Here, on May 14, 1832, the first engagement of the Black Hawk War took place. When 275 Illinois militiamen under Maj. Isaiah Stillman were put to flight by Black Hawk and his warriers. So thoroughly demoralized were the volunteers that a new army had to be called into the field. – Historical marker at the site of Stillman’s Defeat in Stillman Valley, Illinois List of volunteers including Geo. Copperberger [should be Coppenbarger] as 3rd corporal, Elisha Butler & Obediah Hooper as privatesMy great, great, great grandfather, Peter Coppenbarger, was 14 years old in the spring of 1832. He was too...
My great aunt, Beulah (Peters) Brewer, got me interested in genealogy about 18 years ago. One of our ancestral lines are the Randolphs of Virginia. Here’s the story she emailed me of what got her interested in learning more about her family: Myrtle Mae (Coppenbarger) Peters painting (Probably the photo taken for the newspaper) James Madison Randolph is the reason that I started doing genealogy. Mother had a copy of the paper that had his obituary in it, and his part took up about four pages. It was one of the smaller papers. Mother started doing oil paintings when she...
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...
S. P. Coppenbarger death, The Pantagraph, Bloomington, Illinois, 23 Aug 1893, page 4, column 2; digital image newspapers.com, (http://www.newspapers.com: accessed 07 Oct 2014) Of course we expect to find death records of our relatives. But, this is the kind of death you don’t want to find. Sylvester Perry Coppenbarger (1839 in De Witt Co, IL – 1893 in OK) was my 1st cousin four times removed. His grandfather, Jacob Coppenbarger Senior (1769 in Wythe Co, VA – 1841 in De Witt Co, IL), was my fourth great grandfather. Sadly, “S. P.” evidently died at the age of 53 by an...
As I discussed in Part 1 about Lena, I found that the land being sold and partitioned between 32 members of my family originally belonged to Lena R. Tremlett. But, I’ve never heard of Lena. I decided to search for her on Ancestry and see what I could find. When I searched for Lena R. Tremlett in Missouri, I came up with 4 good hits – 3 death records and an 1880 census. 1880 Census – St Louis – John Tremlett is 3rd person – Lena Randolph Tremlett is 4th people below John & Lena are boarders The 1880 census...
Last night’s “Saturday Night Genealogy Fun” challenge at Genea-Musings involved doing some semi-random research. I wasn’t able to do the research last night, but I’m ready now! Step #1: Go to your family tree database of choice (you know, like RootsMagic, Reunion, Ancestry Member Tree), and determine who the very first person on your list of C surnames is. Or the first person on your list of J surnames. Or P surnames. Or any other name you need to research. Your choice! I chose the letter “U” and my name was Boyd Ungard. Step #2: What do you know (or...
Who did your early ancestors marry? Of course, it was often their neighbors! Last week I learned about HistoryGeo through a Genealogy Guys podcast (#263) and was able to visually see that my Coppenbarger & Randolph ancestors of De Witt County, Illinois were neighbors! HistoryGeo’s First Landowners Project contains nearly 8 million original landowners in a single map. You can search for landowners by surname or by location. My Coppenbarger & Randolph ancestors were early settlers in De Witt County, Illinois (then Macon County) under the Land Act of 1820. Basically, this land act required cash instead of credit for land purchases....
What if a fortune teller told you there was a fortune buried on your land? Would you dig up your land in search of it? That’s how my family, the Coppenbargers, figure into this strange tale of a fortune teller who… …told the Coppenbargers there was vast wealth buried on their land …said that he could tell who murdered the German family who was found hung in a tree a few months earlier …and stole the heart of the wife of the man he was employed by. What a crazy story… and I guess it’s true. I don’t know exactly...
