My great, great grandmother, Sarah Jane (Eastwood) Merrill, had evidently been ill for five years when a “marked change in her condition” took place. What was her very strange ailment? And, what occurred to make her feel better? Here’s the brief article I found: 50 Years Ago, The Express, Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, 20 Jul 1967, page 1, column 4, digital image newspapers.com, (http://newspapers.com), accessed 12 Feb 2015 After five years’ illness, Mrs. A. L. Merrill was making good progress towards recovery. A marked change in her condition being after an attack of nausea, when she emitted an object which it...
My Vincent ancestors moved from Essex County, New Jersey to Northumberland County, Pennsylvania in the mid to late 1700s. During the Revolutionary War, they were at Fort Freeland when it was attacked by the British and their Indian allies in 1779. The women, children, and elderly men were set free, but the able-bodied men were marched to Canada as prisoners. In 1876, The Columbian published a series of articles titled “History of Columbia County.” The fourth part of this series was published on January 28th and told about the capture of Fort Freeland. Part of the article tells about Bethuel...
Randy’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge tonight is to see if you have any ancestors or cousins that share your birth date. You can find the “rules” on his blog, Genea-Musings. 1. What is your birth date? (Not the year… just the month & day) February 22nd Robert F Barnett’s headstone, Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Salt Fork, Grant Co, OK (Image by bobetx1 posted at Find a Grave) 2. Do you have anyone in your tree who shares your birth date? (Randy’s post shows how to find this from your genealogy program) There is one person on my tree with my...
“His main occupation was a carpenter and cabinet maker finisher. He went to carpenter school in Wichita KS and helped build the first sky-scraper, the Schweiter Building at Douglas and Main.” [Beulah (Peters) Brewer, daughter of Emil Wilhelm Peters, in her genealogy notes] When I read those sentences, I wanted to learn more about this “first sky-scraper” in Wichita that my great grandfather helped to build. Emil must have been very proud of this building to have told this story to his daughter and for it to be one of the few things she wrote down about him. So, what...
At the age of 16, Emil (pronounced “Aim-uhl”) Peters had lived his entire life in the small town of Walton, Kansas. The largest nearby town was Arkansas City (pronounced “R-Kansas”) whose population was about 5,000. Emil must have been amazed as he watched Arkansas City swell to over 75,000 people. Street Scene in Arkansas City, Chicago Daily Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, 14 Sep 1893, page 1, column 1, digital image newspapers.com, (http://newspapers.com), accessed 04 Feb 2015 Arkansas City was located just north of the Cherokee Strip, a narrow piece of land in Indian Territory just south of the Kansas border. This...
Are you recording the stories of your life along with those of your ancestors? My great aunt spent decades doing genealogy, yet I know very little about her, her siblings (including my grandmother), and their parents. As we research our families, let’s also share our stories so they won’t be forgotten. As children, my brother, sister, and I spent countless hours outside playing pretend with our friends. While we played some of the more common games like school and store, we were also quite creative. PARADE Who wouldn’t love to be in a parade? We would find as many things...
The name “Kansas” first appeared on maps in 1854 when the Territory of Nebraska was divided and the southern portion became “Kansas” under the Nebraska-Kansas Act. In May of the following year, 1855, Henry Bennett (my 3rd great grandfather) and his family arrived from Missouri and settled in the Allen County area shortly before it was named. 1855 first edition of Colton’s map of Nebraska and Kansas Territories (image from Wikipedia) This is the same year Henry Bennett and his family moved to Kansas Territory The First Settlers of Allen County Few white settlers reached this county before the Bennett...
“At dawn on September 19, 1737, three colonists and three Indians set off on the most peculiar ‘walk’ in Pennsylvania’s history. Their purpose was to measure out a land purchase that Thomas Penn, the son and heir of William Penn, claimed his father had made from the Delaware fifty years earlier.” [Source: ExplorePAhistory.com] Although they fought against this phony treaty, the Delaware finally agreed to sale the land described. The amount of land was documented as being a day and a half’s walk from a certain location. A previous treaty which had used the words “two days walk” had ended...
(Thanks to Amy Johnson Crow at “No Story Too Small” for creating “52 Ancestors” where we can share our ancestors stories, one week at a time.) Thomas B Whitwell, my 5th great grandfather, wasn’t even a year old when he was legally declared an orphan. I say “legally” because we are uncertain as to whether his mother was still living or not. But, the law stated that he was an orphan if his father died. So, Thomas and his older brother, Robert, were orphans. What happened to orphans in the 1770’s in Virginia? They’d be legally “bound out” to a...
My grandmother told the story of her grandfather, Reuben H Ward, a Methodist minister who was murdered. She said he was on the Tennessee River going to preach and someone murdered him and then threw his body overboard. Several years ago, I came across a newspaper article that another researcher had found about this tragic event. It not only affirmed my grandmother’s story, but it also added some crucial information: Reuben’s body was found weeks later many miles down river a man named Charlie Ledbetter was charged with his murder the “evidence was not sufficient to convict” Ledbetter Tonight, I...
