Married second, Dec 27 1883 St Paul, Howard, NE, Rebecca Rosenleaf (b. Mar 20 1851 IL, d. May 2 1903 per several ancestry.com trees); daughter of Herman Julius (36063396) and Margaret (36063558) Rosenleaf; living in Alva, Woods, OK in 1900 with her four children
Contributor: Kathy Burgess Burr (47226369) •
---------------------------------------------------
Farmer, minister, temperance leader and reputed Underground Railroad activist.

Sanford married Mary Ann Kuffel (Koffel) in Wayne County, Ohio, in 1845. They moved about 1850 to a farm in Butler Twp., DeKalb County, Indiana, where, according to a family tradition handed down through the line of their daughter Sarah Bassett Kester, they operated a stop on the Underground Railroad.

In 1871, Sanford was elected president of the first DeKalb County temperance association. In 1873, he platted "Sanford Bassett's Addition to the Town of Waterloo" in DeKalb County. This does not seem to have been a very successful venture. In 1879, he disposed of the unsold lots and moved with Mary Ann and their three youngest children to Sherman County, Nebraska. They were preceded there by John Hogue a neighbor of theirs in Butler Twp. who was treasurer of the temperance association when Sanford was its president.

Hogue later returned to DeKalb County, but the Bassetts stayed in Nebraska. Mary Ann died in 1883. Sanford remarried shortly thereafter.

Sanford and Mary Ann had eight children: Leander Sceva, born February 28, 1847, in Ohio (died in infancy); Sarah Marilla, born Oct. 10, 1848, in Ohio; Harriet Beacher, born March 14, 1851, in Indiana; Lucius Matlack, born June 2, 1853, in Indiana; Lewis Daniel, born February 29, 1856, in Indiana; Sanford Sceva, born January 6, 1859, in Indiana; Martha Ann, born May 23, 1861, in Indiana; and Cyrus Prindle, born October 19, 1863, in Indiana.

Sanford and his second wife, Rebecca Rosenberry, had four children: Alice (October 1885?), Victor Byron (June 1886?), Della M. (May 1888) and Mabel (September 1890). (Note: birth dates for first two children are too close for both to be correct.)

It is not certain in what denomination Sanford was ordained. Although the Bassetts lived near Cedar Creek Chapel, a Methodist Protestant congregation in Butler Twp. that still exists as Altarstar United Methodist Church, they were charter members of what is now the LaOtto Wesleyan Church in the former town of Simon's Corners (now LaOtto), just across the county line in Swan Twp., Noble County. Both the MP and Wesleyan Methodist denominations were noted for their anti-slavery positions.

I am indebted to Diane Weston for telling me where the Bassetts are buried; to Susan Engelhardt for the birth dates of Sandford's children by both marriages; and to Alexander Jokay as the source for the Bassetts' connection to the Wesleyan Methodist Church in LaOtto.