Before I Forget

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."

This week Ancestry.com/ released an update to the 1880 Federal Census, woo hoo! I do not as yet know what revisions have been made, but will happily run names through to see if new leads appear. Perhaps the images themselves have been made clearer? The 1880 Census is the last big census taken of American citizens before the 20th century. Sadly, the 1890 Census suffered a near complete loss from a 1921 fire at the Commerce Department. There are various state and county censuses that help fill in the gap between times the federal censuses were "enumerated." Did you know that the United States government has counted its citizens every ten years since 1790? What an effort!

Each census asked different questions. The 1880 Census was the first to specify a resident's relation to each head of household. So rather than just list Tom, Dick and Harry living with Ma and Pa Kettle, this census indicates if Tom was a son, nephew, boarder, or father-in-law to Pa Kettle. This census also was the first to ask if someone was blind, deaf, dumb, idiotic, insane, maimed, or crippled. Yes, many people answered honestly. Enumerators asked if residents were unemployed, and if so, how long. My favorite question asked was of the state or country of birth of a person's mom and dad. These answers have helped push through many a "dead end" in my research.

Problems with accuracy are frequent, but it still provides valuable clues. Ancestry dot com's WIKI page notes:

For a number of reasons, ages are always suspect in census records. Many people tend to be secretive about their age; women may have been particularly sensitive about revealing the truth. One woman tracked in the census taken in New York from 1850 to 1880 claimed to have aged only twelve years in the thirty-year period.

Curious about your family in 1880? Holler at me. I'm off to browse that census now. Fingers crossed!

For a friend. Several articles within a gallery. Please click on each:

And this interesting set of articles about someone with a similar name, beginning with page 8:

...the said Albert T. Wantland and Alice Oakley are not related to each other in the degrees prohibited by law, to wit: Parent and child, grandparent and grandchild of any degree, brother and sister of either of the one-half or of the whole blood, uncle and niece aunt and nephew, nor first cousins...

Months ago I wrote of my Mom's Grand-Aunt Lizzie
http://treepig.posthaven.com/lizzie-coffee-page-daughter-of-john-h-and-nancy-james-coffee  and how we lost touch with her family.

Well, I learned of her daughter Monta's final resting place. And it is in the same cemetery as our beloved Aunt Helen. Fancy that! I hope to find Lizzie's burial place soon.

See Monta Belle (Page) Webster's page on Findagrave:

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=141143279

(Hmm, wish I knew how to turn that choppy looking URL into something I could give a subtitle.)

I obtained Aunt Lizzie's date of death from here: