hesitant about Hannah

Some people believe that the Thomas Dibble who married Hannah Jessup was Israel's son Thomas, older brother of George who fathered Jonathan. Both of them migrated from Windsor, Hartford County, CT to East Hampton, Suffolk County, NY in the late 1600s. The available data on this is extremely confused.

There was a Thomas Dibble who married a Rachel Mulford who was in eastern Long Island. Lots of people believe this Thomas was the son of Thomas Dibble Jr., grandson of Thomas Dibble Sr., great-grandson of Robert Deeble. There certainly were a lot of Mulfords in East Hampton at the time.

The Rev. Nathaniel Huntting noted that among "those that have been admitted or restored to full communion since N. Huntting was ordained, with some others received from other churches" was, as of April 27, 1740, "Rachel, wife of Th. Dibble"

However, Rev. Huntting also wrote down that he performed a marriage between "Thos. Dibble Cooper & Wid. Hannah Jessup" on January 21, 1723.

Thomas son of Israel was born in 1670; he would have been 53 on that marriage date, and around 70 when Rachel was admitted to the church, if he lived that long. Nobody knows when he died, but Rachel is listed as "wife", not "widow", or even "Wid.", of "Th. Dibble".

Thomas Dibble ("the third"), son of Thomas Jr, grandson of Thomas Sr., great-grandson of Robert Deeble, was born in 1677. He would have been 44 when Hannah was married, and 63 when Rachel joined the church.

Upon reflection, neither of these people seem like the best possible candidates for either of these marriages, unless Hannah and Rachel were second and third wives of whichever Thomas this was. That's certainly possible.

As we've noted, there were at least two Thomas Dibbles in eastern Long Island in the early 18th. century, one a cooper, the other a weaver. There were probably more, who are unaccounted for by Robert Deeble-line genealogists. It is quite possible that Robert is not the ancestor of all of the Dibbles in early New England or New York. But this inquiry is really beyond the scope of this story, so I'll leave these loose ends dangling here.

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Sons (and Daughters) of Sam

Sorting out what became of the family of Samuel Dibble, son of George, grandson of Lt. Jonathan, is really very difficult. Not much is certain. Here is what we have:

Several sources give the date of a Samuel Dibble's death as 1835. There is no Samuel Dibble in any Indiana census data, nor is there any indication that Samuel went to Indiana; Jesup only says that his children did. Across several decades of census data there is one Samuel Dibble in North Castle, Westchester County, NY, and three Samuel Dibbles in Danbury, CT. Samuel of North Castle does not appear in 1840 or later. Two of the three Danbury Samuels were alive in 1840; the third, probably Samuel C. Dibble, son of the notorious alleged Tory Nehemiah Dibble, certainly did die in 1835 according to a newspaper record. However, because most of what we know about his children indicates that they were born in NY, I have to assume that our Samuel lived and died in North Castle.

Jesup reported that Samuel's children were: Hannah, Harriet, Grace, Malvenia, George, Ingersoll, and Ann.

Van Buren Lamb had this much:

"Elizabeth dau of Samuel & Deborah b. 1805 d. 6 Dec. 1827 at 22y 7 in Bush Yard
Harriett b 1805 m Wm. Gibson of Patriot Switzerland Ind.
Grace b. m. -- Hoyt
Malvinia
* George m. Mary
Ingersoll m. b.c 1830
Deborah"

Starting from the supposition that Van Buren Lamb's data are more or less in the ballpark, we can at least try to track down these children. However, even that simple project soon becomes bogged down in uncertainty.

Nothing has been found for a Grace who married a man named Hoyt.

Nothing has been found for children named Malvenia/Malvinia, Deborah or Ann.

There is a grave for an Elizabeth Dibble matching Lamb's information in the Brush Cemetery. Working back from that, her birthdate would have been in May 1805, giving rise to the supposition that she and George were twins. This is supported by the fact that Samuel's daughter Harriett later had twins; twins run in families.

There is an Indiana marriage record for Harriett Dibble marrying William Gibson on August 23, 1837.

The 1840 Census for Posey Township, Switzerland County, IN gives a William Gibson as head of household, with two other people, one of whom was probably his wife, age between 30 and 39. This permits a birthdate for Harriett of 1805, as given by Lamb.

The 1850 Census for the same location has William age 49 and Harriett age 43, giving her a birthdate of 1807, and shows her as born in NY.

There is an Indiana marriage record for George Dibble marrying Mary Monroe on September 13, 1838.

Census data for 1840 for Posey Township, Switzerland County, IN give a George Dibble, aged between 20 and 39, as a head of household, with 3 other people including, presumably, his wife, age between 20 and 29. The 1850 census for the same place reveals this George as being 45 years old, giving him a birth date of 1805, and also has him born in NY.

There is evidence of two Ingersoll or Ingersol Dibbles in Indiana.

For the first, there is a gravestone in Patriot Cemetery, Switzerland County, Indiana, for an Ingersoll Dibble who was born on ? 16, 1801, in North Castle, NY and who died in 1834.

For the second, the 1840 Census for Switzerland County, IN, has an "Ingersol" Dibble, aged between 20 and 29 (and therefore born between 1811 and 1820), and living in Posey Township. An "Ingersoll Dibble" also shows up at an April meeting of the Switzerland County Democratic Party. The 1850 US Census has an "Ingersol" Dibble, age 36 (yielding a birth year of around 1814), born in NY, living in Vicksburg, Mississippi with a wife named Catharine and a child who was born in around 1842 in Indiana.

Some genealogists have, understandably, confused these Ingersoll Dibbles with George Dibble Ingersoll, who was born to Solomon Ingersoll and Samuel's sister Elizabeth Dibble on September 7, 1812.

Finally, both Jesup and Lamb claimed that Ingersoll had a son named Warren.

Warren Dibble only appears once in the Indiana census records: In 1860 he is 19 years old and living with several other adults and children in a household headed by J. R. Harris in Posey Township.

We have tried to look at every single Dibble who appears in US Census records in Switzerland, Ohio, Dearborn, Jefferson, Ripley, Decatur, and Franklin Counties in Indiana in 1840, 1850, and 1860. Of course, census records don't include people who weren't there in those years, even if they were there at other times. Also, census records are not as highly accurate as we would like, being subject to human error in many ways. And finally, the Ancestry.com census indexes are occasionally wrong, so we may have missed one or two Dibbles.

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What Became of Jonathan (2)?

If you thought Samuel was hard to track down, you should try finding Jonathan Dibble (2), son of George, grandson of Lt. Jonathan. (George's first son named Jonathan was a Tory and died in Canada).

There is, first of all, no census record showing a Jon, John, or Jonathan Dibble born around 1788 as a head of any household in CT or NY during the time of Jonathan's adulthood. The members of the household of Jonathan Dibble of Pound Ridge, NY (not far from Stanwich, CT), do match this Jonathan between 1790 and 1810, and the 1810 census also shows a female of an age to be his wife, and another female who could have been his daughter, in that location, but he was too young to have headed that household in 1790 or 1800. That's as close as we get. (Censuses before 1850 only gave the names of the head of the household; everyone else was just counted by sex/race/age group.)

He may have moved around a lot, or he may have died young.

Most published family trees give his death date as 1812, without citing sources. That would be too young to allow for the birth of his daughter Ellen, though. However, the matching male member of the Pound Ridge household is no longer present in the 1820 census, so he could have died between the date of Ellen's conception and that year.

However, Jesup says Jonathan went to Indiana, and there is the fact that a household headed by Mary D. Dibble is found in Switzerland County in the 1840 census. This suggests that Jesup was right.

A few trees give Jonathan's date of death as March 14, 1835, and his place of death as Switzerland County, Indiana. This seems to have originated with Van Buren Lamb. Lamb received a long, rambling letter from Mrs. Earl E. Gibbs in 1962, in which she cites the "NY Christian Messenger and Philadelphia Universalist of 1834-35 in which is listed the death in Switz. Co. Ind. March 14, 1835, of Jonathan Dibble age 55, formerly of NY. City". The first problem with this is that there is no evidence that the Jonathan Dibble we are tracking ever lived in New York City. (There is also no documented grave for a Jonathan Dibble in that county, and this Jonathan never appeared in a census for that county, although neither of those points is dispositive.) The second problem is that if he was 55 in 1835, he would have been born in 1780, and our Jonathan was born in 1788, as documented by the Barbour Collection of Stamford Vital Records, a good source. There was, though, a "John" Dibble heading a household in Jefferson County, Indiana, just west of Switzerland County, in 1840 who would have been old enough to be our Jonathan. (That fact raises eyebrows for another reason: John Dibble, son of George, who married Sarah Howe and came to Switzerland County from CT in the 1830s, is said to have died in Jefferson County in 1840.)

Jesup says Jonathan had children named Ellen, Mary Ann, Sarah, Charles Henry, and Samuel, "all of whom are now dead" (Jesup was writing in 1887). Van Buren Lamb also lists these children, whom he probably got from Jesup. He also has the marriage of Mary Ann and Eliphalet Platt, for which the only source he gives is "pg 105" of some un-named document.

