Cassius Samuel Ferris
Father of Clara Marcella Ferris Hannah
And Grandfather of Herbert, William, Irene, Kenneth, Emerson, Warren, and Ethel Hannah
All born in Bemidji, Beltrami County, Mn.

We first find Cassius in the 1850 Census of Peru Township, Clinton Co. New York State at age 5 on a farm with his parents Samuel Ferris and Elizabeth Hodgson Ferris.

We next find Cassius in the 1860 Census still with his parents at age 16 and still on the farm.
Then in 1863 at age 19 he is in the 118th New York State Infantry, commonly known as the Adirondack Regiment. This regiment is recruited exclusively from Clinton and 2 other counties in the Adirondack region. He served with the regiment throughout the Civil War until they were mustered out in 1866. There is a great deal of information about the 118th on the internet. (Military records have been sent for)

He next appears in the 1870 Census at age 24 in Ward 5, Oshkosh (Sawdust City) Wisconsin. He is working in a Shingle Mill. Also working in a Shingle Mill in this Census in Ward 5 is Mary J Case age 19, his future wife.
She is the daughter of Andrew Case and Sarah Ann Honsinger Case.

We also find in this same 1870 census, Emerson Ferris age 22 younger brother of Cassius. He also served in the Civil War 1865-1866. He was working in a Shingle Mill and was living with a woman age 19 named Justine in Ward 5 of Oshkosh.

The next time we see Emerson is in the 1900 census for Big Stone County, Akron Township, MN. He is married to Justine (A book agent), no children.
The last we see of him is in the 1910 census for West Coquille, Oregon. Married 40 yrs. to Justine. No children ever shown for them

The 1910 Census for Grant Valley Township, Beltrami Co, Minnesota shows Cassius and wife as being married 39 years, this puts their marriage date at 1871. According to this census they had born to them 8 children, with 5 being alive for this census. In this census they were living alone.

The Ferris Family plot is in Bemidji, Beltrami County, Minnesota.

The Ferris Family Mystery
The following is the likely order of birth

Claudia Ferris (1872-1907) Headstone in Ferris plot. No other information for her.

William Ferris (?-1899) Ferris plot. Spanish American war vet. No other information.

Lydia Ferris Barton (No information except she lived in Craig)

Mary J Ferris Anderson (8/11/1880-9/4/1950)

Clara Marcella Ferris Hannah (1885-05/1972)
Her husband Ernest W Hannah (1873-1936) who had a store in Bemidji circa the 1920's and traded with the Chippewa is buried in the Ferris plot. They were parents to seven children. See Hannah Family history.

Sara Ferris Knapp (1890- ?) No other information.

The 1900 census said 7 children were born and 5 were living. Who was the 5th child alive in 1900?
The 1910 census said that 8 children were born and 5 still living. The unknown 5th child was still alive in 1910. The 8th child must have been born and died between 1900 and 1910 in Grant Valley Township, MN. All the rest were born in Oshkosh, Wi. The 20 year gap 1880-1900 is because about 1/2 the 1880 census for Oshkosh cannot be read because of ink stains.

See attached letter from Aunt Ethel for additional information.

Russell Herbert Hannah - November 2009
b. 11/28/1926
Bemidji, Beltrami County, Mn.

---

Family History
by Aunt Ethel Hannah Zappo
mailed to nephew Russell Herbert Hannah.

The Ernest Hannah Family
of Beltrami County, MN
top row left to right:
wife Clara Marcella Ferris Hannah, Herbert E. Hannah first born 1904
center row:
Emerson, Kenneth, Ethel (who became Ethel Hannah Zappo) and William
bottom row:
Warren

Mary McCarthy of Ireland was the mother of Sarah B Honsinger Case.
In 1842 Jerome T Case came to Wisconsin from New York State and settled in Rochester in Southeastern Wisconsin. Bringing with him 6 crudely made threshers to separate the wheat grain from the chaff. He sold 5 and did custom threshing with the 6th. He began to build and improve the threshers and other farm machinery. By 1856 he was said to be building 199 threshing machines a year and was now located at Racine.
Hazel Knapp (Mothers Cousin) got these facts from someone giving their family background of the Bernier family, which was her family branch of the Case family.
I remember a big family get together when we made that trip to Wisconsin when I was just a little girl. I have a picture of Andrew and Sara Case, mothers grandparents, who were cousins of Jerome Case.
There was also a relationship with the McCarthys and the Lafollets dating back to when Oshkosh had a population of only 300. Mothers mother was a Case and I remember visiting with one of her brothers, Frank Case when we were in Wisconsin.
When Hazel Knapp gets back from Wi..I hope to visit her for a day to fill in some things about the rest of Grandmas family.
She married Grandpa Ferris when he came to Wi. After the Civil War. How well I remember how proud we kids were to march behind the Truck that carried Grandpa in the Memorial Day parade.
I have a picture of Grandpa Ferris's father which was taken by the C.H.Gallup & Co.292,294,296 Main Street, Poughkeepsie, NY. I have a picture of the Ferris Family (about 12 ) which was taken when Grandpa made a trip back.
I am sure there must be some Ferris's left in that part of the country.

