Paging Carrie Bean

[Steve]

(08-28-2023 01:56 PM)Dave Taylor Wrote:  Alright here's another possible lead that I've gotten stumped on, but it looks promising.

In the 1860 census there is a 17 year old "Caroline Bean" residing in in Greenburgh, Westchester County, New York. This is right outside of the city and her post office is listed as Tarrytown. The census states she was born in New York.

Caroline Bean is the only person with the last name of Bean in the household. The head of the house is Robert Bowne Minturn, a merchant with real estate valued at $200,000 and a personal estate valued at $250,000. Here is the Wikipedia page about Robert Bowne Minturn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bowne_Minturn The dude was loaded.

How Caroline Bean is related, if at all, to Minturn and his family is unclear. Plus there is no reference to a "Mrs. Bean" that could be this girl's mother. Still, Minturn was a very wealthy merchant and someone who could definitely provide fancy clothes and get you into high society. So perhaps Minturn could be the merchant "father" GATH was talking about. If only we could figure out how the two are connected.

I'm skeptical that this Caroline Bean is the same person as our Carrie Bean. I think she's more likely a servant or live-in maid working for the Mintrum family. The household starts with the Mintrum family, then a 30 yr old woman with no occupation, then several servants and a Coachman, then there's a page break, and then there's several more people in the household with different surnames and birth places. Caroline is in this later group. I think it's likely this group of people on the second page are also servants and the census-taker got lazy filling in their occupations. But still this is the 1860 census which doesn't provide individuals' relationships to the head of household, so who knows for sure.