Treasures in a Wall

My great-great-grandmother Susan Spaulding’s life might only have been remembered by her descendants by the few photos that exist today if it had not been for two letters written by her in 1865.  These letters were found inside the wall of the house which she had lived at Corinna, Maine. When her descendant was remodeling the home, a wall was taken out to expand another room.  Often paper was put in walls as insulation and many old newspapers were found inside the wall.  While her family descendants enjoyed looking at the old dates on the newspapers, they came across these letters which were still intact and in relatively good shape, despite one having slight water damage. 

We don’t always think of our ancestors as travelers unless it was migrating west during the gold rush or the westward expansion.  Often our ancestors did travel not only to other towns and places within the state they resided, but even farther and occasionally made mention in journals and diaries. With the expansion of railroads to the west, traveling became possible to visit those distant relatives.   Or in Susan's case, to move west safely as a woman on her own.  

In a time without email, snapchat, etc, Susan was able to maintain contact with her family in Maine and it seems especially with her big sister, Electra (Spaulding) Reed.  Probably many letters were written back and forth between Susan in Milwaukee and her mother and siblings in Maine, but we are fortunate to even have these today.

Electra Reed

Eletcra Spaulding  had married
as her first husband, Jonas Howes and
had one son, Ephraim S. Howes  After his death,
she married Webster Reed and had one son
Philo Reed and through him, they are the
great-grandparents of Gov. John Reed of Maine

Webster Reed, 2nd husband of Electa

Susan Church Spaulding was born in Anson, Maine on May 2, 1836, daughter of Ephraim and Mary (Weston) Spaulding.  She was named after Susan Church, the wife of her maternal uncle, William Weston.  Also found in the wall of her home was Susan’s teacher's  certificate from the town of Anson from 1856.  She began teaching at North Anson Academy where she had gone to school as well.

1900 postcard of North Anson Academy

She attended the teacher’s conventions for Somerset County, Maine in 1858 and 1859.

 

 

The 1860 census of Anson, Maine shows Susan Spaulding, age 23 was a “domestic” living at home with her mother and younger siblings.   After 1860, Susan left Maine and moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin where her uncle William Weston, whose first wife was her namesake, resided.  William remarried after the death of his first wife, to Marianne Hopkins and had moved to Milwaukee in 1860.  William was involved in the lumber manufacturing business, having plants in Wisconsin and Michigan.  He was a rather wealthy man for that time in Milwaukee.  Susan may have been asked to come to Milwaukee to work as a domestic to earn her own income in a household that her family trusted.  By living with her uncle, Susan would have an oportunity to meet, lets say, some eligible bachelors who were more socially promient, then the few available men in her hometown.

William Weston, Susan's uncle 

The two surviving letters contain details of Susan's life in Milwaukee as well as the assassination of President Lincoln, the end of the Civil War, minor gossip and some personal views of Susan herself.  Susan was age 29, unmarried and worried about becoming a spinster. 

Susan Church Spaulding
 Milwaukee, Wisconsin
taken between 1861-1865

She spoke of a “Mr C.” who accompanied her around Milwaukee, but his name is never revealed in these letters, but probably was told in earlier letters that did not survive. Why these two letters were saved and somehow made their way back to Susan is not known.  The originals letters were handwritten with little punctuation and grammar and can be hard to follow.  I transcribed the two letters to make them easier to read.

 

 

Susan had lost a brother in the Civil War and it probably was joyous news to know the Civil War was ending.  Only to be followed by the assassination of the President Lincoln must have had the same affect on people as assassinations that have occurred in the 20th century.  Susan had hopes of marrying Mr C. and we will never know what happened to him or their courtship unless other letters Susan wrote come to light.  

 

 

Susan got to see and hear then General Grant speak, without the knowledge he would become President.   Susan comes across rather insistant that her sister come to Milwaukee.  Susan selfishly forgets that her elder sister is married and has two small children she would have to leave for a long period of time or whether the $36 and $40 could even be afforded by Electra.  Susan implies in her 2^nd letter that she if she was married she would not have any children and gives no reasoning if it is because she does not like children or possibly thought she was getting too old to have children.

Susan returned to Maine before 1868, leaving her Mr C behind in Milwaukee.  Her sister Eunice (Spaulding) Brown had married a man from Corinna, Maine.  She had a neighbor who had become a widower with a young daughter and was in need a housekeeper and nanny for his daughter.  This man was William Penn Mower, who Susan would marry in 1868 in Corinna, Maine at age 32.  

