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- In the spring of 1829, Thomas McMichael believed he had found a place where he could make a living. Writing home to his brother-in-law Charles Fisher, he announced that he had rented a tanyard, arranged to plant corn, and decided to remain in Chautauqua County for “one or two years.” His health was good, the country suited him, and he wanted his wife and little daughter brought out to join him. By August, his confidence had given way to a very different confession: “I never was so poor in my life—or I swear I never felt so poor since I was born.”
Between those two letters lies the most vivid surviving account of Thomas’s life: a skilled working man trying to turn labor, a few possessions, family assistance, and the promise of a new place into a secure home.
Thomas was born about 1807 in Ontario County, New York, according to the 1855 state census, which gives his age as forty-eight and his birthplace as Ontario. The precise town and date remain unknown; the recorded age suggests a birth in approximately 1806–1807. Family recollections suggest that his childhood unfolded in a household divided by separation. In the Sutherland family correspondence preserved from 1908, a note headed “This is the way Mother remembers things” recalls that “Grandma”—identified in the family reconstruction as Lydia McMichael—said her parents “parted.” She then went to live with her grandfather and grandmother Haines.
That same account names Thomas among Grandma’s brothers and sisters, giving a more direct family recollection of the Thomas–Lydia relationship than the later reference to “cousin Caroline” alone. The passage does not name their father or explain which parent left; Charles is the father’s name supplied by the family research. Separately, Fisher descendant Sheldon Fisher remembered that Thomas had lived and worked with Charles Fisher while young. The two traditions suggest that relatives and other households helped raise the children after their parents separated, although neither the date nor the circumstances of Thomas’s own move are established.
What his own letters establish is the lasting trust he placed in Charles. By 1829, Charles was both his brother-in-law and the person Thomas relied upon to manage important affairs at home. Thomas had married Lucinda Fisher, and their eldest daughter, Emmeline, was born on September 28, 1828. A later marriage record for Emmeline’s son Zachary Briggs identified his mother’s birthplace as Bushnell’s Basin, placing the young family in the neighborhood of Pittsford and Victor before Thomas’s western venture.
On March 21, 1829, Thomas and Lucinda sold a small parcel in Victor to John Belamy of Bloomfield for a stated $215. The deed described sixty rods of land near Samuel Ewing’s house and a highway crossing Mud Creek. It also excepted a $100 mortgage given to William Grimes by Joseph McMichael. Joseph’s relationship to Thomas is not stated, but his name supplies a new lead into the family’s earlier property dealings. The sale placed Thomas and Lucinda together in Victor only weeks before the western venture. It may have been part of their preparations, although the deed does not explain their reason for selling or how much money they ultimately had available.
Before setting out in the spring of 1829, Thomas gave Charles formal authority to handle his business. In a document dated April 25, 1829 (the day is slightly uncertain), Thomas described himself as a resident of Victor and appointed Charles his attorney to collect money owed to him, settle accounts, and give receipts and discharges. John Fisher witnessed the document. This arrangement explains why his later letters repeatedly asked Charles to collect notes and attend to unfinished business: Charles was acting under authority Thomas had put in writing.
This was a region being reshaped by the Erie Canal. Completed in 1825, the canal connected Albany with Buffalo and made moving people and heavy goods substantially faster and cheaper. For a family with limited money, it offered a practical means of carrying household belongings and trade goods toward a new home. Thomas’s later instructions show that he understood precisely how to use it. Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor, “History and Culture”
Thomas’s trade was leather. He was a tanner and, as his May letter makes clear, also did currying: the skilled work of preparing and finishing hides after tanning. A currier scraped, stretched, and treated leather to give it the required finish. The word matters in telling his story. His reference to “currying” concerns leather work; it does not by itself establish employment as a courier carrying messages or parcels. The Worshipful Company of Curriers, “Company History”
By May 12, 1829, Thomas had reached the home of Thomas Cleland in Chautauqua County. He then traveled through Jamestown to a place apparently meaning Warren, Pennsylvania, before returning to Cleland’s. He was exploring beyond the neighborhood in which he first stopped, but the May letter does not say that he reached Pittsburgh.
On May 20 he wrote Charles with the outlines of a plan. He had rented a tanyard for two years, with the option of buying it, and had secured a small currying job from its owner. He had also arranged to plant three acres of corn on Cleland’s land. Leather work would provide one possible income; crops would provide another resource. Renting before purchasing gave him time to find out whether the venture would succeed.
He had seen William McMichael, who had agreed to fetch the family if needed. William was Thomas’s brother. Thomas asked Charles to send the leather and shoes he still held, reporting that shoes brought two dollars a pair in his new neighborhood. Goods left behind were potential earnings, and he wanted them put to use.
