The Marriage of John Kennedy and Hanora (Collins) Wallace

 One of the pieces of information that I have spent years looking for is the location of the marriage of my second-great-grandparents (pamamapa and pamamama) John Kennedy and Hanora (Collins) Wallace. I had the following information from the 1879 book of Clinton County biographies:

JOHN KENNEDY farmer Sec 29 P O Lyons he was born June 2 1826 in Ireland in 1848 came to New York in 1849 to Wisconsin in 1854 he came to Clinton Co he owns 160 acres of land Has been School Director and Township Treasurer Married Honora Collins Nov 10 1854 she was born in March 1830 in Ireland had five children four living Michael Julia Maggie and John lost one child in infancy (1)

I had an unconfirmed date of their marriage but no location. Based on census records, I knew that this was Hanora's second marriage. Her first marriage was to a John Wallace in Ireland where they had one daughter, Ellen. Their other daughter, Hanora/Nora, was born, according to the census records, in Illinois, Iowa, or, the most-often-cited Wisconsin.

I considered Nora's birthplace important because she was born in 1853 and her mother remarried in 1854. I thought that it was possible that the two events would have happened close to each other. I have an 1850 census record for a John Kennedy in Kenosha County, Wisconsin that might be my John Kennedy. I eventually obtained Nora's death record which lists her birthplace as Beloit, Wisconsin. I could not find any record of a Wisconsin marriage in either county in 1854 or any other year. I also looked in Illinois and Iowa and found nothing. 

I had stopped looking for the information when one day I was doing some research for my wife on her Chicago Irish ancestors. I was looking through unindexed Family Search images of the records for Old St. Mary's Catholic Church, the first Catholic church in Chicago. My wife's great-grandmother was baptized there in 1840. As I scanned through the records the following entry from 1854 caught my eye.

I recognized the names John Kennedy and Nora Collins. But could it really be my John Kennedy and Nora Collins? I went and found the marriage date I had from  the county book. The dates matched! I had stumbled across the information I had been looking for purely by chance. The genealogy gods had smiled upon me! I did a very happy genealogy dance, right then and there. 

Further evidence that this was the right marriage came from the last name of the witness Johanna Lawler. John had a probable sister, Mary Kennedy, who was married to a Stephen Lawler at the time of this wedding. The Lawlers were living in Chicago in 1860, so they were probably also at the wedding. 

And that is the story of how I accidently found the long-sought-after location of the 1854 marriage of my second-great-grandparents. More research is need to explain how they happened to get married in Chicago of all places.

(1) The History of Clinton County, Iowa: Containing a History of the County, Its Cities, Towns &c., Biographical Sketches of Citizens. United States: Western historical Company, 1879.

Was William F. Ogden a US Citizen?

Now that I am retired all of my time is now 100% my time. (Well, some of it does belong to my wife, I suppose.) I need to find interesting ways to fill up all that time. Especially with the pandemic keeping us isolated at home. 

I like doing research, which is why I took to genealogy and family history. I have more time for that now.  I also recently realized that I like stories. I like reading them. I like making them up. I like writing them down. That is why I am returning to my family history blog. Here I can share the stories of my ancestors and distant relatives. I can also share the stories of how I discovered those family history stories. Some of these stories will be mysteries, both solved and unsolved. There are lots of unsolved ones unfortunately.

One of the unsolved mysteries has to do with my great-grandfather, William Frederick Ogden, and his citizenship status. He was born in Walkerton, Ontario in 1871. In about 1879, at the age of 8, his father moved the family to Hutchison County in the Dakota Territory  A few years ago I came across his 1945 Petition for Naturalization in the Ancestry collection "California, Federal Naturalization Records, 1843-1999." He filed on 8 February 1945.

There is a lot of information here: birth date, birth place, when he came to the US and where, info on his second marriage, info on his children. But this also brings up some new questions. 

I had previously found his first papers in a SD Archives on-line index and then the digitized image on-line in Family Search. He filed his intention on 29 October 1892, shortly after turning 21. I was never ever to find his second papers. I was able to find JR Ogden, his father's first (26 June 1889)  and second papers (6 April 1894) though. 

What happened to William's second papers? I have a couple theories: they were not indexed or digitized; he thought he became a citizen when his father did. I think he filed for the papers in California in 1945 because he needed security clearance for a job in the war-time shipyards. That's just a guess. 

