The Bishoprick grave at Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati,Ohio

On a blisteringly hot (100 degrees Fahrenheit, 108 heat index with humidity thrown in) day, Jim, Renee, Matt and I all went out hunting for the Bishoprick family graves in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati (www.springgrove.org). Armed with some prior knowledge included in previous posts, we knew which section of the cemetery to search. After about 45 minutes of wandering around checking out all the standing monuments (since we knew that Henry had a standing monument), Jim located it. (As he always does; Jim always finds everything-- old forts, slithery things in the grass, roads... you name it.)

The front face has Henry and Elizabeth's names on it; on the side (right from this viewpoint) are the children's names (Charles Edward, Mary Ann, and a child named Redhead, presumably a nephew of Elizabeth's). Mark's must be on the back face, but it's not legible. We'll come back in the fall with materials to do rubbings, when it's cooler...

Nice, quiet location, overlooking a lake with massive fish in it, according to Jim. If he'll share, I'll post his video of the fish swimming around. If it weren't for the scary fish, I think we might all have been pretty tempted to take a dip in the lake.

Jim and Renee thinking about the slope of the hill and the fact that the fish have probably thrived on all the human DNA they've ingested as the slope has washed down into the lake...

Matt and the dogs trying to keep from roasting alive...

Henry Bishoprick and the Bytown Mechanics Institute

Well, it would appear that someone in the family was into implementation science long before it became known as a thing; Jim found this very interesting entry in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bytown_Mechanics%27_Institute

If you look in the little box on the right hand side that lists the officers in 1847, you'll see a reference to Henry Bishoprick...

Ancestry DNA

Well, not too interesting, sadly, although very confirmatory. 86% of my genes derive from the British Isles, 7% from the region of Persia, Turkey and the Caucasus, and 7% uncertain...

Huh... founder of the city of Ottawa? Really?

Okay, following the line of inquiry sparked by the discovery of Henry Bishoprick in Ohio:

Apparently the company founded by Henry, bearing his name, continued in one form or another for some period, although it now may be under a different name (Enerfab). Apparently at some point they switched from baking powder to stucco. I haven't had time to trace out the full story, but here is the brief obituary for Allison Bishopric who died in 1998:

Allison Bishopric, Jr.

Allison Bishopric Jr., 97, a member of the family that founded Bishopric Products Co. in Cincinnati, died Friday in Palm Beach, Fla.

He lived in Amagansett, N.Y., and was the great-grandson of Mark Bishopric, founder of the city of Ottawa, Canada.

Services were Wednesday at the Church of the Advent, Walnut Hills. Memorials: Olympus Center, Cincinnati, or St. Thomas Church, Amagansett.
Date of announcement: 01-29-1998 

I did not know that Mark Bishoprick was the founder of the city of Ottawa. I don't think anyone else does either... he was a reasonably early resident but not a really early resident. Huh.

Henry Bishoprick-- brother or son?

Okay, I've been digging (virtually-- Matt does the literal digging in our household, pictures of the unearthed names of Mark, Maria, and George still to be posted) further. Mark Bishoprick Senior is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, Ohio-- interred in the year of his death in 1872, and presumably transported after death from his home in Ottawa, Ontario to Cincinnati.

Apparently Henry Bishoprick, born 1812 in Richmond, Yorkshire, England (recall that Mark Senior was born there in 1787 or 1789), lived in Cincinnati where he was a baking powder baron. That is, he had a baking powder and other drug manufacturing plant on W. 5th Street in downtown Cincinnati. He himself lived in Glendale, and is profiled on the Glendale history page: http://www.glendaleohio.org/history.html (you have to scroll down about 1/3 of the way to find the piece about Henry). There's a fair amount about Henry on that page, and a bit more on the Spring Grove cemetery page which describes his service as a Union soldier for 30 days in 1862 when Cincinnati was apparently under threat of attack. He and the rest of his company mustered out of the Union army after 30 days, when I would surmise the threat to Cincinnati had faded. A little more detail on Henry and a picture of his cenotaph can be found here: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Bishop&GSiman=1&GScid=43543&GRid=22677276&, courtesy of Kevin Guy, who apparently has a hobby of memorializing graves of Union soldiers.

Following through on that page, I found a comment from someone in Yorkshire, Andrea, who is trying to trace members of her Bishoprick family in North America. There is an email address, and I'll contact her if I can to see if she can shed light on the family in Yorkshire, which I've found very hard to trace. As she notes, Henry (who moved to Brooklyn not long after 1862, but retained his family burial plot in Spring Grove because he had buried two children there) went back to Yorkshire for a visit in 1881, when he stayed in the household of a Thomas Heslop. He returned to the US on a boat called the Egyptian Monarch; he was apparently traveling alone as there are no other Bishopricks on the passenger list. He died in Brooklyn in 1892, and his body was transported back to Cincinnati for burial in Spring Grove in the same plot as Mark Bishoprick Senior.