Various published family trees have picked up these children and assigned them widely varying birth years, without providing any sources.

Mary Ann and Eliphalet do appear in the 1850 census for Rhinebeck, NY. Eliphalet goes back to at least 1830 in that location, and Mary Ann was probably with him too, based on the age ranges and genders of the other people in that household.

Ellen seems to appear in the 1850 census for Ohio County, Indiana, where she was living with her mother in the household of William Davis and his wife. Her age is given as 32, which suggests a birthdate of around 1818. She may also be represented in the 1840 census for that place, which lists a household headed by Mary D. Dibble and includes a female of an appropriate age for Ellen.

There are no official birth, baptism, or census records matching any of the other children. It is quite possible that they have been confused with the children of Jonathan's brother John and/or with those of the various Samuel Dibbles who lived in Danbury, CT.

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When did the Dibbles move to Indiana?

Van Buren Lamb believed that George Dibble's second son named Jonathan lived in New York City for a period of time before moving on to Indiana. Some other researchers have picked this idea up and run with it. As best I can tell, though, there are no facts on record supporting this belief.

Lamb's binder page listing George's children (Binders Vol. 1, Image 167) has "Jonathan b. Mar. 4, 1788 m. Mary D. Smith" in dark black ink. Following Mary's name is the notation, "of NYC 1830" in blue ink--a later addition. When genealogists say a person is "of" some place, that usually means the person lived there, or was said to have come from there. The position of this notation most likely means that Mary was "of NYC". If Jonathan had lived there, we would expect Lamb to have put the notation after his name; there is room on the page for him to have done so. At first glance, the implication is that Jonathan's bride came from New York City; she may have been born and raised there. Of course, since we believe Jonathan fathered children between 1810 and 1820, the notion that his wife was living in NYC in 1830 under a name other than "Dibble" is somewhat suspect. (In light of the 1840 census for Switzerland County, IN, which includes "Mary D. Dibble" as a head of household in Posey Township, it is even more so.) To be scrupulously fair, there were several Mary Smiths in New York City at that time. However, no record of a "Mary D. Smith" has been found there. (In fact, Lamb provides no source for Jonathan's wife's name at all.) On reflection, the notation makes sense only if we assume that Lamb thought that the married couple was "of NYC" in 1830.

However, a thorough search on Ancestry.com in February 2016 did not turn up one single census reference to a person whose last name was Dibble and first name started with J in New York City between 1820 and 1840. Now, Ancestry.com is neither 100% accurate nor 100% complete, but this is strong circumstantial evidence that he never lived in New York City. Other searches have only turned up citations that can be traced back to Lamb.

And Lamb had more on this.

Lamb's page showing the marriage of Jonathan and Mary and listing their children (Binders Vol. 1, Image 224) has the notation for Jonathan, "res 1830 NYC. To Switzerland co, Ind. 1836". In the upper left-hand corner of the page, where Lamb usually listed sources, he wrote "Jessup Gen.". This is probably the Rev. Henry Griswold Jessup's book, Edward Jessup of West Farms, Westchester Co., New York, and His Descendants. However, that book only mentions the move to Indiana; it says nothing about Jonathan living in New York City.

Lamb received a letter from Mrs. Earl E. Gibbs in 1962, in which she cited the "NY Christian Messenger and Philadelphia Universalist of 1834-35 in which is listed the death in Switz. Co. Ind. March 14, 1835, of Jonathan Dibble age 55, formerly of NY. City" (Binders Vol. 1, Image 195). Unfortunately, the periodical she cited is not available online. However, there are at least two problems with this citation. First, Jonathan's birthdate of March 4, 1788 is documented in the Barbour Index of Connecticut Vital Records, a very good source. Backing that up is Lamb's own citation of Jonathan's baptism on April 20, 1788 at St. John's Episcopal Church in Stamford (Binders Vol. 1, Image 167). Jonathan would have been 47, not 55, on March 14, 1835. Secondly, though not fully dispositive, there are the facts that there are no records of the existence of this Jonathan Dibble in Switzerland County, Indiana, and no known gravesite for him there. Other Dibbles living in that county are well-documented.

It seems probable that Jonathan lived in New York State for some time, though not in that city, and there was a Jonathan Dibble living in Pound Ridge, NY between 1790 and 1820, which today is within commuting distance of the Big Apple, though he could not have been the Jonathan we are looking for. Those facts may be sources of confusion. Jonathan's grandfather, Lt. Jonathan Dibble, owned land in lower Manhattan, though it is not clear that he ever lived there, and that may have further confounded the matter.

As for when the wandering Dibbles finally arrived in Indiana: It is possible that not all of the New York and Connecticut Dibbles came to Indiana together; they may have "trickled in" beginning in the early 1830s. But there is no decisive evidence either way.

There is very good circumstantial evidence in 1820 and 1830 US Census data that John Dibble, son of George and Phebe, was living in Stamford, CT in those years with his wife and children.

It also seems clear that George, the son of John's brother Samuel who was born circa 1805, lived in North Castle, New York before he moved westward.

There is less convincing evidence that John's brother Jonathan was living in Pound Ridge, New York in the same rough time frame--but no convincing evidence that he was anywhere else.

It's tempting to conclude that because they lived in different places, they may have emigrated at different times. But it's important to remember that "Stamford" was a very big area in those days, and its northern reaches lay along the CT-NY border, just on the other side of which lie both North Castle and Pound Ridge. It is likely that they all lived within ten miles of each other, and probably saw each other frequently. So they may very well have decided to go west as a group.

However, different sources tell us different things.

Van Buren Lamb's notebook page showing the marriage of Jonathan and Mary and listing their children (Binders Vol. 1, Image 224) has the notation, "To Switzerland co, Ind. 1836". Lamb provides no source for this information.

The Reverend Jesup wrote, in 1887, "About 1836 or 1837, John Dibble ... Jonathan his brother, and the children (by his 2d wife) of Samuel Dibble, another brother, removed to Patriot, Switzerland Co., Indiana, where many of their descendants now reside."

History of Dearborn, Ohio and Switzerland Counties, Indiana: From Their Earliest Settlement, Containing a History of the Counties, Their Cities, Townships, Towns, Villages, Schools and Churches, from 1885 (no author given; published by F. E. Weakley & Co.), has John arriving in 1832 and says that John's son George, born in 1822, came when he was "about ten years old". That book also reports that "The Universalist Society of Patriot was organized in December 1835", and lists Harriet Dibble among the signers of the Society's constitution.

Harriet was married in Switzerland County on August 21, 1837. Samuel's son George was married there on September 12, 1838.

And then there is the grave of Samuel's first son named Ingersoll, who died in 1834 and is buried in Patriot Cemetery. (As an aside, the Historical Sketch of the Town of Patriot, by H. F. Emerson, provided by the "Patriot Indiana" website (at www.patriotin.com), says, "The first village cemetery was at the south end of Front Street in what for years later was known as Dibble's orchard." In 1883 a 9-acre parcel of land in this area was owned by Charles Dibble, a son of Samuel's and Jonathan's brother John. But Patriot Cemetery is on the opposite end of town. As for the first cemetery, we don't know where those bodies are buried.)

Of all of these items, Ingersoll's grave is the most convincing; the year 1834 is there, literally carved in stone, and not likely to be an "engraving error". That immediately casts a shadow on both Jesup and Lamb, as does Harriet's remarkable early role in the founding of the local Universalist church. However, it seems safe to credit the three-county History, whose brief biographies "were prepared, for the most part, by the canvassing agents of the publishers", with equal reliability. So let's conclude by saying that the first Dibbles reached southeastern Indiana in 1832, and all of the characters in our story were there before 1840.

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Howe Now?

People named Silas Howe and Abigail Howe lived in Switzerland County, Indiana, and are buried there. And just about everybody says that the parents of John Dibble of Connecticut's wife, Sarah Howe, were Silas Howe and Abigail Fisk. But why do they say that?

Van Buren Lamb had this family connection on several of his binder pages (Binders Vol. 1, Images 187, 194, 196 & 197, for example). Image 194 is the first page of a letter from Mrs. Earl E. Gibbs, which she wrote to Lamb in July 1962. She referred to "John Dibble who mar. 1815 Sarah Elizabeth Howe b May 4, 1799 d. 1875 in Switzerland Co, Indiana. She was dau. of Silas Howe & wife Abigail Fisk Howe who lived in Greenwich or Stanwich, CT. then removed to Stanfordville, Dutchess Co and on to [genoa/geneva] Cayuga co NY, and Ohio and Indiana about 1812." In the binder images following this letter, Lamb added "of Greenwich or Stanwich" to his notes on Sarah's parents.

Assuming that his pages were written in the order in which they were scanned (which may not be the case), then on the earlier Image 187, Lamb gives "Howe Gen." as the source for Sarah's parents. This is probably Howe Genealogies by Daniel Wait Howe, published in 1929. That book has the following:

"Silas Howe (Sylvanus, John, Nathaniel, Isaac, Edward), born probably in Greenwich, Ct., 13 Jan, 1777; married in 1779 [obviously wrong but the digits could have been accidentally transposed from "1797"] Abigail Fisk, daughter of William Fisk, born 22 March 1771."

