Great Great Great Grandpa William Callin

At last, we have arrived at my 3rd great-grandfather:

William H. Callin (1813-1881)

His father was John Callin, whose story was told in The Brothers Callin of Ohio. His mother was Elizabeth Simon, about whom we asked Who Was Great Grandma Callin?

We talked about his older brother in Uncle George and the Underground Railroad; and since this time last year, we've looked at all of his older siblings and their descendants. We even talked about his youngest sister already in The Distance of Close Connections. You may remember even further back, when we talked about his eldest son and grandchildren in 20th Century Callin Clan.

Here is his record from the Callin Family History - as written by his fourth son, George Callin:

Record of William Callin, 3rd son of John Callin, who was 2nd son of James 1st.
Born May 10, 1813, died Nov. 9, 1881, at Bowling Green, O.
Married to Elizabeth Barlene 1837 who died Nov. 14, 1903, at Bowling Green, O., aged 86 years.
To this union were born seven children:

• Harriett, born 1838, died 1907.

• John, born 1840, lives in Fostoria, Ohio.

• James M., born Feb 26, 1844, died 1903 in Canada.

• George, born July 4, 1846, lives at Bowling Green, O.

• Hugh, born May 16, 1848, died 1880 at Portage, Ohio.

• Zimri, born Dec. 10, 1850, died Aug., 1907, at Bowling Green, O.

• Milton, born 1852, died at 5 months old.

William Callin was 3 years old when his father moved from Penn. To Ashland, Ohio. He grew to manhood on the old farm. Married and lived there till 1849 when he moved to Huron Co., Ohio; bought and cleared up a new farm. In 1861 he bought and moved his family on to a farm in Wood Co., near Bowling Green.
He was a perfect specimen of physical manhood, six feet tall, weight 200 pounds; all bone and muscle. Few men equaled him in strength. He followed clearing timber land and was badly crippled with rheumatism in old age.

The J.H. Beers company published their Commemorative Historical and Biographical Record of Wood County, Ohio in 1897. These hagiographic histories were very popular in the late 19th century, and George may have even contributed some of the information in this biographical sketch of his brother, John, which included these paragraphs about William:

His father, William H. Callin, was born at Callinsburg, Clarion Co., Penn., September 10, 1813, and was the fourth son in a family of nine children. He was an industrious, hardy, persevering man, possessing great physical strength, but had only a limited knowledge of books. He had a mind of keen perception and sound judgment, and was well fitted for pioneer life. In 1831 he accompanied his parents to Ashland county, Ohio, where his father entered a tract of land from the government, becoming one of the first settlers of that locality. William Callin aided in clearing and improving this property, and finally, on the death of the father, in paying it out of the land office and receiving title (the land having been entered on what was termed the ninety-nine-year lease). In 1835, he married Elizabeth, daughter of John Barlin, of Ashland, and of their union were born eight children, the eldest and youngest dying in infancy. The surviving members of the family are Harriet, widow of William , of Bowling Green; John H.; James M., and George W., both of Bowling Green; Hugh H. and Zimri L., of Pioneer, Ohio.

In 1849 William Callin removed from Ashland county to Peru, Huron Co., Ohio, locating on a farm of eighty acres which he sold in 1860, preparatory to his removal to Wood county. Here he settled on 160 acres of land in Plain township, and, on his retirement from farming, took up his residence in Bowling Green. He was an exemplary man, of high Christian character, and a consistent and faithful member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He supported the first Republican presidential candidate, John C. Fremont, and was ever afterward a stanch advocate of the party. His death occurred in Bowling Green, December 11, 1881. His widow still makes her home there, and is now in her seventy-ninth year.

While these old books of pioneer history have a reputation for being wrong or incomplete, the records I have been able to locate largely back up the later details of the Beers sketch; and the details between the Beers and CFH accounts mostly match, too. The only real doubt I have is about the claim that William was born in Callensburg, Pennsylvania.

