Before I Forget

      My maternal great-grandfather's first wife, Daisy, is difficult to trace. Records show her with varying names. Census sheets list her as both "daughter" and adopted daughter. The potential for error in censuses can be high due to the many volunteers who've transcribed notes from enumerators. But clues can be helpful when taken as a whole. A wider picture is needed. And Daisy's mother Susan is the focus of this post.

      Susan was born October 23, 1837 in Dayton, Ohio to David and Susan Margaret (Waitman) Neff. I believe she was their sixth of seven children. After the death of his first wife (and mother of 12 children!), Lemasters Martin Boggs, age 70, married 41 year old Susan in Franklin, Iowa, about 1878. By the 1880 census, Susan and Lemaster appear with a three year old named "Daisy Johnson" in their household. She is described as "daughter" yet both her parents' birth locations are listed as "unknown."

      Did Susan have Daisy with an earlier husband or is Daisy a foundling they adopted?

      Notice a few irregularities? Daisy and John appear to be married--and were so on November 21, 1897. But contrary to custom, Susan does not refer to John as son-in-law to the census taker--but "boarder." Daisy is back to being listed as adopted daughter. Susan's three year old grandson has a different surname than his two year old sister. But both children have the same birth year. And why the name Price for little three year old Guy? He was born January of 1896. Was Daisy married prior to her 1897 marriage to John Coffee? A search in this county finds an "Elwyn Price" living in nearby Versailles, and his 26 year old son, Guy Price. A Morgan County history of notable figures described Elwyn Price as a "stockholder and director of the Bank of Versailles." Was there a relation? Or did Daisy--on a whim, name her child after the banker's son? Oh, the joy of deciphering censuses!

      By 1905 Susan is living in Kansas City, Missouri. A city directory page shows her name, marital status as widowed, first name of husband, and her residence address:

                    Boggs Susan wid Lamaster M r 4115 Flora

      Susan Boggs passed away the next year, and her grave is in the Elmwood Cemetery, Kansas City. Just recently Ancestry.com/ uploaded new probate cases, and Susan Boggs' case was among them. 38 pages' worth. Only a few are shared below. Click on each within the gallery to view or to enlarge. She died intestate (without a will) at age 68.

--"Missouri, Wills and Probate Records, 1766-1988" via Ancestry.com/ originally from "Kansas City, Missouri and Jackson County, Missouri Probate Records and Case Files, 1853-1955." Woo hoo! Don't you love new databases!

--Neff/Boggs marriage date: via researcher Ed Woodyard

      Earlier I mentioned Ties That Bind by Tiya Miles, a favorite resource for Indian Territory history. I learned today that Dr. Miles published a new novel in April: The Cherokee Rose. One reviewer described it as "luminous." An interesting term for a difficult period of history. I'm anxious to read her book.

      Google directed me to a lovely interview with Dr. Miles and Krista Tippett. If you've an interest in Oklahoma history, have a listen or read the transcript from 2012:

http://www.onbeing.org/program/toward-living-memory/transcript/1347

      This. Did you see this? I can't imagine some buffoon telling me this if I were to make inquiry as to a library's holdings. Thankfully she sulked only for a short time before turning it into a challenge. 

http://tiyamiles.com/2015/03/31/writing-the-cherokee-rose/ 

      Thanks again for following!

Little is known of one of my ancestors, and so I search for articles about "Childers" who once lived in Indian Territory. Before Oklahoma became a state in 1907, the northeastern part of that state was land given to various tribes after being forced out of their homes in the South. There were many newspapers in the Territory and later, published in the new state of Oklahoma--several of which have been made available online. I find mention of Childers in articles about schools, marriages, city government, plenty who were cattle dealers, and those who ran ads looking for lost mules or horses. 

Some of the more interesting news items:

      First, Nola Childers' 1909 land dispute:

      And another article on Nola Childers that displays the strong racism of 100 years ago:

      Dick Childers appears in a Tulsa, Oklahoma paper on September 5, 1922. NOTE TO COUSINS: Our Dick Childers died in 1891, leaving one son: our Uncle Sam's dad. 

      My paternal second great-grandmother Hannah allegedly immigrated from Hamburg. Or Bremen. Both were popular seaports in what later became Germany. The first documented proof I have of her existence is an 1853 marriage to Sam Leeper in Galveston, Texas. On their marriage certificate the surname "Wosta" is handwritten. What appears to be WOSTA, that is. What spelling do YOU see? From a previous blog post, here is Hannah and Sam Leeper's marriage certificate:
http://treepig.posthaven.com/1853-marriage-of-hannah-wosta-to-samuel-leeper 

      Because it is an unusual name, I wonder if Hannah might have:

(1)  Been unaware of the correct spelling due to illiteracy;

(2)  Spoken a language that was not understood by the clerk who prepared the marriage certificate;

(3)  Been subject to clerical error. The clerk might have written phonetically what she heard the young bride say. Or what her older husband SAID was his new wife's maiden name.

      So many possibilities. Accompanying Hannah were her four young sons, whose names appear on census, guardianship and land records as WISER. (Yes, and Weiser, too. But predominantly spelled WIser) I therefore assume that the 29 year old Hannah told the Galveston court clerk her MAIDEN name--not her legal married name of Wiser. That was a custom--but not always a requirement in various jurisdictions. After all, I've no proof she was married to a Herr Wiser. Assumptions are not proof, Dear Reader. 

      WITH THAT IN MIND: Familysearch.org/ recently updated their New Orleans Passenger Lists. Attached are a few WOSTE immigrants who came to America at a time my Hannah might have arrived. You see, I've yet to find an immigration record for Hannah and her Wiser boys. These young Woste passengers require further study, as they might give clues to a family my Hannah once belonged. Might my Hannah have had family in America before she crossed the Atlantic with young children? New Orleans and Galveston were busy ports of entry for Europeans. From WHERE did you come, Hannah?

