Genealogy Story - Benjamin Judd Rogers

In an earlier blog (Marrying my cousin), I mentioned my great*3 grandfather, Benjamin Rogers and his daughter Mary.  I'd like to tell the story of this family as it has a lot of poignant details and also illustrates how looking through census records and other records can be incomplete and how you may need to have family sources.

Benjamin Judd Rogers was born in 1814 in the Berkshires of Massachusetts.  He came from a long line of Massachusetts Rogers, dating back to the Mayflower.  In 1834, at the age of 20, he married a local girl, Lois Irene Chaffee - she was also 20.  They immediately starting their family and their first child, a son, was born eleven months later.  For some reason he died just before his third birthday.  This would become a pattern over the next 15 years.  They had a total of eight children, three girls and five boys.  None of the boys reached their third birthday, two living only a few weeks,  The girls all lived.  In the 1850 census you can find Benjamin, his first wife, Lois, and the two older girls, Martha and Mary.

In 1851, they had a final child - but another girl, Lois, named after her mother.  Then, in January 1853, when this child was only 21 months old, Benjamin's wife also died -- at the age of only 38.

Benjamin was apparently not only distraught, but very frustrated that he had been unable to have any sons to pass along the family name.  The three girls were at that point 15, 13, and 21 months.  He re-married only three months later.  It appears that neither he, nor his new wife, wanted to have the girls around as a reminder of his frustration and the loss of his first wife.  They gave the two older girls as servants and the youngest to be adopted.  Fortunately, Benjamin and his new wife were able to begin having children and the following year Benjamin had yet another son, but this time he was healthy and lived.  They also had a daughter a few years later.  These two children from his second wife lived to the ages of 78 and 90 respectively.

The youngest daughter, Lois Irene Rogers, was adopted by the Drake family, James and Mary, a childless couple.  They changed her name from Lois Irene Rogers to Mary Lois Drake - Mary after her new adoptive mother, and Lois after her birth mother.

In the 1860 census, you can find Benjamin, his new wife, Susan, and their two children living in Otis, MA.  A few towns away, in Lee, MA, you will find James Drake, his wife Mary H Drake, their adopted daughter, Mary Lois Drake, and the middle daughter, Mary A Rogers, all living together.  Mary Rogers is listed as a servant.  The oldest daughter, Martha, had married a few years earlier, but then she also died at the age of only 20 from Typhus.

What a tragedy in this family.  Death struck early seven times - to the five sons of Benjamin and Lois, to Lois, and then to the oldest daughter, Martha.  But at least the other children had long lives.  Mary Lois Drake lived to the age of 82, and Mary Rogers to the age of 87.

Most of this cannot be found in census records.  But Mary Lois Drake lived long enough to pass along this information to her daughter and granddaughter, my great-grandmother and grandmother.  And my cousin became the recipient of a collection of notes about this - including the name change that would not have been recorded anywhere (adoptions were much more informal affairs back in the 1850's).  And it's only because of those handwritten notes that I was able to piece together the family tree - otherwise the name change would have stymied my research.