The book lists their children:

Mary Howe b. Aug 4, 1797; lived in Patriot, Switzerland County, IN
Sarah Elizabeth Howe b. May 4, 1799
Cynthia Howe b. Feb 19, 1801
Amy Howe b Dec 16, 1802; also lived in Patriot
Sylvanus Howe b. Oct 10, 1804
William Howe b Nov 21, 1806
Anna Howe b. July 5, 1808; lived in Wirt, Jefferson County, IN
Jonathan Howe b. Dec 28, 1810
Julia Howe b. Sep 16, 1812
Lemuel Howe b. Aug 30, 1815

The book also says, of Silas Howe and his family, "They moved from Dutchess Co. to Auburn, N.Y. and thence went west, and located first, in 1812, in Cincinnati, O., where he remained several years, then moved to Patriot, Switzerland Co., Ind., where he died 6 Nov. 1859. His children were born before he went to Cincinnati."

Most of what Gibbs told Lamb is so close to this account that it must be the ultimate original source for her information.

The book also lists Sarah's husband John Dibble and all of their children, with the same birthdates that we find elsewhere.

Daniel Wait Howe did not cite specific sources for anything in his book. His editor said that much of it came from "ancient records and relics" that were collected from members of a large Howe family reunion that took place in 1871. However, he never published his work; that came much later, in 1929, after it had been edited, with an unknown amount of additional information added, by Gilman Bigelow Howe. The book mostly concerns the descendants of four men named Howe: Abraham Howe of Roxbury, MA; Abraham Howe of Marlborough, MA; James Howe of Ipswich, MA; and Edward Howe of Lynn, MA. The book says that Abe of Roxbury and James were probably brothers, but that they were not related to the other two men, who also were not related to each other. (The book also contains an Appendix listing many other Howe lines that the author and/or editor could not link to the four principals.) The book gives the Howes with whom we are concerned as descendants of Edward of Lynn.

Either D. W. or G. B. Howe wrote that "Much of the information that we have concerning the Howe families of Lynn, seems to be vague traditions and supposition, and it is largely owing to the fact that the records of Lynn, for the first sixty years are missing." Perhaps that vagueness only applies to those first 60 years, or perhaps it permeates all of the information about that line. But D. W. and/or G. B. Howe seem to have been very careful and conscientious researchers. If they thought some supposition about family history or relationships was wrong, or unsupported by valid documentation, they said so, and explained why. From this I have to conclude that they believed they had solid proof for what they presented concerning our Silas Howe and his descendants.

There is also US Census data that appears to back up some of what the Howe Genealogies says about the travels of Silas and his family (bearing in mind that before 1850, census enumerators only recorded the name of the "head of household"). A family headed by "Silas How" that seems to be a very close match was recorded in Genoa, Cayuga County, NY (about 20 miles south of Auburn) in 1810. There's one daughter under the age of 10 missing, but perhaps one of them died young; it's not Sarah, she would have been between 10 and 11 years old and is accounted for in that age group. There is a "Silis" Howe in Randolph, Dearborn County, IN (just north of Switzerland County) in the 1820 census, but this family isn't quite as good a match. It includes only one adult female. She was between the ages of 26 and 44. That's not old enough to be Silas's wife Abigail, who is said to have died in 1836 and therefore should have been present. The only adult daughter in this age range was married at the time, and there is no adult male matching her husband, so we would presume she wasn't living with the family. We can't find Silas in Dutchess County, NY, but there was a family whose head was "Sylvanne" Howe there in 1830. Silas's father's name, according to Howe Genealogies, was Sylvanus. We don't have a birthdate for him but he could have been a match to a man aged between 70 and 79 living in that household. There was a Sylvanus Howe who served as a private in a New York company during the Revolutionary War, which would be consistent with the age of the man who fathered Silas.

We can't find Silas in US Census data for Ohio. However, the name does appear in the "Ohio, Compiled Census and Census Substitutes Index, 1790-1890" at Ancestry.com, where "Silas Howe" appears on a tax list for Cincinnati, Hamilton County, OH.

Silas had a son named Sylvanus, born October 10, 1804 in New York. According to Howe Genealogies, "He went west with his father, locating first in Cincinnati, O. About 1833 he moved to Patriot, Switzerland Co., Ind., where he was for many years a successful business man, and a prominent citizen." There was a family headed by a "Sylvanos How" in Ames Township, Athens County, Ohio in 1830. However, that's about 100 miles east of Cincinnati. But, according to the History of Dearborn, Ohio and Switzerland Counties, Indiana, "Sylvanus Howe, one of the oldest citizens of Patriot...was born in the State of New York, October 10, 1804. When a boy he came, in 1812, with his parents, Silas and Abagail (Fisk) Howe to Cincinnati from New York State, and here the family resided for several years, his father engaged in superintending a tanyard for William Woodard. His father, a few years later, entered 160 acres back of North's Landing which he employed Hardin Heth to clear up. He later moved upon the same and resided there many years..."

North's Landing is just over the Switzerland County line in what is today Ohio County but was, prior to 1840, part of Dearborn County, where we find "Silis" Howe in 1820. The family of Sylvanus N. Howe appears there in 1830, and is a good match to Silas's son.

There is just one problem with all this. We know from census records that John Dibble and his wife and children were in Stamford, CT in 1830. How did it come to pass that John married a much younger woman in Stamford in the mid-eighteen-teens who had been living, since at least 1810, anywhere from several hundred to a thousand miles away?

I can't find any records to support Mrs. Gibbs' assertion that John and Sarah were married in 1815. One would expect to find a marriage record in the Barbour Index for CT or similar indexes for NY for that period, and we don't. There aren't any for Indiana either. But Sarah would have been 16 that year, and their first child was born in 1816, so it's a reasonable date.

There was a family headed by a Sylvanus Howe in Fairfield County, CT in 1790 and 1800, but this seems unlikely to have been Sarah's grandfather, if that gentleman served in the Revolutionary War in a NY outfit in the 1770s and his children hailed from Dutchess County, NY.

The southern border of Dutchess County is about 25 miles north of the northern boundary of Stamford Township. The Dibbles of the CT panhandle had close relatives just over the border in Westchester County. John's grandfather Lt. Jonathan Dibble owned land near Poughkeepsie in Dutchess County in the early 18th. century. It's quite possible that John Dibble and Sarah Howe could have met in those environs before her family moved upstate. It is unlikely that he stayed close to her though; I could not find any evidence indicating that John Dibble ever lived in Dutchess or Cayuga Counties in NY, or anywhere in Ohio.

The History of Three Counties mentioned above, which contains a great deal of information on Sylvanus Howe of Switzerland County and others in that family, also discusses John Dibble and his wife Sarah. It records that John "... was born and reared in Fairfield County, Conn., and married there Sarah Howe and in 1832 came to Switzerland County." And that is all it says about them. Ordinarily the authors of the book's biographies mentioned just about every family connection that was known, and especially those of important people. It seems highly unlikely that nobody knew that John Dibble's wife was the sister of Sylvanus Howe, who was a major figure in the region for much of the 19th. century.

It is perhaps romantic to suppose that John, a man in his twenties, met Sarah when she was a pre-adolescent child somewhere among the Howes and Dibbles of southeastern NY, and they formed a connection that survived her travels, to the Finger Lakes and later to Ohio and Indiana, across a period of five years or more. Such things are not unheard of, though to modern sensibilities, they seem mildly repulsive. The authors of the Howe Genealogies, it must be said, seem to be highly credible. That book also says that three great-great grandchildren of Silas bore the names Warren Dibble Howe (Warren Dibble was a putative son of one of the Ingersol Dibbles, who were both nephews of John Dibble); William Gibson Howe (William Gibson married John Dibble's niece Harriet Dibble); and Robert Ingersol Howe--names that suggest more than a passing involvement with the Dibble family.

On the other hand, it also seems reasonable to suppose that John's wife Sarah was a Howe of a different hue, one whose lineage is entirely unknown, and that she came from southwestern CT. After all, as the Howe Genealogies attest, there were a lot more Howes than Dibbles in early America, and they weren't all related to each other, by far.

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Where and when was Jonathan Dibble born?

Unfortunately, Jonathan didn't live long enough to make it into the 1900 Census, which actually recorded the month and year of each person's birth. Even that would not be definitive, due to the notorious inaccuracy of census records, but it would have helped.

There are only two sources that give the month and day of his birth, and they both have December 15. So assuming that is correct, then we have:

The 1850 Census for Posey Township, Switzerland County, Indiana has "Johnathan" Dibble age 13, birthplace "Ia". (Although one might think this means Iowa, "Ia" was in fact a common abbreviation for Indiana used by census enumerators in the 19th. century.) The date on which this information was recorded, according to the hideous handwriting of the enumerator, was the 27th. day of "Lepleul" or something, probably "September". This gives a birthdate of December 15, 1836.

The 1860 Census for Posey Township has Jonathan Dibble age 22, birthplace Ind. This information was compiled June 20, 1860. The resulting birthdate is December 15, 1837.

