I wasn’t planning to share this story here, because it wasn’t supposed to be related to the Slater House project. And it’s still not, to be fair. Starting at the beginning:
Snow is finally melting here in Minneapolis after SEVEN MONTHS of winter. First snowfall came in September and it’s only now starting to warm up. I took my two teenage daughters out for a day of thrifting and vintage shopping. We visited 4 antique shops at the corner of Xerxes and 50th. I’m a sucker for antique photos with legible names, and this tintype photo of the Case sisters captured my attention instantly.
All I had to go on were their names, and the fact that it was a tintype. Tintype photos were taken in the 1860’s through roughly 1880 at the latest. I estimated the girls in the photo to be anywhere between 12 and 20 years old. That gave me a potential range of birth years for the girls between 1848 and 1868.
Several Dellas and several Carries were born during those years but only the daughters of Cassius Levi Case and Elizabeth (Berdan) fit precisely within those dates. Carrie (who went by Clara as an adult) had no descendants listed in her obituary, but Della and her husband had plenty of children and grandchildren. Tracking down her descendants was pretty easy. It’s not like true heir-research, because I’m not tasked with finding each and every descendant in order that they may duke it out in court for the inheritance… I only need to find one friendly and receptive descendant, who believes me enough to accept ownership of the photo.
At this point I was only using Ancestry for the research, but as I brought those family lines forward in time, Ancestry’s resources became less helpful. They’re not designed for finding current people, like Facebook. Ancestry hides the living behind anonymous (but gendered) avatars.
Using the names and cities listed in the most recent obituaries for Della’s descendants, I searched Facebook and easily found them. Other descendants were listed as friends, so it was easy to verify that I had the right crowd.
Before reaching out to Della’s descendants, I wanted to just learn one teeny thing about the family. Where were they from before they married? What was their childhood like? The dresses and hairstyles looked complicated and fancy. Suddenly I found myself researching their parents; Cassius Case and his wife Elizabeth Berdan. Why does the Berdan surname sound familiar?
Leave it to me to ask one tiny question that turns into a mind-blowing discovery… Elizabeth Berdan (mother of these girls) was born in New Jersey. In 1850, she lived with her parents in Paterson, a few short blocks away from Slater House. In fact, her parents were buried in the same cemetery where my Ancestors were buried. But that’s not all…
It might seem silly to include a story here that’s not really about Slater House, but my mind was reeling when I saw that her parents were buried at the very same Cedar Lawn Cemetery in Paterson where my ancestors rest.
Plus, if the point of this website is to talk about genealogical investigations then this adventure definitely counts. I’m investigative af especially when there’s personalized novelty at stake.
The image above shows the (wallet sized) Tintype image alongside a retouched version. I remember how desperately I searched for a photo of my own great grandmother, so at this point I’m still unreasonably excited to pass this off to Della’s family. But I can’t shake this feeling; is it possible that I just purchased a 150 year old photo of my own cousins in a thrift shop?
Carrie and Della’s mother was Elizabeth Berdan. Her father’s middle name was Ryerson, which immediately rang a bell in my mind because Ryerson is the surname of my ancestors, a family of Dutch colonists that inhabited Manhattan Island around the 1650’s. Märten Ryerson and his wife, Annetje Rapelje are my 10th great grandparents. Their 5th great grand daughter was Margaret Van Riper, my great great great grandmother.
After tracing their mother’s ancestors, I discovered that they are, in fact, family. I didn’t find the Ryerson connection I expected, but according to FamilySearch, these sisters are my 6th cousins, 5 times removed.
It turns out, in addition to living in Paterson at the same time, and being buried near one another, Margaret VanRiper and Elizabeth Berdan were both descended from Dutch colonists Roelof Lubbertse Westervelt and Orselena Steynmets.
So even though this tintype image isn’t technically a relic of 114 Slater Street, it’s indirectly related ephemera and I will treasure it until Della’s descendants get back to me.