Callensburg was not surveyed until 1826, and wasn't incorporated until 1851. William's father and uncle (The Brothers Callin) were both settled in Milton township, Richland county, Ohio, with John appearing in both the 1820 and 1830 Census records there; so William couldn't have been born in that town. That said, the founder of Callensburg, Hugh Callen, did purchase the 300 acres that would later become the town in 1812, so there is an outside chance that our Callin family was living there at the time William was born. That's hard to prove without records, though.

Another quibble with the Beers and the CFH is that Ashland wasn't formed until 1846, and both histories refer to people settling there before that date. I'm not a professional historian, but I'm pretty sure it's bad form to refer to a place by its current name, and not indicate that it used to be called something else.

Because of these bad habits, I'm more willing to think that wherever he was actually born (whether on the property that later became Callensburg, or somewhere near that), William's parents probably told him that's where he was from, and that is what got passed down into the written record.

William married Elizabeth Berlin (1817–1903) about 1836. I actually have a citation record from an ancient CD ROM, the Family Tree Maker's Family Archives: Marriage Index; Selected Counties of Ohio, 1789-1850 CD 400, which puts their wedding on 29 September 1836 in Richland county. When you take into account the Richland/Ashland confusion of the older historians, that fits with their versions of events. (Someday, I need to track down the original record.)

Elizabeth's family has been tough for me to hunt down. Let's start with the facts from the Beers sketch: Elizabeth, daughter of John Barlin, of Ashland.

There is a John Barlean listed in the 1840 Census as living in Richland county (Mifflin township), and in the 1870 Census in Ashland county (Vermillion). (Remember, parts of Richland became part of Ashland in the 1840s.) The 1870 lists 83-year-old John in a household with 79-year-old Mary A Barlean, and the family of 50-year-old Catherine Young. Some further digging turned up another biographical sketch that fits with the family described here; this one for Catherine's son, Samuel Young.

The maternal grandparents of our subject were John and Mary Ann Berlean, who were likewise born in the Keystone state and died in Ashland county. Mathias Young was a soldier of the Revolutionary War, while John Berlean served his country in the war of 1812 and was at Baltimore during the hostilities there. The Berlean homestead, upon which the mother of our subject was born, was situated in Pennsylvania on the Maryland state line.
The birth of Michael Young [Samuel's father] occurred in Union county, Pennsylvania, after which he removed to Center county and later to Huntingdon county in the same state. From that point he accompanied his parents on their removal to Mifflin township about 1829 and Katherine Berlean arrived about a year later.
(from History of Ashland County, Ohio, by A. J. Baughman, 1909)

There are a lot of clues there. The timing seems to add up for the Berlean family to arrive in Mifflin (though they weren't there in 1830); but other facts don't add up. And the 1840 record only counts three people - a male and female between 50 and 59 years of age (presumably John and his wife), and a female between 15 and 19 (presumably Katherine). No Elizabeth, though she would have already been married to William Callin by 1840.

John Berlin turns up in the War of 1812 Pension Application Files Index, 1812-1815 and from that record we learn that he served from 21 April 1813 to 22 November 1814, in both Captain William Craig's and Captain Jonathan May's companies in the Pennsylvania Militia. The record also shows that he married his second wife (the widow claiming his pension) in 1830 in Columbiana county, Ohio. (Happily, his first wife, Anna Coy, is also named.) It also lists residence dates for Van Wert county, Ohio (1851-1856) and Canton, Stark county (1871); he died in Stark county in 1874.

There is still no direct link to Elizabeth, but there are two men (one John Barlin, one John Barline) in Columbiana county, Ohio, in 1830. The former had four daughters under 20 and lived in Beaver township (which became part of Mahoning county in 1846); the latter had one son and one daughter, both under 5, and lived in Green township.

