25 & 26 Henry Sanford Bellows (1834-1897) and Harriet Amelia Tichenor (1838-1933)

Henry Sanford Bellows was a lawyer in Brooklyn, New York, in the late 1800s, active in community affairs and successful enough to get his sketched portrait printed in the newspaper at some point. 

The family into which he was born on March 19, 1834, seems to have been comfortable, neither rich nor poor. In the 1850 US census (the first with any detail beyond the name of the household head), he is 16 years old and living with his family. His dad was a shoemaker, but they seem to have lived in a nice-enough neighborhood. Everyone on the block owned their own homes, though none had any live-in domestic servants. The neighbors' occupations were blacksmith, cooper, seaman, and carpenter. The teen-age boys all had occupations, too: tinman, painter, carpenter. Henry's occupation was listed as "artist." I'd love to know more about that, but don't.

Henry died on Nov. 27, 1897

  If we believe his obituary, within 3 years of that 1850 census, this artist had attended Columbia College (renamed Columbia University in 1896); graduated; and landed a job as assistant superintendent of a public school. 

Within the next two years, he was a lawyer working as private secretary to the mayor of Brooklyn. I tried to find out what the job of "US Commissioner" was, but couldn't. Henry's occupation on every census was "lawyer.' 

Henry and Harriet Amelia Tichenor (Hettie) were married sometime before 1860--I did not find a marriage record. By 1870, they had three children, Julia Edith (b. 1860, our ancestor); Charles Mortimer (1862, who became a doctor), and Mary Amelia (1864). (Much later, in 1882, they had a third daughter, Ethel.)

From 1860 through 1880, federal and state census records show the family moving several times within Brooklyn, always to seemingly solid, though not impressively wealthy, neighborhoods. Similar to the home he lived in as a boy, these neighborhoods were made of native-born American homeowners. One difference is that the census showed a live-in domestic servant in every home, including Henry and Hettie's.  In the 1870 census, Henry and Hettie's neighbors included a potter, hay press maker, chair maker, iron forger, and hair spinner.  Sometime between 1875 and 1880, the family moved to 313 Halsey Street, where they stayed for the rest of Henry and Hattie's lives. On that street, their neighbors included a banker, a sea captain, a button manufacturer, a book merchant, and a "car driver", plus a domestic servant in every home.

Hettie died on June 2, 1933, age 94

I couldn't find more about Hettie, beyond the census records and her obituary.  The eldest of four daughters, she was born on December 16, 1838 into a home a lot like Henry's, that is, in a neighborhood of American-born homeowners, with similar occupations. Her dad was a carpenter.

 Both Henry and Hettie have some interesting ancestors. Henry's lineage traces back to John Bellows, known as the "Boy Immigrant of 1635," who was a inexplicably unaccompanied 12-year-old who came with the Puritans to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Hettie's heritage traces back to the Lyons family, one of the first European families in New Jersey.

313 Halsey Street is one of these homes.

 

 Parents: William Smith Bellows and Mary Smith

                James Mortimer Tichenor and Julia Ann Roberts