Caleb Bolstridge

Lillian May Briggs (Gosman) knew him for a few years after her marriage. He was then rather stocky in build and gray haired and had a slow easy gait and quiet manner --- sort of peaceful-like. When I knew him he was night engineer at the Brooklyn, N.Y. Gas Light Company in the Eastern District of Brooklyn and was justly proud of having worked up from office boy with that Company. Sarah Jane, Lillian's mother-in-law, who was Caleb's daughter, often spoke of how hard her dad had worked to attain his position which had never interferred with him being a good father and husband. His devotion to his family was well appreciated. Sarah Jane was about nine years of age and the oldest of the four children left him to care for when his #1 wife Elizabeth Cordingly passed away with tuberculosis and Caleb kept the little family together for five years before marrying the second time. The chore of keeping house was then somewhat easier for Sarah Jane and from all accounts Caleb was well pleased with his choice for a whife and mother. During the last years of his life, while he lived at the old homestead of his parents --- a small cottage in Central Islip, New York --- he suffered with asthma, although it was a reaction to a stroke that partly paralized him, and which took him out of this world in 1917. Caleb was a Civil War Veteran. He was in U.S. service under General McClellan but was given honorable discharge because of Epilepsy. However, this disease never hindered him in any advancement. He lived a perfectly normal life and in his late years he seemed to have outgrown it. His U.S. Pension record is at the National Archives in Washington D.C., in which city he was discharged from military service. !Census (1880): Brooklyn, Kings Co., New York, T9-0851 p.756C Caleb Bolstridge, head age 40 b. Eng, Engineer, parents b. Eng/Eng Margeret, wife, 38 b. Canada, keeping house, parents b. Canada/Canada William, son, 17 NY, par. b. Eng/Can Sarah J., dau., 15 NY, par b. Eng/Can George F., son, 14 NY, par b. Eng/Can Ellen E., dau., 12 NY, par b. Eng/Can Ida V., dau., 4 mo., NY, par. b. Eng/Can Elizabeth Allen, sister-in-law, single, 22 Canada, Tailoress, par. b. Eng/Can [Note: birth place of mother for children William thru Ellen appears to be incorrect, since they were by Caleb's first wife.]