His instructions placed the canal at the center of the move. Charles and William were to get the belongings to Pittsford. “I expect to move by watter all the way excepting 13 miles,” Thomas explained. The letter does not identify every stage of the journey, but it gives direct evidence that water transport was part of his plan for moving his household west.
Meanwhile, Lucinda remained behind. Thomas urged Charles to see her quickly, or give the letter to John so that he could do so. He closed in haste because the mail was leaving that morning. These were practical instructions, but they also reveal a husband waiting at a distance for news of his family and the means to bring them together.
A shorter letter, apparently dated June 20, 1829, reveals how unsettled his plans remained. The place heading appears to read Rochester, with part of the word crossed through. Thomas hoped to obtain money from Buffalo and said that, if successful, he would try to return for work. He wanted to move again if he could raise enough money. He also reported having paid an account to a firm whose name appears to be Lathrop & Clapp, for which Charles had held a warrant. He asked for news from “the flats” and whether a man named Thomas had been back. The surname was not supplied, so this man cannot yet be identified as Thomas Cleland. If the date is read correctly, this was likely the unanswered letter Thomas mentioned on August 2 as having been written six weeks earlier.
By August 2, Lucinda and Emmeline had joined him. Thomas reported that the family was healthy and that Emmeline had been walking for four weeks. Their reunion, however, had not brought financial security.
Thomas now faced a payment of $150 to T. Cleland by the first of January. According to Thomas, Cleland threatened to foreclose if he failed to pay. The surviving letter does not identify the mortgaged property precisely, so it cannot yet be assumed to have been the rented tanyard. What is unmistakable is Thomas’s alarm—and his anger at a man whose household had figured so helpfully in his May plans.
He asked Charles to collect outstanding notes and sell the horse, cow, and wagon he had left behind. He would accept fifty dollars for the horse with payment in sixty days, ten dollars cash for the cow, and eighteen dollars cash for the wagon. These details show how carefully he weighed price against the urgency of payment.
“I have not taking one dollar in money since I left Victor,” he complained. His account reveals the difference between having work, crops, or possessions and having money available when a debt came due. Whatever resources he had accumulated, they were not meeting his immediate need for cash.
Yet the letter was not entirely despairing. His corn, potatoes, buckwheat, and flax were doing well. He had cut about eight tons of hay. A sow purchased for $2.50 had produced five young pigs, giving him six hogs altogether. Thinking of his crops and little stock of animals, he admitted, revived his spirits.
He was considering selling and trying elsewhere, but he asked Charles to keep that thought from the people at Victor Flats. Even under pressure, he could joke that news of a promising new region might bring everyone west, leaving a poor fellow without a dollar little chance. The letter preserves frustration, pride, humor, and hope in the same voice.
The family research describes another letter, dated September 1829, placing Thomas in Cattaraugus County and referring to a recent return from Pittsburgh. That later letter may help explain how his plans changed after the August crisis. By the 1830 census, he was in Ashford, with a household whose ages fit Thomas, Lucinda, and two daughters under five: Emmeline and Caroline, whose family-recorded birth date is May 18, 1830.
Their daughter Lucinda was born January 21, 1832. Her later death record gives Springville, in neighboring Erie County, as her birthplace. The Ashford and Springville references place the family in the same general border region, although they do not establish the exact location of their home. Maryette, apparently the daughter later called Mary Deyo, followed about 1836, and Samantha in 1837.
The family was growing during an economically unsettled decade. The Panic of 1837 ushered in years of depression, business failures, and disrupted credit. It was a difficult setting in which to support a household through trade and small enterprise. No surviving evidence yet shows how the crisis affected Thomas personally, or whether it influenced his return east; it belongs to the circumstances of his life rather than to a proven explanation for his movements. Harvard Business School, Baker Library, “1837: The Hard Times”
A more definite turning point came in March 1839, when Lucinda died. She was buried in Bushnell’s Basin Cemetery, returning her story to the neighborhood where the young family had lived. Her burial supports the family’s continuing connection with that area, although it does not alone establish where Thomas was living when she died. He was left with five young daughters, the oldest about ten and the youngest about two.
Thomas subsequently married Laura Pixley. In time their household made room for another child whose family had been broken apart. A newspaper account titled “A Scattered Family” relates that Thomas Dickinson, a shoemaker in East Rush, New York, died in 1845. His earnings had scarcely supported his family, and after his death his sons were placed with relatives and friends. William and James went to the Shakers; John was taken in by J. P. Furry, who subsequently moved to Illinois. The youngest, George, went to a family named McMichael in Honeoye.
The article does not give the McMichael adults’ first names, but its Honeoye connection fits the family research and the later census showing George in Thomas and Laura’s household. In 1855 he was ten, born in Yates County, and recorded with them in Naples. The family research identifies his birth mother as Bibby Barnard; the newspaper does not name her or explain her circumstances. Nor does it establish a formal legal adoption. It does show that George grew up using the McMichael name. Thomas’s own reported childhood separation and George’s placement give the family history a striking parallel, although no source tells us whether Thomas himself made that connection.
