HER LAST PLACE. From their northeast corner of Iowa, her family lived within a few hours, by train, of three other states, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. So close, It would not be surprising to find her relatives in all of those places, would it? Minnesota would be chosen by three, son Oscar Benites, her brother Wales Verness French off to Duluth, her brother Aaron, to Wabasha County, the latter before moving out west to SD. Others would go further west, her son Bert retiring in California. Still others stayed. Her son Manuel died locally, while a young married man. Her married daughter was apparently present in Dubuque to sign Esther's death record.
For the fifty years after she married, her hometown would be Dubuque, beautifully green in certain seasons, with scenic bluff lines, but not well-known, so attracting few tourists. It was already an old place, visited or occupied by Spanish and French miners and such, who, long ago, lived alongside native tribes. The city would be named for one of the Frenchmen, his grave high-up on the wooded river bluffs.
The local township was given the Frenchman's first name, Julien. It, eventually, for awhile, had boundaries matching those of the city. Before that, what became Julien Twp. was known as a mining region. Across the Mississippi River, Galena, Illinois, was similarly busy with mining. "Galena" was Spanish for "lead", that second town, thus, named for one of the metals mined there, one which moderns recognize as a serious health hazard if used wrongly. The Fox natives had earlier abandoned their own mines on the Dubuque side of the Mississippi, not needing the metal, no longer trading it for whatever they did need, presumably as they could sell furs instead.
The French-speaking Canadian named Julien Du Buque had previously canoed and portaged, southward from Canada, to reach a southmost corner of what was then spelled as "Ouisconsin" on some French maps, to become future Wisconsin. The corner had a strategic location, called Prairie du Chien. He was able to negotiate and purchase some mining rights "catty-corner" from there, on the Iowa side of the Mississippi, his rights maybe stretching nine miles along the big river. The owner selling to him was one of the Fox tribe's matriarchs. That was about 1788. He thus had paid the Fox in order to mine their land on the Iowa side, but needed double permission, so also needed a grant from the ruling Spanish governor. That would be given in 1796. His businesses came to be called "the Mines of Spain".
Other ethnicities came. "The Americans", formerly British, were in charge by 1804. Some wanted to take-over and re-sell some lands previously granted to others, to fill their own treasuries. An expensive court battle followed. Officials now in charge, no longer Spanish, determined that Du Buque had been granted rights only to work the mines, not to own any of them. Having lost land he'd paid for, Du Buque boarded a ship headed back to Canada. He developed pneumonia in the rough, cold weather and died on board. His friends and family (a mixed party of French and Metis "voyageurs", plus native Fox tribal members) were said to fetch his body. They buried him back at Dubuque, on a bluff top over the town, where his grave would have faced the river. They gave him a Catholic burial service. That would have been in 1810, ahead of the War of 1812.
The Catholics did not wait for the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, nor for the train-track building that would bring in the Irish. They already had enough members in the Dubuque area to open an official diocese, by 1835, pre-statehood.
The eventually heavy presence of Catholic churches in the area began with the place's early French-Canadian and Metis populations. "Metis" referred to an ethnic mix, locally meaning French-Canadians who had intermarried with the Fox tribe. By the time Esther had settled in Ward I with her spouse, however, their neighbors would be Irish, not French or Metis. The church of the Irish was perhaps the one her son Manuel Jr. had attended when he died in 1916, called St. Patrick. He was already done with his peacetime war service, so did not register for WW I. Yet, he died in 1916 anyway. The newer threat at home was that of the Spanish Flu, Did he die of that?
Brought to Dubuque by her Protestant parents, Esther would find herself living near the old Spanish Mines. Marrying a man with a Spanish name, born in Mexico, whose father had been a Spaniard born in Europe, Esther would ultimately call herself Catholic. That was seen in a state census that asked the religion question, her family's answer a ditto mark under the "Catholic" listed for the Irish neighbors above them. She was probably the only one of her siblings to consider herself Catholic, her new choice of church giving her children more records than typical in her generation.
Did her siblings and parents accept her choice? Maybe they were so varied in their own choices, they would not have cared?
FAMILY OF BIRTH. Her father was probably a Baptist, of the northern sort, not southern. His children were tracked by CheriF (/user/profile/49178255), wife to a descendant of Esther's nephew, Cyril French. She noted that Esther was the eldest of nine, that Esther's father, disabled while working on a Baptist church, retired at an "old soldiers home" in Kansas, where he spent 12 to 13 years, before dying in 1898. His wife, Esther's mother, Susan, not yet a widow, called herself Presbyterian when interviewed for her 1895 State Census. Susan French headed a household that contained Esther's youngest sister Minnie and her brother George W, both still single. George was age 29, Minnie about 22, more or less matching the age on her death record. The 1895 State Census also found Esther's brother Wales, he was married and calling himself Methodist. Their mother Susan's obituary would say the widow lived with that son, Wales V. in Dubuque, at the time of her death in 1901 (he later moved to Minnesota). His 1900 US Census in Duluth as W. French, Ohio-born, found his first wife still living, listed as Wisconsin-born Mattie (the former Martha Anderson), his son Cyril, his daughters Nettie and Nellie. They had lots of neighbors with German surnames, so clearly were not in Esther's neighborhood. There was no Susan Landphair French at his house yet, though she would die there soon enough. Her death at his house was thus perhaps a surprise to all, happening on a visit? Normally a mother of that era known to be seriously ill would live with a daughter. Sister Minnie died young, before their mother, so she was not in care of Susan. Esther's house had one of her four children married and away from home, with room for Susan, yet Susan was not there, either. Had Susan spent time with one of the younger daughters listed at the gravepage of her spouse, someone whose cemetery has not yet been found?
SOURCES, REGARDING FAMILY IN DUBUQUE
*Esther Benites in 1885: IAGenWeb.org/dubuque/census/1885/Dubuque_Ward5-1.htm All children born, except the last.
*Esther Benites in 1895: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6SJQ-14N
Spouse as "Emanuel", mis-stated as just 8 years older. Four children, "Burt", "May", Oscar, and Emanuel.
*Susan French in 1895: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DBT7-HQL
*Wales French in 1895: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DBT7-4HQ
W. French in 1900: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M9KF-9V5
Esther in 1900: Her husband's last known Census, on June 5, his age now corrected to 13 years older than Esther's, both reporting they had been married 26 years. Only three children were still home, with Esther saying four had been born, all stay living. Esther's family perhaps did not understand the Vermont background of her father, Jacob Wales French, his institutional care causing him to not be there to answer his family's questions. They thus repeatedly misreported his birth state, this time guessing Ohio, earlier guessing Penn. Her mother was present in Dubuque most if not all of the years her father lived in the Kansas veteran's home, able to answer questions, so they knew she was born in NY state.
*Esther's death: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS3B-JQM5-P
NOTE: The following is repetitious of other Findagrave pages and too long, so will be cut. It will be left for a time, so people can consult it while trying to locate the graves of other relatives.
BEFORE HER TIME. Esther's adopted town's spelling stayed as Du Buque while Iowa was still part of the old Wisconsin Territory. When Wisconsin became a full state (1838), the Iowa Territory formed from the remnant. That territorial govt. lasted until Iowa's statehood in 1846. The new Iowans then partly "Britishized" the town's spelling to Dubuque, but their pronunciation of "buque" still rhymed with Luke, as before.
What was the appeal of forming the state to new Iowans?
The land was good for farming, with jobs in transportation and opportunites for both merchants nd ministers. A further appeal? If those opposing slavery arrived early enough and in sufficient numbers, they could control the state constitution and forbid slavery.
