Broken tombstone

Don't rely on transcriptions.

In the biography of my great-grandfather, John HUIGENS, from a 1912 history of Knox County, NE, it states "Mr. Huigens was born in Henry, Marshall county, Illinois, June 15, 1862, and reared just across the line in Putnam county; here he lived engaged in farming until his migration to Nebraska. He is a son of Edward and Catherine (Thoemas) Huigens, the former a native of Holland who died when the son was but two years old..." Based on this, we can surmise that my great-great-grandfather died about 1864 in Marshall County, IL.

In the 1860 U.S. Census of Hopewell Township, Marshall County, IL, the age of A. HIGGIN, my great-great-grandfather, is given as 32. That makes his birth year about 1828 and his age when he died around 36.

In searching for his place of burial, I came across the following entry in a transcription of grave markers in the Old Catholic Cemetery, Henry Township, Marshall County, IL:

Eberhard Heigens Died February 27, 1864. Aged 21 years.

The name was close and plausible. (As I've previously blogged, my great-great-grandfather's actual name is still a mystery.) The death year is also a match according to the info from his son's bio. But the age is about 15 years off. Is it him?

The Old Catholic Cemeteary (AKA the Old Irish Cemetery, Old St. Mary's Cemetery, Old German Catholic Cemetery, Old Settler's Cemetery, the Merritt Cemetery, the Apfel Cemetery, the Meridian Cemetery) is located in the middle of a corn field. Tom Bogner, who tends to the cemetery, first took my wife and me to visit it a couple of years ago. There I saw the grave marker for my great-great-great-mother, Maria TOEMMES. I also took a closer look at Eberhard's grave. His marker was in two pieces and appeared to be broken across a line of text, which was obscure by an overgrowth of grass. Unfortunately on that first trip, my camera malfunctioned, so I was not able to obtain any photographs. I also could not make out any of the writing after pushing the grass aside.

Last May, when my brother was visiting, we made a trip down to the cemetery. It took us a while to find it, but we trekked through the pouring rain and the mud and took several pictures.





While we were standing there, my brother, who took a little high school German, pointed out that the bottom half of the tombstone read "21 tage alt", 21 days old, not 21 years old. The first time that I had been there I had been so focused on the fact of the two halves and the illegible line of text that I hadn't noticed the obvious mistranslation. I had assumed tha the text gave Eberhard's birth date. With this new information, I was now convinced it would state his age in years and months at the time of his death.

After moving the grass away from the bottom of the top half of the stone, I was able to take a close up picture of the writing there. I was able to maniplate the image enough to be able to read most of it.

As near as I can tell, it says "36 jahre 2 ?????." I canot make out that last word. It should be "monate" for months. That would make Eberhard's age at the time of his death 36 years, 2 months and 21 days--a perfect match for the expected age of my great-great-grandfather.

So I've verfied that the grave is most likely that of my great-great-grandfather, Eberhard/Evert/Edward HEIGENS/HIGGIN/HEUIGEN, born 6-Dec-1827, died 27-Feb-1864.

I repeat, don't rely on trascriptions. Lesson learned.

Say "Yes!" to Michigan

I recently obtained a copy of an obituary that my mother has for her great-grandfather, James Robert (J.R.) OGDEN. According to that obituary "About the year 1870 Mr. Ogden and his family came to Michigan rfom[sic] Canada, where he remained until 1880."

This was the first information I had that J.R. and his family had spent time anywhere but Ontario and South Dakota. My brother, the keeper of info on our mother's side of the family, already knew this, of course. He pointed out to me that the birthplace of J.R.'s daughter, Emily Vella (OGDEN) HARRIS, is "Michigan" in the 1880 US Census and the 1885 Dakota Territory Census. (We haven't found her in later censuses yet.)

Emily's birth year according to these two sources was either 1873 or 1874. I found the Family Search database of Michigan Births 1867-1902 and looked for her. And there she was--born 10-Aug-1874 in Elba in Lapeer County, parents James R. and Hannah OGDEN.

The strange thing is that their residence is listed as Deerfield, which is in Lenawee County, MI. According to Google Earth, Elba is about 95 miles NNW of Deerfield. Why were they so far from home when Emily was born? We'll need to do some more research looking for related family members in that area that Hannah (GIBBON) OGDEN or J.R. may have been visiting or find some other reason why Hannah would have given birth in Elba.

In an effort to narrow down the time span that the OGDENs were in Michigan, I took a look at the birthdates of Emily's siblings on either side of her in birth order. William Fredrick OGDEN (my great-grandfather) was born in Ontario on 10-Oct-1871 and Mercie Belle (OGDEN) FROHMAN was born 12-Mar-1878, also in Ontario. So the OGDENs arrived in Michigan some time between Oct. 1871 and Aug. 1874. They went back to Canada some time between Aug. 1874 and Mar. 1878.

