1865 RI State Census Mercy Hall

1865 RI State Census, Hall family, Westerly, RI. Ancestry.com

Mercy Perkins Hall

In yesterday's post, I showed the heading for this page of the RI State Census of 1865 for the household of Alvah Taylor's family of Main St. Westerly, RI. Mr. Taylor is the father-in-law of Keziah Hall, whose mother was Mercy Perkins, widow of Stanton Hall. With the help of Barbara Fallon, my cousin from Westerly, RI, I located the gravestones for this family in River Bend Cemetery in Westerly. I was looking just for Stanton and Mercy but what I found was the gravestones for their children and Alvah Taylor too. It is a fond memory to stand there and see the grouping of the stones and to spend delightful hours working on them.

I don't yet know who the people are below Mercy on lines 18-20 but I am working on it. Surname is Foster, I think and he is a teacher from nearby Connecticut. His children, including an 8 month old baby are with him but there is no wife listed so perhaps he worked on the farm with Alvah Taylor after the school day ended. He would have needed someone to help with his children while he taught and farmed.

Mercy had plenty of experience with children. She was one at marriage. She was 14. I still find that hard to grasp. 

This state census says she was born in Richmond, RI. Her parents moved from RI to New York and probably her choice was to be a nanny or get married. 

She was the last child in her family. It has been so hard to find out anything certain about her. That's why seeing this state census is so special.

1865 RI State Census Heading

1865 RI State Census Heading, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

Rhode Island State Census, 1865

Always desperate for more information for my ancestor, Mercy Perkins who married Stanton Hall, I discovered this Rhode Island State census date 1 Jun 1865 and was delighted to see enumerated my 79 year old widowed Mercy living in her son-in-law's household. Mercy died in October that year, so I did not go looking for this record thinking she was already dead. 

Before I work on the listing of those in the household, I needed to look at the heading of the page and decide if I understood all the information. State census records and the information in them change with each year they were taken, so although they are wonderful records, they will take time to digest and understand.

We find that this page is for Westerly, RI on 1 June 1865 pages 143-144. I almost missed the street name of Main Street in the fourth column.

Ancestry.com. Rhode Island, State Censuses, 1865-1935 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013. Original data: Rhode Island State Census, 1865. Microfilm. New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, Massachusetts.

The fine print for the description of this census at Ancestry.com tells me that the relationship to the head of household was not given and I wondered where that column went! I see that Column one and three are NOT the house numbers but that age, sex and occupation are listed. The good news for me is that a PLACE of birth was asked for and the type of school children were in (public, select or Catholic). I am not sure what a "select" school is.

Military service may be useful for other members of my large Westerly family but not in this case so it will be worthwhile looking for other people who were alive in RI in 1865. 

Now, I can go on to looking at what is given for Mercy....