F. B. Clement
Can you tell me who "F. B. Clement" was? He was born on or about April 1826
in New York and died in California on January 15, 1864. He died at the age
of 37 years, 9 months and was buried in Sacramento, Calif. He was a widower
and left a daughter aged about 11 years of age.
There is no doubt from what I have learned that there was a connection between him and Lewis M. Clement and would like to determine what family relationship there was. He was apparantly about ten years older than L.M. Clement and I wonder if he might have been a brother to Lewis's father or perhaps a cousin. Whatever it was they were close in their relationship in California.
—Ed Strobridge
posted from CPRR Discussion Group at 9:45 PM
4 Comments:
Thanks for your note and question about Clement family genealogy which intrigues me as I have never heard of F.B. Clement. While the Clement family that I am descended from originally settled in upstate New York, they were United Empire Loyalists and thus all left for Canada at the time of the Revolution. Himself a native of Niagara-on-Lake, Ontario (Upper Canada), to the best of my knowledge L.M. Clement was the only member of this part of the Clement family to have emigrated to California which he did in 1862 after first living in Ohio and St. Louis for about a year. (You can view the detailed genealogical information I have about L.M. Clement and his ancestors.) After leaving the CPRR in 1881, L.M. Clement lived in the Bay Area for at least the last 30 years of his life and died in Hayward, CA, in 1914. I would appreciate it if you could tell me some more about the information you have come upon about "F.B. Clement" that seems to connect him to L.M. Clement.
—Bruce C. Cooper
I have looked at the genealogical information you provided for the CPRR web page before I contacted you on the chance there would have been something show up – to no avail.
Sacramento Daily Union, January 18, 1864
"F.B. Clement ... was connected with the engineering department of the road" (Central Pacific). On January 16th, 1864 he was killed during a derailment of a train in Sacramento when he was thrown off a platform car, run over and killed. "L.M. Clement, Jared Cash and J.H. Strobridge were examined as witnesses" at the Coroner's inquest. "The jury found the deceased to be a widower, aged 37, a native of New York, and to have come to his death by being run over by the cars of the Pacific Railroad Company, January 16th, 1864. The deceased leaves a daughter in the city about eleven years old.'
There was no obituary, only a death notice on the same page.
The question raised in my mind is "what was their relationship." As he was about ten years older than Lewis M. Clement I can only wonder if they came to California together or was he already here and encouraged Lewis to come West or vice versa. He does not show up in the 1860 Census that I can find. Why did Lewis come to California? Could it have been the result of encouragement from his ??? F.B. Clement? It is too much of a coincidence for these two men not to have had some kind of relationship; both with same name, both engineer's, both working for the Central Pacific and both apparently on the same train, one as the victim and the other as a witness.
I am going to weave this story into the James H. Strobridge biography but it would sure be nice to be able to identify F.B. Clement. Who knows, you might have another branch of the family out there, descending from the surviving nine year old daughter.
Did Ralph Morden Clement have any other siblings? A brother perhaps that F.B. Clement might have descended from? He's out there somewhere ... all we have to do is find him.
—Ed Strobridge
I'm afraid that the only "F. Clement" that I have been able to find among my relations was a Frank Clement who was a cousin of L.M. Clement's. (Frank apparently was a Union soldier who was killed early in the Civil War.) I have found no record of any other member of his branch of the Clement family who ever went to California.
—Bruce C. Cooper
Last February [see above] you wrote me asking what I might know about an "F.B. Clement" of the CPRR engineering department who was killed in an accident on the CPRR on January 16, 1864. While I still do not have any genealogical record that he was a relative of L.M. Clement (or myself), ... a new page ... has images of four CPRR Engineering Department payroll vouchers for Dec, 1862, and Jan-Mar, 1863 ... the name of "F.B. Clement" appears on the January, 1863, voucher as a "Rodman." L.M. Clement's name appears on the same voucher two lines above as an "Office Assistant" in the Engineering department.
—Bruce C. Cooper
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