None of this adds up to concrete proof, but the facts do seem to fit together. I wouldn't be comfortable posting this next section without the preceding five paragraphs as a disclaimer, but I think this is what happened:

- -- --- -- -

John Berlin (1787-1874) was born in Pennsylvania, and served from 1813-1814 in the PA Militia during the War of 1812. He married Anna Coy in 1815 or 1816, and entered a tract of bounty land in Beaver township, Columbiana county, Ohio, probably just after 1820.

Elizabeth Berlin (1817–1903) would have been the eldest daughter; her sister, Catherine (mother of Samuel Young in the sketch above) was born about 1820. The couple had four daughters; the two youngest were under 5 when Anna died, likely around 1827. In 1830, John married Catharine Landis (1807-1882), and moved the family to Mifflin township, Richland county.

Elizabeth married William Callin in 1836, and they set up house on the Callin family farm in Milton township. William had purchased the deed after his father died in 1835, and many of the Callin family members who had grown up there had moved further west. In 1845, William took his wagon 500 miles west to Iowa to retrieve his recently widowed sister, Margret, and her two small sons, and return them to Ohio.

William moved to Peru township, Huron county, in 1849 and the family lived there for a decade before relocating in 1860 to Wood county, where he cleared a 160 acre farm in Plain township. When the Civil War broke out, William and Elizabeth sent their three oldest sons, and proudly received all three back. William retired from farming and he and Elizabeth moved into Bowling Green, where he died in 1881. She moved into the home of her son, George, where she made an impression on her granddaughter, Rosemary. Elizabeth survived William by more than twenty years, and she died 19 November 1903 in Bowling Green.

Rosemary recorded her memories of Elizabeth in the post Silk or Satin.

- -- --- -- -

As we head forward and start exploring the Sly family next week, I'm keenly aware that there are more cousins watching who are directly related to the individuals I'll be writing about. I will continue to try to tell the best/most complete/most accurate stories I can, but I need you all to keep me honest!

If you spot a mistake, or catch me taking a shortcut, call me on it!

And if you want to offer a guest post for your family, let me know before we get there, so I can schedule you in.

As always... comment below, email callintad at Gmail, or click through to the Facebook group.

Meet the Campbells

...our story so far...

Ann Callin was ten years old in 1816 when her family left Pennsylvania for the wild frontier of Ohio. She had two older brothers to look out for her (John and George), two younger sisters to look out for (Sarah and Eliza), and two baby brothers (William and James).

Her father, John, planned to settle on a farm with his older brother, her uncle James. Her cousins were four adventurous boys: Thomas and Hugh, who were older than her, and Alec and James who were younger. Having so many people on one farm meant that there was a lot to do, but there were a lot of hands to do it all, and her mother and Aunt Mary surely kept them all occupied.

Ann's mother, Elizabeth, had two more children after the family arrived in Ohio: Hugh in 1817, and Margret in 1819. As the oldest of the four girls, Ann would have been well schooled in running the household.

Even as the two-family farm expanded, the township was growing rapidly around them. Richland county had no more than 150 people living in it in 1812, but by 1825, there were an estimated 8,000. There were bound to be problems, as in 1820, when uncle James was killed in an altercation with a man named Fowler. But the family was large, and strong, and most of their neighbors were industrious and kind.

Among those neighbors was a young man by the name of Henry Campbell. Henry's father was one of the many early settlers who found success farming in Ohio. He was five years younger than Ann, but he had been born in Pennsylvania, as she had been, and when he acquired land in Milton township, not far from where her brothers were clearing their own farms, he needed someone who could run a household to help him start a family.

And so, on 20 August 1833, at 26 years of age, Ann married Henry and joined him on his farm. Their first son, Cyrus, was born the following March. In those first ten years, the couple had five children. The youngest, Cornelia, was born 13 October 1843, but died before her sixth birthday: 13 March 1849. Their middle child, a daughter named Elizabeth born in June 1840, would stay at home with Ann and Henry, and never marry.

