#52 Ancestors 2024 Week 37 Tombstone: The Culver Family Tree Tombstone

 

At first glance, you might think you are looking at a tree. And, in a way, you are, but not one that grew up from the earth.  This is a man-made tree in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Janesville WI, a stone memorial to my cousins in the Culver family that lays out their family relationships. It is one of the most unusual memorials I have ever seen, but definitely one that, as a family historian, I am very fond of. 

At the foot of the tree is the family patriarch, Henry Porter Culver and his wife Lamira Sigourney Lacy.  Henry was born 20 January 1793 in Hebron CT, the son of Benjamin Culver and Miranda Porter. In 1817, he moved to Monroe County NY where he married Lamira Lacy, the daughter of Major Samuel Lacy and Ruth Chase Sigourney (a descendant of Huguenots), in 1820. 

Henry was engaged in manufacturing in the village of Honeoye and contributed substantially to the growth of that area.  He was among the first to manufacture barrels by machinery instead of by hand. He was a colonel in the 177th NY Militia in 1828. In 1842, Henry and his family moved to Janesville WI where he purchased a large farm.  He died in Janesville in 1869, at the age of 76.  Lamira Culver died in Janesville in 1889 at the age of 86.

Henry and Lamira had four children, each of whom is represented on this family tree: 

Cordelia Sigourney Culver 1820-1842. She was educated at the Albany Female Academy. She married Judge Orville Charles Pratt, the second justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, in 1841, but died the following year. 

Harriet Lamira Culver 1836-1918. She was educated at the Troy Seminary.  She married Railroad Agent Wakefield Lyman Marshall of Connecticut in 1870 in Janesville WI and was later divorced from him. Her obituary describes her as a woman of wide reading with a great interest in public affairs.  She moved to California about 1900 because of her health and died there.  Her ashes were interred in Janesville. 

Samuel Henry Culver 1824-1866.  He worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as an Indian Agent in the Rogue River District of Oregon. He married Delia Hanley about 1864 and had one son with her who died in infancy. Samuel died in Janesville WI. 

Charles Porter Culver 1828- 1879. He married my 2X-great aunt, Emily Augusta Scrivener, at St. Peter's Church in Baltimore MD in 1859.  He was a farmer in Janesville WI.  He went to Texas for his health in 1879 and died there.  Emily married secondly Marquis de Lafayette "Mark" Ripley.  She
died in 1902 in Janesville WI.

 

Charles and Emily Culver had three children: 

Louisa C. "Lulu" Culver 1861-1880.  She died of consumption. The Janesville Gazette lamented her passing a few days before Christmas:

She had reached and passed her nineteenth birthday, and while her life was a comparatively brief
one, yet it was a life of inestimable value to the widowed mother, to the two younger sisters and other relatives and friends, and a life whose going out causes a loss to the community.  Her character was one worthy of much praise, and loved most by those who knew it best, and the sympathy extended to the mourning family will come from many friends, who feel that the loss is in part their own. 

Harriet Lamira "Hattie" Culver 1868-1898. She married Charles Fremont Page in Janesville WI in 1893. They had two children: Charles Culver Page and Jeanette Page. She died in Janesville in 1898 at the age of 29.  

Ruth Sigourney Culver 1875-1904. She married hardware merchant Frank Irving Sanner in Janesville in 1902. They had one daughter, Emily Ruth Culver Sanner, in 1903. Both Ruth and Frank died in California in 1904.  Their daughter was brought back to Janesville by her Grandmother Henrietta Sanner but died there in 1905. Ruth and Frank are buried in Riverside CA, but they are included in the Culver memorial in Janesville. 

I don't know who supervised the creation of this detailed family memorial. I'm not sure who in the family was left since so many family members died young. But whoever did it, family historians are very grateful for this unique family record.