BIRTH: 1824, New York, USA
DEATH: 27 Mar 1872, Pennsylvania, USA
FATHER: Unknown
MOTHER: Unknown
SPOUSE: Edmund Sammons (1814–1885)
Harriett C Connor was born in 1824 in New York. She married Edmund Sammons in 1845. They had seven children in 15 years. She died on March 27, 1872, at the age of 48, and was buried in Burlington, Pennsylvania.Pennsylvania.
The Life of Harriett C. Connor
Harriett C. Connor entered the world in New York in 1824, at a time when the Hudson Valley was a patchwork of river towns, tenant farms, and small manufacturing villages. Her parents’ names have been lost to time — a silence in the records that hints at either early loss, family dispersal, or the simple reality that many working‑class families left few written traces. What is certain is that Harriett grew up in a region where Dutch, English, and Irish families mingled, where the Erie Canal was transforming commerce, and where young women often learned early to shoulder responsibility.
By the early 1840s, Harriett was a young woman of quiet determination. Whether she met Edmund Sammons in Dutchess County or elsewhere in the Hudson Valley is unknown, but their paths converged in a way that suggests shared community ties. Edmund, born in 1814, was ten years her senior — a man already shaped by the Sammons family’s long New York roots. Their marriage, likely solemnized in Dutchess County between 1845 and 1852, joined two people accustomed to hard work and the uncertainties of rural life.
A Growing Family in Fishkill
The 1850 U.S. Federal Census places Harriett and Edmund in Fishkill, Dutchess County, New York — a town of mills, brickyards, and river commerce. By then, Harriett was already a mother, and over the next decade she would bring seven children into the world: Charles E. Sammons, William H. Sammons, John J. Sammons, George B. Sammons, Emma Jane Sammons, Walter J. Sammons, and Anna L. Sammons.
Their household appears again in Fishkill in the 1860 Federal Census and the 1865 New York State Census, a sign of stability during a period when many families were uprooted by economic shifts and the Civil War. Harriett’s days would have been filled with the unending rhythm of mid‑century domestic life: tending gardens, mending clothes, teaching children their letters, and keeping a home warm through long Hudson Valley winters.
She lived through the anxious years of the Civil War, watching neighbors’ sons march off to battle and praying her own boys would remain too young to be called. The war touched every household, even those far from the front.
The Move Westward
Sometime between 1865 and 1870, Harriett and Edmund made a bold decision: they left New York and moved west to Taylor Township, Benton County, Iowa. The 1870 census captures them there, part of the great post‑war migration that drew thousands of eastern families toward the promise of fertile land and new beginnings.
For Harriett, the move would have been both hopeful and exhausting. She traveled with a large family, likely by rail and wagon, across hundreds of miles. Iowa offered opportunity, but it also demanded resilience — prairie winters, new neighbors, and the challenge of building a life far from the familiar Hudson Valley hills.
Final Years and Return to Pennsylvania
Harriett’s time in Iowa was brief. Illness or hardship — the records do not say which — cut her life short. By early 1872, she and Edmund had returned eastward, this time to Bradford County, Pennsylvania, where several of their adult children would eventually settle.
On 27 March 1872, at just forty‑eight years old, Harriett died. Her body was laid to rest in Mountain Lake Cemetery in Burlington, a quiet rural burial ground surrounded by rolling fields and wooded ridges. Years later, Edmund would be buried beside her, reuniting them in the same soil after a lifetime of shared labor, migration, and family devotion.
Legacy
Though the documents leave gaps — no recorded parents, no surviving marriage record, no letters in her own hand — Harriett’s life can still be traced through the people she raised and the places she lived. She was a woman who crossed states, built homes in three different regions, and raised seven children who carried the Sammons name into Pennsylvania and beyond.
Her story is the story of countless 19th‑century American women: largely unrecorded, yet foundational. She lived in the spaces between census lines, in the work of her hands, in the resilience required to uproot a family and begin again. And in Mountain Lake Cemetery, where her grave rests beside Edmund’s, her life still anchors the Sammons family history — a quiet testament to endurance, migration, and the unspoken strength of mothers whose names survive only because their descendants remember.
The following is an excerpt from Staggs Genealogy – Harold Wareham Staggs – His Book
In a letter from Bess Sammons (George Sammons wife), she states, “Grandpa told me that the Sammons came from Peervill, New York. on the Hudson River to an area in Pennsylvania known as Mt. Lake”. In a letter from Dot (Jeanne’s sister) she states “My cousin found, in the Mt. Lake cemetery outside of Bareington, PA, the graves of Edmond E. Sammons, born 4-1814, died 5-1885, and Harriet Sammons, his wife, born 1824, died 1872.
These, I suppose, were Jeanne’s Great Grandfather and Great Grandmother. The birth date is right as my Great Grandfather Phillip Staggs was born in 1810. Too, you note that her first name carried on. Bill Sammons’s sister is named Harriet. However, death records were not kept by Bradford County until 1893, so I was unable to trace them back from that source.
Legacy of Harriett C Connor
Parents
FATHER: Unknown
MOTHER: Unknown
Married
Edmund Sammons (1814–1885)
Children
- Charles E Sammons (1846–1911) married Harriet C Vaughn (1847-1927)
- William H Sammons (1848–1924) married Emma Luther (1854-1894)
- John J Sammons (1850-bef 1860)
- George B Sammons (1853-1929) married Helen E Carl (1863-1948)
- Emma Jane Sammons (1855–?) married Hiram Foster (1853-1907)
- Walter J Sammons (1858–1917)
- Anna Sammons (1861-1907)
Documents
- Birth Records
- Find A Grave Birth Date: 1824
- Marriage records
- None
- Death records
- Find A Grave Death Date: 27 Mar 1872
- Cemetery: Mountain Lake Cemetery
- Burial Place: Burlington, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, USA
- Census Records
- 1850 United States Federal Census > New York > Dutchess > East Fishkill > Harriet Lammers (age 25) living with husband Edward Lammers, (age 35, occupation: Laborer, Real estate value: $1,000), living with children Charles, William and John.
- 1860 United States Federal Census > New York > Dutchess > East Fishkill > Harriet Lammers (age 39) living Edward Sammons (age 40, occupation: Laborer), living with children Charles, William, George, Emma and Walter
- New York, U.S., State Census, 1865 > Dutchess > Fishkill > Harriett Samens (age 36) living with Edward Samens, age 45, living with children Charles, William, George, Emma, Walter and Anna
- 1870 United States Federal Census > Iowa > Benton > Taylor > Harriet Sammons (age 45, occupation: keeping house) living with husband Edwin Sammons, (age 56, occupation: farmer, Real Estate Value: $2500, Personal Estate Value: $600), living with children William, George, Emma, Walter and Anna
Relation of Harriett C Connor to Steven Barry Staggs: 2nd great-grandmother
Page last updated April 29, 2026
Search the Staggs Family History site
Staggs Family History 
