As best as anyone can recollect my gr gr grandmother was Prudence
Chamberlain. This is based only on the "say so" of my 80 yr. old mother
and her brother.
Charles Candee Baldwin's "Baldwin Genealogy" gives the wife of Conklin
Baldwin as just Prudence. They had 2 daughters both born in Hempstead,
Long Island, NY in the early 1860s. Conklin died in 1869
The other day I spent an afternoon with Mom and Uncle John and heard the
story of 'Jerushy'. This woman was some sort of cousin to my
grandfather's family (Ryan, Baldwin Chamberlain & Powell) and she is
probably remembered only becaues she is reputed to have been a fortune
hunter. The story goes that Jerushy conned some rich guy to marry her by
pretending that she was loaded. It turned out that the "rich guy" was
also a fortune hunter who was conning her! Well, they put what little
they had together and ended up owning half of Philadelphia or some city
like that.
Now, Jerushy might not have been a Chamberlain at all but I figure if the
story survived in our family, someone else might have passed it down as
well.
Actually, it is possible that we had more than one fortune hunter in the
family and that Jerushy is not the name of the female lead in the above
story but it is my guess that she is.
Does anyone else have tales of such sordid goings on?
Margaret