On 1 OCT 2006, I sent to an email to an individual I discovered on a RootsWeb forum requesting information about Horace Dumbleton. The Editor, Don Smith.

Dear Sir or Madam:
Horace Dumbleton was my great great grandfather We do not know much about the Dumbleton family. We would like to find out more about them, especially Horace's wife, Harriett Deavitt. What I have is on the internet at the website I established for the Smith and Self families. Just click on the internet connect below and then click [Self], then [Dumbleton Family] and [Dumbleton Genealogy]. The Smith and Self Genealogies are found at:

http://www.smithselfgen.com
Regards, Don Smith

The very next day, 2 OCT 2006, I received this reply:

Don,
Horace Dumbleton was my great great grandfather as well. If you note the census data, Horace's oldest son was named David (Dewitt). He was my great grandfather and lived in Manawa for long enough to marry Nellie Madill, my great grand mother, and father two sons, Chester and Carl. Chester was my grandfather, a well travelled railroad man and father to my father, Paul K. Dumbleton.

Now for the other direction. Horace and Hiram (Horace's brother) (born sometime in the 1820's) moved to Wisconsin sometime in the 1850's from Grafton, NY (on Hwy 2 between Williamstown, Mass, and Troy, NY). Their father was Elphias, mother Betsy Noonan. I have seen letters from Betsy to the two boys, which were in the posession of a goat farmer in the Portage area named Jim Peterson, whose mother was a Dumbleton descended from Hiram, Horace's brother. Elpheus (died 1869) and Betsy(died 188?) are buried in a little graveyard down the highway from Dumbleton road crossing in a place called Pittston or Pittsfield, NY. The graveyard was right on Hwy 2. We went looking for it after I had a conversation with another of Elpheus' descendants named William Dumbleton, who was a professor at SUNY Albany. Another of these descendants is a woman named Margaret who is one of the Deans at I believe it is DePaul University, in Chicago.

William told me about some of Elpheus' forebears, one of whom was Nathaniel, a minuteman from the Albany area, who was either his father or grandfather.

I have thought about tracking all this down, but haven't really put myself to it. Would enjoy talking with you sometime when you have the time.

Good luck with your searches.

David Dumbleton

I replied the same day, 2 OCT 2006, with this email:

Dear David:
Incredible! To actually receive an email from a Dumbleton. I was overwhelmed to receive your missive. My Self family, especially my Aunt Eva Self/Davis, great granddaughter of Horace Dumbleton, is especially interested in discovering anything out about her great grandmother and wife of Horace Dumbleton, Harriett Deavitt. The family oral tradition is that Harriett was from a wealthy family and was disinherited for marrying a poor man. She never saw any of her family again after her marriage to Horace Dumbleton. I've searched and searched, but can find no info on her. If you have any suggestions on searching for her or her family, I'd appreciated it.

Railroading must have been in the blood. Horace's daughter, Alice Elnorah "Nora" Dumbleton, married my great grandfather, Francis Edward "Dusty" Green, who also was a railroad man. They traveled down from Wisconsin and settled in the State of Louisiana, where Frances worked for one of the railroads of that area, probably the Kansas City Southern Railroad. It was in Hornbeck, Louisiana where their daughter, Elsie Elnora Green, fell in love with and married my grandfather, David Edgar Self, and had five Self children, including my mom. The Green family lived and still lives in the state of Wisconsin.

Well David, we are cousins, albeit distant cousins. One thing I remember from my childhood is that my mother, Mildred Frances Self, always told us kids that her mother had always told her to never forget that we were Dumbletons and that the Dumbletons came over on the Mayflower. I researched this and found no Dumbletons were named as passengers on the Mayflower. Perhaps there was a Mayflower passenger who was a wife of one of the passengers whose maiden name was Dumbleton. Thank you for your email,

Don Smith

The next day, 3 OCT 2006, I received this reply:

Don,
Yes, I too was pleased to hear from you, and to learn of somebody interested enough to try to make some sense of our history. Back in the 80's I did a search and found every Dumbleton living in the U.S. I tried calling some of them, but was mostly rebuffed. The majority of these folks don't seem to care much.

From your letter, I infer that your family still lives in the South. It's interesting that my great-grandfather, David, also moved to the South when his first wife died. While down there he married a woman whose name my sister has recorded, but whom I've forgotten because we always called her Nonnie. They eventually moved to Detroit, apparently made a lot of money and parented two more children, girls named Ada-Rae (Bratton) and Ellaree(Schwalm). I can remember visiting their mansion on Virginia Blvd in Detroit when I was little, but that area is ghettoized now. Nonnie was intensely interested in finding the Dumbleton line in England, but her efforts turned up no line of descent. The name, Dumbleton, is pretty widely distributed over there, even though uncommon. I once met a guy in the Midlands named Dumbleton, and we actually looked somewhat alike.

The connection with the South is very interesting, because my grandfather, Chester, the railroadman eventually wandered back to Wisconsin, but his brother, Carl lived in McAlister, Oklahoma until his death. Carl's son, Carl M., turned into an Okie in California before the war, and he has a son, David Carl, whom I have lost track of. I believe he now lives in Oklahoma. Incidentally, there is also another David (Peter) who lives about 30 miles from me up here. He is descended from Hiram, Horace's brother. Hiram was apparently pretty prolific, as there is a whole tribe of Dumbletons and other descendants in the Portage area along the Wisconsin River. Apparently the Dumbletons had a lot of girls, as the male lines are much less prolific.