William Penn Mower

Susan (Sapulding) Mower

They would have three daughters together, Emmie, my great-grandmother, Minnie and Sadie.  Despite stating she would not have children if she was married, she did and raised a step-daughter as well and from all known accounts was a good mother.  William and Susan remained together for 34 years until Susan’s death in 1906.

Sue and Penn Mower 1900

Penn Mower house in Corinna,Maine where the letters
were found in the wall.  In the photo are
Sue and Penn Mower on the right.
Their daughters, Sadie, Minnie and Emmie, with Emmie's chidlren
Leona and Donald Smith

The two letters are just a snapshot of one year in Susan's life, but the information of her living in Milwaukee would never had been known if these letters were not either placed in the wall on purpose or possibly just to be used as a filler. The house she shared with Penn was built by him after his marriage to Susan.  She may not have wanted to keep letters with mention of an old beau in Milwaukee around her husband or just thought they weren't important enough to keep anymore and just discarded like the other old newspapers into the wall when building their home.

My Mom's DNA surprise story

Always be prepared for your DNA results is what they say before doing a DNA test. I had been tracing my family history for over 20 years and had documented every ancestor, so I knew this advice did not apply to me and my family.  But after tracing my mother's family side and breaking down brick walls, documenting her father's line, it all came to a crushing blow, my grandfather was not my grandfather.  I am going to share an abbreviated version of how DNA testing disproved my grandfather and how we found my mother's real father.

As not everyone understands DNA, I'll cover some quick basics.

First we all get 50% of our DNA from our father and 50% of our DNA from our mother.  That is a basic building block of our DNA, it never changes. DNA comes down to us in clumps, you are mix of your ancestors, but you may have more of one ancestral line over another family line in your DNA.  Not even siblings will share the exact same amounts of DNA mix.  Each of child will get a different amount of their ancestors DNA, depending on what your parents passed on to you the day they created you (or a nice way of saying had sex).  

Here's an example,

 You can see this father and mother received more or less of each of their parents DNA, but each got 50% from the father and 50% from their mother.  The child has more or less amounts of different colors or amounts of DNA of their grandparents.   That child will then pass on a various combination to their child.

Another child with the same parents may have gotten more of Grandfather purple and Grandmother yellow.  But again each child got 50% of their DNA from their mother and father, but the mix of what they receive will have a little more of one ancestor and a little less of another.

The other big term to know is Centimorgans or often shown as "cMs"  The easiest way to explain cMs is that it is a measurement of DNA.  The more cMs you share with another person, the more closely related you are.  For example, as I stated, you get 50% of your DNA from your parents, so no one else will share as much DNA with you as your parents or your children (who get 50% of your DNA).  Then your siblings as they share the same parents, so they are next closest match.  But from there DNA spreads out.  The next group you share the most DNA will be grandchildren, grandparents, uncles and aunts.  Then the circle of shared your DNA  will spread out to 1st cousins, great-grandparents, etc.  This chart may help you as I will use it this again in this discussion.

If you put your name in the chart under self, it will show you the amounts or ranges of DNA you should share with each of your relatives.

So back my family, we began doing DNA testing with my family in 2015.  We all came back sharing the correct amount of DNA for my mother to be my mother to me and my brothers and grandmother to her grandchildren.  My brothers and myself also came back correctly to be brothers, even though we all came back with different ethnicity results. (Remember Ethnicity is not 100% accurate no matter what DNA company you use at this time).

Then in 2016, my cousin Dru and my Mom's sister B did DNA tests.  If you look at the above chart, the range of cMs or centimorgans a sibling should share with you is between 2209-3384.  My mom and her sister shared only 1617 cMs of DNA.  Way below what full siblings should share.  Using the chart you can see what range they came back as sharing.

We knew we could eliminate my Mom's sister being her grandparent, grandchild, aunt, and niece.  That only left the fact they were half sisters.  My aunt's daughter Dru also came back as a half niece to my mother and my half 1st cousin.  Dru matched her mother correctly as her mother, so we knew that with my family and my aunt and daughter matching us as half, something was wrong with our ancestry.  Sharing half meant they shared only one parent in common.  Someone had a different mother or father!  There were other family members who had done DNA testing.  Both my mother and her sister shared a first cousin on their mother's side of the family correctly and a 2nd cousin on their mother's side also came back as a match to both.  So we knew my Mom and her sister must share the same mother, but one of them had a different father, but which sister?  You can imagine it was a shock to all of us to make this discovery.