Being around for the formation of a new state was witnessed by her father's Frenches, who had gone early to future Vermont. Wiki historians writing on "Slave states and free states" say this (as of Mar. 2020) : "Although not one of the Thirteen Colonies, Vermont declared its independence from Britain in 1777 and at the same time abolished slavery, before being admitted as a state in 1791."
IN HER TIME. Esther's Protestant parents took their children to Dubuque sometime between 1870 and 1873. According to her brother Aaron's obituary, they had gone first to Cedar Falls, Iowa, in 1861, so, were in Black Hawk County just as the Civil War broke out. Her father and her future spouse would both fight on the northern side in that war. Her spouse was apparently not yet in Iowa, would not marry her until 1873 or 1874, so joined the Ohio Infantry for the big war.
As the country geared up for War in 1862, she was only about age 10. There were still steamboats coming south to Dubuque from the Twin Cities , north from St. Louis. The wide and long Ohio River emptied into the Mississippi near St Louis, providing one "easy old way" to future spouse Manuel/Emanuel Benites the senior to arrive from Ohio, before trains came through. The Ohio River had been connected to Cleveland and thus the Great Lakes by a canal bulilt in 1825. However, beginning before the Civil War, the new-fangled trains began to bring migrants.
Most newcomers, first the Easterners, then the Germans, wanted to farm. River barges moved their farm products to bigger cities north and south on the Mississippi. . Later, trains could move farm goods to major markets eastward as well, bring consumer goods back, not just follow the river north and south. Passenger trains eventually replaced the steamboats that had earlier had helped make Dubuque important.Those trains running along the Mississippi gradually expanded their tracks northward to the Twin Cities, then past there to logging areas such as Brainerd, where one of her brothers, a machinist for the railroads, is buried, then out west where other brothers lie buried. Much of the north-south train trackage ran on riverside terraces, the terraces' convenient flatness marking what was left of a once wider riverbed, slowly worn smooth, eons earlier, by glacier meltwaters that then ceased to flow.
Did Esther's father, Jacob Wales French, was a carpenter. Did he ever work for those railroads? He had been named for an uncle who died in Massachusetts. Called Wales at home, he used "J. W." to help separate him from the first Jacob Wales French. if he specialised in new buidlings, not remodelings, J.W. needed to move as rail trackage expanded settlements to new places, causing some of Esther's younger siblings to be born in Illinois, before their move to Iowa. Her father first took his family to Cedar Falls 1861, then to Dubuque, where Esther and a brother would marry and stay, with another stint at Waterloo (Black Hawk County, Iowa).
Some of his distant cousins, the children of Micah French, farmed nearby, in Story County. Micah French had been born in Vermont, just like JW, but in a different town. They descended of the same British immigrants who had originally settled just south of Boston. (John French raised their many children with wife Grace in what is still called Braintree, Mass. He and Grace were buried in the part of old Braintree now called Quincy, Mass., some sons and later generations to be buried across the road from old Braintree's second church on what is now Elm Street, called Congregational post-Revolution, their "second burying ground" across the street, with most old gravestones missing.)
HER DETAILS. Some records spelled her first name as "Ester". Some older family trees listed her as having died "before 1880". Apparently, this was said, as they could not find her as Esther French in the 1880 Census. In reality, her last name had changed to Benites before 1880. She married Manuel Benites in Dubuque on Aug. 13, 1873. (SOURCE: "Iowa, County Marriages, 1838-1934", at FamilySearch.org)
Her father's work caused the family to be in different towns for different Censuses. For the 1860 Census, Esther and everyone except her father was counted in the household of her Landphair grandparents in Ohio. (They lived in the extinct farming place of Rockport Twp., on the west side of Cleveland, now the lovely 1920s "street car suburb" called Lakewood.)
His son Aaron's obituary said they moved to Cedar Fall (Black Hawk County, Iowa) ln 1861. By their 1870 US Census, her family was in Waterloo, Iowa, also in Black Hawk County. her parents were in tDubuque for their 1880 US Cenus. While everyone else seemed to be there, Esther was no longer with her parents, but wit her new spouse, so moderns assumed her death.
Her real birthdate? There are two versions, one from survivors (August 17, 1852), given after her death by a survivor who possibly made a guess; the other, from her own or her spouse's answers in the 1900 US Census (August, 1851). In 1900, the birth year was very clearly written, but month and year only, no precise day given.
The county registrar submitted a handwritten copy of her death report, with the 1852 birth date given by a survivor, to Iowa's Dept. of Vital Statistics. The certificate noted she was buried at Linwood Cemetery, with Hoffmann & Sons of Dubuque making the arrangements. View the microfilm image here, also cited above:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS3B-JQM5-P
The iagenweb.org website currently reports under 8000 graves at Linwood as both listed and photographed. That amounts to about one-third of the total. The survivor giving Esther's personal information and signing? Mrs. Deloris Kauffman, her daughter, with whom the widowed Esther lived in her last years.
When asked for birthplaces, was Deloris surprised to be asked such questions? Adult children would often substitute where ever parents or grandparents had grown up or "were from". Esther's family of Frenches had moved from Ohio to Iowa, staying at other places in-between. Thus, the answer of Ohio was given for both Esther and her father, Mr. French. It was true only for her.
In records instead done while Esther's husband still lived, he used the Spanish version of his name, Emanuel. Did that make it natural for people to call him Manuel? Daughter Deloris gave the English version, Emmanuel.
What was the maiden name of Esther's mother? The place where her mother had been born? Deloris did not know. Surely, she would have known her grandmother's first name. That obvious thing was not asked, nor her grandfather's first name, needed to separate him from all the other Mr. Frenches.
Happily, only one set of Frenches both lived in Iowa in the first decades after it reached statehood and also had a daughter named Esther, born in Ohio, in the early 1850s, as required to match her death information. She was last counted with her original family, not her marriage partner, in Black Hawk County, Iowa, in Waterloo, for the 1870 US Census. Waterloo was inland from Dubuque. In modern times, it became known as a meat-packing center.
J. W. French (born Vermont, age 42) was a railroad employee. He was one of several in their neighborhood, explaining their moves, as railroads were expanding then. Susan A. French was at home housekeeping (born NY, age 43). Esther M. was the eldest of seven surviving children on June 25 when their census-taker knocked at their door. The children were ages 17 through 2. Only the 12-year-old gave her occupation as "student", maybe explained by the season being summertime, maybe as the eldest four had quit school after age 12, as the town lacked a high school. East Waterloo High School would not open until 1874, too late for these teenagers. Esther, just 17, worked as a house servant, so there must have been wealthy people nearby. (River towns often had inherited wealth leftover from the steamboat days.)
Their names were spreads across two pages, beginning with this one:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-624W-PH6
Page 2:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-624W-2HC
One obituary said that, in addition to her daughter, Mrs. J. F. Kaufmann of Walnut Street, two sons survived her. They were Albert J. Benites of Denver (seen elsewhere as Bert Benites) and Benjamin Benites of St. Paul, Minnesota. Despite being the eldest child, she had managed to outlive all but two siblings, as only Mary Fix of "central Iowa" and George French of Roberts, Idaho, survived her.
A second obituary said she had long been ill, before dying at that daughter's home, on 1075 Walnut Street. The news paper did not call her husband Emmanuel or Manuel as seen on her death and marriage records. Esther was instead cited as "the widow of Samuel Benites. She came to Dubuque 60 years ago from Ohio." He thus may have switched between middle and first names. However, zero records for Samuel Benites have been found, thus far, so it may have been the newspaper's error.