The children of Henry and Ann (Callin) Campbell:

1. Cyrus C. Campbell (1834–1873)
2. Harrison M Campbell (1837–1924)
3. Elizabeth Campbell (1840–1897)
4. Frances A Campbell (1842–1905)
5. Cornelia Campbell (1843–1849)

Next week, we'll talk about Cyrus's descendants, followed by Harrison's the next week, and Frances Campbell Hoot's the week after that.

Henry died in Ashland, Ohio, at some point before the 1880 Census was taken; Ann appears there listed as a widow. There is a record for a Henry Campbell in the Headstones Provided for Deceased Union Civil War Veterans, 1879-1903 database, with a death listed as 4 April 1880, but this record lists the receiving cemetery in Zaleski village, Vinton county, which is 155 miles south of Ashland. If he served in the Civil War, Henry would have been in his early 50s at enlistment; that's not impossible, but it is unlikely.

Ann died on 18 March 1889, according to the Callin Family History, and Elizabeth survived until 1897. Elizabeth was buried in the Ashland Cemetery.

Some Tips About Ohio Families

Since Cyrus's family proved to take up a lot of screen, I opted to split them off into their own post, but then I felt bad for making this one so short. To make up for that, here are some things I've observed while researching all of these families.

Michigan: Popular Marriage Get-away? When I want to find marriage records for some of these relatives in the northern part of Ohio, particularly in the decades between 1890 and 1930, I have found that a lot of couples headed up past Toledo and got their licences in Hillsdale or Monroe, Michigan. Those aren't exactly lakeside resorts, as far as I know, but there must have been some reason for so many couples to have gone there to marry. Whatever the reason, if you're researching some people who should have a Richland county or Ashland county marriage license and you can't find it, take a look at Michigan.

U.S. Social Security Applications - This is a relatively new Ancestry database, and it has been a fantastic resource for me - for everyone who applied for a Social Security account, of course. The information is gathered from official forms submitted by the person registered to a particular Social Security Number, and while not every file has every piece of information, you can usually expect to find the following:

• full name
• parents' names (including mother's maiden name)
• birth and death dates
• married names (and sometimes dates to suggest when the marriage occurred)
• places - these are tricky, but usually the correct place of birth is listed (it's probably abbreviated in a weird way, thought)

Obituary Blues - There are diminishing returns to searching for obituaries, and different ways to find them depending on when the person in question died. Here's how I usually go about searching.

Step 1: Google. This is my go-to, once I know at least a few facts about someone. I find that if I start with the person's full name (married names for women work best), followed by the word obituary, I usually get the one I'm looking for in the first page of results... if I get anything at all! If not, I add whatever other information I have; names of their parents or spouses can help; birth and death dates can help if you know those.

I'm usually successful with Google when the person I'm looking for has died within the last decade or so. Finding obituaries from further back than 2000 can be dicey.

Step 2: Newspapers.com - I'm paying for the Deluxe Ancestry membership, which includes limited access to Newspapers.com, so if Google comes up empty, I usually go here next. Start your search with the name of your person, and narrow your search using their interface (choose a state, date range, or even a specific newspaper if they have it in their database).

If you have a spouse's name, you can include that - so if you search for "King Kong Fay Wray" you should see results for pages that include all four names. That can help narrow down your search if you're looking for a common name.

Step 3: Rutherford Hayes Presidential Library collection - these folks show up in Ancestry, though if you want to read the obituary, you usually have to order a hard copy from them. At least they tell you which newspapers your obituary appeared in, so you can search for a digital version using Google or Newspapers.com, just in case. Otherwise, the $2.00 may be worth it to you.

Happy Hunting! (And Happy New Year...)

Tragic Thomas

Thomas Callin is, to me, the first of many firsts.

