{"id":26233,"date":"2017-10-23T10:16:25","date_gmt":"2017-10-23T14:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=26233"},"modified":"2021-04-22T13:38:04","modified_gmt":"2021-04-22T17:38:04","slug":"my-great-uncle-albert-no-wonder-i-like-apples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/my-great-uncle-albert-no-wonder-i-like-apples.html","title":{"rendered":"My Great-Uncle Albert: No Wonder I Like Apples"},"content":{"rendered":"

My great-uncle Albert Henry Sawyer<\/span> (1855-1944) was born on 16 September 1855 in New Hampton, Belknap County, New Hampshire. He was the brother of my great-grandmother Francis Lila Sawyer<\/a> (1863-1958). Their family was a small tribe of 13 children.<\/p>\n

He married Emma F. Marden<\/span> (1862-1941) on 15 September 1884 in Woodstock, Grafton County, New Hampshire. I know from census records and my own research that he worked on the family farm, but I didn\u2019t know much about Albert beyond that, so I decided to research him in GenealogyBank\u2019s Historical Newspaper Archives<\/a> to see what else I could learn.<\/p>\n

I began by searching for \u201cAlbert Sawyer\u201d in the old New Hampshire newspapers.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Source: GenealogyBank<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the first articles I found was this.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Source: GenealogyBank, New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette (Concord, New Hampshire), 13 December 1888, page 5<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It reports:<\/p>\n

\u201cAlbert Sawyer of Woodstock has made about 9000 gallons of cider this fall with his portable mill, going from house to house.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wow \u2013 that\u2019s a lot of cider!
\nSo, Albert was an entrepreneur as well as a farmer.<\/p>\n

I did a quick internet search to see what else I could learn about early New England apple cider. The Old Sturbridge Village museum<\/a> gave me a few interesting details about the region\u2019s cider production in the 1800s:<\/p>\n

\u201cCider mills operated throughout New England in September and October, converting most of the region\u2019s apple crops into cider using horse-powered crushers and hand-operated screw presses\u2026 Most early New Englanders drank cider, with the average farm family making over 300 gallons of it a year.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If the average family farm produced 300 gallons of cider each fall, Albert\u2019s production of 9,000 gallons of cider using a small, portable mill is certainly remarkable.<\/p>\n

A Wikipedia image search provided an interesting take on what Albert\u2019s portable cider mill may have looked like in 1894 \u2013 the time period when Albert did his work.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>
Photo: Apple Press Monument (a relic of the Mid-Winter Fair, 1894, still in the same spot), Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California. Credit: Joe Mabel; Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thank you GenealogyBank for giving me the rest of the story of the lives of my relatives. I\u2019ll think of Great-Uncle Albert the next time I eat an apple.<\/p>\n

Genealogy Tip<\/em><\/strong>: Newspapers are the chief resource for finding new details about the day-to-day lives of our relatives. Find new insights about your family\u2019s history in GenealogyBank.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article about Thomas Jay Kemp\u2019s great-uncle Albert Sawyer \u2013 who, it turns out, was busy making cider in the late 19th century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12557],"tags":[12,2020],"class_list":["post-26233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genealogy-stories","tag-genealogy","tag-newspaper-archives"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/photo-1023-2017-featured-graphic-cider-press.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26233"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77595,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26233\/revisions\/77595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}