They Are Here In Upstate New York

 

 

A pair of eyes and a faint outline appear.  Yes, they are here. The presence of many types of wild animals, of both small and big game have been documented living on our property. And some fifty different species of birds (A/K/A: living dinosaurs) have been observed and identified. By tradition, Terri's employer passes out free turkeys to each company employee a couple days before Thanksgiving. It has been our practice over the past years to put our unwanted turkey remains out on the lawn as offerings to local wildlife on Thanksgiving Eve. Typically our resident vixen will stop by over a day or two to polish off gobbler remains, with the able assistance in daylight hours by our resident American Crow population. "Roxy" the resident vixen and Moe, Larry & Curly -- our ever-present American Crows -- are welcome guests here. They provide us some visual humor from time to time... with a great side benefit in keeping the area's rodent population down to manageable proportions.

 

 

My wildlife camera caught these shots of an unusual visitor early Friday Morning, 11/29/2013. Yes, an Eastern Coyote stopped by and finished off the turkey remains. A couple of years ago we observed a large coyote or small wolf loping along our northern tree line. And this year we saw a young coyote hunting in our front lawn. Interesting -- maybe this early morning visitor last Friday is that grownup pup... don't know.

 

 

Can You ID These Images?

An interesting observation discovered during our ongoing genealogical research:

One of these images is Native American Tribal Leader Crazy Horse [on left], another is Holy Man and Tribal Leader Sitting Bull [on right], and a third here in center is our French-Canadian born Great Great Grandma Suzanne "Suzzie" Wagner (LaLonde) Ouellet. Note the similarity. Often wondered about those early 17th century Frenchman settlers of the lands called "New France."  

No French ladies were brought along on the ships that carried those brave few Seventeenth Century men who first came to colonize the new world "New France" for the King of France. It took some time before France sent the first boat load of female French settlers called "The King's Daughters" -- so named because these intrepid young ladies were orphans under the protection of the French King. These women being articulate and well educated young ladies -- orphans who were raised by the Nuns in Catholic Orphan Homes as financed by the French King.

And so our early ancestors simply did without female company for the many months before French ladies arrived? Our French ancestors were each pure as the northern driven snows... no history of messing around with North American Native ladies in our early French ancestry! Right, there is a nice old bridge in Brooklyn, NY that remains on sale for those who might believe that bit of wishful Christian historical thinking.

A Request For Genealogical Help

Please refer to my "Corporal Wilhelm 'William' Moegling" blog post made yesterday.

Click Here to review this posting.



"BOXES OF BONES"

So here is my thought and request for help this day. Will somebody – anyone at all – please come forward with significant key facts showing that one of these exhumed “Boxes Of Bones” on display for a Utica Sunday Tribune photographer is NOT 2nd Great Granddad Corporal Wilhelm “William” Moegling. These two skeletons are but two of the thousands of persons dug up from their "final-resting-place" at Potter Street Cemetery -- essentially because those great thinkers in Utica, New York let their earliest municipal burial ground fall victim to neglect and probable vandalism.  These great thinkers in Utica now wanted these hallowed cemetery lands for a playground.  Look at these lands today and you find a highway, a parking lot, a plumbing dealer, a drug rehab & counseling house, and a sports bar. Urban renewal... really nice going Utica, New York!

No monument is present today to the memory of this once active municipal cemetery or to honor the dust of those many thousands souls who yet remain spread in the grounds at this former cemetery site.

Corporal Wilhelm "William" Moegling, late of the 97th Infantry Regiment of New York State Volunteers is missing. Please show our family that this wounded and disabled Civil War Soldier who lived, who attended church, who worked, and who died in 1869 in Downtown Utica, Oneida County, New York is not one of these skeletons on unceremonious and disgraceful display in this September 1916 photo.

Thanks very much.

DJ --- out

Reference: A news article as published 1 Oct 1916 in The Utica Sunday Tribune.



Our Grandfather Corporal William Moegling

My four-year search for the remains of 2nd Great Grandfather Wilhelm “William” Moegling is continuing. But the discovery of new firm and valid related data relating to Potter Street Cemetery seems unlikely.  This Utica, NY municipal cemetery was unfortunately sometimes called “Potter’s Field,” so named to acknowledge the original Potter Family property owners who conveyed the three plots of land that became this city municipal cemetery.  The cemetery was not a burial ground reserved exclusively for the poor, as the name potter's field usually implies.  Many prominent early citizens of the Utica, NY area were interred at Potter Street Cemetery over the 122 year span of active use.  According to researchers with Saint Agnes Catholic Church in Utica, NY, as many as 10,000 persons were likely interred at Potter Street Cemetery.

It seems highly likely that Potter Street Cemetery was Grandpa Moegling's logical and probable temporary resting place. Further, it is probable his grave marker, if any, was a wooden marker design (as many there were), and by 1916 was lost, decayed and/or vandalized when the 1916 destruction of Utica's Potter Street Cemetery took place. We know from Corporal William Moegling's Compiled Military Service Record (CMSR), as received from National Archives and Records Administration that Grandpa did not receive his earned government-furnished headstone following his untimely 1869 death.  And about 80% of the several thousand late 1916 exhumed souls at Potter Street Cemetery were classified as unidentified persons, several skeletons grouped together in a single small boxes for "cost savings" and taken to Forest Hill Cemetery on Oneida Street, Utica, NY.  Most of Grandpa's remains were likely placed in one or more of these small containers with the remains of other unidentified persons and unceremoniously reburied in a 100' x 100' hollow purchased by the city of Utica as a mass grave site for unidentified Potter Street Cemetery souls. This Forest Hill Cemetery mass grave burial site is now defined as Section 58B (a/k/a: "City of Utica Public Burial Grounds"), a site purchased by the Utica city authorities in 1916. Any bureaucratic suggestion that absolutely none of the unidentified persons exhumed in 1916 from this 122-year old Potter Street Cemetery were U.S. Military Veterans of the Revolutionary War, The War of 1812, The Mexican War, The American Civil War or even the Spanish-American War simply won’t pass a smell test. My Grandpa, Corporal Wilhelm “William” Moegling was a Military Veteran of both The Mexican War and The American Civil War.

