Favorite Discovery - Samuel Longstreet Forman (1856-1857)

I found a baby in the fall of 2018. He’d been lost for 161 years. And it’s only because of the Forman Family Bible that I’m confident he belongs in our family. You’ll recall that we learned from the family names listed in the Bible that the “L” in Samuel L. Forman’s name stood for “Longstreet.” So I wasn’t immediately surprised to happen upon a death record for Samuel Longstreet Foreman. Until I read that he died at age 14 months in 1857. Ancestry.com only had the indexed details, but FamilySearch.org had an image of the actual document (shown above.) No parents are listed for this baby.

Samuel Longstreet Forman, born 1805

The original SLF is named after his mother’s father (Samuel Longstreet.) So who would be likely to name a child Samuel Longstreet Forman in 1856? Wouldn’t it be logical that the son of Samuel Longstreet Forman would give that name to his son, possibly his first-born son? Samuel L. Forman had 2 sons: William Lake and Isaac E. In 1856, Isaac was only 15 years old, but William Lake had been married to Amanda Orilla McAllister since 1853. That date is fairly new since I only found their marriage date in a newspaper record in the past year or two. What troubled me about the date is that their first known child is our direct ancestor, William Charles Forman, born to them in 1859. Six years with no children? Though possible, it was unlikely, so I assumed they’d dealt with miscarriages or lost babies. So let’s assume William Lake and Amanda Forman have a baby boy in 1856, 3 years after their marriage, and they name him after William’s father, who died 12 years earlier. I think it’s a logical conclusion. I’m so confident that this baby belongs to them that I have added him to my trees on Ancestry and FamilySearch. Though it’s possible I’m wrong, I’m willing to risk being wrong than to leave this baby without a family (until we get to the next life and can find him and ask him!) But the mystery doesn’t stop there! Curious now about other potential lost babies to this couple, I searched for deaths of Forman children between 1853 and 1859. There was only one that didn’t connect to another family somehow, a baby girl named Mary who died in 1856 at the age of 15 days. Let’s do some math: Samuel Longstreet died 25 Sep 1857 at age 14 months, so he was born around July of 1856. Baby Mary died at 15 days on 4 Aug 1856, putting her birthdate in July 1856, the same as Samuel Longstreet. Could they be twins? 

 The single clue that makes me believe they belong in the same family is that both babies were buried in Machpelah Cemetery (now defunct) located at 11th St. and Washington Ave in Philadelphia. No other Formans who died in that time period were buried there. I’d never come across this cemetery before. (All interments were moved in 1895 to Graceland [North Mount Moriah] Cemetery in Yeadon, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.) I am not as confident about placing Mary in the family because her name is so common, but I’m keeping her information with the family just in case. Had Baby Samuel Longstreet’s father or mother not insisted on including his middle name on the death record, we wouldn’t even be discussing any possibilities. It would have been so easy for the doctor to just write down “Samuel Forman.” In the elder Samuel L.’s death record, his middle name isn’t written out on his death record (or anywhere else but the Bible.) I am grateful to believe in a universal resurrection, the redemption of little children, the sealing ordinances that bind families together forever, and I am thrilled to know that Samuel Longstreet Forman can now take his place as the oldest son born to William Lake and Amanda Forman.