In the 1900 Census, she reported having had four children, all still living at the time. In addition to three above, there was Manuel A. Benites. Manuel Jr., born 1890, still alive for the 1910 Census, worked as a cutter in an factory making overalls for farmers. He must have been recently deceased at the time of her funeral, to have been omitted from her obituary. Albert J. Benites
==============================
Julien Du Buque
For the fifty years after she married, her hometown would be Dubuque, beautifully green in certain seasons, with scenic bluff lines, but not well-known, so attracting few tourists. It was already an old place, visited or occupied by Spanish and French miners and such, who, long ago, lived alongside native tribes. The city would be named for one of the Frenchmen, his grave high-up on the wooded river bluffs.
The local township was given the Frenchman's first name, Julien. It, eventually, for awhile, had boundaries matching those of the city. Before that, what became Julien Twp. was known as a mining region. Across the Mississippi River, Galena, Illinois, was similarly busy with mining. "Galena" was Spanish for "lead", that second town, thus, named for one of the metals mined there, one which moderns recognize as a serious health hazard if used wrongly. The Fox natives had earlier abandoned their own mines on the Dubuque side of the Mississippi, not needing the metal, no longer trading it for whatever they did need, presumably as they could sell furs instead.
The French-speaking Canadian named Julien Du Buque had previously canoed and portaged, southward from Canada, to reach a southmost corner of what was then spelled as "Ouisconsin" on some French maps, to become future Wisconsin. The corner had a strategic location, called Prairie du Chien. He was able to negotiate and purchase some mining rights "catty-corner" from there, on the Iowa side of the Mississippi, his rights maybe stretching nine miles along the big river. The owner selling to him was one of the Fox tribe's matriarchs. That was about 1788. He thus had paid the Fox in order to mine their land on the Iowa side, but needed double permission, so also needed a grant from the ruling Spanish governor. That would be given in 1796. His businesses came to be called "the Mines of Spain".
Other ethnicities came. "The Americans", formerly British, were in charge by 1804. Some wanted to take-over and re-sell some lands previously granted to others, to fill their own treasuries. An expensive court battle followed. Officials now in charge, no longer Spanish, determined that Du Buque had been granted rights only to work the mines, not to own any of them. Having lost land he'd paid for, Du Buque boarded a ship headed back to Canada. He developed pneumonia in the rough, cold weather and died on board. His friends and family (a mixed party of French and Metis "voyageurs", plus native Fox tribal members) were said to fetch his body. They buried him back at Dubuque, on a bluff top over the town, where his grave would have faced the river. They gave him a Catholic burial service. That would have been in 1810, ahead of the War of 1812.
The Catholics did not wait for the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, nor for the train-track building that would bring in the Irish. They already had enough members in the Dubuque area to open an official diocese, by 1835, pre-statehood.
The eventually heavy presence of Catholic churches in the area began with the place's early French-Canadian and Metis populations. "Metis" referred to an ethnic mix, locally meaning French-Canadians who had intermarried with the Fox tribe. By the time Esther had settled in Ward I with her spouse, however, their neighbors would be Irish, not French or Metis. The church of the Irish was perhaps the one her son Manuel Jr. had attended when he died in 1916, called St. Patrick. He was already done with his peacetime war service, so did not register for WW I. Yet, he died in 1916 anyway. The newer threat at home was that of the Spanish Flu, Did he die of that?
Brought to Dubuque by her Protestant parents, Esther would find herself living near the old Spanish Mines. Marrying a man with a Spanish name, born in Mexico, whose father had been a Spaniard born in Europe, Esther would ultimately call herself Catholic. That was seen in a state census that asked the religion question, her family's answer a ditto mark under the "Catholic" listed for the Irish neighbors above them. She was probably the only one of her siblings to consider herself Catholic, her new choice of church giving her children more records than typical in her generation.
Did her siblings and parents accept her choice? Maybe they were so varied in their own choices, they would not have cared?
FAMILY OF BIRTH. Her father was probably a Baptist, of the northern sort, not southern. His children were tracked by CheriF (/user/profile/49178255), wife to a descendant of Esther's nephew, Cyril French. She noted that Esther was the eldest of nine, that Esther's father, disabled while working on a Baptist church, retired at an "old soldiers home" in Kansas, where he spent 12 to 13 years, before dying in 1898. His wife, Esther's mother, Susan, not yet a widow, called herself Presbyterian when interviewed for her 1895 State Census. Susan French headed a household that contained Esther's youngest sister Minnie and her brother George W, both still single. George was age 29, Minnie about 22, more or less matching the age on her death record. The 1895 State Census also found Esther's brother Wales, he was married and calling himself Methodist. Their mother Susan's obituary would say the widow lived with that son, Wales V. in Dubuque, at the time of her death in 1901 (he later moved to Minnesota). His 1900 US Census in Duluth as W. French, Ohio-born, found his first wife still living, listed as Wisconsin-born Mattie (the former Martha Anderson), his son Cyril, his daughters Nettie and Nellie. They had lots of neighbors with German surnames, so clearly were not in Esther's neighborhood. There was no Susan Landphair French at his house yet, though she would die there soon enough. Her death at his house was thus perhaps a surprise to all, happening on a visit? Normally a mother of that era known to be seriously ill would live with a daughter. Sister Minnie died young, before their mother, so she was not in care of Susan. Esther's house had one of her four children married and away from home, with room for Susan, yet Susan was not there, either. Had Susan spent time with one of the younger daughters listed at the gravepage of her spouse, someone whose cemetery has not yet been found?
SOURCES, REGARDING FAMILY IN DUBUQUE
*Esther Benites in 1885: IAGenWeb.org/dubuque/census/1885/Dubuque_Ward5-1.htm All children born, except the last.
*Esther Benites in 1895: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6SJQ-14N
Spouse as "Emanuel", mis-stated as just 8 years older. Four children, "Burt", "May", Oscar, and Emanuel.
*Susan French in 1895: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DBT7-HQL
*Wales French in 1895: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DBT7-4HQ
W. French in 1900: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M9KF-9V5
Esther in 1900: Her husband's last known Census, on June 5, his age now corrected to 13 years older than Esther's, both reporting they had been married 26 years. Only three children were still home, with Esther saying four had been born, all stay living. Esther's family perhaps did not understand the Vermont background of her father, Jacob Wales French, his institutional care causing him to not be there to answer his family's questions. They thus repeatedly misreported his birth state, this time guessing Ohio, earlier guessing Penn. Her mother was present in Dubuque most if not all of the years her father lived in the Kansas veteran's home, able to answer questions, so they knew she was born in NY state.
*Esther's death: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS3B-JQM5-P
NOTE: The following is repetitious of other Findagrave pages and too long, so will be cut. It will be left for a time, so people can consult it while trying to locate the graves of other relatives.
BEFORE HER TIME. Esther's adopted town's spelling stayed as Du Buque while Iowa was still part of the old Wisconsin Territory. When Wisconsin became a full state (1838), the Iowa Territory formed from the remnant. That territorial govt. lasted until Iowa's statehood in 1846. The new Iowans then partly "Britishized" the town's spelling to Dubuque, but their pronunciation of "buque" still rhymed with Luke, as before.
What was the appeal of forming the state to new Iowans?
The land was good for farming, with jobs in transportation and opportunites for both merchants nd ministers. A further appeal? If those opposing slavery arrived early enough and in sufficient numbers, they could control the state constitution and forbid slavery.
Being around for the formation of a new state was witnessed by her father's Frenches, who had gone early to future Vermont. Wiki historians writing on "Slave states and free states" say this (as of Mar. 2020) : "Although not one of the Thirteen Colonies, Vermont declared its independence from Britain in 1777 and at the same time abolished slavery, before being admitted as a state in 1791."
