On 11 December 1862 he enlisted in the 21st Ohio Battery of the O. V. I. at Cleveland, and served until the end of the war. The unit organized at Camp Dennison, Ohio, on 29 April 1863, and was ordered to West Virginia on 5 May. They returned to Camp Dennison on 20 May and stood duty there till September. This was no easy duty, as the unit pursued an invading Confederate army during what is known as Morgan's Raid through Indiana and Ohio July 5-28.
After that, on 22 September, they moved to Camp Nelson, Kentucky, where the 21st was attached to Willcox's Left Wing forces, 9th Army Corps, and moved to Greenville, Tennessee, where they saw action in the Battle of Blue Springs on October 10, and in a skirmish at Walker's Ford on December 2. They did duty at various points in Tennessee and Alabama until they mustered out 21 July 1865. The battery only lost 9 men during its service: 1 officer and 8 enlisted men by disease.
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| The George W. Callin family c. 1890 (standing: Roy (left) and Clement; seated: George, Mabel (center) and Mary Ann) |
Mary Ann's parents were Stephen W St. John (1817–1893) and Harriet Jane Husted (1833–1899) of Bowling Green. When George's older brother, James, lost his wife, Rosalina Davenport Callin, in 1876, the St. John family took in the infant Jessie Callin and raised her as their own. Jessie was married to Albert Chudley only a few months before Stephen's death in 1893. (Refresh your memory of Jessie in last month's post, Leaving Only Traces.)
George took a second wife, marrying Lura M. Case (1861–1948) on 27 June 1899. Lura was the widow of Rev. Lemuel Lee Warner (1863–1888); they had both contracted typhoid fever in 1888, but only Lura recovered. Lura's son and daughter were just a few years younger than George's youngest, Mabel. George and Lura had another daughter together, Rosemary, born in 1903.
It isn't clear when George took up genealogy, but it is clear that he devoted many years to compiling his family history. In 1911, he had it published, and the resulting book has been passed down in some form or another to many of the descendants of James Callin.
George died at his home, 331 Pearl street, at 12:30 a. m. on 21 July 1921, after an illness of about two months. Death was "due to complication of diseases superinduced by old age." He was 75 years old.
I. Everett Leroy Callin (1872–1957) married Myrtle A. Rumley (b. 1878) on 16 March 1898. They would raise a son and a daughter together over the next quarter century. Roy was a carpenter, and moved the family around quite a bit. After moving between Lorain and Toledo (which are about 90 miles apart, along the shore of Lake Erie), they were in Gary, Indiana, for a while around 1910 and 1911; then from about 1913, the family resided in Detroit, Michigan.
Roy and Myrtle divorced about 1925, and Myrtle supported herself as a seamstress in Toledo for a few years before marrying Edward M. West (b. 1881) in 1928. That marriage did not last long, and by 1930 she had taken lodging in the house of Edith Hanley - another divorcee, whose maiden name happened to be Edith Callin. (Her family was featured in The Distance of Close Connections.) The last I have been able to learn about Myrtle, she married James Mcnally (b. 1872) in 1933 and settled in his home in Perrysburg, Wood county, which is where they were in 1940.
Roy seemed to prefer to stay in Detroit after his divorce. He remained there until his death in 1957.
A. Lionel Everett "Lee" Callin (1900–1962) was working as a chauffeur in 1917, according to his World War I draft registration. He lived in Detroit, and married Dorothy Adler (b.1901) there in 1919. They were together for 11 years, and divorced in 1930. Records indicate they had no children. According to his obituary, he was visiting a cousin, Warren Hasmer, in Florida, when he died of a sudden heart attack. He was buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Bowling Green.
