We've all heard the phrase "nothing is carved in stone yet," meaning that a decision hasn't been made yet, something has not been identified as fact, or changes could still be made to something. Genealogists know that errors exist everywhere. In my line of work, when I'm doing workshops on how to use Ancestry, I'm always warning people to never take anything as fact until they've done the research themselves, and even then, something could come up later that will make you put that fact aside. I've seen incorrect information in obituaries and even death certificates, which are official vital records. It wasn't until I made a trip to the great land of northwestern Pennsylvania, the land of my husband's kin, that I discovered that errors could even be carved into stone.
No doubt, the hardcore Civil War fans who have seen the above picture have already spotted the error. Some history buffs with a talent for remembering important dates might also have picked up on it. The photo is one I took at Fairmount Cemetery in Farmer's Valley, McKean County, Pennsylvania. The names on the stone belong to my husband's third great-grandparents, Robert C. Cannon and Jane Howland Cannon. At first I got excited when I read that Robert Cannon had died at the Battle of Gettysburg. I spent so much of my childhood in Gettysburg, exploring the battlefields, sitting on cannons, looking for ghosts. I knew exactly where the Pennsylvania monument was and I was overjoyed that an ancestor of my husband would be on it. As I continued to stare at the stone, something bothered me. The dates for Robert Cannon were listed as 1833-1865. The Battle of Gettysburg took place in July of 1863...
I quickly jumped down the rabbit hole to find out the truth. After researching the Union dead at Gettysburg, Robert Cannon's name never appeared in any source I used, leading me to believe that he had not in fact died there. After some research, I learned that he had died at the Battle of Fort Stedman near Petersburg, Virginia....two weeks before the surrender of Robert E. Lee and the end of the Civil War. I'm not sure who in the family (I assume it was a descendant) paid to have a stone erected with this misinformation literally carved in stone. I discovered that Robert was actually buried in a military cemetery near Petersburg with the other causalities of the battle. Despite the fact that Fort Stedman was a Union victory, Robert was one of 950 Union soldiers who did not survive the attack. Now that I had started investigating the truth of Robert Cannon's service and death, I also wanted to know more about Jane.
I cannot find an exact date of birth for her, but Jane was born around 1833 to parents Noble and Polly Howland. Although she was born in Pennsylvania and her parents are listed in the 1860 census living on adjacent property to the Cannons, her parents were both born in Massachusetts. Through her father's lineage, Jane was a Mayflower descendant from passenger Francis Eaton. Most of what I learned about Jane I discovered by reading her widow's pension application, which turned out to be very long and complex. Robert Cannon and Jane Howland were married on February 25, 1852. According to the 1860 census, the couple had three children: Warren (b. 1853), Delana (b. 1855), and Charles (b. 1858). Unfortunately, the older two are not mentioned anywhere else after this census, so it is believed they died young. The widow's pension lists three children born to Robert and Jane under the age of 16: Charlie F. (b. May 14, 1858), Frances S. (b. September 12, 1861), and Lettie J. (b. August 8, 1864). The papers make it very clear that Robert did not enlist, but rather was drafted into service. The typed word "enlist" is crossed out and the word "drafted" is handwritten. This draft occurred November 1864, when his youngest child was barely three months old.
In November of 1865, Jane is approved by the Pension Office to receive $8 per month. In 1866 she qualifies for an increase to $14, but I never actually found documentation where the increase was officially accepted. For the next 23 years she receives a monthly pension from the government as a widow of a Union soldier.
However, I found documents in her pension file from 1889 where the Pension Office begins to reexamine her claims. Her case is classified as "criminal" and sent to the Special Examination Division for further investigation on August 14, 1889. On August 20, the depositions begin. At 56 years old, Jane Cannon is required to defend her living situations that she has experienced since the death of her husband in 1865. She claims that she never remarried and has never lived as a wife to any man since the death of Robert Cannon. She does admit to having a man named Hayes lodge in her house for about a year before moving away to a different part of the county. There she moves in with William A. Butler as his housekeeper. For a single, widowed woman with young children to move into a house to be a live-in servant was not uncommon at this time. This provided room and board for herself and her children, which many employers were not willing to do. Many young women were forced to leave their children in the care of family, friends, or even local poor houses because employers did not want the responsibility of feeding children. Jane had three children under the age of 13 in the 1870 census, so she would have been happy to accept employment with someone who allowed her children to stay with her.
