What Condition Did Harry Have?

Once upon a time, Mary Jane Millikan (1833-1910) married William E. Baker (1833-1866) in 1854 Iowa.

They had eight children. Harry, the youngest, was born after his dad died in May of 1866.

I haven't yet found Harry's birth date. But the 1870 Federal Census indicates he is three years old. 

That same census ALSO shows Harry with a disability. See where "Disability Condition" is indicated below with a "Y" to indicate "yes."



This is a wide view of that census page. Harry is on Line No. 28, in yellow:



He and his mother ("M.J. Baker") are living with her parents, John and Elizabeth Millikan. The recently-widowed Mary Jane works in their household. 



Also with Harry are his older siblings, Frances Elizabeth and John K. Baker, on Lines No. 25 and 26. Luckily I know their names/ages from other records. If this was the only record I had on them, I'd go mad trying to guess their names. Crazy handwriting!


I am instead left with a one-word challenge. In the column asking what physical disability a citizen might have, is listed Harry's condition:


Help!  Have you any idea what it might be? 


BTW, Mary Jane Millikan Baker is my paternal 3x GGrandmother. 

UPDATE:  Two cousins found the answer. Poor little Harry was "idiotic." A term no longer used today to describe mentally challenged people. But it is a term often used in the 19th century--and specifically, the 1870 census. I've not found Harry in the next federal census of 1880.

But dear Harry, you are remembered here in the blogosphere. And thank you to Leah and Jaime for their keen grasp of cursive writing. 

Daughters of Matilda Anna Lee


          No. I do not know when this photo was taken. You?

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:  Birth/death years along with birth names and married names of the women pictured above. Birth surnames are in parentheses.

1.  Fannie Elizabeth (Ward) Skinner Burkett, b. 1896 Daviess County, Missouri - 1967 Denver, Colorado; 

2.  Ora Evaline "Evie" (Baker) Childers, b. 1888 Daviess, County, Missouri - 1984 Tulsa, Oklahoma; 

3.  MOTHER:  Matilda Anna (Lee) Baker Ward Price, b. 1864 Carroll County, Missouri - 1933 Sand Springs, Oklahoma; 

4.  Zelma Pearl (Price) Fox Brown, b. 1909 Keystone, Pawnee County, Oklahoma - 1978 Tulsa, Oklahoma; 

5.  Gladys Naomi (Price) Bivens, b. 1905 Cherryvale, Kansas - 1989 Sand Springs, Oklahoma; and 

6.  Zeala Violet (Price) Skinner, b. 1902 Gallatin, Daviess County, Missouri - 1993 Inglis, Levy County, Florida.

          I was so happy to see this photo on Ancestry as shared by my 2nd cousin, Margaret (Bivens) Breeden. Like many of my cousins, this is the only photo I've seen of my paternal 2xGGrandmother Anna and her daughters. 

          Margie was an active family researcher and shared considerable data on Rootsweb, and Ancestry. Her grandmother was born Gladys Price. I miss "seeing" her online. She passed in January of 2017, but her family tree remains public on Ancestry. 

          Years ago, she wrote this "memory" on a Findagrave memorial regarding my paternal Great-Grandfather:

"Sam Childers was my Great Uncle. Evaline (Eva) Baker was my Grandmother's sister. I spent many times with Aunt Eva and Uncle Sam, either at their house or my Grandmother's. They also lived down the road from my Uncle Harry Baker and his family. Uncle Sam was a great guy and I loved his many stories. I was not aware that Pat Anderson had passed. I'm sorry to hear that she did."

          Are you also related to these women?  

Who Killed John Elliott Baker?

My paternal great-grandmother, born Evie Baker, was a first cousin to Elliott Baker. Their fathers married two sisters, Margaret and Matilda Anna Lee, in Daviess County, Missouri. Margaret died in 1886 when only 23. Her husband John remarried Louisa Agness Hoffman in 1892. Their son John was born in November 1895.

I see you nodding off there! Bear with me. 

Look what I found while searching for details on the five (known) children of Louisa and John Baker. Baker is a common name. But dear John appears to have gone by his middle name of Elliott. THAT narrowed the field of Bakers considerably in my "hunt" of Bakers. 

And, bingo! See the right-hand column with the headline misspelling Elliott's name as "EARL?" His given name of Elliott is used correctly in the first sentence:





It made the big city paper, too:


BTW, that top coat went for $67.50. This is during the Depression, mind you. 



News Flash:   His brother did it?  HIS BROTHER!   OMG



From March 27, 1931, the arraignment of the two men charged:





I promise you. I scoured the days in between these last two articles and found nothing else about Who Did What And When. I'm clueless as to why they dropped charges. Let your imagination run wild.

Whaddya' think, crime fighters?


Having nothing to do with the above brutal death of Elliott, I did find a couple of earlier news stories. From February 14, 1910 and March 5, 1925:


Did you read BOTH images above this sentence? The second one depicts a theft.

An egg thief. I am related to an egg thief. 

What's in YOUR family tree?  

Who Is Virgil Wantland? -- Part I

(This was posted in October of 2014, long before I knew much about Virgil Wantland's family. That has since changed)

This family photo was shared on Facebook last week by a cousin (Thanks, Loi!) who snapped the photo from an album that once belonged to our Great-Grandmother Evie (Baker) Childers. The three men are identified as Sam Childers, Sam Baker and Virgil Wantland. Was Virgil a cousin by marriage or blood? A family friend? As of this date, no one has put names to faces in this undated photograph. A few of us think it is the two Sams who stand behind Virgil, each with a hand on Virgil's shoulder. 

