Author: FHadmin

Educating The Family

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An Early Education

If the census record is correct, Andrew McCracken was was attending school and could read/write at age 4.  Andrew went on to the be director for Johnson School in Crawford County, where his children went to school.

 

Rocky Vale

 

Andrew passed his passion for education on to his son Joe, who became the director of Rocky Vale from 1922 until all his kids finished grade school.  Joe expected his kids to do well in school.  Anything else was not an option.  As a result, most of kids in the  family were good students.

 

More Education

 

After graduating grade school, not all the family was able to attend high school.  When the oldest children were ready for more education, there was no bus service to the area.  O’Ella lived with a family in Ft. Scott and went to high school; however, Ester, Dewey, and Howard never had that opportunity.  Ruby also lived with a family so that she could attend high school. The rest of the children were able to attend high school at Ft. Scott and Girard, although Dad’s education was disrupted for a few years due to WWII.

 

Teachers

 

Joe’s influence continued after his kids completed school. O’Ella, Dee, and Don all taught school at Rocky Vale.  Dee only taught for a short time because she didn’t want to be an old schoolmarm and because she was allergic to chalk dust.  O’Ella taught at Rocky Vale, Schofield, Pleasant Valley, and Pawnee.  Don was the only one that made education a lifetime career.   He  went on to receive his Phd and taught school at the elementary, high school, and college levels, spending many years at the University of Tennessee at Martin.

 

Did the influence end there?

 

The focus on education didn’t end with Joe’s children completing there education.  If you look at his kids, despite many obstacles (money, transportation, a war) 70% completed high school with one completing college and an advanced degree. Now, if you look at the next generation, 100% completed high school with over 50% getting a college degree with several getting a masters or Phd.   And, yes, there were teachers among them.

 

Bottom Line

 

A little influence can go a long way.

 

 

 

 

Always Out of Place

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Researching the McCracken family seems to always be a matter of looking where you don’t expect.  This is true of both Lemuel and his wife Louisiana.  They just never seem to be where you expect them to be or they have records that don’t quite match their names although they are definitely for the right people.

 

Lee County, Iowa

 

Lemuel showed up alone in Lee County, Iowa.  I found him there in the 1860 census after much research.  It took some time because the record was written/interpreted as Samuel McCracker and his wife Rosahhana McCracker with sons Samuel, Delormah, Lewis, and daughter Mary.  There was also a Luther Vanbergler living in the household.  This required a manual search of the records in order to find Lemuel and Louisiana.  Then the record was quite confusing because at the time I did not know that Lemuel and Louisiana had each been previously married and had children with their first spouse.  Fortunately, multiple of their children had recorded their birth location as Lee County.  So, I had that clue.

 

Crawford County, Kansas

 

In the early 1870s, Lemuel and Louisiana pulled up roots and moved to Crawford County, Kansas.  Why?   What drew them to move and leave a teenage son (Lemuel’s by his first wife) behind?  They supposedly knew or knew of the Gallea family that lived near Cato.  But, why move there at that time?  I did find that one of the McCrackens in Ohio married someone with a similar last name, but have yet to find a connection between them and the people in Crawford County.

 

Bates County, Missouri

 

To my knowledge, no one in the family had any idea where Louisiana, who was only 49 when she died, was buried.  The family story was that she was ailing and that they left and headed to family.  Dad always thought they were headed to Peoria, Illinois, but it is possible it was Adams County, Illinois where her oldest daughter Mary lived as no ties to Peoria have been found  – yet!  Dad assumed or heard that she died in route.  In any case,  one day I found a record that showed she was buried in Bates County, Missouri.  Why Bates County?  Did some of their family live there?  No one knows.  However, she has a gravestone located in a very prominent location in  cemetery located a very secluded (and eerie) area (I wouldn’t go there alone).

 

Chautauqua County,  Kansas

 

After living in Bates County with his third wife for many years, they moved to Chautauqua County, Kansas near Sedan.  Why?  What took them there?  None of their kids lived there.  They didn’t own property there.  He had children in Adams County, Iowa, Lee County, Illinois, and Crawford County, Kansas.  But, they went somewhere else.