IN HER TIME. Esther's Protestant parents took their children to Dubuque sometime between 1870 and 1873. According to her brother Aaron's obituary, they had gone first to Cedar Falls, Iowa, in 1861, so, were in Black Hawk County just as the Civil War broke out. Her father and her future spouse would both fight on the northern side in that war. Her spouse was apparently not yet in Iowa, would not marry her until 1873 or 1874, so joined the Ohio Infantry for the big war.
As the country geared up for War in 1862, she was only about age 10. There were still steamboats coming south to Dubuque from the Twin Cities , north from St. Louis. The wide and long Ohio River emptied into the Mississippi near St Louis, providing one "easy old way" to future spouse Manuel/Emanuel Benites the senior to arrive from Ohio, before trains came through. The Ohio River had been connected to Cleveland and thus the Great Lakes by a canal bulilt in 1825. However, beginning before the Civil War, the new-fangled trains began to bring migrants.
Most newcomers, first the Easterners, then the Germans, wanted to farm. River barges moved their farm products to bigger cities north and south on the Mississippi. . Later, trains could move farm goods to major markets eastward as well, bring consumer goods back, not just follow the river north and south. Passenger trains eventually replaced the steamboats that had earlier had helped make Dubuque important.Those trains running along the Mississippi gradually expanded their tracks northward to the Twin Cities, then past there to logging areas such as Brainerd, where one of her brothers, a machinist for the railroads, is buried, then out west where other brothers lie buried. Much of the north-south train trackage ran on riverside terraces, the terraces' convenient flatness marking what was left of a once wider riverbed, slowly worn smooth, eons earlier, by glacier meltwaters that then ceased to flow.
Did Esther's father, Jacob Wales French, was a carpenter. Did he ever work for those railroads? He had been named for an uncle who died in Massachusetts. Called Wales at home, he used "J. W." to help separate him from the first Jacob Wales French. if he specialised in new buidlings, not remodelings, J.W. needed to move as rail trackage expanded settlements to new places, causing some of Esther's younger siblings to be born in Illinois, before their move to Iowa. Her father first took his family to Cedar Falls 1861, then to Dubuque, where Esther and a brother would marry and stay, with another stint at Waterloo (Black Hawk County, Iowa).
Some of his distant cousins, the children of Micah French, farmed nearby, in Story County. Micah French had been born in Vermont, just like JW, but in a different town. They descended of the same British immigrants who had originally settled just south of Boston. (John French raised their many children with wife Grace in what is still called Braintree, Mass. He and Grace were buried in the part of old Braintree now called Quincy, Mass., some sons and later generations to be buried across the road from old Braintree's second church on what is now Elm Street, called Congregational post-Revolution, their "second burying ground" across the street, with most old gravestones missing.)
HER DETAILS. Some records spelled her first name as "Ester". Some older family trees listed her as having died "before 1880". Apparently, this was said, as they could not find her as Esther French in the 1880 Census. In reality, her last name had changed to Benites before 1880. She married Manuel Benites in Dubuque on Aug. 13, 1873. (SOURCE: "Iowa, County Marriages, 1838-1934", at FamilySearch.org)
Her father's work caused the family to be in different towns for different Censuses. For the 1860 Census, Esther and everyone except her father was counted in the household of her Landphair grandparents in Ohio. (They lived in the extinct farming place of Rockport Twp., on the west side of Cleveland, now the lovely 1920s "street car suburb" called Lakewood.)
His son Aaron's obituary said they moved to Cedar Fall (Black Hawk County, Iowa) ln 1861. By their 1870 US Census, her family was in Waterloo, Iowa, also in Black Hawk County. her parents were in tDubuque for their 1880 US Cenus. While everyone else seemed to be there, Esther was no longer with her parents, but wit her new spouse, so moderns assumed her death.
Her real birthdate? There are two versions, one from survivors (August 17, 1852), given after her death by a survivor who possibly made a guess; the other, from her own or her spouse's answers in the 1900 US Census (August, 1851). In 1900, the birth year was very clearly written, but month and year only, no precise day given.
The county registrar submitted a handwritten copy of her death report, with the 1852 birth date given by a survivor, to Iowa's Dept. of Vital Statistics. The certificate noted she was buried at Linwood Cemetery, with Hoffmann & Sons of Dubuque making the arrangements. View the microfilm image here, also cited above:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS3B-JQM5-P
The iagenweb.org website currently reports under 8000 graves at Linwood as both listed and photographed. That amounts to about one-third of the total. The survivor giving Esther's personal information and signing? Mrs. Deloris Kauffman, her daughter, with whom the widowed Esther lived in her last years.
When asked for birthplaces, was Deloris surprised to be asked such questions? Adult children would often substitute where ever parents or grandparents had grown up or "were from". Esther's family of Frenches had moved from Ohio to Iowa, staying at other places in-between. Thus, the answer of Ohio was given for both Esther and her father, Mr. French. It was true only for her.
In records instead done while Esther's husband still lived, he used the Spanish version of his name, Emanuel. Did that make it natural for people to call him Manuel? Daughter Deloris gave the English version, Emmanuel.
What was the maiden name of Esther's mother? The place where her mother had been born? Deloris did not know. Surely, she would have known her grandmother's first name. That obvious thing was not asked, nor her grandfather's first name, needed to separate him from all the other Mr. Frenches.
Happily, only one set of Frenches both lived in Iowa in the first decades after it reached statehood and also had a daughter named Esther, born in Ohio, in the early 1850s, as required to match her death information. She was last counted with her original family, not her marriage partner, in Black Hawk County, Iowa, in Waterloo, for the 1870 US Census. Waterloo was inland from Dubuque. In modern times, it became known as a meat-packing center.
J. W. French (born Vermont, age 42) was a railroad employee. He was one of several in their neighborhood, explaining their moves, as railroads were expanding then. Susan A. French was at home housekeeping (born NY, age 43). Esther M. was the eldest of seven surviving children on June 25 when their census-taker knocked at their door. The children were ages 17 through 2. Only the 12-year-old gave her occupation as "student", maybe explained by the season being summertime, maybe as the eldest four had quit school after age 12, as the town lacked a high school. East Waterloo High School would not open until 1874, too late for these teenagers. Esther, just 17, worked as a house servant, so there must have been wealthy people nearby. (River towns often had inherited wealth leftover from the steamboat days.)
Their names were spreads across two pages, beginning with this one:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-624W-PH6
Page 2:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-624W-2HC
One obituary said that, in addition to her daughter, Mrs. J. F. Kaufmann of Walnut Street, two sons survived her. They were Albert J. Benites of Denver (seen elsewhere as Bert Benites) and Benjamin Benites of St. Paul, Minnesota. Despite being the eldest child, she had managed to outlive all but two siblings, as only Mary Fix of "central Iowa" and George French of Roberts, Idaho, survived her.
A second obituary said she had long been ill, before dying at that daughter's home, on 1075 Walnut Street. The news paper did not call her husband Emmanuel or Manuel as seen on her death and marriage records. Esther was instead cited as "the widow of Samuel Benites. She came to Dubuque 60 years ago from Ohio." He thus may have switched between middle and first names. However, zero records for Samuel Benites have been found, thus far, so it may have been the newspaper's error.