So we reached out to my Mom's nephew, Chet who agreed to do a DNA test.  He came back as a half nephew to my mother and a full nephew to my aunt.  He was a half 1st cousin to my brothers and myself, but a full 1st cousin to my cousin Dru.   This proved his mother and my aunt B both shared the same parents and my Mom was the sister who had a different father.

There was no record my mother had a different father.  So many people asked my mother what did her birth certificate say, it said her father was father and her mother was her mother.  There were no rumors of my grandmother ever being involved with anyone other than the man we knew as my grandfather. Walter Buzzell.

We spent the next year trying to figure out what may have happened.  Ancestry DNA kept matching my family to people who did not match my aunt or cousins, so we knew they must be people who match on her biological father's side.  One common theme kept appearing with my Mom's DNA matches.  The matches all seem to have had at least one ancestor who was a Strout from Charleston, Maine where my mother was born.  We began to realize that someone on her father's side was a Strout ancestor. But the matches were distant 3rd and 4th cousins, so the Strout match could be through my Mom's biological grandfather or biological grandmother's side.

As we talked to family members and researched my mother's birth.  We knew my grandmother did not drive and was limited geographical on how far she could travel on foot.  We knew my grandfather was often gone for long periods of time when he worked in the woods during the time they lived in Charleston, Maine and left my grandmother at home alone with 5 children.  My grandmother  never left the neighborhood which she living in Charleston called "Puddledock," but relied on neighbors for help or to visit. 

The 1940 census taken just 3 years before let's say before my mother's conception revealed two men who were brothers and neighbors to my grandmother whose names were Perley Strout and Harold Strout.  Keep in mind we were finding the common theme in matches to my Mom were people with Strout ancestry.  Other neighbors to my grandparents were Trims who did not have Strout ancestry or they were relatives to my grandfather Buzzell's family which we now knew were not my direct ancestors.  

My aunt remembered both Strout families as Perley's family was the next closest neighbor and Harold Strout had daughters who were the same age as two of my aunts.  Both were known to have visited my grandmother and sometimes alone as they would my grandmother with heavy lifting, wood for the wood stove, etc. We began to consider that my Mom may  just not have a Strout ancestor, but really may be a Strout.  We spent the next several months trying to contact descendants of the Charleston Strouts whose DNA could help us determine which Strout man may be my mother's real father. We were met with it was a nice story and wished us luck, but no thanks or got no response at all.  At times, it was discouraging.

In 2017, a DNA match came back to a Chris R.  He shared 322 cMs with my mother.  Corresponding with his wife, we learned Chris' great-grandfather was Harold Strout.  But Chris' DNA wasn't enough to prove Harold was my mother's uncle or father.  Here is the chart for his range of DNA.

Based on his ancestry we knew we could eliminate some of the groups and he would be either my Mom's 1st cousin, twice removed if Perley Strout was my Mom's father or he could be my Mom's half-great-nephew if Harold Strout was her father.  We needed someone else in Chris' family to do a DNA test to help.  His grandmother would be the closest match to mother as either her half-sister or her first cousin.  Sadly, her health would not allow us to use her DNA, but Chris' mother, Terry was the next closest match and she agreed to do the DNA test.

Terry came back sharing 757 cMs of DNA.  She shared too much DNA on average to be my Mom's 1st cousin once removed if Perley Strout was my mother's father. 

Compared to my mother's other half-niece and nephew, Terry was right in the middle.

Mom's half niece, Dru shared 812 cMs with my mother

Terry shared 757 cMs with my mother

Mom's half nephew Chet shared 727 cMs with mother

Terry's test was enough with Chris's test to prove Mom's ancestry.  Harold Strout was my Mom's father.  Recently more of my mother's new Strout relatives have done DNA testing and all fall correctly into the range as expected to be my Mom's cousins.  No other Strout descendant to date shares as much DNA as Terry with my Mom.

In November 2017, we all agreed to meet.

Terry, Mom, Chris and myself

As difficult as it was for Mom to learn all this at age 73, that her father was a neighbor, and that she had three more half sisters that she never got to know and many more half nieces and nephews.  It has been a positive experience meeting her new family and actually made my mother feel better about it all. 