This opens up a new line of inquiry into the Bishoprick family. Henry evidently went from Yorkshire to Canada with his family (Mark Senior and Mark Junior), but then moved to Ohio where he met Thomas Redhead, with whom he went into partnership to create Bishoprick & Co., and whose sister Elizabeth Redhead was apparently his wife. However, his older children were born in Canada, with a gap in age between those children and those born in Ohio. He appears to have remarried in later life (after Elizabeth's death in 1866) in Brooklyn to someone named Julia (perhaps nee Davis), who was from New York. However, the name of the person who "ordered" his interment in Spring Grove was an Amelia Haworth-- possibly a housekeeper? He and his wife had had at least one servant when they lived in Cincinnati according to census records.

If I were to make a guess, I'd guess that Henry was Mark Senior's oldest son. When they emigrated from Yorkshire, in 1832 (if that's accurate) to go to Canada, Mark Senior would have been 45, Henry would have been 20, and Mark Junior would have been about 9. It's not clear if anyone else emigrated with them; Mark Senior married Maria Downing in 1862 in Ottawa. There are no records I've found so far that he was married to anyone else in Canada.

But this opens up a whole new line of inquiry...

Findings from a visit to Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa, Ontario

This is the tombstone for William and Sarah (Bishoprick) Sales, in Beechwood Cemetery, Ottawa, Ontario. William died in 1928, of stomach cancer; he was noted in the Beechwood interment records as having been a civil servant, and his next of kin, responsible for his burial, was his widow, Sarah. Sarah died in 1930, 2 years later, of (I think, will have to check) heart failure. Her next of kin in the Beechwood records is listed as Mrs. Patrick (Florence) McEvoy, her daughter. She lived with the McEvoys at 464 Gladstone Street in Ottawa until her death. Sarah's father was Mark Bishoprick Junior, and her mother was Maria (Kilbourne) Bishoprick. They are both buried in a plot in Beechwood not too far from this one, but in a different section of the cemetery. Mark Bishoprick Senior also lived in Ottawa, and was also married to a Maria, nee Downing. She, however, was not Mark Junior's mother, who appears to have been someone named Ann Todd. Both Mark Bishoprick Senior and Junior were born in England, probably from North Yorkshire. They emigrated together in 1832, when Mark Junior would have been about 9. Mark Bishoprick Junior may have been the only child from the first marriage; other children were born in Canada from Mark Senior's second marriage to Maria Downing. More on the Bishopricks below.

This tombstone in Beechwood marks the burial site for Mark Junior, Maria (Kilbourne) and George Frederick Bishoprick, who was either a brother of Mark Junior, or the son of Mark Junior and Maria K. The three individual markers of their graves were completely covered over with turf; Matt dug them out with his hands and we took pictures of them, as well as of the surrounding tombstones so that I can do some more research to see if they're buried near other family members; offhand, I didn't remember any of the names of the families around them (Wright, McLaren, McFarland, Tully), but I'll do some more digging. To date, I haven't been able to find much online about Maria Kilbourne's background or family except that she was apparently born in Kingston, Ontario, somewhere between 1819-1825. I haven't yet found any records of her birth. Her husband, Mark Junior, was the son of Mark Senior (who may have been named John Mark, but he apparently went by Mark) and apparently Ann Todd, in England. Again, so far, I haven't been able to trace them back much in England.

This tombstone marks the grave of Maria (Downing) Bishoprick, second wife of Mark Senior. She was apparently born in England also, although I haven't yet been able to trace much of her background. She had several children with Mark Senior, one of whom was her daughter Alice who married William Henry Marshall. Maria lived with them during her later years, and Alice was listed as the next of kin in the Beechwood records. She would have been Mark Junior's stepmother, although she was very close to his age (perhaps the same age as he), and her children were the same age as Mark Junior's children, so they would perhaps have felt more like siblings than like nieces/nephews. The two Marias (Downing and Kilbourne) were also very much the same age. Mark Senior is actually buried in Springhill Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio, a very strange coincidence because that was where my mother grew up, and both of my maternal grandparents (Irving and Anne Robertson Magorian) have their ashes interred at that cemetery (many, many years later). I'll make a trip to Springhill on my next visit to Cincinnati and see if I can locate Mark Senior's tombstone. Apparently his son (or grandson) George Frederick lived in Wyoming, Ohio, and may have been the reason why Mark Senior's body was sent there for interment. However, George Frederick himself is buried in Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa in the same plot as Mark Junior and Maria Kilbourne. Seems as though there's something of a story there to try to puzzle out...