Draper Family History
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Family Recollections of David
Draper (1844-1934) and John Wesley (1875-1954) and Cynthia Draper Northrup
(1876-1967) David Draper, the son of Ari
and Cynthia (Bender) Draper was born in 1844 but it is unclear where he was
born, possibly in Madison County near Chittenango and Sullivan, NY, although
military documents state Syracuse. David
married Harriett Carpenter after returning to Madison County following military
service in the Civil War. They resided
for a time near Oswego, NY in the small town, Scriba where Cynthia, the
youngest of three children, was born.
David and Harriett separated when the children were young. As a result it became necessary for David to
send two of their children, Flora and Cynthia to live with a Benedict family
(not related to our Benedicts) in Whitelaw, NY.
Elwin apparently stayed with his father but there is no record of where
he lived or was buried. Flora married
John Hawker and lived in the Utica, New York area. It is assumed that Cynthia rejoined her
father, David when she was older. David and Cynthia were
involved with the Free Methodists and, according to Mary N. Benedict, it was at
a Free Methodist camp meeting in Herkimer, NY that Cynthia first met John
Wesley Northrup. He had grown up near
Frankfort a small town in the Mohawk Valley near Herkimer. Wesley, as he was commonly called, was born
near Frankfort or Schuyler and one of six children. His father, Joseph reportedly came from
Germany as an infant, but that this has not been fully established. The family name was anglicized to Northrup but
it is not clear what the original German family name was, perhaps Nachtrup or a
similarly sounding name. His mother was
Helen Sterling. When Wesley was fifteen,
he worked in the locomotive works at Frankfort.
Being a rather small person, he was able to crawl inside a locomotive
boiler to place rivets into holes in the boiler plate and hold a heavy weight
against rivets as they were hammered by workers on the outside. The intense noise lead to Wesley’s life-long
hearing difficulty. David spoke occasionally
about his tour of duty during the Civil War as a Private in the New York 157th
Infantry Regiment, Co. I, 11th Army Corps.
He served with his brother, William and with Robert and George
Carpenter, brothers of Harriett Carpenter.
The NY 157th was at the Battle of Gettysburg where David sustained a
wound to his head that was apparently not extensive enough to have been
officially recorded in the NY 157th records.
David related to Augustus “Gus” Weaver Benedict (1903 - 2002), how after
being wounded he was being treated in a medical tent when during the fighting
the Union Army was pushed back leaving David and others behind Confederate
lines. The Confederates took as prisoner
anyone from the medical tent who could walk.
It was believed that prisoners were taken to some of the infamous
Confederate prisons. Appearing more severely
wounded than he actually was, David pretended he was too “sick” to leave his
bed. According to Gus, David would say to
him with a twinkle in his eye, “I was very sick that day.” The Confederates left him behind and, after
the Union troops surged forward, he was reunited with the Union troops. He used to show family members the crease
along the side of his head that resulted from a glancing mini-ball -- a close
call for David and his descendants! David spoke of one incident in which a
woman in the South pleaded with Union soldiers not to take her cow and of
another how the soldiers when hungry would eat “swamp rabbit” -- likely
muskrat, possum, or even skunk, by some civil war accounts. Records from the National
Archives show that William Draper was also wounded at Gettysburg. This is also documented in the records of the
NY 157th as is Robert Carpenter’s death at Dingle’s Mill, South Carolina (see
notes below). After David was mustered
out of the Army, he suffered from catarrh, a chronic inflammation of the nose
and throat and later in life, severe rheumatism; both diseases were attributed
to sleeping on the ground while in the Union Army. He eventually applied for and received a
pension from the government as disability compensation. Results of research indicate that such
pensions were not automatic and required formal petitioning to the Federal
Government. Civil War records of various
battles show that often more soldiers died from or were debilitated by disease
than by enemy fire. One can surmise that
there must have been a very high number of similar petitions for disability
pensions made by those who suffered life-long effects of diseases contracted
during military service.
David’s petition for
disability pension reflected difficulty for him to do farm work. Whether this
had any impact on the ownership arrangement of the farm in Rome is not
clear. We do know that at one time
Wesley and David owned a team of horses.
Joint ownership of the team became a significant issue when Wesley,
attracted to a religious cult called The Kingdom by its founder, Frank
Sandford, considered moving the family to Shiloh, Maine. David may have sensed the problems that lay
ahead for such a venture and refused to sell his share of the team to
Wesley. That put an end to the matter of
moving the family. Wesley continued his
interest in The Kingdom but must have come to realize that David’s decision not
to sell was fortuitous as The Kingdom community collapsed in the 1920’s amid
scandal and loss of many member families’ life savings. Wesley’s brother Frank, however, did make the
move to Shiloh with his wife, Mary (Hicks); they remained in that area after
the debacle for the rest of their lives and are buried in the Shiloh Cemetery.
(*) According to his
granddaughter, Mary, David was quiet man who kept to himself much of the
time. He enjoyed fishing, making many
fishing lures over the years. At one
time he owned a cottage at Lakeport, NY on Oneida Lake, the site of many Northrup family
vacations. In his later years, poor eyesight made it difficult for him to catch fish. On one outing with Gus Benedict, the fish
were biting so lightly that unless the fish could be seen taking the bait there
was no chance of catching one. Gus could
catch the fish with ease as he could see them readily. David’s vision was so
poor in old age that he failed to hook any. By Gus’ account David was very
upset by his inability to catch fish that day. David’s second wife was
Charlotte Fellows, about whom we have no knowledge of death or burial. We do know that for a time David and
Charlotte made their home at Chatham
Street in Rome, NY. In 1925, David lived
at 225 East Bloomfield Street. David
lived out the rest of his life in Rome, last residing at 423 William Street
near the home of Wesley and Cynthia. His
1934 obituary states that he died at age 90 while praying at his bedside with
his pastor. He is buried in the Northrup
- Draper plot in the Rome Cemetery. At some point in time, David
came to possess a beautiful music box.