As near as we can tell, he was the eldest son of an eldest son, and he is the earliest of these ancestors to leave behind multiple records. He had to be a survivor - that much is evident in his story. But thanks to war, disease, and the other dangers of frontier life, he came close to leaving no legacy at all.

I'm sure I'm projecting a bit, but the Callin men in my contemporary branch of the family tend to be a bit clumsy. For us, it's not usually fatal - it often leads to minor injuries and embarrassingly preventable consequences. Most of our misfortunes are small enough to be laughed off (and maybe bandaged up), but Thomas's life, with its many tragedies, seems to have been plagued with the kinds of misfortunes that are harder to laugh off.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1801, Thomas would have been just old enough during the War of 1812 to have been aware of his family's vulnerable position as a farm in the middle of a growing American frontier. If his father, James (from our previous post, The Brothers Callin of Ohio) did have a sister carried off during a raid on their settlement (see The Perils of Polly (or Margaret) for that story), then Thomas would have grown up hearing that harrowing adventure around the fire, and experiencing the dread of attack from his earliest memories.

Thomas would have been about 9 years old when the family relocated to the new state of Ohio - a state younger than Thomas himself! - and there are some resources available if you want to learn more about what that would have been like. (I found a quaint book, and linked to it at the bottom of this post if you're interested - "Philip Seymour, or Pioneer Life in Richland County"written in 1858 and set in 1812.)

There is a lot we don't know about that time on the Callin farm. Thomas's uncle, John, arrived in 1816, about six years after Thomas's father did. I like to think adding seven cousins to the farm lessened the work load, and spread out the chores. According to the 1820 Census for Milton township, Thomas had four brothers and two sisters, and his aunt and uncle had added two more to their brood, bringing the total for both families to 17 cousins!

Sadly, this is when the first real tragedy struck, as sometime around 1820, James got involved in an altercation with a man named Fowler, who hit him in the head with a rifle and killed him. (The census does show a neighbor named Sutton Fowler, but without any documentation, there is no way to tell if that is the same person.)

Milton Township, Richland county, 1820

We don't have any evidence outside of George Callin's Family History, but according to him, Thomas married Nancy Burget in 1822.

The 1820 Census did show two households headed by Burgets - one named Thomas and one named Boston. From looking at the ages of the people in each of those households, I've concluded that it's most likely that Thomas and Boston could be Nancy's brothers, and that if she was living in either household in 1820, it might have been the one headed by Thomas Burget.

Marrying Nancy and setting up his own home on or near the family farm ought to have been a happy occasion for Thomas. I like to think of everyone getting along and working together, making a life like that you might have seen on Little House on the Prairie. But it can't have been without its share of heartbreak. The picture we have is murky, as the facts in our different sources don't paint a complete picture. But we'll do the best we can to piece together the family of Thomas and Nancy Callin.

The George Callin Family History (which I'm going to refer to as the "CFH") tells us that Thomas and Nancy's eldest child was a girl named Jane, born in 1823. But, there is no girl of that age listed in the 1830 or 1840 census, and even though George's account says she lived until 1879, unmarried, there is no Jane Callin listed in any of the subsequent census records for this family - nor is there such a person listed in Ohio for any of those dates. There is, however, a James of about the right age (born 1826) listed in the 1850, 1860, and 1870 census records, living with his mother, Nancy. I suspect the CFH simply got that one little fact wrong.

Their second child, George, was born in 1825. (I guess that would make him the eldest, if my Jane/James theory is correct.) There is a boy the right age to be George in the 1830 and 1840 Census records, and while he is nowhere to be found in 1850, there is a George Callan the right age in nearby Vermillion, Ashland county, in the 1860 census, living with a family called Boyd. Military records support the CFH account that says he was killed at the end of the Civil War in 1865. He enlisted in Company G, Ohio 178th Infantry Regiment on 23 Sep 1864, and though the records say he mustered out on 26 March 1865, his unit was in North Carolina at that time, and counted 2 of their members as Killed at the end of the war. The CFH says he was shot by a rebel sharpshooter while on "pickete duty".

