I imagine little Anna Catherine Oliver, my great-great-grandmother was looking forward to her fifth birthday, as most children do at her age. Instead, she became an orphan just a month before when her beloved mother, Sarah died. Her father John and three siblings were already dead, most likely from diseases that at the time, had no cure.
At just five years old, Anna had already witnessed the horrors of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the death of her parents, and by December of 1866, a mere month after her fifth birthday, the death of yet another sibling, her older brother Philip. All that would survive of the John M. Oliver family were Anna, her older sister Permelia and older brother Abraham.
When Anna was born on November 24, 1861 in Newton, New Jersey, her parents were deeply grieving the loss of not one, but two of their small children, Theodore and Jackson. They died on September 25, 1861 and September 30, 1861, respectively, just two months before Anna was born. Imagine the heartbreak for Sarah and John of seeing your four-year-old and two-and-a-half-year-old sons die within five days of each other.
Page from Oliver family bible in possession of Sue Marous. Click on image to view larger version
During the Civil War when Anna was a small child, 620,000 soldiers died fighting their fellow Americans. Two-thirds of those soldiers died of disease, not their wounds. Killer diseases such as dysentery, the number one killer during the civil war, and typhoid fever, a close second, didn’t discriminate between soldier and civilian. There was also “swamp” fever, yellow fever, malaria and smallpox–all diseases that have been virtually eradicated today but had no cure in the nineteenth century. Imagine being a child in the 1860’s when war was ripping apart your country and disease was killing all those that you loved. It must have been a frightening start to Anna’s young life.
1880 Census, Frankford, New Jersey, Anna Oliver. Click on image to view a larger version
Anna and her older sister Permelia were listed in the 1870 United States Census as living in Frankford, New Jersey with Ephraim and Mary A. Shay and their 13-year-old son Philip. Anna was eight years old while Permelia was 16. In this particular census, the relationship to the “head of household” was not listed, as later census’ would state. However, in the 1880 United States Census, Anna, now a young, single woman of 19, was listed as the niece of Ephram Shay, head of household. So we can assume that Anna and Permelia were raised by their aunt and uncle after the deaths of their parents. I assume that “Aunt Mary” would have been Anna’s mother’s sister.
Page from Strader family bible in possession of Sue Marous. Click on image to view larger version
Permelia went on to marry a man named Sylvester Savercool. It was in their home that Anna married Clarence L. Strader on September 15, 1883. Anna was 22 years old.
I suspect the marriage was troubled because a child of this union wasn’t produced until four-and-a-half years later. Clarence Oliver Merritt Strader, my great-grandfather was born on February 7, 1888 in Newton, New Jersey. By the 1900 United States Census, Anna “Annie” Strader was listed as the widowed head of household living in Newton, New Jersey with her 12-year-old son, Clarence. However, Clarence L. Strader was also listed in that same census as living in Derby, Connecticut married to Elizabeth, his new wife of one year. Things being what they were at the turn of the century, it looks like Clarence ran off with another woman while Anna simply declared herself a widow. As of this writing, I have not been able to find any documentation of an official divorce, nor have I found any death records for Clarence L. Strader.
Anna and Clarence Strader as shopkeepers. Click on the image for a larger view.
Before the demise of their marriage, however it ended, Anna and Clarence became property and business owners. I believe the two individuals in the photograph to the left may be Anna and Clarence Strader, although I have no way of knowing for certain. There are two reasons that have led me to this conclusion: When my grandmother, Dorothy Scott (granddaughter of Anna and Clarence) gave me this photo, she told me that her grandmother was a milliner and operated a general store. Secondly, through my research, I learned that Anna and Clarence owned a building at 11 High Street in Newton, New Jersey. According to a website on the history of Newton, NJ, <http://newtonnj.net/Pages/highstreetongreen.htm> Anna bought a building in downtown Newton. “On July 19, 1880, James L. Decker, Sheriff, conveyed William Drake’s house and lot on High Street to Charles J. Roe. In the first week of March 1881, work began on the building that Charles Roe planned to erect on the site of the Drake House destroyed by fire a few months earlier. By May 11, 1881, bricklayers were erecting the walls for Charles Roe’s new brick building on the Drake property. In August 1881, Charles C. Hoff, of Lambertville, leased the new store room of Charles Roe, two doors above the Court House, and opened a fancy and millinery goods business. In December 1883, the Roe building was occupied by “four or five lawyers … besides the millinery store of E. & H. Rorbach.”
11 High Street, Newton, New Jersey, the building that Anna and Clarence Strader once owned together.
Charles Roe sold his brick building and lot at 11 High Street to Anna C. Strader, wife of Clarence Strader, on March 1, 1886. She immediately opened a “new millinery store, in the new brick building above the Court House,” offering the “new Spring styles.” Annie Strader and her husband, Clarence L. Strader, conveyed the property to Margaret Cortelyou on December 20, 1892.
Anna remained in New Jersey and alone into her 70’s. Sometime after the 1930 census that has her living in Stanhope, New Jersey, she went to live on Long Island, New York with her son and his family, Clarence and Lucy, and their children (including my grandmother Dorothy.). Anna died at the age of 77 on March 31, 1939. She is buried in the Lutheran Cemetery in Middle Village, LI.
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