Grandpa and Grandma Ferris had five children.

William who died soon after he came home from the Spanish American War in 1899. He is buried in the Ferris plot in the cemetery in Bemidji.
Aunt Mary, Aunt Lydia, Mother, and Aunt Sarah.
Grandpa Ferris lost part of his right hand while working in a sawmill. Because he could no longer do that type of work he decided to be a farmer close to Grandma's brother Uncle Ames. It was a good farm in Otter tail County, where they stayed for a few years.
I remember grandma telling me about the blizzards that would roar across the plains in the winter. I believe it was in one of these blizzards that she was hurt, and had to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair.
Grandpa Ferris made a trip to Beltrami County, Minnesota, where he had heard they were opening up land for homesteading. It was during Blueberry season, and when he returned home he brought a pail of Blueberries with him. To Grandma that meant woods, so they sold the farm and started north with a covered wagon, making most of their own roads through the woods. He homesteaded property about eight miles out of Bemidji. (this must have been the property around Cass Lake that I found in my research he had filed on) The land was some of the poorest in the county, but it did produce Blueberries and Arbutus in abundance, which must have brought joy to Grandma's heart. She always seemed happy, or perhaps it was her faith in her Lord and Savior. I was told that she started the first Sunday School in this area.
I remember their log house which was replaced by a frame house. It never seemed odd to us children that Grandma did all her work from a wheelchair. I believe we thought that was the way Grandma's came. It was here where mother met father who had homesteaded a farm close to where mother's cousin Hazel Knapp lived.
At one time we had quite a bit of material on Dad's background, but that all burned when we lived in the Lakeview Apartment.
I do know that Dad's father"s family was moving from Pennsylvania to Michigan by wagon train, when they were attacked by Indians. The mother and father were killed and the two boys were taken to be raised by other families. Dad's father always kept the name Hannah, but did not know if the brother had. Dad had a brother who lived in Montana, and I believe three sisters. Dad was the youngest and perhaps the most restless and ended up in Minnesota where he met and married mother. They lived in the country for awhile and then moved to Bemidji where Dad built a house on 12th street, we after moved to the store, and later he bought the home in Millbank.
I know I have more material and will send it as soon as I get it together.
Aunt Ethel Zappo

---

Herbert E Hannah was born in June of 1904 in Bemidji, Minnesota. The first born of the Ernest Hannah and Clara Marcella Ferris Hannah branch of our tree. He and his four brothers and two sisters grew up in the midst of the lumber wars. See The Wobblies and Lumber Beasts of Minnesota.

He loved outdoor work and working with horses. .At age 14 he was working in the lumber camps. When he came home after a stay in the camps his mother would not let him in the house until he stripped and washed using a big galvanized tub outdoors, she would give him clean clothes and burn the camp clothes. While in Minnesota he also gave the Rodeo a try. He got busted up real bad by a horse called Steam Boat Bill, and that ended his rodeo career. He met his future wife Edythe E Hargreaves through his sister Irene Hannah. They married and honeymooned by traveling on his motorcycle with a small trailer towed behind it into the Superior National Forest. In Nov. 1926 Russell was born and a year and one half later in June 1928 Irene was born. Stuart, Shirley, and Gordon were all born in NJ.

After the depression forced the move back east to NJ where his wife Edythe, and most of her ancestors were from, he went looking for work. He was always able to find work of some kind to put food on the table. He once was able to bluff his way into a job at the old Kearney Plant of Ford Motor Co. He heard that they were hiring welders, so he went to a pawn shop and spent the last of his money on a welders helmet and a pair of welding gloves. He then went and stood in line for this job. Seeing him carrying a pair of welders gloves and a helmet he was hired on the spot.

After he had reported to work and the company found out he did not know a thing about welding, he was almost fired and would have been, except for a job that happened to be open on the freight train unloading platform. The boss said, that anyone having enough nerve to pull a stunt like he did, to get hired for the welding job, ought to be able to work like a horse. So that was the kind of work that he was given. Large hand trucks were filled with the materials unloaded from the freight cars for delivery to the assembly lines, these trucks had a tongue similar to a farm wagon with a t-bar at the end, so Ford Motor Co. put our father and another employee on each side of this wagon tongue and all day the two of them, just like the horses that he loved so much, hauled material to wherever it was needed on the assembly line.
He stayed with them until they moved their assembly operation to Edgewater, N.J Then he worked as a milk delivery man with a horse drawn truck in Hillside NJ

Eventually he found out about the job opening for a caretaker farmer for Earl Hines in West MIlford, NJ at the head of Pinecliff Lake. and about 1932 took this job. He and his family got an old house that did not leak, but had no water inside. Mr. Hines had Eddy Davis come and check the electric. After Eddy checked the electric Bert told Mr. Hines that he knew how to handle dynamite, and if he could buy it on the farm account he would put a water line in from the spring to the kitchen. ( At that time any farmer could buy dynamite) He had handled dynamite in the lumber camps, but this was a far cry from a lumber camp. In order to get to the kitchen he had to get through about ten feet of shale for the three foot deep trench for the pipe. He decided to start at the house and work back toward the spring. My mother was quite worried about this operation, and it turned out she had every right to be. He mis-calculated how much of a stick to use the first time and blew out the kitchen window and put a hunk of shale right through the wall onto the kitchen stove. He got the job done without any more casualties. For quite a while after this Charley Milligan a black man who also worked for the Hine's as a chouffer and house man called my father Dynamite Man.