B. Katharyn Loraine Callin (1904–1950) was born 16 June 1904 in Perrysburg, Wood county, Ohio. She spent at least part of her childhood in Gary, Indiana, but after she married Cloyd J Markwood (1902–1973) in Toledo on 26 June 1926, she remained there for the rest of her life. Cloyd was born in Jackson Township, Ohio, and worked as a maintenance man for the Shell Oil Co. for 10 years until his retirement. After Lorraine died, he married again in 1953; he and his second wife, Letha L (Dubbs) Masters (1913–1972) moved to Phoenix in 1956.
Lorraine and Cloyd had two sons, one of whom is still living.
1. Robert Kenneth Markwood (1933–1992) was born in Toledo on 24 February 1933, and served in the U.S. Army from 2 February 1954 to 17 January 1956. He lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, and died there in 1992. He was buried in the National Memorial Cemetery Of Arizona in 2001.
II. Clement Carl Callin (1877–1944) was a veteran of the Spanish-American War, and graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1901, where he received the B.S. and A.B. degrees. While an undergraduate he excelled in football and was a member of the varsity. This is also where he likely met Gertrude DeWees Smith (1879–1955), whom he married on 15 February 1905.
He did graduate work at Temple University, where he re-received his master's degree, and also held a degree of B.C.S. at Rider College. He completed further studies at Teachers' College of the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University.
He taught, and served as principal of Morrisville schools in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, for many years, and from 1930, he served as head of the junior accounting department of Rider College, Trenton, New Jersey.
III. Mabel Augusta Callin (1881–1970) was born 15 July 1881 in Bowling Green, and grew up to follow the family profession; namely, she became a teacher in the public schools. She attended Ohio Wesleyan University and Bowling Green State University. She moved to Lorain from Bowling Green about 1920, and after she retired, she returned to Bowling Green, where she died in 1970.
IV. Rosemary Callin (1903–1978) was the baby of the family, born 15 January 1903. She was the author of the letter I published in the post Silk or Satin, in which she recalls what she knew about her grandmother, Elizabeth Berlein Callin; though it is questionable how much she would remember firsthand, as grandma Elizabeth died when Rosemary was 11 months old.
Still, Rosemary grew up surrounded by a family full of teachers, surrounded by pioneer family, Civil War veterans, and scholars. It seems inevitable that she would also go into teaching. After her father died, she moved with her mother to a new home in Richfield, Henry county, and eventually they settled in Lakeside, Ottawa county, on the shores of Lake Erie, east of Toledo.
The ladies entertained and stayed active in the community, hosting Thanksgiving dinners for the "lonely" townspeople during the tourist-free winter season. After Lura's death, Rosemary remained in Port Clinton until her death at 75 years of age - the same age her father reached.
She was the last surviving Callin from this branch of the family.
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I've said before that the Callin Family History is the book that inspired me to begin doing family history research and to start this blog. As difficult as it has been to re-trace the information that George provided, even with modern tools and access to millions of digitized online records and newspapers, I find it impressive that he was able to leave us such a reliable record of his scattered, extended family.
As a family history researcher, finding a family like this one is both inspiring and sad; inspiring to find a family so full of accomplished and professional people, but also sad because in the end, there are so few remaining descendants. Bob Markwood and his brother may have had large families for all I know, or that brother could be the last living member of this branch of the family.
But the important thing to recognize is that people make choices. Clement and Mabel chose to be teachers, and if they chose not to have children, that shouldn't diminish our appreciation of their lives. I only wish that the records our childless relatives left behind were as thorough and glowing as Clement's obituary, so I could adequately celebrate them for who they were. Nothing is as sad to me as not knowing enough about who someone is to be able to write more than their birth and death dates.
If you want to help celebrate these families, and you see any mistakes or omissions I should fix, please let me know! This is all part of the plan to give the original Callin Family History a 100-year overhaul, so I want to get it right.
Drop a comment in the box below, email me at callintad at gmail.com, or follow the link to our Callin Family History Facebook group and let me know how you're related to this family. There's a digital (PDF) version of the original Callin Family History available in that group, too, if you want it.
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