Author: FHadmin

What’s Happening?

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Today when we want to know what is happening with somebody, we check their social media accounts.  If you aren’t connected to a person, it can be a bit challenging to find out what is going on in their life. 

 

Local Items

 

Back in the day, it was common to print items  in small town newspapers about people from different neighborhoods.  In this case, you could check up on anyone.  However, you were limited by the other person’s connection to the person that wrote the local items.  So, if someone in your family wrote the local items or was tightly connected to the person who wrote them, your family would show up in the newspaper a lot.  On the other hand, if you weren’t connected, you might never show up.

 

Local Items For Genealogy

 

Items written in the newspaper are a far cry from a primary source for genealogy.  However, they can be invaluable in your research.   They have helped me find people that weren’t where they were expected, learn about schools and churches that are long gone, find unknown family members etc.  But more than anything, they bring these characters in my genealogy to life with details and stories that go beyond basic facts.

 

Ten Specific Stories

 

The following are a few of the things  that I learned about by read reading local items or other small articles in newspapers.  Some were exciting new information that led to additional research, while others were just fun tidbits of information.

 

  1. My gg-grandfather Lemuel McCracken’s birth date is  April 12, 1831.  Records showed April 1831, but no day had been found until an article that talked about his birthday party.
  2. My husband’s grandmother Minnie (Kutzner) Helm had two half sisters that she knew, but apparently never told her daughters about.
  3. My ggg-grandfather Abel John Pellett voted for General Harrison in 1836 and 1840.
  4. At age 16, my g-uncle Oren Thomas was run over by a wagon when the team of horses ran away.  They thought at first that the injuries might be fatal.  He survived and died at age 70.
  5. My husband’s g-grandparents Herbert & Blanche (Klinefelter) Thomson met in Colorado at a train station in the early 1930’s.  Blanche lived in Pennsylvania and Herbert lived in Nebraska.  So, it must have been meant to be.
  6. The Jury family arrived in Fort Scott, Kansas from Oxford, Canada  in November 1869, staying at the Western House Hotel in Fort Scott.
  7. John Peelle, brother to my ggg-grandfather William Peelle, was quite a story teller.  He would get up at the Old Settlers Picnic in Indiana and tell stories of picking cotton in North Carolina, swapping pants with another man at a log rolling, marrying his wife, and witches in “North Caroliner.”
  8. Williamsburg, Indiana was named after my gggg-grandfather William Johnson.
  9. In 1916, my grandpa Joe McCracken decided to move into Farlington.  He had a sale (selling cattle, farm implements, etc.) as he was quitting farming (which he returned only a few years later). 
  10. My gg-grandmother Mary (Portwood) Conner was seriously hurt when she was thrown from a horse she was riding (she was 40 years old at the time).

 

 

Oops!

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This week’s challenge was “Oops.”  The first thing that came to my mind was all the short pregnancies.  What I mean by that is all the people who married and had a baby six to seven months later.  I have seen that in many different families in many different people’s genealogies.

 

It’s Not New

 

Many people think pregnancies out of wedlock are a modern phenomena, but in reality they have always occurred.  One of my favorite storiesin my family is about Matilda Jury Peelle’s short pregnancy.

 

Matilda

 

You see, the Jury family was, shall we say, a quite proper English family.  As such, her short pregnancy was never ever mentioned.  Matter of fact, the day her first child, Lydia, was born, her husband simply wrote in his journal that he did not work due to illness in the family.  Well, this was the 1890s.  Matilda and her husband William J Peelle were both well into adulthood. 

 

It was clear, based on her daughters’ behaviors, that Matilda did not intend to have her daughters end up in the same situation. None of us knew what she told them.  Did she admit that she was pregnant when she got married?  Did she have a story about how it happened? None of the details were clear, except that she clearly stressed to them to be careful of men being around.   So strongly was it stressed upon them, that when my dad did his DNA test, I wondered if we could uncover a family secret. (We didn’t.)

 

Lydia

Her mother’s words clearly impacted Lydia to the core.  She never married and was so scared of men that she poured concrete on the locks on her windows.  Of course, she lived in the big city (Wichita, KS, which had a little over 70,000 inhabitants in those days), moving there from a very rural area when she was barely of age.  Even years later, upon arrival home, she wanted her nephew to check the house to make sure there were no men inside.  And, she did not appreciate him joking about her wanting him to make sure no men escaped.

 

Nellie

Nellie, on the other hand, didn’t take the advice quite so much to heart.  Although she came across as a very proper woman, she had a bit of flirtation in the letters she wrote to her future husband.  They had a large family and seemed to live a normal life. However, she never openly talked of indiscretions of any kind.  Such topics were clearly not to be discussed.  However, any time Nellie and Lydia were talking and their voices became inaudible, family suspected they just might be discussing some of those topics. But, to everyone else, they were always “hush, hush!”

 

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!