Grandpa Moegling and his wife Rosella ("Grandma Rosa") Moegling had three minor kids at Grandpa’s death in late November 1869, they were financially not prosperous (perhaps considered today as working poor), they lived in rented housing on the corner of Varick and Fayette Streets in downtown Utica, NY, they attended the original Zion German Evangelical Lutheran Church at Fay and Cooper Streets in downtown Utica, and Grandpa was working in his lifelong occupation as a "dyer" at Mrs. A. McClean's Scourer and Dyer Shop on 26 Hotel Street in downtown Utica. His home, his Church and his workplace essentially border the 1869 city-owned Potter Street Cemetery (all within a half mile radius). Grandpa had submitted a Military Disability Pension application in July 1863, this following his U.S. Army Civil War Discharge For Disability in early 1863. Official papers from the National Archives in Washington DC document he suffered several war-related disabilities including a gunshot wound received during the Battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862. His veteran's invalid pension application also states he has a service-connected double hernia. Strong evidence is that Grandpa's Civil War Army Veteran Disability Pension application had not yet been approved by his death 23 Nov 1869.

There is a spot in Forest Hill Cemetery nearly centered between cemetery Section 58 and 58A roadside signs on the lower southern perimeter road that Forest Hill Cemetery Superintendent Gerard Waterman called Section 58B (but there was no observed 58B signage here). Section 58B (a/k/a: "City of Utica Public Burial Grounds") is directly south from the small roadside gravestone of Mary M. (d. 1937) and Edward R. Stramm Sr. (d. 1926), the Stramm gravestone no more than five feet from the south side of this perimeter road, and has a couple large trees surrounding. Furthermore, Section 58B essentially borders the Forest Hill Cemetery heavy gage wire south perimeter fence. Superintendent Waterman told me his crew was digging a grave near this 1916 city purchased 100'x100' site and several bones were unintentionally dug up, causing him to research and discover that this location is where the bones of unknown souls from Potter Street Cemetery were re-buried in a mass grave. No honorary markers are present to flag Section 58B as the location for mass re-burials of those several thousand "Unknown Souls" exhumed from Potter Street Cemetery. This unmarked mass burial ground for the several thousand Potter Street Cemetery unknown disinterred is a colossal disgrace. Some form of significant memorial monument is required here to formally mark this ground. Section 58B is the same location where the majority of the identifiable disinterred Potter Street Cemetery skeletons were re-buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in a place between two other public burial grounds called “The Tiers."

The contempt we presently hold for our post Civil War federal government -- delay and more delay for those Civil War disability pension applications -- so therefore perhaps the pension applicant will die first as Grandpa did. And a contempt is growing for those period leaders of the City of Utica who allowed the city's first municipal burial ground Potter Street Cemetery at Potter and Water Streets to fall victim to the natural and unnatural ravage of time. 

Attack On Constitution Amendment II

Amendment II: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The language seems very clear. What is it that the Obama gun control loving "experts" don't comprehend about those 27 very clearly written words? And "a well regulated Militia" does not have to be "well regulated" under federal or state government control.

The U.S. Constitution and Amendment II do not say that.

Many of the leaders who formed volunteer regiments to fight the American Civil War did so using personal funds and privately owned logistics & supplies. The township's people often supplied necessary seed money & supplies. Many of those early regiments originated from volunteer local militias where soldiers initially trained and used their private weapons. Following the American Revolution, every able-bodied man of about age 18-45 (might be a bit off on those age limits) was also required to own a firearm weapon. The founders never intended all "well-regulated militias" to be under the absolute authority of a federal chief executive. Show me where that is written... you won't find it. And I of course realize what this sounds like... "When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them..." the People... if properly armed... can meet, associate and organize in well-regulated militias and "...it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..." We can only hope that the coming revolution will be peaceful.

The problem with a little gun control is that old slippery-slop concept, it is so easy thereafter to do a little more & and then a little more. Look around after a bit and you may have given up a natural Human Right. And that's at the real base of NRA's problem with the liberal gun control nuts. Slippery slop governance... it's no way to run a clam shop. The federal government repeatedly does illogical and ethically wrong things. Look a history... Native American treatment, Slavery, the Whiskey Rebellion, the New York City Riots against the Civil War Draft, Wounded Knee, Japanese Internment Camps, the Waco Branch Fire, the Patriot Act, and so much more. Gosh, federal government weapons control isn't exactly that smart either under any political party (e.g., Iran/Contra, or that really dumb cluster-SNAFU over the last couple of years (Operation Fast and Furious) that gave automatic weapons to Mexican Drug Lords, etc., etc.). It may be that gun control acts in the New York State Legislature this week and Cuomo's "NY SAFE Law" is unconstitutional. We will see... the lawyers are now lining up to test this.

Do you think these dangerous leftist zealots might want to re-write the U.S. Constitution? And along the way, throw out the Natural Human Rights that a liberal left doesn't like... only to inject their own "progressive" liberal ideas. "All People (animals) are created equal, but some People (animals) are more equal than others." Stolen words I know... but one can't misread our Constitution Amendment II and simultaneously keep a straight face. And too, there was then and still remains a firm reason why the Right to Bear Arms is Amendment II. This Right was then to the Founders and today stands so strongly important... trumped only by our capstone Natural Rights... Amendment I: the Freedoms of Speech, Press, Association and Religion.