The 1870 Census data for Warsaw Township, Goodhue County, MN, collected on July 19, 1870, has "Johnathan" Dibble age 32, birthplace Indiana. This also gives a birth year of 1837.

The 1875 Minnesota Territorial/State Census has: Jonathan Dibble, age 37, birthplace Ind. This data, gathered on May 1 1875, gives a birth year of 1837.

Jonathan's Military Enlistment record gives his age at enlistment, in February 1865, as 27. This also supports a birthdate of December 15, 1837.

Van Buren Lamb's Binders Vol. 1, Image 190, (the Gibbs letter) gives Jonathan Dibble b. 1833.

Lamb Vol. 1, Image 187 (cites "Howe Gen") has Jonathan b. Dec 15 1833 (this probably refers to Howe Genealogies: Genealogies of Abraham of Roxbury, James of Ipswich, Abraham of Marlborough and Edward of Lynn, Massachusetts (1929), which is not online).

Finally, Jonathan's obituary in the Cannon Falls Beacon (March 30, 1877), has him born in Switzerland County, Indiana on December 15, 1837.

Although individual census records can be wildly wrong, we can place more confidence in a series of several census records that provide the same information. The enlistment record and obituary clinch it: Jonathan Dibble was born on December 15, 1837 in Indiana.

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Where did John Dibble die?

According to his headstone, John Dibble of Connecticut died in Jefferson County, Indiana in August 1840. Jefferson County is just west of Switzerland County. He was 58 at the time; it's easy to imagine that he had business in the county and, perhaps, heart disease caught up with him there. Unfortunately, we don't know where in the county he died.

On the other hand, the 1840 census for Jefferson County, Indiana shows a household in the town of Lancaster, about 25 miles or so west of Quercus Grove, headed by a John Dibble, age between 50 and 59. Living with him was a male between the ages of 15 and 19. This could be John's son Harvey or his son Alonzo, neither of them is accounted for elsewhere at this time. This John does not appear in later censuses. This raises the question of whether John and Sarah were separated near the end of his life, though the fact that she had just given birth to Sylvanus would seem to militate against that.

There is also the possibility that this was John's brother Jonathan, separated from his wife Mary D. Dibble who was then living in Posey Township, Switzerland County.

In any case, John's gravestone is in Patriot Cemetery in Switzerland County. So no matter what urged him to wander, in the end he came home.

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What happened to Harvey?

John Dibble, son of George, grandson of Lt. Jonathan Dibble of CT, allegedly had a son named Harvey who was born on November 10, 1824. The only source I have for this is Van Buren Lamb, who has Harvey on three of his binder pages (Binders Vol. 1, Images 187, 196, 210). Lamb provides no source for the identity or birth of this person. However, on Image 196, he shows Harvey marrying Maria Phipps, and on Image 210 he gives this marriage as taking place on March 9, 1865 in Patriot, Indiana.

The marriage of a Maria Phipps to a Harvey Dibble in Switzerland County, IN did occur, though the Family Search Indiana Marriages Index record for that event has it on April 8, 1869, and most sources say this Harvey Dibble was born in 1842 to Silas Dibble, son of John. This Harvey shows up quite frequently in census and other records. Lamb's Image 210 has Harvey in Company D of the 18th. Indiana Infantry regiment during the Civil War, a fact that is backed up by official military records. This is probably the same Harvey Dibble described in Historical Sketch of the Town of Patriot as one of two Civil War veterans, members of the Grand Army of the Republic, still living in the county in 1931, at which time this Harvey was "nearly 90". That would give him a birth year of around 1842.

A Harvey Dibble born in 1824 appears nowhere else but in Lamb's notebook and in published family trees that relied on him (or on this website, which repeated it uncritically until 2016; sorry about that).

That being said, the 1830 Census for Stamford, Fairfield County, Connecticut shows two male children between the ages of 5 and 9 for John. One of those could be Harvey (the other would be Alonzo). And the biographical sketch for Charles Dibble in History of Dearborn, Ohio and Switzerland Counties, Indiana reported in 1885 that Charles' father John "reared a family of ten children to maturity (seven born in Connecticut) — nine sons and one daughter — seven still living: Silas, Henry, Charles, George, Alonzo, John and Sarah". We only know of two children born outside of CT--Jonathan and Sylvanus. John could have taken in someone else's child, but if he didn't, that leaves room for Harvey as the tenth child. In any case, Harvey is not listed as still living, though he allegedly was raised "to maturity", that is, an age between 18 and 21, or thereabouts. So if he ever lived at all, he likely died between 1842 and 1850, unmarried and without children. Or perhaps he was just invisible, like Harvey the rabbit.

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Another Harvey Conundrum, Part 1

There are enough issues concerning Dibbles named Harvey to confound any genealogist, amateur or otherwise. In fact, there are enough to justify at least four footnotes. You've already read one (if you read the footnotes at all). Here's another.

Most census data for Harvey Dibble, son of Silas Dibble of Switzerland County, Indiana, give his age as indicating a birthdate in around 1844. The Find-a-Grave website gives his birth year as 1843. No specific dates are given.

However, Van Buren Lamb initially gave his birth year as 1854, but then later made a notation placing him between his sister Mary Ann, born in 1842, and his brother John, born in 1844 (Lamb Binders Vol. 01, Image 201).

Further confusing the issue, Lamb also mistakenly assigned his four daughters and his wife Maria Phipps to Harvey, son of John Dibble of Connecticut (Binders Vol. 01, Image 210). That Harvey was, according to Lamb, born on November 12, 1824.

Many published family trees give the birthdate of Harvey, son of Silas, as November 12 or November 27, 1842. This seems like a simple inadvertent transposition of digits that has been perpetuated through the years.

On the other hand, the author of Historical Sketch of the Town of Patriot was a personal friend of Harvey, and he reported that the gentleman was "nearly 90" when he wrote that paper on January 29, 1931. Assuming "nearly" means "within one year of", that sets the year of Harvey's birth as 1842. But "nearly" doesn't have to be that precise, and I am inclined to trust a date taken from a headstone more than a calculation based on a given age.

I am therefore assigning him a birth year of 1843, but using the birthdate of November 27, which came from George A. Dibble III, as the best option.

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George Junior?

Various records, historical documents, and family trees talk about George Dibble, Jr., of Switzerland County, Indiana, prior to the Civil War. One would presume that a man called George Jr. would have a father named George. However, this does not seem to be the case, at least for the time period in which these reports were made.

I believe that I have documentation for every single Dibble who lived continuously in Switzerland County between 1830 and 1880 (I may not have some transient Dibbles). Among them are only four George Dibbles: George Dibble, born around 1805 in New York, son of Samuel Dibble whose father was George Dibble of Stamford, CT; George Dibble, born in 1822 in Connecticut, whose father was John Dibble, brother to Samuel; George S. Dibble, born in 1855 to John's son Henry J. Dibble; and George Dibble born in 1868 to the George who was born in 1822. This last George is the only "real" George Jr., but neither he nor George S. was alive at the time of these reports.

Some of these reports have George Dibble Jr. marrying Mary Craig in 1846. The District Court's Clerk did indeed record the marriage license as having been issued to "George Dibble, Jun." George even signed himself as "George Dibble Jr." when he witnessed the last will and testament of Henry Monroe, father in-law of his older cousin George.

However, in the deposition taken in the disputed Indiana State Senate election in 1843, from "George Dibble, jun.", George gives his age as "twenty-one years of age on the 21st day of September, 1843". That makes his birthdate September 21, 1822.

The commonly-given month and year for the birth of George Dibble, son of John Dibble of Connecticut who brought his family to Switzerland County, Indiana, is September 1822. The most commonly-given birthdate for this George is September 12, not 21. This may have come from Van Buren Lamb, who gives September 12, 1822 as George's birthdate on several binder pages (Binders Vol. 01, Images 187, 189, 196, 197, 211). He only provides a source for one of these notations: "Howe Gen.". This probably refers to the Howe Genealogies by Daniel Wait Howe (1929). Unfortunately that book is not online so I haven't been able to investigate this further. However, this George died on January 2, 1893 and was buried in Antioch Cemetery in Posey Township. His birthdate as carved into his monument was September 21, 1822--consistent with his testimony. It seems likely that someone transposed the digits of 21 to 12 somewhere along the line.

The biographical sketch of this George in the History of Dearborn, Ohio and Switzerland Counties (1885) gives the year of his birth as 1822, reports his marriage to Mary Craig, says his father was John Dibble--and does not call him "Junior".

The only reasonable explanation for these facts is that people started calling this George "Junior" to distinguish him from his cousin. Perhaps some of them even thought the older George, who had 17 years on the younger, was his father. At any rate, the younger George apparently found this distinction convenient, or useful, because he adopted it himself.

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Netting Nathan

We have gone out on a limb by speculating that the Jacob Powell who married Sarah Elizabeth Dibble was Jacob A. Powell, a son of the Jacob Abylott Powell who brought a large family from Maryland to Indiana. There are good references that link other Powells who married Dibbles into that family. But the only sources for the Jacob A. Powell connection are public trees on Ancestry.com, none of which have documented their information.