 

The Johnson Name

 

And, then there was Louisiana’s maiden name.  The family story was that her maiden name was Johnson.  That resulted in many houses of wasted research.  Another researcher said that her name was Mattser.  Well, one is a common name and the other didn’t exist in the areas where I was researching.  It turns out her maiden name was Matteer, which of course, was recorded as several different things in records for her children – none of which were Matteer (or any of its various spellings).

 

Lemuel’s Birth Location

 

Lemuel’s birth location seemed to be variable with most records indicating Ohio or Pennsylvania.  However, he is nowhere to be found in the 1850 census.  Prior to that the census records did not indicate each person by name – only listing the head of the household.  DNA has narrowed his birth location down to likely in or around Wayne County, Ohio  since that is where the families of McCracken and Peppard (our strongest DNA matches in his line) paths crossed.

 

My Lessons From This Family

 

I have learned a lot by researching this family.

  1. Use every tidbit of information that you have and then turn it on its side and upside down.
  2. Try every possible iteration of a name, spelling errors, etc.
  3. Don’t assume that anyone is where you expect them to be.
  4. Don’t assume anyone’s name is what the family says that it is.
  5. Basically, use all information available, but don’t exclude that it is all wrong!

 

Now They’re Here; Now They Aren’t

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The challenge for Week 2 is a “favorite photo.”  I have no clue how to pick a favorite photo.  So, I asked others and I ended up with this 5-generation photo.

 

Shown in the photo are Judge Sharpless Klinefelter, his daughter Blanche Klinefelter Thomson,  her son Alexander Thomson, his son James V. Thomson, and his children.  Judge lived to be 100 years of age and this was taken during the last year of his life.  The thing that makes it interesting is that within a two month span Judge, Blanche, and Alexander all died.  And, in another 4 years, only the young children were living. So many generations were condensed into one so very quickly.

 

Clusters

 

Clusters of deaths seem to happen in families.  The cause is unclear.  In this case, Blanche went first.  Then her father.  A few days after her father, her son died.  It might be stress, random happenings, or something more mysterious.  However, it seems to happen from time to time in families.

 

The same thing happened in my family in 2005-2006.  In January 2005, my dad’s youngest sister Kay passed.  In September, his oldest sister O’Ella died.  Then in October, my mother passed away. She wasn’t a blood relative, but had been married into the family for over 45 years.  And, in early 2006, her youngest sister Ruby died.  Thus, over a span of one year, 4 members of my family died.

 

Common Dates

 

Also common in families is having patterns in birth/death/marriage records. It is not at all uncommon for me to find a family that has multiple of the same month/day events as my family does.  It is also common for the same day to show up in a family in different months.  In my own family my mother and I were born in different months, but on the same day of the month.  Likewise, my dad, my sister, and one of my sons were born on the same day of the month.  Ok, maybe this is a random occurrence.

 

But, see if the dates in the following family that I was researching today (descendants of Louisiana Matteer) could possibly be random.  The man and wife had 8 children.  So, we have 10 birth dates, 9 of which I know.  We have 6 death dates as the parents and 4 of the children are not living.  So, let’s analyze the days of the month that these 15 specific dates fall on.

  • The mother was born on the 27th of the month, as were two of her children.  Additionally, one child died on the 27th.
  • The mother and father died on the 16th of the month. One child was born on the 16th.
  • Two children were born on the 13th of a month and died on the 14th of the month in different years.

Thus, out of 16 known dates, 11 (68.75%) of them are covered by the patterns listed above.  It is hard to see this as a coincidence.

 

I have to believe there is something in the rhythm of the Universe at play!

 

 

Who Would You Like to Meet?

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The challenge for week 1 is to consider who you would like to meet.  I considered several obvious people:  Lemuel McCracken, Roger Ellis, and George Nicholson for example. I would love to know who their parents are and hopefully they knew.  However, I decided to write about Tabitha, who married Passco Peele (1733).

 

Why?