William Butler is listed in the 1870 census in the same county (Potter County) as Jane, living with his wife Nancy and their six children. By the 1880 census, Jane and her two daughters, Nora and Lettie, are living with the Butlers and William is listed as widowed. I could not find a death announcement for Nancy Butler, but obituaries were not common in the 1870s, especially for women. The 1880 census is the first census in which we are able to see the relationship of each person living in the house to the head of the household. Although William's remaining three children living at home are listed as sons and daughter, Jane and her daughters have no relation. The relationship is blank; they're not even listed as boarders. Either the enumerator did not feel comfortable writing a relationship, or else they did not ask.
The 1889 deposition included two testimonies by Jane Cannon in which she is questioned about her living situation. She admits that she had two children out of wedlock, but refuses to name the father. Both children died young and we do not know their names or genders. A woman named Julia Thompson also gave testimony at the deposition and claimed to know Jane and her husband prior to the war. She said that she had seen a man named Samuel Hayes going to and from the house, but that she did not think he claimed the place as a residence. Apparently, other neighbors also saw these interactions because Julia said she began to stay away from Jane after "reports adverse to her character began to be raised." I bristled when I read that judgmental statement because Julia could not have known the intimate details of Jane's personal life. Jane found herself widowed at 33 with three young children, one who was probably still nursing. Between the hormones from her pregnancy and the loss of her husband, there's probably a chance she was dealing with depression and anxiety as well as feeling total isolation. Jane's father, Noble Howland, was already dead and her mother was in no physical state to care for a daughter and three grandchildren. If Sam Hayes had shown her any sort of affection, kindness, or support, she would no doubt have willingly accepted. If a sexual relationship followed, Jane never admitted to it, although based on testimony from her neighbors, he was most likely the father of the two children she had early in the 1870s.
Whatever her relationship was with Sam Hayes, I cannot find him on the 1870 or 1880 census records. By 1880, Jane is living with William Butler and theirs was probably a relationship based on mutual companionship. Both have been widowed by the father/mother of their children and both were impacted by the effects of the war. William served in the 46th regiment of Company H and was also receiving a soldier's pension. In 1882, changes were being made to pension laws, forcing the Pension Office to crack down on fraud. I read about one man who falsely filed not one but SEVEN widow applications for nonexistent women and collected over $20,000 in payments before he was caught. Although that type of fraud was rare, a more common type was that of a woman who received widow pension payments while living as another man's wife. This was difficult to prove, but it made the depositions necessary in Jane's case. A man named John Nisbet who knew Jane and Robert before the war testified that he also know William Butler through their service together. William and John Nisbet were in the same military unit. Because they all lived in the same county, it's possible that William also knew Robert Cannon. It was also part of Nisbet's testimony that William and Jane were living together as man and wife. His close proximity to the pair must have provided damning evidence against Jane. Two other men who testified confirmed Nisbet's story. By claiming that Jane was living with William as his unofficial wife, it was viewed that she was "cheating the system." If she married Butler, she would no longer qualify for her widow's pension. As a veteran receiving his own pension, it's possible the couple was trying to double dip.
Based on these depositions, the Special Examination Division recommended that Jane's name be dropped from the pension rolls. On March 7, 1890, the Pension Office agreed with the recommendation and ceased payments to Jane Cannon. Whether Jane and William ever planned to get married is unclear, but their time together after the proceedings was short. William Butler died at the age of 66 in July 1900. Jane was listed as still living with William's son in the 1900 census, although by this time she was bed ridden from ill health. On March 17, 1908, Jane Howland Cannon passed away, most likely at the home of her daughter Leonora Frances Herzog. She and her husband made their home in McKean County which is where Jane's death is registered. Nora was also the informant on the death certificate. Nora and her husband Conrad Herzog were my husband's 2nd great-grandparents. Although Jane's society judged her for the living situations which life handed her, I'm comforted in knowing she received a pension long enough to raise her children to adulthood. I'm still researching the Cannon and Howland branches of our family tree, but reading the widow's pension file allowed me to get a better glance of Jane's life. It's funny to think this all started because the information carved in her headstone were wrong.
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