Discovering the adventures of John L. Schoolcraft's son
— Photo from Polly Schoolcraft
The Portsmouth Naval Memorial was built after World War I to commemorate members of the British Royal Navy who had no grave. Oliver J. Schoolcraft, a wireman aboard the HMS North Star, is listed on one of the memorial’s plaques: Oliver J. Schoolcraft — the son of Oliver J. Schoolcraft and the grandson of John Lawrence Schoolcraft of Guilderland — was born on Feb. 19, 1895 and died at sea on April 23, 1918, at the age of 23.
GUILDERLAND — The Schoolcraft House is coming into its own! Many residents that attended the Holiday Event at the House in December checked out the restoration of the historic Gothic mansion. The house is becoming beautiful and usable. Now we have another facet of its history.
A week ago, this historian received an email from Southhampton, Hampshire in England. An email from Mrs. Polly Schoolcraft Bell, a direct descendent of Congressman John L. Schoolcraft! She is also the great-granddaughter of Oliver J. Schoolcraft, Congressman Schoolcraft's first son.
What a surprise that was.
Polly Schoolcraft Bell and family have been searching their ancestors online and found the Altamont Enterprise story written by Melissa Hale-Spencer, editor, telling of this historian's book called "Congressman John L. Schoolcraft...and his House." It has become a small world through the Internet.
We were able to fill Polly Schoolcraft in on some of the history of Oliver J. Schoolcraft, her ancestor. We will fill in readers also.
Oliver J. Schoolcraft was born in 1854 to John and Caroline Schoolcraft whose house we know in Guilderland. Congressman John Schoolcraft died in 1860 upon returning home from a Chicago convention where Abraham Lincoln had won the presidential nomination over William Seward, Schoolcraft's best friend.
Two years later, Caroline Schoolcraft sold the house and moved to Richmond, Virginia with her three children. She then married Dr. Joseph Gilmore Beattie.
Oliver J. Schoolcraft grew up in Richmond after his mother married and became an editor of that city's paper. He married Mattie Ould in Salem, Virginia in 1876.
The "Famous Belles" magazine profile of Mattie Ould Schoolcraft states that she sang for guests at her wedding in her father's house. "Under the Daisies" was a melody with prophetic lyrics, a sad forecast of events to come.
Mattie died in childbirth in 1877, and the sad lyrics, "She lies through all spring and summer beneath a bed of daisies, and near sleeps the infant whose life closed her own," formed her epitaph.
Oliver, after a short attempt in the United States Navy, went to England in 1880. After several years, he became a priest in the Church of England, married, and had five children. In his later years, he returned to the United States and died of paralysis in Lexington, Virginia in 1911 at the age of 58.
The obituary in the Virginia paper mentions that Oliver was the son of John L. Schoolcraft, of Albany N.Y., "prominent banker and man of large business interests.
Polly Schoolcraft Bell of England sent this historian the photos that accompany the article. Filling out part of the legacy of Guilderland's Gothic mansion on the Western Turnpike is of premier importance to this historian.