Long after Thomas’s death, George’s birth family found its way back together. According to “A Scattered Family,” John Dickinson advertised in the Detroit Free Press to locate his brothers and soon heard from all three. William was in Geneseo, New York, and James in Ithaca, Michigan. A dated notice in the Sterling Standard of May 27, 1897, page 14, records George’s arrival from Rochester, New York, on the 4:10 train the preceding Saturday—apparently May 22. John, of West Jordan, met him. The brothers reportedly had not seen each other for forty-eight years. The notice distinguishes their renewed contact through a newspaper advertisement some years earlier from this long-delayed meeting in person.
George was then a harness maker and was considering remaining in the area. His occupation gives Thomas’s story another connection across generations: the boy raised in a tanner and currier’s household had entered another leather trade. It is possible that Thomas influenced or taught him, but no apprenticeship or direct statement establishes that. The two newspaper accounts document George’s visit to John and plans for a wider reunion, although they do not establish that all four brothers eventually gathered together.
By May 6, 1847, Thomas was already living in Richmond, Ontario County. On that date he bought a small lot on Briggs Street in Honeoye from John R. Hall for $200. It measured four rods across the front and eight rods deep—about sixty-six by one hundred thirty-two feet—and contained one-fifth of an acre. The deed does not say whether Thomas used it as a home or workplace, but it gives a definite location for one of his investments and brings his documented Richmond residence forward three years from the 1850 census.
The 1855 state census gives a clearer picture of his later household in Naples: Thomas, forty-eight, a “Tanner & Currier”; Laura, thirty-two, his wife; and George, ten, recorded as a child of the household. Both adults were born in Ontario County, while George was born in Yates County. The dwelling appears to be recorded as a frame house valued at $300. The position normally used for years of residence in the town, suggesting that they had arrived around 1852.
Moving to Naples did not end his business connections with Honeoye. On May 3, 1858, Thomas, described as a resident of Naples, bought another Richmond property from the Bishops for $425. This deed identifies its purpose far more clearly: it was “the Tannery lot in the village of Honeoye.” The parcel contained ninety-nine square rods, a little over three-fifths of an acre. Nearly thirty years after the uncertain Chautauqua venture, Thomas was acquiring land already known for the trade by which he had supported his household. The purchase establishes ownership of the tannery lot, although it does not tell us whether he operated it himself, leased it to someone else, or divided his working time between Honeoye and Naples.
Thomas appeared in Naples again in 1860. His estate research indicates that he held land in both Richmond and Naples, although the newly supplied administration document does not itself describe those properties. The most revealing new evidence of his livelihood comes from December 1863. A federal excise assessment lists Thomas McMichael of Naples with 357 pounds of harness leather and 141 pounds of upper leather, assessed at $2.50 and $1.41 respectively, for a total of $3.91. These are quantities and taxes recorded for that assessment, not his annual earnings or the value of his estate. More than thirty years after renting the Chautauqua tanyard, Thomas was still associated with the leather business. The national system of federal excise taxation reached his Naples enterprise just months before his death.
His family connections nevertheless stretched west to Michigan. An 1852 letter from John Fisher to Charles reported that Emmeline was visiting Michigan and expected to bring Caroline back to Honeoye for the winter. The daughters were using the same kind of family assistance that had supported their father: visiting relatives, arranging journeys, and finding a place to stay when circumstances required it.
Thomas died on or about February 24, 1864, while the Civil War was still underway. The official record describes him as late of Naples and states that he died intestate—without a will. On March 12, 1864, the Ontario County Surrogate appointed Emeline Briggs and Levi Hotchkiss administrators of his estate. A separate probate petition, quoted in the family research, named his daughters Emmeline Briggs, wife of Cyrus Briggs; Caroline McMichael; Lucinda C. Douglas, wife of George L. Douglas; Mary Deyo, wife of Henry Deyo, in Cass County, Michigan; and Samantha Lee, wife of William Lee, in Naples. Emmeline identified herself as his eldest daughter. George does not appear in the heir list quoted so far; the complete estate file may clarify his position in the administration of the estate.
Thomas was buried in Honeoye Cemetery near the Briggs family. His daughter Lucinda McMichael Douglas was also buried there. Although his search for work had carried him into Chautauqua County, Cattaraugus County, and Pennsylvania, his final home and burial brought his story back to the Ontario County communities where several of his children remained.
His letters preserve what census entries and deeds cannot: the experience of trying to make a living while the future was uncertain. There was a tanyard to rent, leather to finish, corn to plant, a family to move, and a creditor to satisfy. Even in his bleakest letter, Thomas could find encouragement in a growing crop, a litter of pigs, and news of his little daughter walking.
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1807 - 1864 (56 years)
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