Elisha Dorr Knower
Clearly, he's related, but how?
Elisha Dorr Knower's date of birth is about 1810, according to several censuses. He bears the Knower name, but is not now identifiable as the child of any Knower in Roxbury or Albany. He could possibly have been a son of Daniel Knower, who was married in Roxbury in 1809, and was known to have had a daughter by 1810. He could possibly be a son of Timothy Knower, who lived in New York around that time, or Samuel Knower, an early emigrant to Albany, but no evidence supports any of these notions. Research by David Randall supports very strongly his identification as the son of George Knower.
Elisha is not named among the children of Benjamin Knower of Albany in the hatter's will, nor is he buried in that family's plot at Albany Rural Cemetery. David Randall found rather that he is buried in Green-wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, in the same plot as Mary Knower Randall, a sister of the hatmaker. This deepened the mystery, until David also discovered a report of the marriage of Ann K. Randall and Elisha D. Knower in the New York Post of May 15, 1834: "Last evening by Rev. Mr. Summers, Elisha D. Knower to Ann K. Randall, all of this city." Ann K. Randall was a daughter of Mary Knower Randall. Mary Knower Randall therefore was Elisha's mother-in-law, and John Randall and William Hannaford Randall were his brothers-in law. William H. Randall must have esteemed him -- in 1839 he named a son Elisha D. Knower Randall.
Elisha and his family appear in the 1850, 1870 and 1880 federal censuses in New York City, but he has not yet been found in the 1860 census. New evidence from the Norfolk County (Mass.) Registry of Deeds suggests that he may have been in the Boston area in 1860. Several deeds dated in the early 1860s record his purchases of land in Roxbury that had belonged to members of his wife's family. In 1870, fur merchant Elisha Knower, 60, and his wife Anna, 57, are again residents of New York City. He states he and his parents were all born in New York. He may have been born in New York, but it seems very unlikely that his parents were. His wife's birthdate is given as around 1813 in Massachusetts. Their children are Marie, 25; and Edmund, 21. Marie became the wife of Edward Bartow. In the 1880 census, the Bartows and their children -- Marie, 3; and Anna, 7 months -- are all part of the Elisha Knower household, a wealthy one, which included three servants.
But among the Knowers, who was Elisha? In only one document can we even affirm that the middle initial "D." stands for Dorr: a deed dated June 1863 in which one Lucius Manlius Sargent of Roxbury sells him a parcel of land known as the Belknap Estate. This land abuts land "formerly of Samuel Weld more recently of Mary Randall." If Samuel Weld was the father of Elizabeth Weld, Mary Knower Randall was his granddaughter. She was definitely a sister of Benjamin Knower of Albany, Timothy Knower of New York and Daniel Knower of Roxbury and Albany. It is certain Sthat Elisha was a near cousin to his wife.
Could the name Elisha Dorr itself be a clue? We believe, but cannot yet prove, that the wife of George Knower, the likely father of Elisha Dorr Knower, was named Ann Dorr.. According to "Span of a Century," a centennial booklet published by the Mechanics and Farmers' Bank of Albany, one of its founding directors was Elisha Dorr. He was a native of Lyme, Connecticut, and had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War, though curiously, a pension application in his name was rejected when the state of Connecticut could find no record of his service. Like the Knower brothers, Dorr was prominent in the "Yankee Invasion" of New Englanders who migrated to Albany in the early 1800s in search of fortune. Elisha Dorr, Audley Peckham and Benjamin Knower were among those named to the first board of directors of the bank in 1811. Benjamin Knower served as president of the board from 1817 to 1834. Martin Van Buren, who would become the eighth president of the United States, was the board's attorney.