Both of these eldest sons died unmarried, according to all of the sources I have; their third son will be the subject of next week's tale: Thomas Jefferson Callin, born 1827. "Jeff" survived, thrived, and raised a large family of his own.

After him, depending on the source, there were two more boys and three girls; this is where things get both sad and hard to confirm. In the CFH, there are several children of Thomas and Nancy that are listed with the ominous note, "All died young." Mary Ann, Caroline, Emiline, Sally, Abel, and one unnamed.

We know that Mary Ann and Emiline survived until at least 1850, when they were 14 and 11 years old, respectively. The 1840 census shows two girls under 5, and one between 5 and 9 years of age. Mary Ann (1836) and Emiline (1839) and either Caroline or Sally could be those girls. The 1840 census also shows two boys between 5 and 9, but it isn't clear who they might be. Find-a-Grave says that Abel lived from 1838-1839, and the other boys mentioned in The Callin Family History are younger than that. While we have no record to indicate what their fate might have been. I would suggest that one of the many outbreaks of yellow fever or cholera which were known to occur at the time claimed at least some of these children.

Thomas himself seems to have died when he was right around the age that I am now - somewhere around 42. His family is listed in 1840 Milton township under his name, but in the enumeration, there is no male his age counted. There are the five boys under twenty, and three young girls, with one female (Nancy, most likely) between 30 and 39. Thomas's actual date of death is still a mystery; Find-a-Grave says 1861, but I would expect to have seen him in the 1850 and 1860 census if that were true. I tend to think that he probably died right around when his youngest son was born (Elliott, b. 1841 or 43).

The next child listed in the CFH is a boy named Marquis born in 1840. (If you're like me, you will always wonder if that is pronounced like "Marcus" or like the French "mar-KEE". Wonder on, American dreamer.) The book goes on to have Marquis marry Pauline Snyder, have two sons - Fred and John (b. 1871) - and die in Chicago, Illinois, presumably before the 1911 publication of the CFH. I have not been able to find a single record to support any of this. If Marquis has descendants out there, they remain a mystery.

(UPDATE: While putting the post for next week together, I ran across a 27-year-old "Munfer Callan" living in the 1860 Weller township household of Thomas J and Susan Callan - which is just close enough to what the CFH says about Marquis that this might be an elusive record of his life! The hunt continues... -T.C.)

The 1850 Census finds Nancy Callon in Weller Township, Richland county, with her son, the aforementioned James, two daughters, Mary Ann and Emiline, and the last of her sons listed in the Callin Family History: Elliott, whose birth date is either 1843 (per the CFH) or 1841 (per the Census). Interestingly enough, Nancy's 1850 household is listed on the page in between a Jefferson Callin (a newly wed Thomas Jefferson) and a Joseph Burget (no known relationship, but another tantalizing hint that Nancy's family is still nearby). In 1860, she is down to James and Elliott; and in 1870, only James remains.

Elliott appears to have enlisted in the 26th Ohio Regiment in 1861, which saw action at the Battle of Shiloh, and was deployed at the end of the war to New Orleans, and then San Antonio. Elliott died in 1865, at the hospital in Columbus, Ohio - never married.

I would love to learn more about Nancy; I know that she died in 1871, having outlived her husband and all but three of her children. Of those eleven children, after losing two to the war, and several more very likely to disease, only two survived to have families of their own. She must have been tough, but if we make a few reasonable guesses from what we see in the records, it's not too difficult to believe she had more family around her - between her brothers and in-laws, and what I hope was a close and supportive town.

But however quaint and romanticized the stories you read about the early days of America and life in 1800s Ohio might be, it's worth remembering just how steep a toll that life could take on those who survived it.

The Brothers Callin of Ohio

Fraulein Maria famously sang in the Sound of Music, "Let's start at the very beginning/a very good place to start!"

