Week 12- historic Event

Jane Ann “Jeanie” Bulman Coursen Reacts

On Friday, April 14, 1865, at 9:30 pm, Abraham Lincoln was shot while seated in a box at the Ford’s Theater in Washington D.C. This was the first assassination of a sitting U. S. president.

The American people reacted, most with shock and grief. Some were glad.

The new technology of the telegraph enabled this somber news to be spread across the United States within hours of its happening, The same news took weeks to spread around Europe.

The news was received in California on Saturday morning, April 15. The memory of Lincoln’s assassination stayed in the minds of many Americans a long time. Among these people were the members of the Coursen family.

Sixty-five years later an Oregon journalist named Fred Lockley asked Edgar E. Coursen about his first memory. Edgar replied,by telling about his mother’s reaction to the news and the effect her reaction had on him as a child of four.

 His Mother, Jane Ann Bulman Coursen

“You ask me what is my first recollection?” said the Edgar E. Coursen…” My first recollection takes me back to the time when I was about 4 or 5 years old. We lived on Fulton Street opposite Alamo Square in San Francisco. The Catholic archbishop now owns the property in which I spent my boyhood.”

“My mother was a rather calm woman. She raised the window and said to someone outside, with great excitement, “The president has been shot.” I was scared, because I thought something dreadful must have happened; so I asked her what was the matter. She said, “Abraham Lincoln, the president, has been killed.” It left a very vivid impression upon my mind.”

Whitfield’s Letter

In 1880, Whitfield Hurd wrote a letter to Ellen Douglass Coursen. Ellen, the oldest living child of Gersham Coursen and Jeanie Ann Bulman Coursen. Ellen, intrigued by family history, wanted to know more about her mother and father. She had contacted Whitfield who was from the Hurd line of the Coursen family.

This letter along with a genealogical chart copied from the Coursen Family Bible by James F. Campbell was one of the papers found in Grandmother Perritt’s scrapbook. James was Catherine Coursen’s husband.

The Coursens used “Jeanie” as the first name for their mother. Records before this time use Jane Ann.

About Jane Ann Bulman

The bible chart page relays information about Jane Ann:

• Jane Ann Bulman was the widow of a man with the surname, Stout.
• She was born on September 2, 1830
• She married Gersham A. Coursen on September 21, 1854
• She died on March 9, 1877

I have photocopies of the Coursen Family Bible which added information. Gersham and Jeanie were married by Rev. J.A. Benton in Sacramento. She died in San Francisco at a quarter to 10 o’clock on March 9, 1877.

The New Jersey marriage record for Jane Bulman and Jacob Stout records their marriage on August 9, 1848. Johann Gardner performed the ceremony. It was in Harlingen, New Jersey. Jane Ann was 18; Jacob was 24. Jane’s mother, S.G. Bulman, was in attendance.

 Here is a snippet of the record from Marriages, Somerset Co., 1846-1867

The 1850 census has Jacob and Jane Ann living in Montgomery, Somerset, New Jersey with Jacob’s family.

Migration

On January 23, 1851, Jacob W. Stout obtained passport papers from the state of New York. Written at the top of this paper was “wife name Jane Ann Stout.”

Soon after they migrated to California by ship. They would have crossed the Isthmus of Panama by mule. Adding to the rigors of this trip was the condition of Jane Ann. She was pregnant.

Soon after arriving in California Jacob and Jane Ann’s child, William Presley Stout, was born, the year still being 1851.

By July of 1852 this family of 3 were living in San Francisco County. William was a 1-year-old.  Here is a snippet from the 1862 California State census.

Jacob died June 30, 1854, and is buried in Sacramento City Cemetery. Jeanie Ann married less than a year later. The new husband was Gersham A. Coursen whom she married on September 21, 1854.

Family Life with Gersham

They lived in Sacramento for about ten years. Their first three children born in Sacramento included Evelin Eugenia, Ellen Douglass, and Edgar Eugene. In 1864, they moved to their home at 1060 Fulton Street in San Francisco. Madeline May, Grant Ober, Sherman Adams, Rosamond Alexandria, Geraldine Anabel and Catherine Eleanore were born here.

Listed as a housewife on the 1870 census record didn’t describe what she did. Jeanie Ann had been a schoolteacher in her early life, so she home schooled her children. Edgar Coursen states in an interview with Ed Lockley this. “I never went to school…my mother taught me at home.” Edgar also said his mother had a beautiful singing voice.

Edgar was an extremely able student and had a gift for music. When he was only 14 years old his parents enrolled him in the Royal Conservatory in Leipzig, Germany.

It must have been hard for Jeanie to send Edgar so far from home. She couldn’t have predicted that she would never see him again.

She had lost other children. Evelin had died on May 16, 1860. Madeline was less than a year when she died on May 27, 1863.

In the spring of 1877, Edgar at his school in Leipzig received the letter of his mother death. He was 2 years into his studies there. He reacted by studying harder. He said,” the death of my mother was a great sorrow to me, but I threw myself into my work, all the harder studying the violin and piano.”

Jeanie Ann Coursen Died

There was a short announcement in the San Francisco Examiner on May 3, 1877.

Gersham never moved from their home on Fulton Street. He never remarried.