The Red Book

On my one and only genealogy road trip,  my sister and I traveled north from St. Louis, through Illinois and the northern rim of Indiana. Our goal was north central Michigan where my dad’s parents were born. I had planned a route with stops at cemeteries, courthouses and libraries. We even threw in some museums and a stroll through Holland. It was summer and we really enjoyed walking along the lake shore in Cadillac.

The next stop was Manton, a small town a few miles north. We had a couple of cemeteries to visit and I was hoping the library would have some family information. This town is the closest one to where my grandparents lived and could be where they met.

Left: Area where JM lived; Right: Area where Lillian lived; Manton is circled

Evidently it was closer to Cadillac than I thought because I drove right by the exit. That took us a few miles out of the way and we backtracked into town. This turned out to be the serendipity moment of the trip.
 
On the left approaching town was a small park, a Veteran’s Memorial and the Manton

Area Historical Museum. Though now on the town’s website, at the time it had not shown up in my research of the area. A man was sitting on a folding chair outside so we stopped. He said he opened the museum when he felt up to it and we could go in and look around.
 
I should mention that my sister was really not into the research and she had seen her share of museums on this trip, so she found a bench and sat there visiting while I looked for vintage postcards, photos or anything that might date back to the turn of the century (the last one, not this one). I should also mention that the museum was organized more like an antique store than a typical museum and there were piles of books and artifacts in several places. Oh, and the elderly proprietor had never heard of either family name that I was researching.

So after a while we decided to move on. It was then that I looked over my sister’s shoulder and saw a red ledger book, not labeled and a little scuffed up. For no reason I picked it up and opened it. Inside were three pages of entries. A new school had been built and they had just hired the first teacher for the 1911-1912 school year. The teacher was Lillian Timmerman, my grandmother.

The book recorded three pay periods - 9/29/11 - $30, 10/2/11 - $5, and 11/10/11 $14.45. Lillian would have just turned 19 when she got that first pay check. Family notes say that after finishing eighth grade she couldn’t go to high school in Manton so she studied for the teacher’s exam. She may have taught at a different school the previous year. She got married in March of 1912 so may not have finished out this school year. 

The following year the teacher was Conley Brown. From 1913-1914 the teacher was Erma Timmerman, Lillian’s sister. Then the entries ended. The name of the school was not in the book.

Lillian told her children that teaching was very satisfying work. All of her children learned the importance of education. She eventually received her high school diploma and attended college. She was an avid letter writer, poet and artist. 

Unfortunately, there was no way to copy the book at the museum and it never occurred to me to get my camera from the car. So all I have are the notes that I wrote down. Maybe this summer (the museum is closed in the winter) I will call and see if someone can track down that red book.

Pioneering Women – Part 3 – What happened to the children?

Joel Johnson was the younger son of Mary Polly Wheeler and Samuel Johnson. He was born in 1857, the first of their children to be born after the move from Vermont. He married Sarah Nash around 1839 and in 1850 they were living in Burlington Township, Licking County, Ohio. Joel was a carpenter and they had 6 children. Sometime before 1856 they moved to Wayne County, Iowa and are listed on the state census that year. They now had 8 children. Both parents died within a few months of each other in 1857. 

I was curious about what happened to Mary’s grandchildren so I looked for them in the 1860 census. [Note to my grandchildren – these are you 1st cousins 6 times removed – that means you are 6 generations apart.]

Leona, 18, was married to Zephania Johns and still in Wayne County. By 1869 Leona was a widow with three children living in what is now Clark County, Washington. She married James Walker there on March 25th. He was an early Oregon pioneer, a veteran of the Rogue River Wars and a member of the Oregon militia during the Civil War. There are many accounts that James Walker and his family established a homestead near the landing just upstream from the cliffs of Cape Horn in 1844 and were the only settlers in the vicinity. However, that disregards records that place him in Oregon at that time.  It is likely that the family did not move to Skamania County until the early 1870's shortly before the birth of their daughter Anna Eugenia.  They were granted a land patent in 1876. Leona is buried in Cascade Cemetery in North Bonneville.

Walker homestead just north of the Cape Horn Trail

 

View from Cape Horn

Jane – would have been about 17 in 1860 – I have not found her.

Mariah, 15, was living with her sister Leona.  There is an Ancestry Tree (Grandma Gooch) that shows Mariah marrying Frederick Palmer in 1863 in Walla Walla, Washington.  Not long after that they moved to Shasta, California and raised 6 children.  Mariah died there in 1910.

Lemira, 14, was living with the John Diemer family, farmers with 5 children of their own.  There is a marriage record for Lemira Johnson marrying Albert Wright in 1865 in Wayne County, Iowa.  Further records for Albert and Lemira are in Licking County, Ohio.  However, her death certificate shows a last name of Wheeler…so here is a puzzle to solve.

Clark, 12, is living near Lemira.  He is staying with the William Boswell family.  I’m not sure what happened to him after that.