For me, as a genealogist, it was hard to think of the years spent tracing a family line that wasn't really all mine, but to look at it as a gift of exploring a whole new family tree.  I had forgotten the excitement when I was young of finding a new ancestor and making new family connections.  Now it has all come back.  

We know we have been lucky to solve this mystery in a relative short period of time compared to others in the same situation.  We are thankful we had someone who really only did a DNA test for his ethnicity and not to find all new relatives, who was so willing to help us prove we are related to him and accept us too.   I don't believe this will be everyone's experience doing a DNA tests as so far on my father's side of the family we match everyone we should correctly.  But more and more I hear stories of people finding these surprises or finding their real biological family if they were adopted.  It is claimed that within the next 10 years, DNA testing will solve all mysteries as the numbers of people doing tests is growing world wide.   As of 2018, there 14 million people in all the various DNA testing sites and it just keeps growing.  

So as we have learned, Do Not Assume (DNA).

Noah Moulton, Revolutionary War P.O.W.

I remember one summer in my childhood, my parents took my brother Michael and myself to New York to visit Fort Ticonderoga as my brother Mark was away I believe, at Boy Scout camp.  I remember I thought the Fort was so cool and there was a reenactment of the how British captured the Fort without firing a shot as the American forces left before the British arrived, but eventually the Americans recaptured it.  They spoke of "The Green Mountain Boys" and their role in the war and the battles they fought against the British in the mountains of Vermont.  For me, it was great to watch and learn about the role the Fort played in the American Revolution, but I never gave much thought about my ancestors possibly being involved because this was too far away from Maine for anyone in my family to be involved.  But I was wrong to have such a narrow view of what roles my ancestors would play in the Revolutionary War, as it turned out my ancestor was involved in this part of our country's history.

His name was Noah Moulton, my 5th great-grandfather and grandfather of Robert R. Moulton from my previous blog who died in the Civil War. 

Noah Moulton was born on November 14, 1726 in Hampton, New Hampshire, the son of Daniel and Phebe (Philbrick) Moulton.  His parents moved to Rye, New Hampshire when he was about 2 years old where he was raised.  When he was 23, he married Patience Locke on November 16, 1749 in Rye, New Hampshire.  They would produce a family of 13 children.  Noah moved to his family to Lyman, New Hampshire about 1770 where the following sketch about him appears the Historical Sketches of Lyman, New Hampshire by E. B. Hoskins, [1903] p. 55:

This was the first mention I had of Noah serving in the Revolutionary War and taken prisoner and dying.  Like his grandson, Robert whose wife only had a gravestone, Noah's wife has a gravestone in the Moulton Hill Cemetery in Lyman, New Hampshire, but no grave marker for him and this would make sense if he died someplace else other than at home in Lyman.

Pension record searches for New Hampshire are almost entirely for Noah's son, Noah Jr. and his widow, Priscilla.   However a search of New Hampshire Provincial and State Papers,  [1886] vol. 15, p. 425, listed a Noah Moulton of Lyman, New Hampshire as private in Col. Warner's Regiment which was not attributed to his son's service.  This was Noah Moulton Sr.   Military records supplied the rest of the story of his service.

At age 50 years old, Noah Moulton enlisted on December 4, 1776 in Capt. William McCune's Regiment in Col. Seth Warner's Battalion also known as the "Green Mountain Boys."  Keep in mind at this time, Vermont was not a state but a territory called "The New Hampshire Grants" which was claimed by both New Hampshire and New York.

Here was the date Noah was taken Prisoner.

The date of July 7, 1777 gave enough information to search for what had occurred at the time period of the War.  The British General John Burgoyne began his campaign for control of the Hudson River Valley area of New York.  His troops arrived at Fort Ticonderoga on July 1, 1777.  The American forces discovered the British were placing cannons over looking the fort to begin a bombardment, so the American forces evacuated the fort on the night of July 5th.  The bulk of the Army retreated through Hubbardton (now Vermont) while the rear guard commanded by Seth Warner stopped at Hubbardton to rest and pick up stragglers.  This was Noah Moulton's Battalion.