Also according to one of those trees, Jacob Abylott Powell had a son named Nathan. This was the (relatively, locally) famous Captain Nathan Powell, a big-time river shipper, meat-packer, and bank president. It would be natural to assume that he was a younger brother of Jacob A., who stayed with him for a time.

However, this Nathan was born in 1813. Unfortunately, the Nathan Powell who was living with Jacob A. Powell and Sarah Elizabeth Dibble in 1850 was only 15 at the time. There's no doubt about it; the census record for him is written in an extremely clear hand. He had to have been born around 1835.

Even more unfortunately, I have been unable to find a record for any other person who matches this Nathan. He's a mystery, at least for now.

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Solving Sylvanus while Hunting for Harvey

Sylvanus Howe was Patriot, Indiana's leading citizen for much of the 19th. century. According to both the Howe Genealogies and the History of Dearborn, Ohio and Switzerland Counties, he was born in New York in 1804, and came with his parents to Indiana "several years" after 1812. The History of Three Counties says he owned several farms in Switzerland County, as well as several lots and houses in Patriot. He also ran a distillery and owned a large general store in the town. Although we have no records indicating that his holdings extended outside the county, it's at least possible that he made real estate investments elsewhere.

Sylvanus's father was Silas Howe, who is pretty much unanimously accepted among Dibble genealogists as the father of Sarah Howe, wife of John Dibble. That would make him Harvey Dibble's uncle, and if that's the case it's a pretty good reason why Harvey would go to work for him. What seems much odder is that this well-established Switzerland County businessman and landowner would, in his old age, move all the way across the state to take up farming in Illinois, and that his nephew would follow him there. This raises the question of whether the Sylvanus Howe we see in Robinson, IL is the same Sylvanus who was called "the father of Patriot". Here's what we've found.

Sylvanus died in 1892 and is buried in Switzlerland County. However, he doesn't show up in any census data for that county after 1860. (It doesn't help that nearly all of the data from the 1890 federal census was destroyed.)

The 1870 US Census for Palestine, Crawford County, Illinois shows Harvey Dibble, a farm laborer born in Indiana whose age was about 25, living with his wife "Mariah" in a household whose head was Sylvanus Howe, age 66, a farmer born in New York. That matches Harvey, Maria, and Sylvanus of Patriot somewhat well. The age given for Harvey does not exactly match his birth year of 1843. On the other hand, the 1880 census reports Harvey's first daughter as having been born in Illinois in around 1871.

1871 was also the year in which the Howes held a big family reunion in Massachusetts. Prior to the event the organizers sent out letters of invitation to family members, whom they asked to bring with them any and all information about the family. Sylvanus Howe of Robinson, IL appears in a list of names that was included in a pamplet that documented the event. Unfortunately, the pamphlet doesn't explain what role Sylvanus played, but the information that was collected later became the basis of the Howe Genealogies, by Daniel Wait Howe. Sylvanus may have been Daniel's principal informant on the Indiana Howes of Switzerland and Ohio Counties. This gives more weight to what the book reports about those families, since Sylvanus certainly would have been close enough to know their stories.

According to that book, Sylvanus, son of Silas, had four wives and seven children: He married Sarah A. Scranton on October 5, 1828. Their children were Silas Quinlan Howe, born March 8, 1830, and George Oscar Howe, born December 30, 1831. Sarah died on December 9, 1832. Sylvanus married Laura Scranton in June 1834, and she died on September 11, 1840. He married Mary D. Clancy on May 19, 1844. One or both of these wives produced three more children: Clarence Howe, Abbie Howe, and Frank Howe. What became of Mary Clancy is not reported, but on February 22, 1859, Sylvanus married Mary Presser, and they had two more children: Abigail Howe, born April 25, 1860, and Halleck Howe, born August 24, 1862.

The History of Three Counties says that Sylvanus had a fifth, unnamed wife. (It also reported that only three of his wives were deceased at the time of writing, suggesting that the marriage to Mary Clancy ended in divorce.) The 1880 census for Robinson, Crawford County, IL shows a Sylvanus Howe, age 75, born in New York, living with a wife named Anna and several people who are listed as his sons or daughters.

Meanwhile, back in Indiana, according to Howe Genealogies, Sylvanus's son George Oscar Howe married America Butler, and they had children named Sylvanus, Abigail and Eliza. This family, the book says, later lived near Palestine IL, which is close to Robinson. I can't independently verify that. But assuming the family was in the neighborhood, then in 1870 the younger Sylvanus, who was probably born in 1855, wouldn't have been ready to work as a farm laborer even if his grandfather was too old to handle the farm himself. This explains why somebody else would be tapped for the job, but not why Sylvanus's nephew living 150 miles away was the best candidate.

At any rate, by 1880 Harvey was not on the farm in Palestine. We don't encounter the younger Sylvanus again until 1910, when he was living in Robinson, Crawford County.

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Another Harvey Conundrum Part 3

There are two more odd things about Harvey Dibble's story:

1. Why did he give up what seemed to be a successful and growing meat and grocery business to move to Illinois and mind a farm?

2. Harvey was a professional butcher; why did he give up that trade and become a laborer and performer of odd jobs?

These conundrums come from the available US census data. One confounding thing about 19th. century census records is that almost all of the records for the 1890 census were destroyed. Knowing what Harvey was doing in 1890 might answer some questions. Of course, census data can be wrong. So can the people who index census data, and so can the algorithms used to search census data as it was indexed. For example, our Harvey Dibble probably was in Switzerland County, IN, in 1880, but listed on the census as "Hary" Dibble. This is a problem because if you use Ancestry.com to search for census records for people named "Harvey Dibble" who were born in around 1843 in Switzerland County, this "Hary" doesn't come up, even if you use the most general matching criteria for first names. Even more troubling, if you use the same criteria to search for all people named "Har" Dibble, then only "Hary" comes up; there are no Harveys in the results.

We are pretty sure that the Harvey Dibble who was born to Silas Dibble in Switzerland County, Indiana, in 1843, was a butcher. His brother Alonzo, serving on the USS Victory in the Civil War, wrote a letter to their mother in September 1864 acknowledging receipt of her letter reporting that Harvey was taking up butchering. There is also an "H. Dibble meat market" in Patriot listed in the 1880 Indiana State Gazetteer and Business Directory. Harvey's occupation (as "Hary") is given as "butcher" in the 1880 census for Posey Township.

Harvey may also have been the Dibble who partnered with a man named Scranton to form the Scranton & Dibble General Store that was located in Patriot around the time of the Civil War. This is pure speculation, of course (and there was a Dibble Hardware Company in Rising Sun whose owner we haven't been able to identify). But J. M. Scranton had a beef and pork packing and distributing operation in Patriot in 1861, according to G.W. Hawes' Commerical Gazetteer and Business Directory of the Ohio River, and that seems a good fit.

But it's not such a good fit that Harvey, almost immediately after getting married in 1869 (we have his marriage license and certificate), would have traveled to Crawford County, Illinois to work as a farm laborer on a farm owned by someone else. Still, the 1880 census gives the birthplace of Harvey's (again, as "Hary") first child, Addie, as "Ill".

But could there have been two Harveys, one in Indiana and one in Illinois? Perhaps. But the one living in Crawford County, IL, was given by the 1870 census as having been born in Indiana. There are no other Harvey Dibbles represented in census data living anywhere near that county in Illinois at that time--except one.

That one was reported in 1880 as confined to the Anna State Hospital for the Insane for "mania", and had been there for two years at the time. This could not have been Harvey the butcher, because the census counted him in Indiana on June 9, 1880, whereas institutionalized Harvey was counted on June 27 of the same year.

That leaves us with our unanswered questions. Bipolar disorder, which falls, with several other conditions, into the antique psychiatric category of "mania", can explain a person suddenly changing jobs and uprooting his home. Having been heavily medicated for several years could also explain why a skilled butcher might end up doing general labor and odd jobs for a living. Post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of wartime service could also explain all of these things. But there is the matter of those enumeration dates.

So the Harvey who was institutionalized could have been the Harvey who worked on the farm in Crawford County in 1870; he was listed as having a wife in 1880. But it would be a huge coincidence that his wife's name was also "Mariah", which is how Harvey of Patriot's wife's name is usually spelled, and how it was listed in 1870 in that county. And if Harvey of Patriot wasn't the farm laborer on Sylvanus Howe's farm (whichever Sylvanus Howe he was) in Illinois in 1870, then how did his first daughter get born in that state in 1871?

Again, all of this could be much ado about a lot of hopelessly messed-up census data. So I have taken the path of least resistance in telling Harvey's story.

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Aligning Alonzo

In the midst of World War II the good people of Chicago seemed rather anxious to claim Civil War veteran Alonzo Dibble as a long-time resident. His obituary in the Chicago Tribune says he moved to Chicago in around 1880, and he marched in that city's Memorial Day veterans parade until they were no longer held.

Census data is not perfect, but we have him in Switzerland County in 1880, and in Loveland, Ohio in 1890 (Veterans Schedule) and 1900 (full census). He doesn't show up in Chicago until 1910, and he was gone from there by 1927, according to his wife Mary's death certificate, which says she had lived in Detroit for 10 years when she died in 1937.