 

The reason I chose Tabitha is that meeting her would hopefully  put to bed a debate over her parentage or at least determine if the family lore is possible or not.  There are distant members of the family that believe that Tabitha is the daughter of President John Adams and was conceived out of wedlock prior to his marriage to Abigail Smith.  The belief is based on three things:  one of her grandsons being given the middle name Adams (William Adams Peelle),  one man’s grandmother’s story, and a scrap of paper with a note that was supposedly written by her great-grandson (William A. Peelle).  William Adams Peelle was the uncle of William A. Peelle.  Read more about their research and thoughts @ https://peele.info/lawrence/Volume%2015%20Issue%201.pdf.

 

This story got me digging into Tabitha around the time their story was published.  I didn’t find any evidence to support their story.  However, like on other family lines, other researchers seem to think I should simply accept family lore or circumstantial evidence without looking further.

 

So, what do we know about Tabitha? 

 

Early census records and tax lists show Passco in North Carolina.  In 1800, one female over the age of 45 is listed.  Assuming this is Tabitha, that would make her birth year 1755 or earlier.

 

The oldest know child was born in 1776 with the last one born in 1795. A twenty year span for a large family was quite normal at the time.  It does mean, however, that she wasn’t born around the time of her husband as she would have passed her child bearing years before 1795.  Again, that is assuming that all of Passco’s children are also her children. We do know that Passco’s will in 1806 specifies that his wife is Tabitha.

 

At one time I found an article that claimed she didn’t provide her age when asked, stating that the Meeting House (Society of Friends/Quaker) had burnt and that no record of her birth could be found.  She may have been avoiding saying how old she was or she may truly not have known.  The story of the Meeting House burning is a very believable one as many of the old buildings burnt.  In addition,  neither myself or anyone else I know has found a record of their marriage either.  Given that they belonged to the  Society of Friends at the time, their marriage should have been recorded.

 

The additional factor is that family states that her last name was Dunnigan (or some version of that name).  However, I have not seen any records personally that show her maiden name.  So, I am working with the assumption that this name is correct while continuing to look for documentation of her name.

 

What do We Know About John Adams?

 

If Tabitha was about 20 years old when she married Passco (give or take 5 years) and they married a year or two before the oldest known child was born, she would have likely been born 1750-1760.  In 1751 John Adams began attending Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He graduated in 1755.  After graduation, he taught school, studied law, and received his master’s degree from Harvard.  In 1759, he was admitted to the bar.

 

As a young man, John was popular with women and reports were that he enjoyed their company.  It wasn’t until after this period that he met his future wife Abigail Smith.  So, it is possible that he had a dalliance with with a young lady during this interval.  However, it is most likely that it occurred in Massachusetts.  If this did indeed occur, the young lady would have either had to have been sent south to have the child or the child would have had to have been sent south to be adopted by someone.

This distance is bothersome.  It is definitely possible, but somehow Tabitha ended up in North Carolina, which is several hundred miles from where John Adams lived.

 

DNA

 

I have done DNA research on the name Dunnigan (multiple spellings) and the name Adams.  Tabitha is back several generations and which makes it more challenging.  She also belonged to the Society of Friends, who intermarried within the society which can skew the DNA matches.  In addition, i also also related to a different Adams family that lived in the same general area and whose descendant married into my direct Peelle line.  Thus, although I have DNA matches to people with each name in their tree, I have not found conclusive data to prove or disprove who Tabitha’s parents were.

 

Conclusion

 

As I see it, there are many possibilities.  However, there are lots of “ifs” in every version of this story. For now, I will keep the search open as I still don’t believe there is enough evidence to make a determination as to her ancestry.

 

Family: Records, DNA, Lore, and more

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I have decided to take the “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” challenge offered by Amy Johnson Crow. Each week she will provide a prompt that is in some way related to genealogy. What each person does with it from there is their own choice. I will be writing about genealogy of the families described on this website. And, on occasion, I may venture outside those families.

My hope is that by doing this challenge, I may think about something I hadn’t considered before, revisit something long forgotten, or simply do a bit more research and add to my tree.

It should be an exciting year!