Interesting Crego ancestors, part 1

Interesting/famous/immigrant Crego ancestors

I have two different online genealogical websites:

1)     One is my toast.net website that I have to program and upload myself.  I haven't updated it in years;

      2)   The other is hosted by rootsweb/ancestry.  I upload my genealogy database and it is put in a format that's easy to navigate.  The advantage to using this system is that ALL my data is here - not just what I purposely wrote up and recapped. 

So that being said, as a way of presenting my information, here are several interesting Crego ancestors:

Some interesting Crego ancestors

1)  Richard J Crego, Farmer, politican.  Moved with family from New York into Jackson County, Michigan as one of the original settlers in 1831.   Successful farmer, served as a township representative for many years and eventually became a Michigan state senator.  I believe he was one of the founders of the Republican party in Jackson County in the 1850’s.  He tragically died in 1872 at age 53 (after outliving 3 wives) from typhoid fever.  He left 5 young children, who had to be taken in by relatives.

http://members.toast.net/jan.monnin/hagan/Crego,RichardJ/crego,richardjay.htm

https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=hagmon86&id=I507

2) Richard Crego,  father of Richard J. Crego..

Before moving west to Michigan in 1831, Richard and his entire family lived in Erie County, New York.  Richard was a Private in the War of 1812.

http://members.toast.net/jan.monnin/hagan/Crego,RichardMartha/crego,richardmartha.htm

https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=hagmon86&id=I522

 3)Nathaniel Gallop.  Served in the Revolutionary War as a Private, for various lengths of services, at various places and under various captains.  He was never given a pension because none of his various services could be proven by existing documentation at the time.

https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=hagmon86&id=I556

http://members.toast.net/jan.monnin/hagan/Gallop,Nathaniel/gallop,nathaniel.htm

4)Joshua Reed, Served in the Revolutionary War as a minuteman in the Massachusetts militia.

https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=hagmon86&id=I2407

5)Edward Sheldon, born in Michigan in 1836. Clerk in a store..  But also seems to have been an entrepreneur and land speculator.  We know at least he had land in Texas and that a Sheldon, North Dakota was named after him because he was one of the largest land purchasers of that town. At one point, he owned a creamery.  In the 1900 census, his occupation was described as “capitalist”.  

http://members.toast.net/jan.monnin/hagan/Sheldon,Edward/sheldon,edward.htm

https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=hagmon86&id=I510

6)Newton Sheldon, born in New York in 1810.  Farmer. Politican.  Was active in the Washtenaw County Michigan Agricultural Society.  He was one of the original officers/secretary of the Washtenaw Mutual Insurance Company..  Was also a justice of the peace, township supervisor, county clerk, and in the state legislature at various times.

https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=hagmon86&id=I2358  

7)Eli Riggs, born in New York in 1802.  Farmer.  Was one of our many ancestors whose family was in the east coast, gradually moved west into new York, then across lake erie and into Michigan. 

https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=hagmon86&id=I530

Hagan ancestors that I know about, but haven't done a lot of original research:

*  Crego Family -  The origins of the Crego Family are Dutch.  After emigrating to the English colonies across the ocean, they were in New Amsterdam.  They were also members of the Reformed Dutch Church, who kept very good genealogical records.

*Sheldon Family – The origins of the Sheldon Family are English.  Our immigrant ancestor was Isaac Sheldon, who married 2^nd Mehitable Gunn.  Here’s a website that explains some of his history:  http://josfamilyhistory.com/htm/nickel/griffin/sheldon/sheldon-isaac-1.htm

(to be continued) 

What is Sheldon, North Dakota?

There's been one mystery in our Sheldon family that I've never found an answer to.  Here's how it started.  While going through my Grandma Hagan's genealogy papers back in the 1980s, I found 2 interesting items about our ancestor, Edward Sheldon.

1)  a letter from the County Clerk of Ransom County North Dakota dated Sept 13, 1881.  It indicates that they are enclosing deeds (from March?) that were recorded, specifically one from BD Wilcox to EE Sheldon.

2)  An envelope dated 1893 from the State Bank of Sheldon North Dakota.  Someone's handwriting (probably Edwards) indicate that the contents probably held an abstract (deed?) of the 640 acres of the original town site.

Now, Edward Sheldon had been living in Jackson Michigan during this time.  And I really had no idea why there was communication about land in North Dakota.  But what peaked my interest was the fact that the town was SHELDON North Dakota.  I wondered if it was just a coincidence that our ancestor was Edward Sheldon, and the town was named Sheldon. I had these papers for about 30 years, always wondering about this mystery.

Just recently I decided to do a google search on "Sheldon North Dakota" and see what I found.  [You see, there is new digitized information going up on the net all the time, so it's useful to search your ancestors names periodically.]

Anyway.... JACKPOT!!!   I found that the town of Sheldon North Dakota had digitized a 100 year town history dated 1911.  In it,  it describes the formation of the town. (http://digitalhorizonsonline.org/cdm/ref/collection/ndsl-books/id/44417)

The Fargo & Southwestern Railroad was being built through Ransom County, North Dakota.  B.D. Wilcox bought land (I think 640 acres) from the railroad for $3200. He apparently had no money to pay for the land, so he sold the land to our ancestor, E.E. Sheldon for $3800. [Now how in the world did E.E.Sheldon who lived in Michigan, get into land speculation in North Dakota?].  The article states that Edward then platted the land, sold off some lots, deeded half the land back to the railroad so that the town could be built on that land.  About a year later, he then sold the rest of the land to another party for $8000.

So Edward made a $4200 profit in 1 year in 1882.  I did a little research on this.  The average wage earner in 1880 made $16 per week or $832 per year.  And $4200 in 1882 would be about $97,500 in todays dollars.  $4200 would be equal to about 5 years of wages. (http://www.davemanuel.com/inflation-calculator.php)

So a couple questions come up about this:

1)  How did Edward come to have $3800 to invest?
2)  How did Edward get into land speculation in North Dakota?
3)  Why would Edward speculate on land on North Dakota?

This was new great information and really filled in a lot of blanks about these North Dakota papers.  Research to do is to get copies of the deeds.  Probably put together a financial history to see where he might have come into money.

Here's his descendancy chart::

If you want to read more about Edward Sheldon, here is the link to my main family history page biography:
http://members.toast.net/jan.monnin/hagan/Sheldon,Edward/sheldon,edward-bio.htm

source documents added

Today I added original source documents to my website for the family of Edward & Minerva (Riggs) Sheldon. Here's the link: http://members.toast.net/jan.monnin/hagan/Sheldon,Edward/sheldon,edward.htm

Forest Hill Cemetery

Today Kristy and I went after church up to Michigan. We visited the Forest Hill Cemetery in Ann Arbor. My hubby purchased me a GPS and I wanted to see how to use it. It was Kristy's first cemetery trip. She did really well, considering it was cold and muddy. But we found the tombstones. The only difficulty Kristy had is that she wasn't watching where she was looking at one point and she fell over a small tombstone. She was totally muddy, and upset. So we left. Took pictures of the Sheldon Family and FB Crego Family.