That being said, they were both buried in Chicago, which would seem to say something about how they felt about the place.

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Chillin' in Illin'

The story from Sylvia Grabill reprinted here was an early draft of a version she later published. The draft had the Dibbles moving from Illinois to Kansas. All mention of Illinois was removed from her final version. It may be that she was unable to find evidence documenting the Dibbles' stay in Illinois, in which case her immigrant train would have journeyed from Indiana (probably Indianapolis) to Kansas.

It's attractive to think of them going there because Willian Dibble's sister, Mary Dibble Ford, and her family did move to McLean County, Illinois, briefly, before moving on to join the William Dibble family in Kansas. Plus, McLean County is where William and Mary's uncle George Dibble and his family moved sometime in the 1850s, although they were all probably gone from there by the time William's family arrived.

But diligent searching has found no records of William and Lucy Dibble in Illinois. That doesn't mean they weren't there; it could just mean they weren't there very long. Based on the birthdates and birthplaces of their children, and Sylvia's story, the "window" for their travel from Indiana to Kansas is October 1, 1876 to February 2, 1878. Sylvia's first draft had them leaving Illinois in mid-December 1877. So if they went to Illinois at all, they were there only a bit longer than one year. That period does not include a census year, and the Dibbles didn't have any children born during that period, so there's no reason for them to appear in typical surviving records of the time.

The decisive piece of evidence in support of the idea that the Dibbles went from Indiana to McLean County, Illinois before moving to Kansas is Sylvia's statement that they were drawn to Kansas by advertising from the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad. That road did not run anywhere in Indiana. However, it did have a branch (now abandoned) that ran to Peoria, IL, about 50 miles west of McLean County. One would think that the railroad would not advertise in a state where it had no track, but it certainly would want to entice people in central Illinois to use its services.

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Sorting Stephen

Stephen Dibble, son of Henry J. Sr., was born on January 27, 1852. It's a bit of a stretch to think that he could have served in the Civil War, though it's not completely impossible. Teenagers as young as 14 are known to have lied about their ages to enlist. I have this birthdate from Linda Dibble McCool, a descendant of Henry J.'s son Charles; I don't know where she got it, though a good guess would be from the Silas Dibble family bible in possession of Geneva Dibble.

Charles also had a son named Stephen, born about 1851; he would be a marginally better candidate for the war veteran "Steve Dibble", but even less is known about him than we know about Henry J.'s boy. This would be an interesting topic for later investigation.

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When did which Dibbles come to Minnesota?

Dibbles have been recorded as living in Minnesota since 1809, long before the area was a state or anything more distinct than just part of the Louisiana Purchase. There were also Dibbles in Dodge and Olmsted Counties, just south of Cannon Falls' Goodhue County, and in Winona County, by the mid-1880s. Some of those Dibbles may have been descended from Robert Deeble, just as our line probably is, but the connection doesn't seem to be much closer than that. A likely Robert Deeble descendant, Eva Dibble of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, was living as the second wife of George E. Ray in LeSueur County, some 75 miles west of Cannon Falls, in the 1890s.

Among the Dibbles we are most concerned with, there is some confusion as to who settled in Minnesota, and when.

It seems clear that Alonzo Dibble was in the Cannon Falls area in July 1854, because we have an eyewitness, Charles Parks, who met him on the trail between Red Wing and Cannon Falls as Alonzo was moving to his claim. Parks did not mention Jonathan, perhaps because he was only 16 at the time. (However, some sources say that Jonathan did not arrive until the fall of the following year.) In any event, he was living there with Alonzo on September 27, 1857, when the state census enumerator recorded him.

Beyond that, though, things get murky. Consider the brothers' land patents. Photographs of the actual patents from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) reveal the following:

Alonzo's original claim included the south half of the northwest quarter of section 24, and the southeast quarter of the northeast quarter and northeast quarter of the southeast quarter of section 23, in township 112--160 acres--which would be the eastern half of the portion of the Alonzo Dibble tract shown in section 23 on the 1877 plat of Stanton Township, plus the central section of the portion shown in section 24 of that plat. This patent is dated 1856.

Jonathan claimed the north half of the southwest quarter of section 24, township 112--80 acres--which would be the area where School No. 7 appears on the 1877 plat, just south of Alonzo's land in that section (a location that tends to disprove a later arrival date for Jonathan, as the rapid influx of settlers would have made it unlikely that any land adjacant to his brother's claim would have still been available). This patent is dated 1858.

Jonathan also claimed the northeast quarter of the northeast quarter of section 12, township 111--40 acres--which is several miles due south of the above two claims, in Warsaw Township not far from Sogn. This patent is dated 1871.

And, a Silas Dibble claimed the south half of the northeast quarter and north half of the southeast quarter of section 12, township 111--160 acres--which is just south of, and adjacant to, Jonathan's Warsaw Township claim. However, this patent is dated 1857.

We probably can ignore most of the dates. All the patents are "pre-emption certificates", which means the settlers had "pre-empted" or occupied the land some time before filing a claim. Three of the patents refer to claims filed at the Red Wing land office, which did not open until August 1855, and we know Alonzo was already on the land over a year before that. The BLM also states that it was quite common for land patents to be issued, and dated, years after the claims were filed during this period in history, due to the enormous backlog of claims engendered by land rushes exactly like the one that took place in Goodhue County. The date of 1871 for Jonathan's second patent (which, unlike the others, was filed at the New Ulm land office well west of Cannon Falls) still raises questions. Although by 1871 Goodhue County was well settled, other evidence supports the notion that Jonathan filed this claim later, perhaps after returning from his Civil War military service.

Then there is the question of Silas Dibble. Jonathan's and Alonzo's brother Silas was 38 in the summer of 1854, he had five living children (one of the dead ones was also called Silas), and his wife was pregnant with another. He was successful as a riverboatman. Would he have traveled all the way to Minnesota under those circumstances, and if he did, why didn't Parks notice the crowd of kids around Alonzo, or Silas himself for that matter? Both Alonzo and Jonathan appear several times in the subsequent historical record of Cannon Falls and Goodhue County. Silas is never mentioned. We might conclude that he was simply one of the "other" Minnesota Dibbles who are not in our line. But there is the nagging fact that his claim was right next to Jonathan's in Warsaw Township, and it was occupied for some time before March 1858. This seems like too much of a coincidence to ignore.

As we shall see, Jonathan and a lot of other people left the Cannon Falls area not long after getting there. Perhaps Silas was one of them. But, given the difficulties of transporting a bunch of young kids and a pregnant woman almost a thousand miles up the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in 1854, plus the fact that some of Silas's sons later served in the Civil War in Indiana units, another possibility emerges.

Alonzo was a young bachelor recently returned from an unsuccessful effort to make his fortune in the California goldfields. Jonathan was a teenager. These land claims were filed under the federal Cash Entry Act of 1820, which required grantees to purchase the land, either at public auction or for $1.25 per acre. Together, the younger brothers claimed at least $450 worth of land. Where did they get that kind of money? Perhaps the older, established Silas provided it, and in return the brothers also claimed a parcel for him, from whose prospective sale Silas expected to profit in the high-flying land market of the time?

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Who was Ann Eliza Smith?

Several Ann or Ann E. or Ann Eliza Smiths have been found whose birthdates approximately match the information found on her headstone. This is the curse of having the name "Smith".

However, we now have pretty convincing evidence for who she was and where she came from. The 1850 US Census for Posey Township, Switzerland County, Indiana has an "Ann E. Smith", age 11 and born in Indiana, living in the household of Daniel Smith and Olive Smith. (We previously reported the father's name as "James" Smith, which is how Ancestry.com indexes it, but on close inspection, the first letter of Mr. Smith's first name is clearly a D, not a J. The second letter is "a". The rest could be "wes" or "nees" or "nies". The last letter, it seems to me, is NOT an "l", but the handwriting is so bad that one could easily also read the last name as "Pruitte".

The census enumerator wrote down the age he was told by the family on the date he collected the record, which was September 19, 1850. This would make Ann's birth year about 1839. However, for various reasons, families did not/do not always tell census enumerators the truth about birthdates or other things. Various family trees give her birthdate as February 9, 1838. Most definitively, though, there is a photo of her gravestone in the Cannon Falls Community Cemetery at her Find-a-Grave website. The stone says, (as best I can tell), "Aged 35 Ys 9 Mo. 9 Ds". That would give a birthdate of January 21, 1838.

Olive is not that common a name, so Daniel Smith's wife and daughter named Olive link a lot of other data together. The Daniel and Olive Smith family was living just across the Ohio River from Switzerland County, in Gallatin County, KY, by the time of the 1860 US census, but Ann was not recorded with them. This supports a marriage to Jonathan Dibble after his return to Indiana sometime in 1857 or 1858 but before 1860. (Despite dilligent efforts, we still have not been able to find a marriage record.)

Daniel Smith was born in New York according to that census. Jonathan's second wife, Sarah, whom he married after Ann died, is said to have been Ann's younger sister. The Smith family in Posey Township in the 1850 census also had a daughter named Sarah who was three years old in that year; she is with them in KY in 1860 as well. The 1875 Minnesota State Census for Goodhue County shows Jonathan married to a Sarah whose parents were born in New York.