 Thanks to draft registrations from World War I, we have a brief description of the three men. Childers has brown hair, Baker has black hair, and Virgil's hair is "auburn." See their three cards in the gallery below. Click to enlarge for easy reading. Remember to click again to return to this page:


Virgil Elwood Wantland's draft card shows he was born January 25, 1890 in Gallatin, Daviess County, Missouri. Did you see the reference to his having spinal problems? A horrific accident occurred in October of 1907 while Virgil, a teenaged riveter, was on the job. Read what the local newspaper wrote about Virgil's accident on page 6 of The Weekly Examiner newspaper in Bartlesville, Indian Territory, Saturday, November 2, 1907:


Virgil was lucky not to have suffered permanent paralysis. He sued, and his employer later appealed Virgil's lawsuit:

Source: PETROLEUM IRON WORKS CO. v. WANTLAND, 1911 OK 104, decided March 21, 1911 by the Supreme Court of Oklahoma at URL: http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/deliverdocument.asp?id=4108&hits=6627+3553+3547+3270+3245+274+268+6+


Let me back up and lay groundwork as to the possible history between these three men. First, Sam Baker is my Great-Grand Uncle, the younger brother to my Great-Grandmother, Ora Evaline. His full name: Samuel Oscar Baker, born February 14, 1890, in Gallatin, Daviess County, Missouri--two years after the birth of his sister "Evie." And Sam was born three weeks after Virgil in early 1890-- also in the town of Gallatin. Might they have been boyhood friends? Schoolmates? Kin? 

By 1900, Sam and Evie Baker's mom, born Matilda Anna Lee, is widowed, having lost her second husband, William Henry Ward. This census page below is from the 1900 Fed. Census for Daviess County, Missouri, showing their race, gender, birth month and year, age and marital status:



Virgil's parents were John Woodson Wantland and Lennie Mae (Roach) Wantland, married in Daviess County, Missouri in 1886. They appear in rural Daviess County in the 1900 census. Here's the whole census page for Jackson township. See the Wantlands near the top? Also in the gallery is a cropped photo which may be easier to read. The Wantland family starts on line 2 in this 1900 Federal census page:


KANSAS BOUND: Both the Bakers and the Wantlands are next found in 1905 in Cherry township, Montgomery County, Kansas, along the Oklahoma border. The Wantland family first shows up on Kansas State Census page 63, and continues with the remaining children on the next page. What prompted both families to move from Missouri to Kansas? 




The Wantland kids are at the top, and the Baker family appears at the bottom of this next page:


Source: Kansas State Census Collection, 1855-1925


NEIGHBORS: Sam Baker's mother, previously referred to as Matilda Anna Lee, is seen here as Annie Price, age 40. She had married her third husband, James Allen Price, on November 29, 1900 in Daviess County, Missouri. This was her last marriage, as Mr. Price did not die prematurely as did her first two husbands. Together they had three daughters (see Baby "Zela," their first child) along with their children from prior marriages. You will see Harry Baker, Evie Baker (soon to marry Henry Childers), and Sam Baker, age 15. All are neighbors to the Wantlands.

Did these two families move together from upstate Missouri to the Kansas/Oklahoma border? Why move in the first place? I've one idea. You might recall what was happening then in Indian Territory. Thousands of white people were moving into land previously promised to the Five Civilized Tribes. A promise made in perpetuity 70 years earlier to Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Tribal nations--but only if they relocated from southeastern United States. Those tribal members that did not move by the mid-1830s were forcibly evicted. Their land and possessions taken. Hence the Trail of Tears. In late 1907, land was again taken from the tribes as Oklahoma became a state. White westward expansion was in full swing on the prairie.

Just south of the Kansas border where our Wantlands and Bakers would later live, a pivotal event occurred. The Nellie Johnstone No.1 blew in as a gusher, producing up to 75 barrels of oil a day before it was capped in early 1897. Bartlesville in Indian Territory was "the place you ought to be." 


Along with the gushing black gold came even more "intruders" to Indian Territory. Intruders = the term applied by the U.S. Government to uninvited squatters on tribal land. Plenty of jobs became available as new communities popped up. With new employment came families, and young people who later tied the knot. I've copied/pasted the transcription of Virgil's marriage to Mayme Saunders, with spelling errors intact:


The Childers/Baker ceremony took place in Basin, a small community in Pawnee County, Oklahoma Territory. Here is Evie Baker and Sam Childers' marriage license in January of 1907. Oklahoma would become a state later that year:


A newspaper editor commented on the upcoming nuptials of my Great-Grandparents in a local paper: The Appalachia Out-Look. (Pawnee County, Okla.), Vol. 2, No. 47, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 31, 1907. See Sam's name highlighted here on page 5. 

https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc173546/m1/5/zoom/?q=Childers%20%22Appalachia%20Out-Look%22&resolution=3&lat=3623&lon=3246 


Another time I'll continue with the marriage of Sam Baker to Virgil's younger sister, Della Wantland:


     (To Be Continued)


-- This was updated with minor corrections in August 2017.