One of his great granddaughters tells the following:
“I have his
Regina music box with 50 metal disks.
Mother presented it to me when
she came out west. Her only request was
that I pass it down to one of my children that would appreciate its historical
value. It has a beautiful cardboard
picture of two child angels that appears to have been a greeting card. It was placed on the inside of the lid with
very tiny nails to hold it in place along with another smaller silver card that
says “Seek ye the Lord”. My mother told
me that Grandpa Draper had placed this in the lid. I don’t know if Grandma [Cynthia] had given
me her music box or if it came directly from Grandpa David.” In a restored copy of a
photograph David holds a second but much smaller music box, which is no longer
among family possessions. This photograph was likely taken at David’s camp on
Oneida Lake or perhaps at one of his residences in Rome, NY.
David and Wesley were
vegetable growers on their muck (glacial lake-bottom soil) farm in the
Canastota, NY area. Wesley and Cynthia
were likely a married couple at the time. Because the Canastota area was very
windy, they sold that farm, and moved to a muck-land farm on Muck Road, Rome,
NY. According to Gus Benedict, the
prevailing high winds blew the soil away from the tops of the onion bulbs. The loss of soil during the growing season
resulted in small onions and low yields. They had
greater success growing vegetables on their Rome farm where Wesley later
established the Rome Celery Company, raising celery, lettuce and onions for shipment to grocery stores in central and eastern New York State and
eastern Canada. His specialty was bleached
(white) celery. Celery was bleached by
banking (covering) it with soil in the fields during the last stages of
maturity. At harvest time he harvested,
wrapped and stored the celery at the farm for eventual delivery to customers. We recall watching Grandpa Wesley at his farm
wrapping bunches of bleached celery in white or brown paper tied with red
string using a mechanical wrapping device operated by foot pedals. White celery, the standard for years, fell
out of favor among consumers when green Pascal celery came into the marketplace
during the 1940’s and 1950‘s. The family farm house first
stood on South Jay Street in the middle of what is now the Erie Canal, formerly
called the New York State Barge Canal and not to be confused with the original
Erie Canal referred to in history as “Clinton‘s Ditch“. The fields of celery, onions and lettuce were
a very short distance from the original house site along what is now called the
Muck Road that runs along the Canal.
When the house was moved further up South Jay Street, where it presently
stands, to make way for canal construction in 1912, the Northrup family moved into the city of
Rome to a large house at 414 William Street.
It was from there that Wesley traveled daily during the growing season
to tend the crops at the farm while helping to raise a family of five children.
The decline in demand for bleached celery coincided with Wesley’s decision to
pass along the farm to a younger set of hands.
Wesley sold out to a farmer, Sam Merchant but went out see Sam and the farm
from time to time. For several years
after he sold the farm, he worked for the City of Rome Sanitation
Department. He continued to employ his
“green thumb” talents by growing beautiful flowers beside the family home on
William Street. Mary Northrup Benedict (1907
-) did her father’s bookkeeping and drove his Model T Ford automobile as he
traveled taking orders for produce prior to spring planting. She started driving on these trips when she
was only 16 at a time when no driver’s license was necessary. She tells how her father would not allow her
to drive until she could change a tire, a major undertaking in those days. Later, before their marriage, Mary and Gus
would drive Wesley around the eastern, northern, and central areas of New York
and north as far as Canada to visit produce customers. This afforded them a great opportunity to do
their “sparking” while Wesley was inside grocery stores and hotels taking
orders. It was on one of these trips in
1928 that Mary and Gus bought rings for their up-coming wedding of August 21,
1928.
Mabel Northrup Gleasman (1910
-1985), wife of Marvin Earl Gleasman, Sr. (1909 - 1971) was the “poster girl” for Rome Celery Company
shipping tags that accompanied each shipment of produce. A picture of Mabel on the tag shows her
holding a large bundle of celery.
We all cherish the many
memories of the times when the Northrups, Gleasmans and Benedicts gathered
around Grandpa and Grandma Northrup for special occasions and little
visits. We can still envision Grandma in
her apron smiling and working in the kitchen, Grandpa puttering in the garden,
reading his Bible or listening to his radio, and parents, aunts and uncles laughing
and carrying on. As youngsters we took
it all in even if we had to sit at the kids’ table. That was expected and
accepted until we were old enough to sit at the “big people‘s table“. While we all have fond first-hand memories of
Grandpa Wesley and Grandma Cynthia, most of us were either too young to
remember David or not yet born before he died.
However, stories about him that came down to us through our parents and
extended families remain a cherished part in our family story. It is our hope that by
collecting these fragments of oral family history we will have added to our
children and grandchildren’s understanding of their Draper-Northrup roots,
preserving a few of our recollections by written account for enjoyment by
succeeding generations. Had we not taken
the time to collect and write down these memories we might have risked losing
them forever.
Notes:
We encourage
anyone to share any recollections that could be added to this bit of family history. Additional genealogical data on the Draper
family can be found on
http://members.shaw.ca/familyhistory/ , an excellent
Website designed and maintained by our second
cousin, , which details Warkentin - Draper genealogy and provides links among
others to records of the 157th Regiment Infantry of New York .
(*) Nelson, Shirley, Fair, Clear
and Terrible: A Story of Shiloh, A Strange
Fragment of
American History, British American Publishing, Latham, NY, 1989 provides an
interesting account of The Kingdom at Shiloh, Maine. Prepared by Lewis W.
Benedict in collaboration with descendants of David Draper and John Wesley and Cynthia Draper Northrup. 10-18-2003 |