What is interesting is that he appears not to have followed up on the application. At the bottom of the second page it states "Petition denied dis [sic] List No. List 1968 Oct 22-1945 Lack of presentation." It looks like he didn't show up to take the oath and become a citizen almost nine months later.

What else is interesting is that in the 1900 US Census his birthplace is Canada but there is no Naturalization info. In 1910 it says he arrived in 1879 and is Naturalized! In 1920 it says he came in 1884 and is Naturalized. In 1930 it says he arrived in 1879 and is Naturalized. In 1940 it also says he is Naturalized. If was naturalized, why did he need to file in 1945? If he wasn't naturalized, why did he keep saying he was?

So many possibilities; so many questions! Maybe he couldn't prove he was naturalized in 1945, filed the application and then found the proof. If he found the proof, where is it and why can't I find it? Maybe something happened with the job and he didn't need to go through with becoming a citizen and had been lying all those years. 

So much more research to do. Is he listed on any voting records over the years? Where else might he have filed before or after the 1945 filing? It's a real head-scratcher.

Ogdens and Tooles

I recently received an email about a DNA match from someone looking for information on Tooles in New Brunswick. I have Tooles in my family tree, but only as potential half-brothers to my 3rd great-grandfather Robert Ogden. I could not understand how we could share DNA.

Then the lightbulb finally lit. Our common ancestor is not a Toole, but is probably Mary Clark who was married to James Edward Toole, with whom she had four sons, and then Jonathan Ogden. The only evidence that Jonathan and Mary were Robert's parents was a book on New Brunswick Loyalists that listed him as a probable son. The book cited no sources for evidence of that relationship. Several online family trees list them as his parents, but none of them cite any evidence either.

I have been looking for evidence for some time now. All I had so far was Robert's Ontario obituary that said he came from a New Brunswick Loyalist family (Jonathan was a Loyalist) and a land sale between Robert and one of his potential half-brothers.

With the DNA evidence possibly tying the Tooles and Ogdens together through Mary Clark, I am now more certain of Robert's parentage. This means we are Ogdens descended from John Ogden of Rye, NY, an early settler from England in the colony of Connecticut and then Westchester Co., New York.

Time for a genealogy happy dance!

"And the walls came tumbling down"

Another major genealogy brick wall has tumbled to the ground. I have managed to locate a Dutch birth record for my 2nd great grandfather, Evert Huigen! We have been working on finding this info for decades. Suddenly it's like I poked a hole in the dyke and the water came rushing in! OK, bad analogy, but you understand what I mean.

It began with an oft repeated search on Ancestry.com finally turning up a useful link to what must be a new record in the Dutch genealogy website, Wie Was Wie. The record was a birth record for an Everardus Huigen born 7 Dec 1827 to Evert Huigens and Evardina Sloot in Didam, Gelderland, Netherlands. The birth date was a day off from the date we calculated based on the info from his broken tombstone (for more details, see here) and the name of his father matched one of the names he used in America. I was pretty sure this was my 2nd great grandfather, but I still had lingering doubts about whether Everardus was really Evert.

Later that night, lying in bed, it hit me--the  "-us" at the end of his name was the Latin nominative ending used for baptisms. His first name was really "Everard" which matched the German version "Eberhard" that was on his tombstone! Everything fell into place. I got up and right back on Ancestry and WieWasWie and was up until 2:30 in the morning tearing down as much of the brick wall as I could.

One of the first finds was a birth record for his father, who was also listed as "Everardus" in his birth record, but went by "Evert." I'm guessing "Evert" is a nickname for "Everard" and I'm working verifying that.

In addition to Everard's birth record, I found birth records for his parents, Everard "Evert" Huigen and Everdina Sloot, and a variety of birth, death and marriage records for them and their other children: sons Herman, Joann (Johann), Jacob, the twins Gerard and Bernard and daughters Gerarda and Elisabeth. My great grandfather, John Huigens, was named for his uncle, Joann (That's Johann, not Jo Ann). His brother, Bernard Haugens, was named for another uncle. Herman and Jacob may be buried in a Catholic cemetery in Damiansville, Clinton Co., IL. It's possible my ancestor was not the only one to make his way to America.

I was able to go back another generation and find info on all four of Everard's grandparents: Herman Huigen and Agatha van den Berg and Johann Sloot and Gerharda Koning. I even found info on Agatha's parents: Peter van den Berg and Johanna Hatting.

