I am looking for any additional information on this Clarissa Bunce. Based on her gravestone, can anyone provide an approximate date of death? 1840-1850? I believe she may be my gggg grandmother.

I have a Clarissa (Keys or Keyes) Bunce who lived in Oneida County, New York and is said to have died about 1840. There is a Clarissa Bunce listed in the 1840 Oneida Census. She is said to have had three children, Mary, Clara (I suspect Clarissa), and Sidney, my ggg grandfather. That is about all I know about her and her two daughters.

HOWEVER:

The 1850 Census for Lebanon, Warren County, Ohio, enumerates a John A. Smith 33, school teacher, with wife Mary A. 30 NY, Lydia B.(?), and Frank W. On the next page, the first person enumerated is Clarissa Bunce 28 NY. I don't know what happened to Clarissa, but if she never married, she would not be called mother, and if she did marry, she would not be called Bunce.

There is a biography online for a Capt. J. Allison Smith, who married a Mary A Bunce, born 1817 in Oneida County, New York. Their children were Lillie (Lydia?), Frank W.,Clara, Ella, William, and Albert. During his career, John Allison Smith was a schoolteacher, principal, and superintendent of schools in various states. The bio says he was elected Principal of the Lebanon Academy in Lebanon, Warren County, Ohio, probably in the late 1840's. He later went to Springfield, Ohio, then to Illinois, and later to Iowa.

I have suspected for some time that these were MY family, but have not found additional information to build my confidence, until I found the gravestone on-line at the Warren County Rootsweb site. The gravestone, the census, and the bio all support that the two Clarissa's (mom/gravestone and daughter/Census) and Mary with husband John Allison Smith were in Lebanon.

Please, if anybody has any additional information on any of these people, I would greatly appreciate receiving it.

Thank you, Lucy