Cool Cousin: Chauncey Norman Noteware

Chauncey Norman Noteware was born to Jacob Noteware and Aruba Olmstead on the 13th of January, 1825 in Owego, Tioga County, New York.

In 1844 he and his family moved to Galesburg, Knox County, Illinois, where he attended Knox College, apparently studying medicine, as he later would list himself as a physician.

He crossed the plains in 1850 to make his fortune in the California Gold Rush. He mined for three years in northern California, and in early January of 1853 he became an agent for Wells Fargo Bank in Diamond Springs, El Dorado, California. There he met Sarah Lyons and the two were married on the 4th of March, 1854 in the same town. They had two sons Myron and Warren and a daughter Mary Elizabeth.



After three more years of working for the bank in California he moved his family to Genoa Station, which was then part of the Utah Territory. I don't know much about his activity there until Nevada became a separate territory in 1861, when he was appointed Probate Judge for Douglas County, Nevada Territory. The following year he became a land agent appointed by President Lincoln.



The population of Nevada Territory was growing due to Comstock Lode silver boom in nearby Virginia City. As state-hood grew near, Chauncey was a member of the first constitutional convention, with one newspaper saying that he "presided" at the convention. So eager where the Nevadans to become a state that they sent their entire Constitution via telegram at a modern cost of over $62,000!

When Nevada became a state in October 1861, Chauncey was appointed as the state's first Secretary of State. He served as an appointee for two years, then ran for the office and was elected for a four-year term. He also served concurrently as a State Senator for Ormsby County. In 1872 he was appointed coiner for the US Mint in Carson City by President Grant.

During his life he was also the Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge and Grand Chapter of Nevada for the Masons. His wife Sarah passed in August of 1867. Chauncey then married Mary Ann Gee. All of his children left his beloved Nevada, and he died at his home in Carson City, Nevada on the 22nd of October, 1910 a few months shy of his 86th birthday.

His Home in Carson City.

What an amazing life he would have lead!

Yarre Noteware > Jacob Noteware > Chauncey Noteware
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Awesome Ancestor: Sarah Jane Scrivener-Somervell

Sarah Jane Scrivener was born in a well-off plantation owning family in southern Anne Arundel County Maryland in September of 1823. Her parents, John and Eliza Scrivener, both came from wealthy slave-owning families. Sarah was the 2nd of 12 children, and the oldest daughter. Her father was a War of 1812 soldier, and two of his slaves were captured by the British during that war. He was compensated $560 for the loss of his slaves. He also posted rewards for several other run away slaves in the local newspapers. Sarah married John Howe Somervell, who also came from a well respected slave-owning family from nearby Calvert County on November 6th, 1841.

Sarah's father, John Scrivener, died in 1849, at the time of his death Sarah's husband owed her father's estate $838.37 (over $26,000 in today's money) and had to mortgage 9 of his slaves, over 80 head of livestock, and much of his personal property in order to settle the debt. Sarah and John had 7 children together, two daughters and three sons and two that died as infants. John died in 1854, leaving Sarah to raise their children alone. The oldest was 8, and the youngest (twin boys) were around a year old.

Shortly after the death of her husband, Sarah moved her 5 living children to Washington, DC. There, she purchased a home near the corner of 11th and Pennsylvania Avenue, just blocks from the White House and the nearly complete Capitol Building. The city directory listed her as running a boarding house, which means she would have been host to a variety of out of town visitors, one of which, a War Department Clerk, Augustus McCafferty, the son of the married her oldest daughter Mary.

The Somervell children would have grown up during the Civil War, so Washington would have been a bustling place. They might have seen President and Mrs. Lincoln as they rode through town. They would have seen union soldiers as they marched through on their way to or from a major battle. They might have seen General Grant as he returned after Lee's surrender. Or even seen a play at Ford's Theatre, which was only a block from their home. They may have even seen the famous actor John Wilkes Booth skulking about town in April of 1865.

Sarah lived in Washington for the rest of her life. She lived in the footsteps of every US President from James Buchanan to Theodore Roosevelt. She would have lived through the assassination of three of those Presidents. She saw to it that her sons received an education, one son worked as an administrator for the US Postal Service, another was an accountant for the Department of Treasury, and another moved to Denver and owned a grocery store.

Sarah died at the Women's Christian Home in DC on May 1st, 1904 and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Washington, DC. Having outlived her husband and five of her seven children. She lived during one of the greatest periods of turmoil in our Nation's history, and she lived at the center of it all in Washington, DC. What an exciting life!

Sarah Jane Scrivener-Somervell > William Scrivener Somervell > Sarah Louisa Somervell-McMahon > Raymond Joseph McMahon > Irene Caroline McMahon-Earl > Daniel A Earl