Here is what I have so far in taking this branch back:

1. Everard "Evert" HUIGEN, Jr.(b. 7 Dec 1827 in Didam, Gelderland, Netherlands; d. 27 Feb 1864 in Marshall Co., IL)
2. Everard "Evert" HUIGEN, Sr. (b. 31 Mar 1788 in Groessen, Gelderland, Netherlands; d. 5 Mar 1832 in Didam, Gelderland, Netherlands)
3. Everdina SLOOT (b. 25 Apr 1789 in Didam, Gelderland Netherlands; d. Unknown)
4. Herman HUIGEN (b. 3 Mar 1730 in Leiden, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands; d. 27 Mar 1805 in Duiven, Gelderland, Netherlands)
5. Agatha VAN DEN BERG (b. about 1740 in Amersfoort, Utrecht, Netherlands; d 5 Jan 1823 in Duiven, Gelderland, Netherlands)
6. Johann SLOOT (b. Unknown; d. 24 Feb 1810 in Didam, Gelderland, Netherlands)
7. Gerharda KONING (b. Unknown; d. 15 May 1808 in Didam, Gelderland, Netherlands)
8. Unknown HUIGENS
9. Unknown
10. Peter VAN DEN BERG (b. Unknown; d. 1 Apr 1747 in Hoogland, Utrecht, Netherlands)
11. Johanna HATTING (b. Unknown; d. Unknown)
12.Unknown SLOOT
13. Unknown
14. Unknown KONING
15. Unknown

You can understand why I was up until 2:30 in the morning tracking all of this down and doing my genealogy happy dance. I also found records for several more children of Herman and Agatha. Evert Sr. and Herman Huigen gave their occupation as "day laborer." We do not come from the upper class. Not a surprise.

Next steps are to have my daughter's Dutch friend, Anne, help translate the wording on the civil birth, marriage and death records and the church records for baptisms, marriages and funerals. I still need to verify that "Evert" is a nickname for "Everard." I plan on tracing all of the branches of the various families down to find some living relatives. I hope I can find a living male Huigen or Huigens who will take a Y-DNA test to lay to rest all doubts that we've finally found our Dutch family.

Mystery Solved: Farm Located

I have finally been able to locate the farm in Sheridan County, Nebraska that my dad grew up on. Here is how I managed to find it.

I had two pieces of information from my mother to go on:

1. Logan C. Musser owned it--my grandfather just leased it 
2. It was northwest of Rushville, within walking distance 

Yesterday I learned that World War 2 "Old Man's Draft" registration cards from April, 1942 had two sides. The indexed images of the front side that are available on ancestry.com, I knew about. I did not know that if you click through to the next image, you can see the back side of the card, which contains height, weight, eye color, hair color and a few more pieces of information. You can read more about that draft here and here. I immediately went online to check out the second image for my male relatives in that age range. From my grandfather, Joseph Andrew Huigens' card, I learned that he had hazel eyes like mine.

But what really caught my eye, and what I had failed to notice before, was that he listed his address on the front of the card as "section 22-32-44." That was exciting because it gave me what I hoped were the section, township and range in which the farm was located.

It took me a while to track down a set of online historic plat maps for Nebraska Sheridan County, but I finally located a set from 1914 in an ancestry.com database: Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1860-1918. Townships in some western Nebraska counties were not named but use a number instead. I was able to find the image for Township 32 N in Range 44 W.

Section 22 is listed as being owned by M. P. Musser and not Logan C. Musser, but I guessed they were related and ownership had changed between 1914 and 1926. It was also just north of Rushville and very much within walking distance of the town.

Further research in the book Recollections of Sheridan County Nebraska (Sheridan County Historical Society (Neb.). 1976. [Place of publication not identified]: Printed by Iron Man Industries.) turned up the fact that banker M. P. Musser died in 1914, the year of the plat map and his son was Logan C. Musser. So Logan had indeed inherited the land after his father died and owned it when my grandfather arrived in 1926.

Here is what Section 22 looks like on Google Maps today.



I still need to discover why my father moved the family west in 1926 and when they left the farm and moved into Rushville. I'm also intrigued by the fairgrounds shown in section 22 in 1914. My dad never mentioned any fairgrounds and the Sheridan County Fair takes place in Gordon. I'm guessing they moved the fair long before my grandfather came and leased the land. I'll need to contact the Sheridan County Historical Society about that.