Thomas, 10, is probably living with the Henry Shell family.  There are a couple of possibilities in later census records, but the name is too common to know for sure without more research.

Ann, 8, appears to be living with the William George family in nearby Wright Township.  She is listed as adopted but retains the “Johnston” surname.  I don’t know what happened to her after that date.

Mary Polly, 6, was living with her Aunt Jane (her dad's sister), who had probably moved to Wayne County around the same time as her parents.  Jane was married to Frederick Messenger and they had at least 12 children.  In 1860 there were six sons still at home ranging in age from 11-19.  I hope she was spoiled…

Note about the Messenger family - Jane and Frederick Messenger married in Ohio in 1831 and moved to Iowa some 25 years later with most of their children.  At least 5 of those children kept going west to the Washington Territory to homestead land opened up by the territorial government.  John E. Messenger settled in Clark County as did his aunt Leona.  The others landed in Garfield County, which is in southeast Washington.  About ten years after her husband died, Jane followed her children west.  She would have been in her late 60’s.  She is buried in Kirby Bethel Cemetery in Garfield County, Washington.

Note about your direct line:

Joel and Jane had an older brother named Zalmon Johnson whose second wife was Susan Maxwell.  They would be your 5th great-grandparents.  

Zalmon Johnson - found on Ancestry.com

Their descendents took a more circuitous route to the northwest.  Born in 1805 in Vermont, Zalmon moved with his family to Ohio where he married twice and raised 9 children.  In mid-life he moved to Marshall County, Illinois.  His daughter Adeline married Miles Ward in 1866 and after a few years that family moved to Iowa and then Nebraska.  Their daughter Lois had been born in Illinois in 1869 and married Albert White in Iowa about 1889.  They lived in Nebraska for a while and that is where their daughter Dianitia was born in 1890.  By 1910 the family had moved to Jackson County, Texas.  Both Lois and Albert died there and are buried in Houston, Texas.

Front row: unknown child, Miles Ward, Adeline Johnson (Mrs Miles Ward), Lois (Ward) White, Albert Willis White 
Back row, unnamed family of Lois Ward - from White_Crumpton Family Tree on Ancestry.com

Not long after the move to Texas Dianitia married Bert Stark.  They had two daughters while living in Texas.  Their two sons were born in Clay County, Minnesota, but sometime after 1940 they moved to San Francisco.  One of those sons, Glenn, is your great-grandfather. 

Pioneering Women – Part 2

Hannah Butler was a true pioneer. The first half of her life was spent moving to land that was just opening to settlers and caring for her family. Mary, the oldest of her children, no doubt played an important role in taking care of her younger siblings.

Mary Polly Wheeler was born April 23, 1788 in Vermont, probably near Fairfield which is in Franklin County. By the time she was 10 she had 4 brothers and a sister. Her father died the following year. Her mother came from a large family that was living in Hinesburg, Vermont so perhaps the family returned there for a couple of years. Or they could have remained in Fairfield until her mother remarried a couple of years later and moved about 10 miles south to Fairfax, Vermont.




Shortly after arriving in Fairfax, when she was 16 years old, Mary Polly married Samuel Johnson on November 11, 1804. He was a farmer who lived a few miles east in Fletcher, Vermont. She had the first of her 8 children in 1805. Mary and her mother had several children that were close in age and I can imagine that family get-togethers were hectic. Mary and her husband stayed in Vermont a few years longer than her mother, but they too moved to Licking County, Ohio around the year 1816. Mary’s last three children were born there.

 In 1820 Mary and Samuel lived in Newark Township and in 1830 they were in Granville Township. A township is a subdivision of a county that is common in the Midwest and used for census and other records. In the early 1800’s these townships would have been mostly forested land that was being cleared for farming. There would have been a few small villages nearby.

In 1850 they were living few miles north in Burlington Township. Samuel was 73 and did not list an occupation, but all of his neighbors were farmers so no doubt they lived in the country. Their children lived in the area, though that was about to change. By the time Samuel died in 1859, most if not all of their living children had moved west.

Mary was living with her 88 year old mother in 1860. But she must have felt torn. Her younger son Joel and his wife Sarah had died within a few months of each other in 1857. The 1856 Iowa state census shows that they had 8 children under the age of 16 years old. On the 1860 census those children were living with different families in the area. Mary was 72 years old but must have felt the need to help. She left her mother and went to Iowa. I don’t know how much time she got to spend with her grandchildren, but at least she got to see them before she died in 1873. Mary is buried in the New York Cemetery, Millerton Township, Wayne County, Iowa.

 

Pioneering Women - Part 1

For my granddaughters

This is the story of Hannah Butler, your 7th great-grandmother, who is an ancestor on your Stark line.
 