The British alerted to the withdrawal immediately set out in pursuit of the Americans on July 6th and camped near the town of Hubbardton that night.  On the morning of July 7th began the Battle of Hubbardton,where the British surprised the American forces.  The spirited Battle resulted in the Americans being driven back and scattered.  The Battle also took a large enough toll on the British forces that they did not pursue the main American Army, but many prisoners were captured.  One of which was Noah Moulton.  The American prisoners were taken back to the British controlled Fort Ticonderoga.  From there, it is not clear where the prisoners were taken.

Fort Ticonderoga

The casualty return for the Battle was 38 British soldiers and 1 Canadian killed.  125 British wounded and 2 Canadians.  For the Americans, 41 killed, 96 wounded and 230 captured.  It has been difficult to learn what happened to the prisoners of this Battle after being taken to Fort Ticonderoga.

A local body commissioned the erection of a monument on the battlefield in 1859 and the state began acquiring battlefield lands in the 1930s for operation as a state historic site.

Battle of Hubbardton monument

Commemorative sign 

King George III of England had declared the American forces traitors in 1775 which denied them prisoner of war status, therefore British officials declined to try and or hang them. Great Britain's neglect resulted in starvation and disease which achieved the same results as hanging them. Many prisoners were taken to cities that the British controlled in 1777 which was New York and Philadelphia. The British also used old damaged, captured or obsolete ships to hold the American captives. During the war, at least 16 ships were placed by British authorities in the waters of Wallabout Bay off the shores of Brooklyn, New York as a place of incarceration for many thousands of American soldiers and sailors during about 1776-1783. These prisoners of war were harassed and abused by guards who, with little success, offered release to those who agreed to serve in the British Navy. Over 10,000 American prisoners of war died from neglect. Their corpses were often tossed overboard, though sometimes they were buried in shallow graves along the eroding shoreline.

It is said that Noah died while a prisoner which would have been after 1777, some on line family trees list his death as 1782, but with no source documentation.  But from all accounts he died while in British custody.

Uncle Ezra lost and found

As I mentioned in my previous blog on Joseph Smith, when my great-aunt told me the story of Joseph's family, she said that all his siblings had died while he was in California.  This was not entirely true, as Joseph's brother, Ezra Smith also survived.  However, as my great-aunt did not speak of him, so she did not appear to have known him or maybe she had forgotten about him if he was not close to her family.  So I as I began to research my family, I found Ezra did live beyond his brother's return from California in 1863.

My 3rd great-uncle, Ezra Smith was born on July 9, 1845 in Corinna, Maine, son of Daniel Jones Smith and Elizabeth Ann Wiggin.  He appeared on the 1850 and 1860 census living at home.  Ezra married Alwilda Ann Devereaux on April 20, 1867 in Augusta, Maine. I don't know why he married in Augusta, Maine other than Ezra also had an uncle named Ezra Sleeper Smith who resided in Hallowell, Maine whom he may have stayed with for a time.

Alwilda Devereaux was born on May 19, 1844 in Saint Albans, Maine, daughter of Dennis and Rhoda (Parkhurst) Devereaux.  Alwilda was the sister to Arminda Devereaux, who had married none other than Ezra's brother, my ancestor Joseph Smith.  So two Smith brothers married two Devereaux sisters.  As Joseph and Arminda had married in 1863, Ezra would have met Alwilda from his brother's marriage.

In July 1870, Ezra and Alwilda Smith were living in Corinna, Maine,   They were enumerated as part of his father, Daniel J. Smith's household, but as a separate household.  Ezra had followed in his father's trade of blacksmith and was working in his father's shop.

Then Ezra disappeared from Corinna census and vital records.  There was no gravestone for him in his father's lot in the Village Cemetery with the rest of his siblings.  However his wife, Alwilda Smith continued to appear on later census records usually residing in the household of her other siblings until her death in 1919.   Alwilda Smith was buried in the Village Cemetery in Saint Albans, Maine with her widowed sister.  If Ezra had died, she never remarried and always kept the surname Smith.  Of course keep in mind, I was doing this research in 1980s and this was before the internet and searchable Genealogical websites like today.  But as it turned out, fate sometimes plays a role genealogy.

My parents had divorced in 1990 and my mother remarried and moved to Gardiner, Maine and eventually I took a job in Augusta, Maine.  My mother had a dog who I would take for a walk and watch if they were going to be away for a period of time during the day. I would take the dog for walks down the street to the large Cemetery called Oak Grove near their home.  On one of my trips, I was reading the old stones and saw a gravestone for an Ezra Smith.  I began to read it and recognized the birth date of July 9, 1845.  I copied down the death date and later that day found the death certificate for Ezra and that he had died April 2, 1912 in Gardiner, Maine and was born in Corinna, son of Daniel and Elizabeth (Wiggin) Smith.  I had found Ezra!