In the 1900 Census, she reported having had four children, all still living at the time. In addition to three above, there was Manuel A. Benites. Manuel Jr., born 1890, still alive for the 1910 Census, worked as a cutter in an factory making overalls for farmers. He must have been recently deceased at the time of her funeral, to have been omitted from her obituary. Albert J. Benites
==============================
Julien Du Buque
HER LAST PLACE. From their northeast corner of Iowa, her family lived within a few hours, by train, of three other states, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. So close, It would not be surprising to find her relatives in all of those places, would it? Minnesota would be chosen by three, son Oscar Benites, her brother Wales Verness French off to Duluth, her brother Aaron, to Wabasha County, the latter before moving out west to SD. Others would go further west, her son Bert retiring in California. Still others stayed. Her son Manuel died locally, while a young married man. Her married daughter was apparently present in Dubuque to sign Esther's death record.
For the fifty years after she married, her hometown would be Dubuque, beautifully green in certain seasons, with scenic bluff lines, but not well-known, so attracting few tourists. It was already an old place, visited or occupied by Spanish and French miners and such, who, long ago, lived alongside native tribes. The city would be named for one of the Frenchmen, his grave high-up on the wooded river bluffs.
The local township was given the Frenchman's first name, Julien. It, eventually, for awhile, had boundaries matching those of the city. Before that, what became Julien Twp. was known as a mining region. Across the Mississippi River, Galena, Illinois, was similarly busy with mining. "Galena" was Spanish for "lead", that second town, thus, named for one of the metals mined there, one which moderns recognize as a serious health hazard if used wrongly. The Fox natives had earlier abandoned their own mines on the Dubuque side of the Mississippi, not needing the metal, no longer trading it for whatever they did need, presumably as they could sell furs instead.
The French-speaking Canadian named Julien Du Buque had previously canoed and portaged, southward from Canada, to reach a southmost corner of what was then spelled as "Ouisconsin" on some French maps, to become future Wisconsin. The corner had a strategic location, called Prairie du Chien. He was able to negotiate and purchase some mining rights "catty-corner" from there, on the Iowa side of the Mississippi, his rights maybe stretching nine miles along the big river. The owner selling to him was one of the Fox tribe's matriarchs. That was about 1788. He thus had paid the Fox in order to mine their land on the Iowa side, but needed double permission, so also needed a grant from the ruling Spanish governor. That would be given in 1796. His businesses came to be called "the Mines of Spain".
Other ethnicities came. "The Americans", formerly British, were in charge by 1804. Some wanted to take-over and re-sell some lands previously granted to others, to fill their own treasuries. An expensive court battle followed. Officials now in charge, no longer Spanish, determined that Du Buque had been granted rights only to work the mines, not to own any of them. Having lost land he'd paid for, Du Buque boarded a ship headed back to Canada. He developed pneumonia in the rough, cold weather and died on board. His friends and family (a mixed party of French and Metis "voyageurs", plus native Fox tribal members) were said to fetch his body. They buried him back at Dubuque, on a bluff top over the town, where his grave would have faced the river. They gave him a Catholic burial service. That would have been in 1810, ahead of the War of 1812.
The Catholics did not wait for the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, nor for the train-track building that would bring in the Irish. They already had enough members in the Dubuque area to open an official diocese, by 1835, pre-statehood.
The eventually heavy presence of Catholic churches in the area began with the place's early French-Canadian and Metis populations. "Metis" referred to an ethnic mix, locally meaning French-Canadians who had intermarried with the Fox tribe. By the time Esther had settled in Ward I with her spouse, however, their neighbors would be Irish, not French or Metis. The church of the Irish was perhaps the one her son Manuel Jr. had attended when he died in 1916, called St. Patrick. He was already done with his peacetime war service, so did not register for WW I. Yet, he died in 1916 anyway. The newer threat at home was that of the Spanish Flu, Did he die of that?
Brought to Dubuque by her Protestant parents, Esther would find herself living near the old Spanish Mines. Marrying a man with a Spanish name, born in Mexico, whose father had been a Spaniard born in Europe, Esther would ultimately call herself Catholic. That was seen in a state census that asked the religion question, her family's answer a ditto mark under the "Catholic" listed for the Irish neighbors above them. She was probably the only one of her siblings to consider herself Catholic, her new choice of church giving her children more records than typical in her generation.
Did her siblings and parents accept her choice? Maybe they were so varied in their own choices, they would not have cared?
FAMILY OF BIRTH. Her father was probably a Baptist, of the northern sort, not southern. His children were tracked by CheriF (/user/profile/49178255), wife to a descendant of Esther's nephew, Cyril French. She noted that Esther was the eldest of nine, that Esther's father, disabled while working on a Baptist church, retired at an "old soldiers home" in Kansas, where he spent 12 to 13 years, before dying in 1898. His wife, Esther's mother, Susan, not yet a widow, called herself Presbyterian when interviewed for her 1895 State Census. Susan French headed a household that contained Esther's youngest sister Minnie and her brother George W, both still single. George was age 29, Minnie about 22, more or less matching the age on her death record. The 1895 State Census also found Esther's brother Wales, he was married and calling himself Methodist. Their mother Susan's obituary would say the widow lived with that son, Wales V. in Dubuque, at the time of her death in 1901 (he later moved to Minnesota). His 1900 US Census in Duluth as W. French, Ohio-born, found his first wife still living, listed as Wisconsin-born Mattie (the former Martha Anderson), his son Cyril, his daughters Nettie and Nellie. They had lots of neighbors with German surnames, so clearly were not in Esther's neighborhood. There was no Susan Landphair French at his house yet, though she would die there soon enough. Her death at his house was thus perhaps a surprise to all, happening on a visit? Normally a mother of that era known to be seriously ill would live with a daughter. Sister Minnie died young, before their mother, so she was not in care of Susan. Esther's house had one of her four children married and away from home, with room for Susan, yet Susan was not there, either. Had Susan spent time with one of the younger daughters listed at the gravepage of her spouse, someone whose cemetery has not yet been found?
SOURCES, REGARDING FAMILY IN DUBUQUE
*Esther Benites in 1885: IAGenWeb.org/dubuque/census/1885/Dubuque_Ward5-1.htm All children born, except the last.
*Esther Benites in 1895: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6SJQ-14N
Spouse as "Emanuel", mis-stated as just 8 years older. Four children, "Burt", "May", Oscar, and Emanuel.
*Susan French in 1895: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DBT7-HQL
*Wales French in 1895: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DBT7-4HQ
W. French in 1900: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M9KF-9V5
Esther in 1900: Her husband's last known Census, on June 5, his age now corrected to 13 years older than Esther's, both reporting they had been married 26 years. Only three children were still home, with Esther saying four had been born, all stay living. Esther's family perhaps did not understand the Vermont background of her father, Jacob Wales French, his institutional care causing him to not be there to answer his family's questions. They thus repeatedly misreported his birth state, this time guessing Ohio, earlier guessing Penn. Her mother was present in Dubuque most if not all of the years her father lived in the Kansas veteran's home, able to answer questions, so they knew she was born in NY state.
*Esther's death: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS3B-JQM5-P
NOTE: The following is repetitious of other Findagrave pages and too long, so will be cut. It will be left for a time, so people can consult it while trying to locate the graves of other relatives.
BEFORE HER TIME. Esther's adopted town's spelling stayed as Du Buque while Iowa was still part of the old Wisconsin Territory. When Wisconsin became a full state (1838), the Iowa Territory formed from the remnant. That territorial govt. lasted until Iowa's statehood in 1846. The new Iowans then partly "Britishized" the town's spelling to Dubuque, but their pronunciation of "buque" still rhymed with Luke, as before.
What was the appeal of forming the state to new Iowans?
The land was good for farming, with jobs in transportation and opportunites for both merchants nd ministers. A further appeal? If those opposing slavery arrived early enough and in sufficient numbers, they could control the state constitution and forbid slavery.