Finally, Jonathan's fourth child's name was "Daniel Smith Dibble", not "James Smith Dibble".

Taken together, all of these connections must be more than coincidence. So the mystery of who Ann Eliza Dibble was has been solved.

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When did Jonathan return to Minnesota?

We have three sources for the date of Jonathan's return:

1. Jonathan's obituary in the Cannon Falls Beacon said he "has been a resident of this state ever since [his first arrival] with the exception of about four years."

2. A "Historic Note" dated 1899, probably also from the Beacon, which says, "Richard Dibble, of the firm of Dibble Bros. was born Nov. 1, 1862, at Rising Sun, Ind. and came to this village at two years of age." (reprinted in Roots and Wings by Connie Bickman [1996])

3. His son Dick's obituary in the Beacon, which says Dick came to Cannon Falls with his parents five years after his birth in November 1862.

The first source puts him back in Minnesota in 1864, assuming he left around the beginning of 1860. He probably left before then, but "about four years" leaves some leeway. The second source would have him returned by November 1864. The third source delays his return until 1867. However, we also have his military service with a Minnesota unit, beginning in February 1865. This, with the other evidence, tips the balance to a return date of some time in 1864.

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"Never Volunteer for Anything" -- Richard Kenneth Dibble

There was a Union draft call in early 1865, and it is tempting to believe that Jonathan did not deliberately abandon his young family, and that he was drafted.

A man named Jonathan Dibble appears in the U.S. Civil War Draft Registration Records, 1863-1865, a database maintained by Ancestry.com. In fact, there are two records for this name in that database, the principal difference between them being that one shows Jonathan as married. Both show him residing in Lillian Township, Goodhue County, MN. Stanton Township was briefly named Lillian. They also have him being born in 1833 in Connecticut, and show his "Age on 1 July 1863" as 30.

However, most other records for Jonathan's military service show him as having enlisted, and having been born in 1838.

There is yet another twist in the story. The 1909 History of Goodhue County, Minnesota, edited by Franklyn Curtiss-Wedge, has Jonathan Dibble on a list of men who enlisted in the army in the Civil War from Cherry Grove Township. That township is on the southern border of the county, a goodly way from Warsaw Township and even farther from Stanton/Lillian Township.

So Jonathan may have registered for the draft sometime earlier, but after July 1, 1863, and subsequently decided to enlist. That seems possible. Or there may have been another, five-years-older Jonathan Dibble in the area, who was born in CT and went to war instead of our Jonathan. This seems very unlikely. The third possibility is that someone screwed up the records at some point, which happens all the time.

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Coping with the Coplins

The original version of this website, circa 2000, reported that the Coplins came to Cannon Falls in 1875 or 1876. This was based on the obituaries in the Cannon Falls Beacon of Norman Coplin and his mother Parthinia ("Parney"). However, that newspaper seems to have been unaware, as I was in 2000, that the Coplins had two children who died very young and were buried in the Cannon Falls Community Cemetery long before that time.

The gravestone (there is a single stone for both children) clearly says "Albert born Apr. 15 1863 died Sept. 11, 1864", and "Cora born June 18 1870 died Sept. 25 1870." And there lies a problem, so to speak. Their daughter Ella was born on December 10, 1864, and, according to all sources, in Michigan. Let's backtrack.

Norman Coplin was with his parents Jared and Parney in Lenawee County, Michigan at the age of 11 in 1850. His parents and younger brothers were in Hillsdale County, MI in 1860, but Norman was not counted with them. He doesn't show up again in any census that I can find until 1875, when he is in Nobles County, Minnesota, in the southwestern part of the state.

One explanation is that Norman traveled a lot and he and his family were somewhere on the road and no enumerators found them when the 1865 Minnesota state census, and the 1870 federal census, were taken. Another explanation is that they were recorded, but have been indexed under some heavily corrupted version of their name, which has been variously recorded as Coplin, Coplan, Copeland, Copelin, and Copelyn. (I tried all those variations, but census enumerator handwriting can be atrocious, and the people who index the handwritten records can make odd decisions.)

Norman also had a daughter named Hattie; the presence of both Hattie and Ella with the family helps track them through the census data we do have.

Hattie was born in 1861 in Michigan. Albert was born in April 1863, but we don't know where. Norman's wife Eliza would have been pregnant with Ella by March 1864. Either they were in Cannon Falls in September 1864, when Albert died, and back in Michigan by December of that year, or (gruesome thought), Albert died in Michigan and they brought his body with them when they came to Cannon Falls sometime after Ella was born. How long after? Long enough that they could also bring Cora's body after she died in 1870? Although the Victorians held attitudes, and engaged in practices, concerning dead children that seem to us rather morbid and obsessive, this still seems unlikely.

Another possibility is that, discouraged after Albert's death, they returned to Michigan to be near their family. Although it would have been a tough trip with Eliza more than six months pregnant, they may have felt that she and her baby would get better medical care back home than on the Minnesota frontier, making the travel worth the risk. The idea that they returned temporarily either for emotional support, or better doctoring, or both, makes a bit more sense when trying to explain why they were back in Cannon Falls for Cora's birth and death in 1870.

The family was in Worthington, Nobles County, MN in 1875. Perhaps there were better milling jobs there. The Beacon also says that they were in Northfield, MN before coming to Cannon Falls. Northfield is only about ten miles west of Cannon Falls; it was another mill town on the Cannon River. So they may have moved from Worthington to Northfield briefly, and then on to Cannon Falls the following year. Or they may have lived in Northfield at some earlier time; the Beacon's language doesn't preclude that.

The Beacon also says that Norman's mother Parney came to Cannon Falls about two years before she died in 1879. That death date matches her headstone, and this would mean she arrived in 1877. She had been a widow since 1861 but maybe she needed help due to her advanced age, and Norman's family was the best option by that time.

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When did Sarah marry Dr. Ed?

The information we have so far is confusing on Sarah Dibble's and Hiram "Ed" Conley's marriage date. Historical Sketches of Cannon Falls 1854-1954 has them marrying in 1884. But a Cannon Falls Beacon "profile" from 1886 (reprinted in Roots and Wings) says Conley came to Cannon Falls from Waterville "last fall". It seems unlikely that Sarah and Ed could have met and married in Waterville during the time Sarah was away at college, given the distance between Waterville and the normal school in Winona, and anyway, Sarah is said to have resumed teaching in Cannon Falls after graduating from normal school and then to have quit again to get married. Given the short time-frame allowed by a fall 1885 return for Conley, one almost has to conclude either that he first met Sarah and got to know her while studying with his brother in 1881 or that they actually married in 1886 or later.

Whether they married in the fall of 1885 or after, as we shall see below, another source indicates that their first child was 6 years old in 1891. Allowing as much leeway as possible, if this is true the child would have had to be born no later than December 31, 1885, which would place her conception about 5 months before Ed returned to Cannon Falls. Something is clearly wrong here, somewhere.

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Who was Casimir's Mother?

Information copied from old, faded handwritten records from St. Stanislaw's Church (Winona, MN) does not support this story. The information was provided to Bonnie Cattnach in a 1992 letter from Ben Schultz of the Winona Polish Museum. It shows Stephan marrying Mary Banacek (also spelled "Banaczek" and "Banachek") on June 3, 1904 in Poland, and gives Casimir's birthdate as March 3, 1905, a rather suspect exact nine months later. St. Stanislaw's seems frequently to have played fast and loose with vital records; birth records for some of Stephan's descendants contain given names different from those found on their birth certificates ("Bonita" for Bonnie Gatz and "Appolonia" for Opal Orzechowski, for example). This may simply reflect a tradition of bestowing special "baptismal names". Altered marriage dates, however, may indicate that church officials were skeptical of Stephan's story of a first wife and altered the record to avoid raising potentially embarassing questions. At any rate, the family is quite certain that Casimir was the child of Stephan's unknown first wife, and that Mary (referred to by St. Stan's as "Maryanna") was his stepmother.

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Who Was Stephan Orzechowski?

The word "white" is associated with Stephan Orzechowski in the minds of many of his family. How this association came about, however, is not clear. Some family members assert that his real name, "Flakiewicz", translates as "White" in Russian or Polish. However, the Russian word for white would be spelled, in English, as "byely", and would be similar in Polish and other Slavic languages, so this explanation cannot be true. Other family members say his departure from the Russian army was related to the Bolshevik Revolution, and that perhaps he and his family were "White (anti-revolutionary)" Russians fighting the "Red" Bolsheviks. Tales that Stephan was "landed"--a member of the gentry or even, perhaps, of the minor Russian nobility--support this contention. However, the Russian Revolution broke out in February, 1917, and at that time it was a democratic revolution. The Bolsheviks did not take over until November (October by the old Russian calendar) of 1917, and the Russian Civil War between Whites and Reds began after that. This was between two and five years after Stephan is generally believed to have come to America. (Family sources give the year of immigration as about 1915; Stephan's daughter Angeline's obituary gives 1912.) On the other hand, there were several minor revolutionary incidents and revolts in Russia between 1905 and 1917. Many of these involved units of the Russian armed forces on both sides of the conflict, so Stephan's participation in revolutionary activity cannot be ruled out. A third possibility is that Stephan belonged to the Slavic ethnic group known as Byelorussians, or "white Russians", which is a distinct nationality, though closely related to Russians by language and culture. This is likely to remain a mystery, ensuring that Stephan and his descendants will always be safe from the Russian army.