Gravestone of Ezra Smith and wife
Oak Grove Cemetery, Gardiner, Maine

But with Ezra was his wife, Melissa Smith.  She had died in 1913.  How could this be when he had been married Alwilda Devereaux, who out lived both Ezra and Melissa?   It was not a case where Alwilda died and Ezra remarried as a widower.  It became clear that Ezra and Alwilda must have divorced.  If it was a case where Ezra deserted Alwilda and come to Gardiner and remarried, it would not have escaped the Devereaux family's notice as there was another Devereaux sister, Arvilla who had married and also lived in Gardiner, Maine, less than a mile from where Ezra resided.  It would have been highly unlikely that the two would never have crossed paths as Ezra became a blacksmith in Gardiner.  She certainly would have told her family or the authorities if Ezra had just deserted her sister and remarried illegally, and nothing suggests that Ezra was hiding at all.

It was after some discussion about Alwilda with my cousin Tarena Deden, another Devereaux descendant that I began a search for the divorce record of Erza and Alwilda.  It was surprising to learn that Ezra had petitioned for a divorce from Alwilda.  In his petition of 1873, Ezra stated that Alwilda had deserted him in August 1870, the month after they were recorded together on the 1870 census.  Alwilda had gone all the way to Florida to live with her brother, Converse Devereaux.  Ezra, then either because it was too hard to remain in Corinna with his brother and sister-in-law, whose sister had deserted him or just to start a new life on his own, moved to Hallowell, Maine.  Ezra's divorce was granted in the December term of 1873 in Kennebec County Supreme Judical Court. Of course we only have Ezra's side of the divorce and he claimed to have done nothing to cause Alwilda to desert him, but without her side, we can only speculate what would have made her escape all the way to Florida from her marriage.  After the divorce,Alwilda returned to Maine to live.  It doesn't not appear that Devereaux family members turned their backs on her as she resided with family for the rest of her life.  However, it may explain why my great-aunt Leona never mentioned her great-uncle, Ezra if there had been a divide in the relationship between the brothers over the desertion and divorce.

Ezra remarried to Melissa Britt (or Brett) on February 28, 1874 in Hallowell, Maine. His desire to remarry probably prompted him to petition for a divorce since his remarriage occurred within a ew months after the divorce was granted.

Melissa and Ezra Smith

Ezra and Melissa adopted a daughter, Mary Alice Britt,  a relative to Ezra's wife Melissa.  Ezra purchased a house on Church Street in Gardiner, Maine and was a blacksmith there.  An undated advertisement speaks of his high quality of work.

It would seem that Ezra had established a good life for himself in Gardiner, but the local newspaper provides a few mentions on Ezra in the 1880s and usually for public intoxication and drunkeness.  His adopted daughter quickly left home after the age of 18, and changed her name back to Alice Britt, marrying and moving to Brunswick, Maine.  Contact with a niece of Alice before her death, included the above photo of Ezra and Melissa and the advertisement.  She said that Alice said little of her life with the Smith Family, but it was known that she had an unhappy childhood and not treated well by her adopted family.

By 1900, Ezra and his wife are living alone in Gardiner, Maine.   The end of Ezra's life was listed on his death certificate as "suicide by shooting."   The Kennebec Journal provided the details of that event.

The Local Gardiner paper also carried that same detail, but also had included that it had reported a previous accident with Erza.  That was an incident where Ezra had fallen off a couch and broke his arm.  Nothing more reported as to how or why he fell but possibly due to his fondness of alcohol may have played a role. His widow, Melissa died the following year in 1913.  In her will, she left $1 to her daughter Alice.

The discovery of my lost 3rd great uncle, Ezra is one of the strange events in my life doing genealogy.  Obviously with today's technology, it would have been very easy to find that he had moved to Gardiner, Maine after 1870 and had a second marriage, etc.  But for that time, to happen across a gravestone for a relative that I had no idea had lived in Gardiner and for my mother to move to that same town and for me to find Ezra's stone by just walking a dog, makes believe in more than just coincidence in genealogy.