Orsemus Sackett

Orsemus Sackett was born in New York in about 1826.¹ He died aged about 70 in Grand Rapids, Kent County, Michigan, on 3 August 1896² and was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery, Grand Rapids.² He married first in about 1846, Caroline ___.³ He married second in about 1858, Geraldine ___.⁴ She was born in Iowa in about 1840.¹
     Orsemus took out a patent with the United States Patent Office on 29 July 1879 for a new and improved hotel casket. This invention was what might now be called a desk tidy, 'to provide for the use of hotels, offices, and other places of business a simple, neat, and compact device for holding conveniently various kinds of inks, pens, pins, cards, envelopes, paper, sand-paper, call-bells, tooth-picks, card-trays, matches, pencils, and similar articles, and also to hold conspicuously various advertisements, cards, notices, directories, and other articles of that character.⁵'
     In 1860 Orsemus was living in Maryland, Otsego County, New York, and was recorded in the census as Orsemus Sackett, a laborer, aged 34 and born in New York. Living with him were his second wife Geraldine, aged 19, their son Henry, aged ten months, and Orsemus's children, Althea, 12, and Edwin, 10, by his first wife Caroline.⁶
     In 1880 he was living at Grand Rapids, Kent County, Michigan, and was recorded as O Sackett, a manufacturer of caskets, married, aged 54. He appears to have been living alone. The record states that he and both his parents were born in New Hampshire. This would appear to have been a transcription error and NH should have read NY.⁷

Sackett Family Association descendants of Orsemus Sackett & Geraldine ___:
Molly Sackett.