We don't actually know much about the "very beginning" of our story, but there are some clues, and a handful of records to work with.

And based on what I have, it starts with two brothers...

I can't prove that James and John were the sons of James Callin. If they were, then their father was the Revolutionary War soldier found in the earlier post, Lafayette on the Brandywine, and their sister (or sisters) experienced the events related in The Perils of Polly (or Margaret). Here is what John's grandson, George, tells us in his Callin Family History in 1911:

James 2nd, with his family moved from Penn. to Ashland Co. and located on a farm about the year 1810. He was killed in an altercation with a man named Fowler who struck him over the head with a rifle, this occurred about the year 1820. He was buried in Oliversburg Cemetery.

The family of James 2nd described here would have included his wife, Mary, and at least three very young sons: Thomas (b. 1801), Alec (b. 1808), and James (b. 1810). As imprecise as our information is, all three boys might have been born in Pennsylvania, though little James might have been born in - or on the way to - Ohio.

John Callin, 2nd son of James 1st, emigrated with his family from Westmoreland Co., Penn., to Ashland County in 1816 and settled on 60 acres of his brother James' farm who gave him a life lease of it. He lived the remainder of his life on the same farm, dying in 1835 of tuberculosis and buried in Oliversburg Cemetery; his wife, Elizabeth, born Nov. 1780, died Nov., 1864, and buried near Auburn, Ind.; John, eldest son, died at 22, unmarried.

John's family in 1816 would have been his wife, Elizabeth (nee Simon), four young sons (John, b. 1802; George, b. 1804; William, b. 1813; and James, b. 1815) and three daughters (Ann, b. 1806; Sarah, b. 1808; and Eliza, b. 1811).

I have yet to find any evidence showing where these brothers actually came from. George says Westmoreland County, PA, but I haven't found any records to show these two families in that county. There were people named James and John Callen living in that general area (mostly in nearby Armstrong County), but it seems pretty clear from the evidence that those individuals stayed put, died in, and left descendants in, Pennsylvania without venturing westward.

Wherever our James and John were from, the brothers arrived in Ohio in the years just before the Panic of 1819. James Madison was President of the United States, and the country had just finished a second war with Britain that had started in 1812. Ohio was still considered "the frontier," but it had been a state long enough for there to be some infrastructure - mills and markets, roads and mail. The easy credit and land speculation (which led to the Panic) and the pressures to move away from the original colonies (recent war, and growing numbers of immigrants) obviously made it a popular place to go.

Click for full size

Ashland County wasn't formed until February 24, 1846, from portions of Huron, Lorain, Richland, and Wayne counties, so when George talks about places and events in Ashland county before that date, he's usually talking about Richland county. This map shows the modern boundaries of Richland county, and the pin shows the location of Olivesburg (Oliversburg is probably a typo in George's original text).

Milton township was organized in 1816, just in time for John's arrival, and it makes up a roughly rectangular area between Richland County and Ashland city, with Olivesburg near the top and Pavonia near the bottom corner.

The reason I mention Milton is because the 1820 Federal Census for Milton, Richland County, has the earliest record of James and John that I can find - in fact, it's the only record I can find that shows them both. Since George Callin, compiling his book in 1911, would not have had access to any but the earliest of the U.S. Census records, any similarities between George's account and the official records can probably be considered independent verification.

This detail from the census record shows John and James "Calan" - as well as a neighbor named Sutton Fowler. There are also two neighbors named Burget - Thomas and Boston. All of these are clues that help match this record to our Callin Family History.

George's tale of James's demise at the hands of a "man named Fowler" is lent some credibility here, though there is no way to tell for certain whether this is the same Fowler.

There isn't a lot of information in the first few Census counts beyond the names of the heads of each household. Each member of the household gets counted and reported by some standard demographics - male/female, and rough age groups. It takes some analysis and guesswork to pull any kind of story out of it, so having George's names and ages to compare to makes the job a bit easier.