I'm sorry that I can shed no light on Harriett Deavitt. I didn't even know she was our great-great grandmother. I can tell you some oral tradition about Horace, however. He supposedly went off the the Civil War as an older guy (obviously in his 40's), mostly to get away from home. He apparently had a long grey beard. He managed to survive, came home, and is buried in a cemetery in Manawa, Wisconsin, which I once visited to find the grave.

I can also shed some light on the first Dumbleton to live in North America. His name was John, and he came over in the early 1630's to the Massachusetts Bay colony. Apparently, the rules were too strict there, as he was one of the dissenters that then moved to Connecticutt. Apparently the Dumbletons existed in the Hartford area until the 18th century when they moved to upper New York state. This info came from William, who also told us where the graves were. Elpheus was a justice of the peace, and he does hold a prominent fenced in place in that cemetery. However, I also know that old Betsy had him posted so no one could sell him any drink in their township. That part of New York is about as backwater as you can get. They must have gotten last choice when the land was handed out, but it sure is beautiful country today, just over the hill from Williamstown, MA.

Back to John. He came over as an indentured servant about 1633, and I have been unable to track him down in England. There is some conjecture that he could have been an orphan from the town of Dumbleton, which is in the Cotswolds. It was the custom back in the 16th century and before to ship the town orphans off to the holy fathers in I believe Winchester, which is a good piece away. They attached their town name to identify their place of origin. Apparently being poor runs in this family, as most of the people I have every run across are just about getting by.

I think a concerted effort would probably turn up the line of descent from John to Nathaniel to Elpheus. John repeats over the years, which makes it hard to sort out, but there are enough records around. I just haven't taken this project on. When I talked with William years ago, he said his sister, who lived in Louisiana then, was the family authority on geneology, but I could never get her to respond back then.
Please keep in touch. I am hopeful that you decide to become an expert on all these forbears, as I would like to know more, too.

Thanks again for your contact,

David Dumbleton

Armed with this new information, I emailed the following email the next day:

Dear David:
I am finally able to piece together some of the Dumbleton genealogy. I finally realized that I had a lot of the information already. This information was copied down from a 128 year old Dumbleton bible in the possession of Lillian Ethel Dumbleton, daughter of Hiram Lorin Dumbleton and niece of Horace Dumbleton. My notes:

Lillian Ethel Dumbleton (Birth: 18 MAR 1896. Married: Milton Smith on 7 DEC 1920). This is the family of Lillian Ethel Dumbleton Smith whom Elsie Elnora Green Self (my grandmother) used to correspond with, and from whom she obtained this information. Lillian Ethel Dumbleton Smith said that she copied it out of a Bible that her sister Grace Elnorah Dumbleton had. This was in 1965 and she said that the Bible was then 128 years old, dating to the year 1837.

The information was typed up and handed out to family members. I received a copy of these notes from my sister who received them from my grandmother Elsie, mentioned above. David, I believe that bibles may contain the most accurate of genealogical information. The problem I had was that I mistakenly listed Horace Dumbleton's mother and father as his sister and brother. This is what I had:

Brothers and Sisters of Grandpa Horace Dumbleton:
Alphesus Dumbleton (Birth: 17 JUN 1787) ....Should be Father
Betsey Dumbleton (Birth: 17 JUN 1798) .......Should be Mother
Ann Dumbleton (Birth: 25 MAY, 1806)
Aaron Dumbleton (Birth: 30 OCT 1807)
Lorinda Dumbleton (Birth: 30 NOV 1809)
Amanda Dumbleton (Birth: 23 MAR 1817)
John Dumbleton (Birth: 24 MAR 1818)
David D. Dumbleton (Birth: 16 AUG 1820)
Hiram Lorin Dumbleton (Birth: 3 MAR 1822)
Horace Dumbleton (Birth: 7 JUL 1823. Death: 16 SEP 1893)
Adelia L. Dumbleton (Birth: 25 SEP 1825)
Oscar Dumbleton (Birth: 5 JUN 1838)

Alphesus or Alpheus Dumbleton was the father and Betsy the mother. Armed with this information, I cruised RootsWeb and Ancestry.Com (I am a member). Lo and behold I found Alpheus and Nathaniel Dumbleton within ten minutes.

(In the email, I included many links and copied internet information. I also revamped the entire Dumbleton Genealogy, beginning with Nathaniel Dumbleton - Birth: About 1740).

Regards, Don Smith

This email was received the next day:

Don,
Thank you very kindly for this abundance of information. I suppose I should have tracked this down earlier, but the picture is starting to fit together. Apparently there is a long history of late marriages and children coming late in the lives of these Dumbletons. As you can see, the recurring names can be problematic, but I think we now have enough information to be able to sort out the tree. The fact that our great great grandfather's grandfather was born in 1740 certainly makes these lives seem closer to us. My daughter is now the sixth generation of our family born in Wisconsin, and I know she will enjoy having this information, as will my sister, Diane.

The family bible that you mentioned has also been referenced by my Dad, who apparently had some contact with its owner back in the 1930's. I also saw a letter penned by Elpheus' wife, Betsy, whose last name I thought was Noonan, but appears to have been Bixbee, our great great great grandparent. The letter was extemely well written, with excellent penmanship, spelling and grammar, so she was obviously at least somewhat educated. The letter was from the 1850's, at which point she was telling her boys in Wisconsin that it would probably be her last winter, as she was very poorly. I think she lived until 1889. I would love to track down the current owners of this material, but haven't a clue how to get hold of Jim Peterson. Maybe my cousin David will know.

After I have a chance to digest all this, I'll talk with my sister about what we might do to get in contact with some of the remaining relatives in Wisconsin.

Thanks again for your contact. I look forward to keeping in touch.

David Dumbleton