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What did Dick Dibble own and when did he own it?

The information collected so far doesn't allow for precision. At some future date, a review of deed transfers and other records in Goodhue County may provide better answers. In the meantime, the narrative is based on the following:

Dick's grandson Richard reports that "Dick did very well by selling meat to the Army during WWI and prior - which started him on the way of buying buildings in downtown Cannon Falls and later a farm to raise his own meat (without middlemen)...[Dick's wife] Bertha had a sister, Eve, and Eve's husband Ed [Wilson] was the local barber. I remember Dick setting him up in one of his buildings [in] downtown Cannon Falls, rent free."

From Cannon Falls - Remembered, published by the Dakota County Geneological Society: "Mr. E. [Eli Ellsworth, the grandfather of Dan Dibble's wife Isabelle Sanders] ... erected a frame store building on the north side of Mill St. seventy by sixty feet, two stories in height with one story for a living house. The site of this building is now occupied by the R. Dibble, Aug. Eklof and O. F. Peters block."

The Chronicles of Cannon Falls (1976) states that the Cannon Falls post office was located in the "Dibble Block" on Mill St. "(now Lampert Storage)" from 1915 to about 1925.

In 1886, the Cannon Falls Beacon reported that Tanner & Dibble occupied a 2-story frame building.

Heidi Holmes-Helgren, of the Cannon Falls Museum, reports, "I have a book called Roots and Wings... On page 138 the picture on the top right has a street scene from the late 1880's. It shows the names of the businesses but the one that you would be interested in is the saloon next to Scofield Drug store. This was owned by Kowitz's and later by the Dibbles for their meat store."

Let's start with this photo. (It appears on Page 6 of this site--"Big Farms, Little Towns on the Prairie"--as "West side of 4th. St. looking north from Main St. Cannon Falls, late 1800s".) The caption in Roots and Wings indicates that Dibble Bros. Butcher Shop stood about 4 buildings south of Mill St. Ms. Helgren, who says that Roots and Wings contains several inaccuracies, puts Dick's shop 5 buildings further south. None of the buildings in the photo is a 2-story frame building like that described in the Beacon. The more northerly candidate is brick and has only one story. Depending on how many windows each store had, the shop next to Scofield Drugs would also be brick and have either one or two stories. Of course, Dick's shop probably burned in the 1887 fire. No doubt he would have rebuilt using brick just as all the other merchants on the street did, but would he have downsized from two stories to one?

Earlier photos of the same block (including one displayed on Page 6 of this site and captioned, "Some of Cannon Falls' earliest businesses") show several frame buildings, and one, taken no later than 1878, shows part of a 2-story frame building north of Scofield's where Ms. Helgren puts the shop. This may later have been the site of Dibble and Tanner, but that building probably burned in the 1884 fire as well as its successor in 1887. The fires, of course, complicate things significantly; while many of the businesses on Fourth St. were rebuilt, they may well have occupied quite different "footprints" than they did before they burned.

If Ms. Helgren's statement that the Dibble Bros. shop originally housed Kowitz's saloon is correct, then the location occupied by Dibble Bros. in 1889 and thereafter would most likely not be the Geering shop that Dibble and Tanner bought in 1882. Geering had already been there for a few years, and Kowitz, who started his brewery in 1876, would most likely have started his saloon a few years later, after Geering's shop opened.

There are two saloons in the photo described by Ms. Helgren. One, whose owner is not identified by the caption, is north of Scofield's; the other, just north of the building the caption calls Dibble Bros., is said to belong to Ole Olson. That designation, however, may be just as erroneous as anything else in the book.

A photo that Roots and Wings says is from "the early 1900's" (on Page 8 of this site--"Between Two Wars"--as "West side of 4th. St. looking north from Main St. Cannon Falls, early 1900s") shows a barber pole outside the building that the late 1800s photo's Roots and Wings caption seems to indicate held Dibble Bros. This may have been Ed Wilson's barbershop, and if so, it lends creedence to the more northerly site as being a building Dick owned. And there is a photo from the 1930s (on Page 8 of this site, as "West side of 4th. St. looking south, Cannon Falls, 1930s") in which a shop about one door south of where the barber shop was in the early 1900s displays a sign that says "Quality Meats". This might be Dick's shop, though by then Dick may not have been running it.

Earlier in our narrative Kowitz's saloon is described as being next door to, and possibly in the same building with, Dick's shop. The above evidence neither decisively rules out that possibility nor definitively supports it. However, one could speculate that Dick's holdings first expanded after his father-in-law Ferdinand Kowitz's death in 1897. Kowitz's eldest son, Ferdinand Jr., was already dead and his other sons, George, aged 17 or 18, and Herman, 15 or 16, were too young to take on a business. His oldest daughter was Bertha, Dick's wife. Ferdinand may have left the saloon to Bertha and/or Dick, it being as close as next door to Dick's shop. Of course, Dick may have owned other buildings on Fourth Street, perhaps including any between his shop and the Kowitz saloon; we just don't know.

With income from the butcher shop and a tenant next door or down the street, Dick probably bought into Mill Street next. The precise location or extent of his holdings there aren't clear either, but they were on the north side of the street between the Little Cannon River bridge and the First National Bank (which occupied the site of the early Ellsworth House hotel). This distance is perhaps a bit longer than most Cannon Falls city blocks. A photo from around 1920 (judging from the cars) shows a building with a sign on its roof that says "Lampert [unreadable]" on Mill St. just east of the bridge. This area was just a few doors north and around the corner from the butcher shop. We can comfortably assume that Dick owned this property by 1915, when the Post Office was moved there, but he may have bought it well before then.

It was probably well after he bought the Mill St. "block" that Dick acquired the cattle farm southeast of town on Spring Garden Road, and perhaps as late as after the end of World War I, as his namesake suggests.

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Where and when did Archie Dibble serve?

The only record we have for Archie's military service is his Honorable Discharge paper. This document reports simply that he was wounded on October 3, 1918 and that the last unit he was assigned to was Company A, 7th. US Engineers. Our narrative assumes this was the only unit he served with, but that could be wrong.

If it's not, then a larger problem is presented by the date of his wounding. The 7th. Engineers were attached to the 5th. Division. The 5th. was involved in both the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives. However, several sources concur that the 5th. Division was taken off the line after St. Mihiel, on September 16 or 17, and did not return to the front until October 11 or 12, when it joined the post-Argonne phase of the offensive. If all this information is correct, then Archie would not have been wounded in combat. However, he received a Purple Heart medal, which can only be awarded for an injury caused by enemy action.

There are a few possible solutions to this puzzle. The Meuse-Argonne campaign began on September 26, and Pershing's forces began drawing on their reserves almost immediately. While the 5th. Division is not recorded as being part of the designated reserve contingent for that operation, it may be that men were drawn from it anyway, and Archie could have been one of them. A second possibility is that Archie's unit, while not on the front line, may not have been moved very far back while it waited for reinforcements and provisions. A stray bullet, or more likely an artillery bombardment shell, might have found its way to him behind the lines. It may also be that an error was made on Archie's discharge papers. Suppose the wrong month was entered and the wound occurred on November 3. Archie's unit, the 7th. Engineers, was definitely in combat then, having just built a bridge across the Meuse River and crossed to the east bank where withering German fire pinned them and several brigades of infantry down for a full day.

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Where did Herman Kowitz die?

Herman's obituary, probably in the Cannon Falls Beacon, says he died at Forsythe, MT, which is about 90 miles east of Great Falls. The less-reliable Roots and Wings says he was shot in Hysham, MT, some 60 miles northeast of Billings. While it's certainly possible that he was shot in one town and died in another, these two towns are a good 100 miles apart, and there were no medivac helicopters, and probably not even a motor ambulance, to take him from one to the other. In short, we don't really know where this happened.

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Della and Van Buren

Some time in 1951, the ur-Dibble researcher Van Buren Lamb sent one of his inquiry cards to Willard Dibble Sr., on the farm in Stanton Township. He passed it on to his sister Della, the family genealogist, and Della and Lamb exchanged some letters. Lamb saved them in one of his loose-leaf binders. All of the binders were scanned to electronic format by George Dibble III in the first decade of the 21st. century, after the original version of this website was published. Your author did not receive a copy of them until February 2015, when he resumed working on this website after a break of nearly 15 years.

From Lamb's correspondence with Della, I learned that Della's brother Willis had met the Indiana Dibble, Alonzo, who served on a river gunboat during the Civil War.

And, I learned that Della had given Lamb my entire family tree, from Jonathan Dibble of Cannon Falls all the way down to my father Richard Kenneth Dibble, my mother Gladys Ruth Johnson, and my oldest brother David Dibble. If this correspondence had occurred a few years later, no doubt my name would be enshrined in one of Van Buren Lamb's binders.