Carleton Watkins Aurora Borealis
its source of power that was first called "McDonald's Mills," then "Milfordville" [Fig. 4], then by 1838 was renamed "Oneonta." Her father, John McDonald was proprietor of a popular tavern and hotel located at Main and River streets, the very place where Carleton is believed to have been born on November 11, 1829 [Fig. 5a].[33] Carleton was proud of maternal Scottish ancestry and he sometime dressed in kilts [Fig. 5b] as an adult in California.
Carleton's paternal ancestry cannot be traced to America of the seventeenth century as can his mother's Dutch forebears. His paternal uncle, Hezekiah Watkins, carried the mail on horseback between Cooperstown and places south in Otsego County along the Susquehanna River and later operated a stage coach transportation service.[34] His monument [Fig. 6a] found in Oneonta's Presbyterian Church cemetery along with the monuments to John Watkins and his family are testimony to the material success the family enjoyed [Fig. 6b]
Carleton's paternal grandfather, John Watkins the elder, died in 1816 in a sporting accident and left his son John, the younger, an orphan at the age of ten years old. Carleton's grandfather was a well established lumberman doing business with the commercially successful Asa Emmons, a large landowner and mill operator, who was active in the timber business in Otsego County from around 1800. Little is known about Carleton's father's upbringing except to speculate that he was raised along with his three siblings by his mother, Lydia, as a single parent, with possible assistance from the Emmons family.
Carleton's father learned the trade of carpentry as a teenager, and along with his two cousins built the residence of Dr. Samuel Case on Main Street. Carleton's father continued an association with the Emmons family, in particular with Asa Emmons's bespectacled son, Carleton [Fig. 7a], who was the namesake of John Watkins's own firstborn child.[35] Paying respect to family and friends in the naming of children was a well established tradition for the Watkins and McDonald families. Forty years later, Carleton named his own daughter, Julia after his mother; he named his son, Collis, after Collis P. Huntington, in honor of his life-long friend, about whom more will be said.
[33] Palmquist 1987-88, p. 3.
[34] Alma F. Slawson, "John and Julia (McDonald) Watkins," Peter E. Palmquist Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University and Old Time Notes, p. 2042.
[35] Palmquist 1987-88, p. [2]. While no birth certificate or other document has been found to prove it, I believe the middle initial "E" with which Watkins signed many of his photograraphs, stands for "Emmons."