My genealogy app's relationship calculator came up with that mouthful of a title. Emily Edgin Hail and I both descend from a common ancestors--her maternal grandparents, William Flemon Cowan and Mary Ann (Primm) Cowan. Meet Emily's family with husband Robert T. Hail. Date unknown. I copied this from Brian Atwood's memorial for Emily on Findagrave dot com. Emily was born in Arkansas in 1864 and had only 49 years before passing on March 11, 1914 in Texas. 

I wonder what color her new dress is, and don't her eyes look pretty. How did the photographer get all those boys to stand still? And what might he have been dangling to get those wide-eyed expressions? 

In my hunt for an elusive ancestor, I scour archives using his surname in keyword searches. Interesting "hits" pop up. This Childers' story is from the front page of the Muskogee Phoenix, December 7, 1893:

Hall wrote:  "Sam caught "Yockey' one day while the latter was sitting on his horse in the middle of Main street between First and Second Street and shot him off. He lived for a short time but would not reveal his true name nor his home town."

http://www.tulsaokhistory.com/hall/pg055.html 

On this Labor Day 2015, I celebrate my day off with this picture that has always made me smile. 

On September 1, 2015 Ancestry.com added millions of pages of probate records from 50 U.S. states onto its database. Many of these documents were already on the free site at Familysearch.org, having been microfilmed from county courthouses years ago. The two companies have since partnered. Ancestry.com has added and WILL CONTINUE TO ADD (beautiful words!)  more wills to its new database. 

Why do probate records make a family historian sing out loud? "An inventory of the estate assets can reveal personal details about the deceased’s occupation and lifestyle," notes Ancestry.com. Names of family members are given in these records which some times differ from names recorded in a family's old Bible. Ah, ha! Children's names might appear--from earlier marriages now long forgotten. I love surprises. And my fav probate shocker was learning of a great-great's new wife preparing a new will for her husband to sign in his final hours. A will that left his two adult children only one dollar each. (The resulting Coffee family lawsuit to be shared later)

But first, in appreciation of the guy who pays my genealogy expenses, I submit this will from his fourth great-grandfather. Born in British America about 1762, 4xGreat-Grandfather is thought to have died in Circleville, Pendleton County, Virginia before April 1821. As you will see, he left his mark on this document on December 20, 1820. 

Source Information

Ancestry.com. West Virginia, Wills and Probate Records, 1724-1978 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.

In September 2007 I hitched a ride to Bartlesville with my husband who was scheduled to be in that northeast Oklahoma town on business. There is a wonderful genealogy room within Bartlesville's library where I had hoped to find records of my dad's family. His Uncle Sam's parents had lived in Bartlesville 115+ years ago, and it was there Sam's sister (my grandmother) was born in 1909.

Newspapers from that era tell of people immigrating into the "Twin Territories" by the thousands. Oklahoma had just become a state and OIL had been discovered. Jobs were plentiful in that county named "Washington." And Bartlesville's library has a fine collection of Indian Territory records. On a prior visit I had struck gold and found mention of Sam's grandfather Dick Childers on an 1890 list of white "intruders" living by permit in Cherokee Nation. That was the oldest reference I had found of Richard's existence. I've since found him on an 1880 Cherokee Nation census that recorded white families living on Cherokee land by permission. I'm told even earlier proof exists. Sam's wife Lois, our family's consummate researcher, once told me she had a copy of Dick's 1879 marriage record to Lucy Ackley in Creek Nation, Indian Territory.

But my luck wasn't good at the library that day in 2007.  No new family records were found. Upon leaving Bartlesville, we stopped at a convenience store. While waiting in line to pay for gas and coffee, I looked at the headlines of the local paper and was surprised to see a familiar face. My Uncle Sam on the front page! His photo was next to a headline urging readers to read his story on Page 7. Here's the article--cropped and re-sized into 23 pages within this gallery:

I hope you clicked on all 23 pages to read Uncle Sam's story. See why I was so excited that September day? What a treasure for generations to read years from now. Thank you, Sam! And thank you, Joe Todd, historian, for this marvelous interview of Sam. 

The Legal Genealogist blogged this week about the use of middle names among early Americans. Did you know it was not a common practice until just recently? "Recently" being the 1840s. (I've a different view of time than most people) Read Judy G. Russell's excellent blog post here:

http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2015/08/24/stop-middling-along/

Russell writes: 

    "The reality is that middle names were rare in America before the 19th century. As Robert W. Baird reports in “The Use of Middle Names”:

Prior to 1660, the Virginia Settlers Research Project found “only 5 persons out of over 33,000 had genuine middle names.” Not one person born by 1715 in St Peter’s parish of New Kent County sported a middle name. Surry County’s records, which are unusually complete for the latter part of the 17th century, record only one person who used a middle name. Other studies of public records confirm that seventeenth-century parents gave their children more than one name so rarely that the practice was essentially nonexistent.

Middle names began to find favor among wealthy extended families in the late 1700s. Aristocratic families increasingly began giving their children two names, so that by the time of the Revolution a quite small but detectable proportion of southerners carried middle names, mainly those from upper class families. A study of the births and baptisms recorded in the register of Virginia’s Albemarle Parish shows that about 3% of children born between 1750 and 1775 were given middle names.

… The practice did not really catch on with the middle class until after the turn of the century, and became increasingly common within a generation or two. Although only a small percentage of children born around 1800 were given a middle name, it had become nearly customary by the time of the Civil War. By 1900 nearly every child born had a middle name."