Being around for the formation of a new state was witnessed by her father's Frenches, who had gone early to future Vermont. Wiki historians writing on "Slave states and free states" say this (as of Mar. 2020) : "Although not one of the Thirteen Colonies, Vermont declared its independence from Britain in 1777 and at the same time abolished slavery, before being admitted as a state in 1791."
IN HER TIME. Esther's Protestant parents took their children to Dubuque sometime between 1870 and 1873. According to her brother Aaron's obituary, they had gone first to Cedar Falls, Iowa, in 1861, so, were in Black Hawk County just as the Civil War broke out. Her father and her future spouse would both fight on the northern side in that war. Her spouse was apparently not yet in Iowa, would not marry her until 1873 or 1874, so joined the Ohio Infantry for the big war.
As the country geared up for War in 1862, she was only about age 10. There were still steamboats coming south to Dubuque from the Twin Cities , north from St. Louis. The wide and long Ohio River emptied into the Mississippi near St Louis, providing one "easy old way" to future spouse Manuel/Emanuel Benites the senior to arrive from Ohio, before trains came through. The Ohio River had been connected to Cleveland and thus the Great Lakes by a canal bulilt in 1825. However, beginning before the Civil War, the new-fangled trains began to bring migrants.
Most newcomers, first the Easterners, then the Germans, wanted to farm. River barges moved their farm products to bigger cities north and south on the Mississippi. . Later, trains could move farm goods to major markets eastward as well, bring consumer goods back, not just follow the river north and south. Passenger trains eventually replaced the steamboats that had earlier had helped make Dubuque important.Those trains running along the Mississippi gradually expanded their tracks northward to the Twin Cities, then past there to logging areas such as Brainerd, where one of her brothers, a machinist for the railroads, is buried, then out west where other brothers lie buried. Much of the north-south train trackage ran on riverside terraces, the terraces' convenient flatness marking what was left of a once wider riverbed, slowly worn smooth, eons earlier, by glacier meltwaters that then ceased to flow.
Did Esther's father, Jacob Wales French, was a carpenter. Did he ever work for those railroads? He had been named for an uncle who died in Massachusetts. Called Wales at home, he used "J. W." to help separate him from the first Jacob Wales French. if he specialised in new buidlings, not remodelings, J.W. needed to move as rail trackage expanded settlements to new places, causing some of Esther's younger siblings to be born in Illinois, before their move to Iowa. Her father first took his family to Cedar Falls 1861, then to Dubuque, where Esther and a brother would marry and stay, with another stint at Waterloo (Black Hawk County, Iowa).
Some of his distant cousins, the children of Micah French, farmed nearby, in Story County. Micah French had been born in Vermont, just like JW, but in a different town. They descended of the same British immigrants who had originally settled just south of Boston. (John French raised their many children with wife Grace in what is still called Braintree, Mass. He and Grace were buried in the part of old Braintree now called Quincy, Mass., some sons and later generations to be buried across the road from old Braintree's second church on what is now Elm Street, called Congregational post-Revolution, their "second burying ground" across the street, with most old gravestones missing.)
HER DETAILS. Some records spelled her first name as "Ester". Some older family trees listed her as having died "before 1880". Apparently, this was said, as they could not find her as Esther French in the 1880 Census. In reality, her last name had changed to Benites before 1880. She married Manuel Benites in Dubuque on Aug. 13, 1873. (SOURCE: "Iowa, County Marriages, 1838-1934", at FamilySearch.org)
Her father's work caused the family to be in different towns for different Censuses. For the 1860 Census, Esther and everyone except her father was counted in the household of her Landphair grandparents in Ohio. (They lived in the extinct farming place of Rockport Twp., on the west side of Cleveland, now the lovely 1920s "street car suburb" called Lakewood.)
His son Aaron's obituary said they moved to Cedar Fall (Black Hawk County, Iowa) ln 1861. By their 1870 US Census, her family was in Waterloo, Iowa, also in Black Hawk County. her parents were in tDubuque for their 1880 US Cenus. While everyone else seemed to be there, Esther was no longer with her parents, but wit her new spouse, so moderns assumed her death.
Her real birthdate? There are two versions, one from survivors (August 17, 1852), given after her death by a survivor who possibly made a guess; the other, from her own or her spouse's answers in the 1900 US Census (August, 1851). In 1900, the birth year was very clearly written, but month and year only, no precise day given.
The county registrar submitted a handwritten copy of her death report, with the 1852 birth date given by a survivor, to Iowa's Dept. of Vital Statistics. The certificate noted she was buried at Linwood Cemetery, with Hoffmann & Sons of Dubuque making the arrangements. View the microfilm image here, also cited above:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS3B-JQM5-P
The iagenweb.org website currently reports under 8000 graves at Linwood as both listed and photographed. That amounts to about one-third of the total. The survivor giving Esther's personal information and signing? Mrs. Deloris Kauffman, her daughter, with whom the widowed Esther lived in her last years.
When asked for birthplaces, was Deloris surprised to be asked such questions? Adult children would often substitute where ever parents or grandparents had grown up or "were from". Esther's family of Frenches had moved from Ohio to Iowa, staying at other places in-between. Thus, the answer of Ohio was given for both Esther and her father, Mr. French. It was true only for her.
In records instead done while Esther's husband still lived, he used the Spanish version of his name, Emanuel. Did that make it natural for people to call him Manuel? Daughter Deloris gave the English version, Emmanuel.
What was the maiden name of Esther's mother? The place where her mother had been born? Deloris did not know. Surely, she would have known her grandmother's first name. That obvious thing was not asked, nor her grandfather's first name, needed to separate him from all the other Mr. Frenches.
Happily, only one set of Frenches both lived in Iowa in the first decades after it reached statehood and also had a daughter named Esther, born in Ohio, in the early 1850s, as required to match her death information. She was last counted with her original family, not her marriage partner, in Black Hawk County, Iowa, in Waterloo, for the 1870 US Census. Waterloo was inland from Dubuque. In modern times, it became known as a meat-packing center.
J. W. French (born Vermont, age 42) was a railroad employee. He was one of several in their neighborhood, explaining their moves, as railroads were expanding then. Susan A. French was at home housekeeping (born NY, age 43). Esther M. was the eldest of seven surviving children on June 25 when their census-taker knocked at their door. The children were ages 17 through 2. Only the 12-year-old gave her occupation as "student", maybe explained by the season being summertime, maybe as the eldest four had quit school after age 12, as the town lacked a high school. East Waterloo High School would not open until 1874, too late for these teenagers. Esther, just 17, worked as a house servant, so there must have been wealthy people nearby. (River towns often had inherited wealth leftover from the steamboat days.)
Their names were spreads across two pages, beginning with this one:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-624W-PH6
Page 2:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-624W-2HC
One obituary said that, in addition to her daughter, Mrs. J. F. Kaufmann of Walnut Street, two sons survived her. They were Albert J. Benites of Denver (seen elsewhere as Bert Benites) and Benjamin Benites of St. Paul, Minnesota. Despite being the eldest child, she had managed to outlive all but two siblings, as only Mary Fix of "central Iowa" and George French of Roberts, Idaho, survived her.
A second obituary said she had long been ill, before dying at that daughter's home, on 1075 Walnut Street. The news paper did not call her husband Emmanuel or Manuel as seen on her death and marriage records. Esther was instead cited as "the widow of Samuel Benites. She came to Dubuque 60 years ago from Ohio." He thus may have switched between middle and first names. However, zero records for Samuel Benites have been found, thus far, so it may have been the newspaper's error.