Our father was not dumb, but at times he was like a bull in a china closet. Another one of his episodes burnt his hand pretty bad. Mr. Hines son Earl brought us a box of fireworks for the fourth. This was a very exciting thing for us kids. We could hardly wait for it to get dark. He got a couple of Roman Candle tubes going and let Irene and me hold them. We had Chinese firecrackers also. Then he pulled out what we now know was a sky rocket. He thought that it was like a Roman Candle and lit it. It burnt his hand pretty bad before he could release it. It was a hell of a way for us kids to learn about fireworks safety.

One of the major drawbacks to this job, was a distinct possibility that during the summer you could get snake bit by either a Copperhead or a Rattler as the farm had both in abundance. It was so bad that Bert carried a Snakebite Kit when he was mowing hay in late summer.

This job afforded him the opportunity to do the things that he had always loved doing such as hunting, trapping and fishing.
I remember one time while we were out running a trap line, that he fell through the ice along the edge of the pond, he chased me home ahead of him and ran for home himself to keep from freezing.

Another time I remember going up to the long field on the hill behind the barn with him to get a deer. Hunting seasons did not mean much to him as he figured the deer were put there to feed his family. When we went out to this field it was usually just after dark and I carried an old fender mounted automobile headlight that was hooked up to an old tractor battery that had a carrying strap. A wire was permanently connected from a post on the battery to the head light, the other wire from the light had an alligator clip on it, and when he told me to I clipped it to the battery and shown the light where he told me, to spot the deer, which he shot over my shoulder with a 22 cal. rifle. If a pig had been butchered some of the meat would be mixed with venison and made into sausage.

It was during the time on this job that Dad started drinking quite a lot and hanging out with a bunch of locals who also were drinkers. I think the place was called Hunters Rest and was on Union Valley Road.
He could not handle drinking and would become mean and violent. This led eventually to the divorce. One night that I will never forget, one of the men from this bar in his rickety old car came roaring into the dirt road to our house, and told Bert to grab his gun and come with them to meet with other men in West Milford. They went roaring off leaving us kids scared half to death. It turned out that these men had heard the famous Martian Invasion broadcast on the radio in that bar. Most of them, not being quite sober decided they would meet with other men and defend their homes. Our radio was not working at the time so Bert went along with the other men. You never could imagine how mad he was when he found out it was all fiction. I think most of them used the whole affair as an excuse to go back to the bar. It was almost daylight when he came home ranting to my mother about that bunch of damn fools. There were thousands of jokes made over the years about that episode.
I remember once finding quite a few bottles of beer stashed in a cold spring, that Dad and Charlie Milligan, a black man who also worked for Mr. Hines had hid there.
After the divorce Irene, Gordon and I did not get to see very much of Stuart and Shirley who stayed with him and Grandma Hannah. Once in a while he came to Newark and we were able to visit with him in the car or when we were able visit him in West Milford.

During WW2 he worked in a Defense Industry as did almost everyone, it was sometime during this period that he had an auto accident and never drank again. As soon as the war was over he found another outside job as a Caretaker for Martha Brooks Hutcheson on her Estate in the Pepack Gladstone area of N.J. she called this place Merchiston Farms. It is now part of the Morris County Park System and is called Bamboo Brook. This estate became part of the Park System after Mrs. Hutchenson died, as her will specified and also as her will specified Dad was granted lifetime rights to his home and his salary to be paid from park funds. Stuart lived there with Dad for quite some time, and that is another story in itself.

After Mrs Hutcheson died, her ashes were spread over her beloved estate as was our father's after his death. He loved that place as much as Mrs Hutcheson.

One of the most impressive and unusual moments that I have encountered occured a couple of days after Dad's death as several of us were standing around the parking area outside his home. Off in the distance you could hear the Foxhounds running and drawing near to the property on the hill above the out buildings, and all at once the full membership of the Essex Fox and Hunt Club in their full dress riding habits, galloped up and drew their horses up in a large semi-circle up on that hillside, bugled the dogs in and just sat there, on their horses facing Dad's house for a few moments of silence and then proceeded on with the hunt.
This honor was because of his good relationship with the members of the hunt and the care he took of their dogs that so often showed up at his house.

During his time on this property, he and his second wife, whose maiden name was Louisa Franks, who was a hard working, good woman were quite successful raising Championship caliber Beagle Hounds for Field Trial and Hunting purposes. One of those Champions (Longview Susie) became U.S. Champion in 1963 by beating a field of over 57 other Field Champions at a Field Trial in Pennsylvania

Our father loved this place, and passed away peacefully in his house just as he wanted.
Updated February, 2009

---

BACK -- HOME

Copyright ©Genealogy Trails