I have not been able to find any Michigan state census records for Lenawee County in that time span that woul provide more information. I did find an 1874 plat map for Deerfield Township in Lenawee County. Unfortunately, I can't find the Ogdens on it.

Once again answering one question just raises more questions.

Arrived

One of the many benefits of reading genealogy blogs is that I often get ideas for new sources of potential family history nuggets. For instance, a few weeks ago, on "Ask Olive Tree Genealogy a Question," I read the following:

It's fun to look for these ships in the New York Times newspaper Archives. You can find out when the ship arrived in port and sometimes other details especially if they encountered bad weather en route.

What a great idea! Since the archive only goes back to 1851, I started by looking for the earliest arrival I know from after that date. On ancestry.com, I had previously found a passenger list that showed my great-great grandmother, Catherine TOEMMES, arriving in New York from Le Havre on the ship Finland on Saturday, 23-Apr-1853.

From the image, I also learned that Catherine had immigrated with several other Toemmeses. These turned out to be her brother, Matthias, her mother, Maria, and her sisters, Anna, Maria and Anna Maria (AKA Emma).

Knowing the date of the Finland's arrival made it very easy to locate the following in the NYT archives. From the Monday, 25-April-1853 edition:

"In ballast" means that the ship carried no cargo, just the passengers and crew, their baggage, and enough extra weight to keep the ship from "heeling" or tipping over. "To master" means that there was no hired agent and the ship's captain (the master) was acting as the agent. "Johnson" was the ship's captain, Henry Johnson, as shown in the information from the first page of the passeger list.

Since the ship arrived on 23-Apr-1853 after 49 days at sea, it must have left Le Havre on Saturday, 5-Mar-1853. Just another interesting little tidbit of family history.

New Kennedys and more

My brother Ross was visting from Texas last weekend. He's done a lot of work on our genealogy and all of what I do is built on the foudations he and my mother put down. We made a couple of genealogy field trips while he was here so that he could see the nearby farm locations and tombstones that I've tracked down. One of the places we included on the trip was the "Root Cellar," the excellent genealogy resource in the basement of the public library in Clinton, IA.

While we were looking around, my wife, Anne Marie, (God bless her for putting up with us this weekend) pulled out a notebook labeled "St. Ireneaus" since that now-shuttered church was part of our tour. (My Irish acenstors helped build it and my dad's maternal grandparents were married there). I flipped it open and there was an abstract of the death record for John KENNEDY, one of my Irish ancestors from the region. It included his parents' names, information that I did not have. A brickwall begins to crumble!

With the help of Fran, the wonderful librarian who runs the Root Cellar, I was able to find and print the image of the original 1913 death record on the microfilm. The informant was John SHEPPARD, the husband of John KENNEDY's niece, Ann, with whom John lived for the last 20 years of his life. John's parents are listed as "Michael" and "Nolaurd"; that's his mother's maiden name. Very unusual. Knowing that parent's are listed on more recent death records in Clinton County also gives me a new place to look for the name of Hanora (COLLINS) KENNEDY's first husband. All I have to do is find the death records for their two daughters.

(Click on the image to see a legible view.)

I also took the opportunity to take another look at the death rcords for John KAIN and his wife, Mary (FOX) KAIN. Both of them died before parent's names were recorded, so no luck with that brick wall. However, I did discover a column on the older death records that I had previously overlooked--Number of years since coming to Iowa. John KAIN's 1893 record simply lists "before the war," meaning the Civil War. That information most likely came from his sons, all too young to provide more precise information. Fortunately, Mary's 1890 record, probably information provided by her husband, was much more helpful. Her record claimed she had been in Iowa for 38 years. That would put the arrival of the KAIN's in Iowa in 1852. All I knew before this was that it was somewhere between 1850 (when the US Census shows them in St. Louis) and 1853 (when the Iowa State Census shows them in Elk River Township in Clinton County). I hope that the microfilmed land records available at the Root Cellar will provide even more precise information. That's for a later trip back to Clinton!

This post is in memory of my grandmother, Julia (KAIN) HUIGENS, who would have been 114 today. She died 30 years ago and I miss her still. The KAIN's and KENNEDY's of Clinton County, Iowa were her Irish grandparents.

Happy Mothers Day

Above is a picture of my mother, Shirley OGDEN, with her mother, Esther (JOHNSON) OGDEN. According to the back of the picture, this was taken on 30-Jan-1932, when my mother was just shy of 6 months old. Esther was 29.

On the back my grandmother wrote "This will scare the mice away. Don't I look like a wild westener [sic]? I did not know I pushed my hair so far back. It's pretty good of Shirley Ann tho!"