In the 1900 Census, she reported having had four children, all still living at the time. In addition to three above, there was Manuel A. Benites. Manuel Jr., born 1890, still alive for the 1910 Census, worked as a cutter in an factory making overalls for farmers. He must have been recently deceased at the time of her funeral, to have been omitted from her obituary. Albert J. Benites
==============================
Julien Du Buque
For the fifty years after she married, her hometown would be Dubuque, beautifully green in certain seasons, with scenic bluff lines, but not well-known, so attracting few tourists. It was already an old place, visited or occupied by Spanish and French miners and such, who, long ago, lived alongside native tribes. The city would be named for one of the Frenchmen, his grave high-up on the wooded river bluffs.
The local township was given the Frenchman's first name, Julien. It, eventually, for awhile, had boundaries matching those of the city. Before that, what became Julien Twp. was known as a mining region. Across the Mississippi River, Galena, Illinois, was similarly busy with mining. "Galena" was Spanish for "lead", that second town, thus, named for one of the metals mined there, one which moderns recognize as a serious health hazard if used wrongly. The Fox natives had earlier abandoned their own mines on the Dubuque side of the Mississippi, not needing the metal, no longer trading it for whatever they did need, presumably as they could sell furs instead.
The French-speaking Canadian named Julien Du Buque had previously canoed and portaged, southward from Canada, to reach a southmost corner of what was then spelled as "Ouisconsin" on some French maps, to become future Wisconsin. The corner had a strategic location, called Prairie du Chien. He was able to negotiate and purchase some mining rights "catty-corner" from there, on the Iowa side of the Mississippi, his rights maybe stretching nine miles along the big river. The owner selling to him was one of the Fox tribe's matriarchs. That was about 1788. He thus had paid the Fox in order to mine their land on the Iowa side, but needed double permission, so also needed a grant from the ruling Spanish governor. That would be given in 1796. His businesses came to be called "the Mines of Spain".
Other ethnicities came. "The Americans", formerly British, were in charge by 1804. Some wanted to take-over and re-sell some lands previously granted to others, to fill their own treasuries. An expensive court battle followed. Officials now in charge, no longer Spanish, determined that Du Buque had been granted rights only to work the mines, not to own any of them. Having lost land he'd paid for, Du Buque boarded a ship headed back to Canada. He developed pneumonia in the rough, cold weather and died on board. His friends and family (a mixed party of French and Metis "voyageurs", plus native Fox tribal members) were said to fetch his body. They buried him back at Dubuque, on a bluff top over the town, where his grave would have faced the river. They gave him a Catholic burial service. That would have been in 1810, ahead of the War of 1812.
The Catholics did not wait for the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, nor for the train-track building that would bring in the Irish. They already had enough members in the Dubuque area to open an official diocese, by 1835, pre-statehood.
The eventually heavy presence of Catholic churches in the area began with the place's early French-Canadian and Metis populations. "Metis" referred to an ethnic mix, locally meaning French-Canadians who had intermarried with the Fox tribe. By the time Esther had settled in Ward I with her spouse, however, their neighbors would be Irish, not French or Metis. The church of the Irish was perhaps the one her son Manuel Jr. had attended when he died in 1916, called St. Patrick. He was already done with his peacetime war service, so did not register for WW I. Yet, he died in 1916 anyway. The newer threat at home was that of the Spanish Flu, Did he die of that?
Brought to Dubuque by her Protestant parents, Esther would find herself living near the old Spanish Mines. Marrying a man with a Spanish name, born in Mexico, whose father had been a Spaniard born in Europe, Esther would ultimately call herself Catholic. That was seen in a state census that asked the religion question, her family's answer a ditto mark under the "Catholic" listed for the Irish neighbors above them. She was probably the only one of her siblings to consider herself Catholic, her new choice of church giving her children more records than typical in her generation.
Did her siblings and parents accept her choice? Maybe they were so varied in their own choices, they would not have cared?
FAMILY OF BIRTH. Her father was probably a Baptist, of the northern sort, not southern. His children were tracked by CheriF (/user/profile/49178255), wife to a descendant of Esther's nephew, Cyril French. She noted that Esther was the eldest of nine, that Esther's father, disabled while working on a Baptist church, retired at an "old soldiers home" in Kansas, where he spent 12 to 13 years, before dying in 1898. His wife, Esther's mother, Susan, not yet a widow, called herself Presbyterian when interviewed for her 1895 State Census. Susan French headed a household that contained Esther's youngest sister Minnie and her brother George W, both still single. George was age 29, Minnie about 22, more or less matching the age on her death record. The 1895 State Census also found Esther's brother Wales, he was married and calling himself Methodist. Their mother Susan's obituary would say the widow lived with that son, Wales V. in Dubuque, at the time of her death in 1901 (he later moved to Minnesota). His 1900 US Census in Duluth as W. French, Ohio-born, found his first wife still living, listed as Wisconsin-born Mattie (the former Martha Anderson), his son Cyril, his daughters Nettie and Nellie. They had lots of neighbors with German surnames, so clearly were not in Esther's neighborhood. There was no Susan Landphair French at his house yet, though she would die there soon enough. Her death at his house was thus perhaps a surprise to all, happening on a visit? Normally a mother of that era known to be seriously ill would live with a daughter. Sister Minnie died young, before their mother, so she was not in care of Susan. Esther's house had one of her four children married and away from home, with room for Susan, yet Susan was not there, either. Had Susan spent time with one of the younger daughters listed at the gravepage of her spouse, someone whose cemetery has not yet been found?
SOURCES, REGARDING FAMILY IN DUBUQUE
*Esther Benites in 1885: IAGenWeb.org/dubuque/census/1885/Dubuque_Ward5-1.htm All children born, except the last.
*Esther Benites in 1895: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6SJQ-14N
Spouse as "Emanuel", mis-stated as just 8 years older. Four children, "Burt", "May", Oscar, and Emanuel.
*Susan French in 1895: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DBT7-HQL
*Wales French in 1895: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DBT7-4HQ
W. French in 1900: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M9KF-9V5
Esther in 1900: Her husband's last known Census, on June 5, his age now corrected to 13 years older than Esther's, both reporting they had been married 26 years. Only three children were still home, with Esther saying four had been born, all stay living. Esther's family perhaps did not understand the Vermont background of her father, Jacob Wales French, his institutional care causing him to not be there to answer his family's questions. They thus repeatedly misreported his birth state, this time guessing Ohio, earlier guessing Penn. Her mother was present in Dubuque most if not all of the years her father lived in the Kansas veteran's home, able to answer questions, so they knew she was born in NY state.
*Esther's death: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS3B-JQM5-P
NOTE: The following is repetitious of other Findagrave pages and too long, so will be cut. It will be left for a time, so people can consult it while trying to locate the graves of other relatives.
BEFORE HER TIME. Esther's adopted town's spelling stayed as Du Buque while Iowa was still part of the old Wisconsin Territory. When Wisconsin became a full state (1838), the Iowa Territory formed from the remnant. That territorial govt. lasted until Iowa's statehood in 1846. The new Iowans then partly "Britishized" the town's spelling to Dubuque, but their pronunciation of "buque" still rhymed with Luke, as before.
What was the appeal of forming the state to new Iowans?
The land was good for farming, with jobs in transportation and opportunites for both merchants nd ministers. A further appeal? If those opposing slavery arrived early enough and in sufficient numbers, they could control the state constitution and forbid slavery.
Being around for the formation of a new state was witnessed by her father's Frenches, who had gone early to future Vermont. Wiki historians writing on "Slave states and free states" say this (as of Mar. 2020) : "Although not one of the Thirteen Colonies, Vermont declared its independence from Britain in 1777 and at the same time abolished slavery, before being admitted as a state in 1791."