Hannah was born on August 18, 1772 in Salisbury, Litchfield, Connecticut just before the start of the Revolutionary War. The Butler family had come from England around 1633. Hannah's father was Thomas Butler and her mother was Jane White. The following was written by Ryan Radleigh in Wadleigh-Brown-Plymale-Bixby Genealogy:
 

from town website

Hannah spent her earliest years in Salisbury, Connecticut. In about 1776-1778, Hannah and her family apparently moved to Massachusetts where they probably lived in the remote town of Adams. In 1785, the family moved permanently to Hinesburg, Vermont. It was there, in about 1786-1787 (when she was only 14 or 15) that Hannah was married to a young man named Zalmon Wheeler. [This would be your 7th great-granfather]

Soon after the marriage...the couple moved to Fairfield, Franklin County, Vermont, where their children were born. Zalmon Wheeler died in 1799, leaving Hannah a 27-year old widow with six minor children.

She remarried in about 1802 to a widower named Peter Thurston from the nearby town of Fletcher, Vermont.

At the time of their marriage, Peter had at least 3 children.  Hannah and Peter had 8 more children in the next few years. 

 

Hannah would have been a young child during the Revolutionary War. By the time her youngest child was born in 1813, the country was involved in another war with England, the War of 1812. The effects of this war would have been felt in the area of Vermont where Hannah and her family lived since major battles were fought in the Lake Champlain and Lake Erie area. It was during this turbulent time that Hannah, her husband Peter and most of her children moved to Licking County, Ohio, a trip of over 900 miles. One writer has described this trip as follows:

They fitted up long wagons, covered them with a coarse cloth manufactured by themselves, and attached two horses to each; supplied them with bedding, so they could be used for camping in nights, and with cooking utensils for baking bread and cooking game and fish, which they found in abundance on the way. These operations, together with fording streams, encounters with copperhead and rattle snakes, which were numerous, rendered the journey lively and often exciting. There were but few settlers on the route, and no hotels, making it necessary to camp out most every night during the two months it required for the journey. When they arrived at Buffalo, N.Y., the place had been burnt by the British and all the people fled.

When they arrived in Ohio they would have found few people living there. They settled in Licking County which is in central Ohio east of Columbus. The first settlers had arrived in 1800 and told stories of forests and swamps and snakes - lots of snakes. Land was cleared and churches organized. Most people were farmers.

In 1820 the family was in Newark township. Life would have gotten easier by then with towns being formed, churches built and neighbors moving in.  Peter died in 1827 and Hannah was again a widow...her youngest child was 13 years old.  She probably stayed near Licking County for the rest of her life living with different children.  The following description of Hannah comes from The Thurston Genealogies, 1892, by M. T. Runnels:

Mrs. Thurston was a woman of great energy, endurance, bright intellect, and social culture, having remarkably uniform good health, a sound and strong physical body, which, together with similar qualities in her husband, produced a wonderfully healthy, vigorous and hardy family of children. She would weave fourteen yards of cloth a day after she was sixty years of age. She joined the Methodist church in Ohio.

 Hannah would experience one more war before her death.  She would have been 88 years old when Abraham Lincoln was elected president and 93 years old when the war ended.  She died on May 23, 1866 in Knox County, Ohio at the home of her son Johnson.  She is buried in the family cemetery near Centerburg, Ohio.

You can read more about the history of Licking County in:

The history of Granville, Licking County, Ohio - see especially chapter 26 (page 226) on pioneer life. Also the source of images of houses shown above.

...History of Licking County, O.
 

Family on the Move – Part One

 The next two posts are for my sibs - if you have different memories or better photos, please send them to me...

My dad, Glen S. Remington, moved frequently when he was growing up and that pattern continued as an adult, even after marrying Frances Fortman and starting a family.  He took jobs with North American Aviation then Douglas Aircraft Company that kept him changing locations as the aeronautics industry evolved.

 

In 1955, with three small children tow, they were off to Pennsylvania.  This time we were leaving the palm trees and heading for snow.

The first of three stops in the state was at 1908 Beech Street, Pittsburgh, where we stayed for 6 months from November to May 1956 and where I had my third birthday. 

Then we were off to 25 Bluebird Drive [now 11091] in Irwin, Pennsylvania.  This is where we lived when my brother, Michael, was born.  It is the first house that I remember living in so it is hard to believe we only lived there 18 months.

 

In November of 1957, we moved on to 4011 East Chester Drive in Chester, Pennsylvania. My parents had joined the First Presbyterian Church shortly after arriving in Pennsylvania.  My main memory of living in Chester is of my dad working to help build a new Presbyterian Church there.  Evidently a fire had destroyed the old building and a new one was being built a few blocks from our house.  Both my sister and I remember the trail and bridge that Dad built to connect our neighborhood to the church.

This is also where we lived when I started school.  Two years later, in the fall of 1959, we headed back west, but only as far as Kansas.  Dad must have gone ahead to find a place to live, because I know we spent a few months at my grandparent’s farm near Continental, Ohio on the way.

House is gone (would have been to the left), but the barn is still there