Frances ("Fanny") was the daughter of Rensselaer Havens (1773-1854), native of Shelter Island NY, and his second wife, Catherine Cebra Webb (b. 1801) of NYC. Fanny encouraged her much younger sister, Catherine Elizabeth Havens (1839-1939), to keep a diary for a year in NYC from 1849 to 1850, which was later published in 1919 under the title "Diary of a Little Girl in Old New York."

On Aug 6 1849 Catherine wrote: "Today I am 10 years old and I am going to begin a diary. My sister says it is a good plan, and when I am old...I can take out my diary and read what I did as a little girl..."

Catherine was close to Fanny's oldest daughter Eleanor ("Ellen" in the diary). She introduces her:"...I have a little niece, nearly as old as I am, and she lives in the country [called Old Church in the diary]. Her mother is my sister, and her father is a clergyman, and I go there in the summer and she comes here in the winter, and we have things together, like whooping cough and scarlatina...." p. 9

With her "clergyman" husband, Samuel Sherwood Bissell, Fanny had these children:

Eleanor/Ellen (1840-?)
Samuel Sherwood (1842-?)
Catherine Havens (1844-?)
Rensselaer Havens (1848-1934)
Frances (1854-?) m Theodore C Patterson
Clark (1855-1881)
Morris Jessup (1857-1912)
Frederick Packard (1859-1886)
Howard Havens (1864-1886)

After the death of Rensselaer Havens (Fanny's father) in 1854, Fannie's mother moved in with Fanny's household, for she appears there in the 1860 US Census for Norwalk. By 1870, Fanny's mother and sister both are living in Stamford in Fairfield County with a maternal aunt of Fanny's named Mary E. Haff.

Sources:
Catherine E. Havens, Diary of a Little Girl in
Old New York (Bedford, 1919)
1850 for NYC, Ward 15
1860 US Census, Norwalk, CT
1870 US Census, Stamford, CT