My husband's Bentley ancestors moved from upstate New York to settle in Elkhart county, Indiana in the mid-1830s. William Tyler Bentley (1795-1873) and his wife Olivia Morgan Bentley (1799?-1838) had seven children before she died during a particularly severe winter in Indiana.
William never remarried. About 1850, he went west to begin farming in Tulare County, California as it became a state. Many of his family members also went to California at that time to farm or raise livestock.
William's daughter Elizabeth E. Bentley (1821?-1898?) married widower Emanuel Light (1815-1897) in Elkhart, Indiana in 1847, becoming a stepmother to his sons David and Eugene. The family moved to California and settled in Santa Rosa, north of San Francisco. As adults, David Light and Eugene Light also became farmers in Santa Rosa (see top left of map).
Then why did David die in Silver City, California in 1863? He was reportedly 22 years old, and multiple news reports of his death only provide a date and a place.** Silver City is in the area now known as Sequoia National Park, a mountainous region that today has no year-round residents. Interestingly, Silver City (bottom right of map) is much closer to Tulare (where William Bentley died in 1873) than to Santa Rosa, where the rest of David's family lived.
Silver City was apparently part of the California Silver Rush. Was David seeking his fortune there? Or was he in Silver City for some other reason? As the map shows, it was more than 300 miles from his farm (and his father and brother), quite a long distance to travel in 1863.
Remembering David Light (1839-1863), outlived by his brother Eugene Light (1840-1908) and his father Emanuel Light.
**UPDATE: Two wonderful readers recommended doing further newspaper research. Several newspapers, which I looked at previously, indicated Silver City without any state. This matters because other reports of deaths in those papers indicated a state only when the death took place outside of California.
But! One report, in the Sonoma County Journal, indicated David M. Light died in "Silver City, N.T." which translates to Nevada Territory--the site of lots of Silver Rush action! (Nevada didn't become a state until 1864.)
Since Silver City, Nevada is closer to David Light's farm in Santa Rosa than Silver City, Calif., as shown on map above, it is very possible that David sought his fortune there in early 1863. I'm going to go with Nevada now that I've seen this additional death notice.
I'm curious. How do you know Silver City in Sequoia National Park is the right place? There is a Silver City in Shasta County and also in Nevada. I tried looking at California newspapers to learn more about it but those were the places that came up.
ReplyDeleteNone of the California death notices included any state name, which they did for folks who died in towns outside California. Therefore, he died in the state. And it is very possible his Silver City death took place in Shasta County, which is still more than 200 miles from David's farm in Santa Rosa. Either way, he was in a silver rush area and far from home, unfortunately. Thanks for reading and trying to research for me!
DeleteYou didn't mention where you searched for newspapers. I saw that the death notice appeared in San Francisco and Sacramento newspapers on CDNC, as did the notice of another death four days later also in Silver City. Perhaps researching that death could help determine which Silver City it was? Also, several newspapers are listed as having been published in Shasta County and Tulare County between 1860 and 1870. Maybe a more local paper might be able to help solve the question of which Silver City and might have more information?
ReplyDeleteThanks, I'll double-check. I searched Newspapers.com and GenealogyBank. Also can check OldNews.com for local info. I appreciate your comment!
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