John's family, as listed in George's book, matches up with this census count almost perfectly. A few of the ages that George reports don't quite add up, but they are close - and every individual we know about is accounted for.

Here's the breakdown, with the names and birth-dates provided by George:

Males <10: 3

• Hugh (b. 1817 - 3)

• James (b. 1815 - 5)

• William (b. 1813 - 7)

Males 10-15: 2

• George (b. 1804 - 16)

• John (b. 1802 - 18) 

Males 45+: 1

• John (b. 1780 - 40)

Females <10: 2

• Margaret (b. 1819 - 1)

• Eliza (b. 1811 - 9)

Females 10-15: 1

• Sarah (b. 1808 - 12)

Females 16-25: 1

• Ann (b. 1806 - 14)

Females 26-44: 1

• Elizabeth (b. 1780 - 40)

James's family is also close enough for me to be convinced that it's the same family, but the census includes two boys and two girls that George's book does not list.

Males - Under 10: 1

• James (b. 1810 - 10)

Males - 10 thru 15: 1

• Alec (b. 1808 - 12)

Males - 16 thru 18: 1

• Unknown

Males - 16 thru 25: 2

• Thomas (b. 1801 - 19)

• Unknown

Males - 45 and over: 1

• James (b. 1779 - 41)

Females - 10 thru 15: 1

• Unknown daughter

Females - 16 thru 25: 1

• Unknown daughter

Females - 45 and over : 1

• Mary (b. 1768 - 52)

These unknown kids could mean there were people in the household who were not family, but I'm not entirely convinced that's the case, because of what we find in 1830. I think it's more likely that because John is George's grandfather, George had better information about who his aunts and uncles were. It's entirely possible that some combination of frontier tragedy and poor bookkeeping kept him from learning the names of all of his 1st cousins, once removed.

That 1820 Census was enumerated on August 7, and it's probably a safe bet that James and Mr. Fowler had their altercation sometime after that. James's eldest son, Thomas, married a Nancy Burget in 1822; Nancy may be one of the females who is listed in the household of Thomas Burget in 1820. A death and marriage in the 1820s ought to show up in the following census, and sure enough, in 1830 things seem to have adjusted as you would expect.

John is there in Milton Township, with young, newly-wed nephew Thomas listed below him, and James's widow, Mary, listed below him. Unexpectedly, though, the name Hugh Callon appears further down the page!

This Hugh could be completely unrelated to the family, of course, but remember there were two boys listed* in the 1820 census that weren't in the Callin Family History; there is a good chance that this is one of those young men. In 1830, he seems to have a wife, they are counted in the "20 to 29" age group, and they seem to have a son and daughter each under the age of 5.

* Update (7/30/2018): if you look again, there is actually only one extra boy there; for some reason, the census counted the same boy twice; once in the "16-18" box, and again in the "16-25" box. I'm reasonably sure that Hugh is that extra boy.

John's family matches up once again, though the census lists one daughter fewer than the number he should have in the household. The widow Mary has two young men in her household, most likely Alec and James.

After John's death in 1835 of tuberculosis, the two families he and his brother had brought to Ohio begin to spread out. Daughters and sons marry and strike out on their own, and in the coming weeks, I'll explore what happens to their descendants. John's widow, Elizabeth, eventually moved to Auburn, DeKalb County, Indiana where she lived out her days with daughter Eliza Ferguson.

We saw what happened to James's sons, Alec and James, and their mother, Mary, in the earlier post, The Pull of the West. The mysterious Hugh from the 1830 Census will remain a mystery, for now; he doesn't appear to be in Ohio in 1840, but there is a Hugh Callen of the right age in Louisa, Iowa territory. Perhaps we'll learn more about him during our search for more records on Alec?

James and Mary's eldest son Thomas will remain in Ohio with Nancy until.... but perhaps we should talk about their family next time?