IN HER TIME. Esther's Protestant parents took their children to Dubuque sometime between 1870 and 1873. According to her brother Aaron's obituary, they had gone first to Cedar Falls, Iowa, in 1861, so, were in Black Hawk County just as the Civil War broke out. Her father and her future spouse would both fight on the northern side in that war. Her spouse was apparently not yet in Iowa, would not marry her until 1873 or 1874, so joined the Ohio Infantry for the big war.
As the country geared up for War in 1862, she was only about age 10. There were still steamboats coming south to Dubuque from the Twin Cities , north from St. Louis. The wide and long Ohio River emptied into the Mississippi near St Louis, providing one "easy old way" to future spouse Manuel/Emanuel Benites the senior to arrive from Ohio, before trains came through. The Ohio River had been connected to Cleveland and thus the Great Lakes by a canal bulilt in 1825. However, beginning before the Civil War, the new-fangled trains began to bring migrants.
Most newcomers, first the Easterners, then the Germans, wanted to farm. River barges moved their farm products to bigger cities north and south on the Mississippi. . Later, trains could move farm goods to major markets eastward as well, bring consumer goods back, not just follow the river north and south. Passenger trains eventually replaced the steamboats that had earlier had helped make Dubuque important.Those trains running along the Mississippi gradually expanded their tracks northward to the Twin Cities, then past there to logging areas such as Brainerd, where one of her brothers, a machinist for the railroads, is buried, then out west where other brothers lie buried. Much of the north-south train trackage ran on riverside terraces, the terraces' convenient flatness marking what was left of a once wider riverbed, slowly worn smooth, eons earlier, by glacier meltwaters that then ceased to flow.
Did Esther's father, Jacob Wales French, was a carpenter. Did he ever work for those railroads? He had been named for an uncle who died in Massachusetts. Called Wales at home, he used "J. W." to help separate him from the first Jacob Wales French. if he specialised in new buidlings, not remodelings, J.W. needed to move as rail trackage expanded settlements to new places, causing some of Esther's younger siblings to be born in Illinois, before their move to Iowa. Her father first took his family to Cedar Falls 1861, then to Dubuque, where Esther and a brother would marry and stay, with another stint at Waterloo (Black Hawk County, Iowa).
Some of his distant cousins, the children of Micah French, farmed nearby, in Story County. Micah French had been born in Vermont, just like JW, but in a different town. They descended of the same British immigrants who had originally settled just south of Boston. (John French raised their many children with wife Grace in what is still called Braintree, Mass. He and Grace were buried in the part of old Braintree now called Quincy, Mass., some sons and later generations to be buried across the road from old Braintree's second church on what is now Elm Street, called Congregational post-Revolution, their "second burying ground" across the street, with most old gravestones missing.)
HER DETAILS. Some records spelled her first name as "Ester". Some older family trees listed her as having died "before 1880". Apparently, this was said, as they could not find her as Esther French in the 1880 Census. In reality, her last name had changed to Benites before 1880. She married Manuel Benites in Dubuque on Aug. 13, 1873. (SOURCE: "Iowa, County Marriages, 1838-1934", at FamilySearch.org)
Her father's work caused the family to be in different towns for different Censuses. For the 1860 Census, Esther and everyone except her father was counted in the household of her Landphair grandparents in Ohio. (They lived in the extinct farming place of Rockport Twp., on the west side of Cleveland, now the lovely 1920s "street car suburb" called Lakewood.)
His son Aaron's obituary said they moved to Cedar Fall (Black Hawk County, Iowa) ln 1861. By their 1870 US Census, her family was in Waterloo, Iowa, also in Black Hawk County. her parents were in tDubuque for their 1880 US Cenus. While everyone else seemed to be there, Esther was no longer with her parents, but wit her new spouse, so moderns assumed her death.
Her real birthdate? There are two versions, one from survivors (August 17, 1852), given after her death by a survivor who possibly made a guess; the other, from her own or her spouse's answers in the 1900 US Census (August, 1851). In 1900, the birth year was very clearly written, but month and year only, no precise day given.
The county registrar submitted a handwritten copy of her death report, with the 1852 birth date given by a survivor, to Iowa's Dept. of Vital Statistics. The certificate noted she was buried at Linwood Cemetery, with Hoffmann & Sons of Dubuque making the arrangements. View the microfilm image here, also cited above:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS3B-JQM5-P
The iagenweb.org website currently reports under 8000 graves at Linwood as both listed and photographed. That amounts to about one-third of the total. The survivor giving Esther's personal information and signing? Mrs. Deloris Kauffman, her daughter, with whom the widowed Esther lived in her last years.
When asked for birthplaces, was Deloris surprised to be asked such questions? Adult children would often substitute where ever parents or grandparents had grown up or "were from". Esther's family of Frenches had moved from Ohio to Iowa, staying at other places in-between. Thus, the answer of Ohio was given for both Esther and her father, Mr. French. It was true only for her.
In records instead done while Esther's husband still lived, he used the Spanish version of his name, Emanuel. Did that make it natural for people to call him Manuel? Daughter Deloris gave the English version, Emmanuel.
What was the maiden name of Esther's mother? The place where her mother had been born? Deloris did not know. Surely, she would have known her grandmother's first name. That obvious thing was not asked, nor her grandfather's first name, needed to separate him from all the other Mr. Frenches.
Happily, only one set of Frenches both lived in Iowa in the first decades after it reached statehood and also had a daughter named Esther, born in Ohio, in the early 1850s, as required to match her death information. She was last counted with her original family, not her marriage partner, in Black Hawk County, Iowa, in Waterloo, for the 1870 US Census. Waterloo was inland from Dubuque. In modern times, it became known as a meat-packing center.
J. W. French (born Vermont, age 42) was a railroad employee. He was one of several in their neighborhood, explaining their moves, as railroads were expanding then. Susan A. French was at home housekeeping (born NY, age 43). Esther M. was the eldest of seven surviving children on June 25 when their census-taker knocked at their door. The children were ages 17 through 2. Only the 12-year-old gave her occupation as "student", maybe explained by the season being summertime, maybe as the eldest four had quit school after age 12, as the town lacked a high school. East Waterloo High School would not open until 1874, too late for these teenagers. Esther, just 17, worked as a house servant, so there must have been wealthy people nearby. (River towns often had inherited wealth leftover from the steamboat days.)
Their names were spreads across two pages, beginning with this one:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-624W-PH6
Page 2:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-624W-2HC
One obituary said that, in addition to her daughter, Mrs. J. F. Kaufmann of Walnut Street, two sons survived her. They were Albert J. Benites of Denver (seen elsewhere as Bert Benites) and Benjamin Benites of St. Paul, Minnesota. Despite being the eldest child, she had managed to outlive all but two siblings, as only Mary Fix of "central Iowa" and George French of Roberts, Idaho, survived her.
A second obituary said she had long been ill, before dying at that daughter's home, on 1075 Walnut Street. The news paper did not call her husband Emmanuel or Manuel as seen on her death and marriage records. Esther was instead cited as "the widow of Samuel Benites. She came to Dubuque 60 years ago from Ohio." He thus may have switched between middle and first names. However, zero records for Samuel Benites have been found, thus far, so it may have been the newspaper's error.
In the 1900 Census, she reported having had four children, all still living at the time. In addition to three above, there was Manuel A. Benites. Manuel Jr., born 1890, still alive for the 1910 Census, worked as a cutter in an factory making overalls for farmers. He must have been recently deceased at the time of her funeral, to have been omitted from her obituary. Albert J. Benites
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Julien Du Buque
Gravesite Details
Cemetery named in death record, no plot number given.
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