CFH First Draft: Minerva Ferguson Copp

 This post is part of an ongoing series, sharing the first draft of my Revised Callin Family History. 

Minerva Ferguson is the 52nd person in a descendant report beginning with the earliest known ancestor of our Callin family, (1.) James Callin. This descendant report uses the Register Style of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society. 

Please use the Contact Form (at right) to send questions or corrections.

CFH First Draft: John Dancer Ferguson

 This post is part of an ongoing series, sharing the first draft of my Revised Callin Family History. 

John Dancer Ferguson is the 51st person in a descendant report beginning with the earliest known ancestor of our Callin family, (1.) James Callin. This descendant report uses the Register Style of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society. 

Please use the Contact Form (at right) to send questions or corrections.

CFH First Draft: Eliza Ferguson Myers

 This post is part of an ongoing series, sharing the first draft of my Revised Callin Family History. 

Eliza Ferguson is the 50th person in a descendant report beginning with the earliest known ancestor of our Callin family, (1.) James Callin. This descendant report uses the Register Style of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society. 

Please use the Contact Form (at right) to send questions or corrections.

CFH First Draft: Sarah Ferguson Myers

 This post is part of an ongoing series, sharing the first draft of my Revised Callin Family History. 

Sarah Ferguson is the 49th person in a descendant report beginning with the earliest known ancestor of our Callin family, (1.) James Callin. This descendant report uses the Register Style of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society. 

Please use the Contact Form (at right) to send questions or corrections.

CFH First Draft: Nicholas P Ferguson

 This post is part of an ongoing series, sharing the first draft of my Revised Callin Family History. 

Nicholas Ferguson is the 48th person in a descendant report beginning with the earliest known ancestor of our Callin family, (1.) James Callin. This descendant report uses the Register Style of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society. 

Please use the Contact Form (at right) to send questions or corrections.

CFH First Draft: James L Ferguson (1841-1907)

 This post is part of an ongoing series, sharing the first draft of my Revised Callin Family History. 

James L Ferguson is the 47th person in a descendant report beginning with the earliest known ancestor of our Callin family, (1.) James Callin. This descendant report uses the Register Style of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society. 

Please use the Contact Form (at right) to send questions or corrections.

CFH First Draft: Margaret Jane Ferguson Gallaher

 This post is part of an ongoing series, sharing the first draft of my Revised Callin Family History. 

Margaret Jane Ferguson is the 46th person in a descendant report beginning with the earliest known ancestor of our Callin family, (1.) James Callin. This descendant report uses the Register Style of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society. 

Please use the Contact Form (at right) to send questions or corrections.

CFH First Draft: Mildred Ferguson Ettinger

 This post is part of an ongoing series, sharing the first draft of my Revised Callin Family History. 

Mildred Ferguson is the 45th person in a descendant report beginning with the earliest known ancestor of our Callin family, (1.) James Callin. This descendant report uses the Register Style of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society. 

Please use the Contact Form (at right) to send questions or corrections.

CFH First Draft: Elizabeth Belle Ferguson McNabb Reed

 This post is part of an ongoing series, sharing the first draft of my Revised Callin Family History. 

Elizabeth Belle Ferguson is the 44th person in a descendant report beginning with the earliest known ancestor of our Callin family, (1.) James Callin. This descendant report uses the Register Style of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society. 

Please use the Contact Form (at right) to send questions or corrections.

CFH First Draft: Mary Ferguson McNabb

 This post is part of an ongoing series, sharing the first draft of my Revised Callin Family History. 

Mary E Ferguson is the 43rd person in a descendant report beginning with the earliest known ancestor of our Callin family, (1.) James Callin. This descendant report uses the Register Style of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society. 

Please use the Contact Form (at right) to send questions or corrections.

CFH First Draft: Eliza Callin Ferguson

This post is part of an ongoing series, sharing the first draft of my Revised Callin Family History. 

Eliza Callin is the 13th person in a descendant report beginning with the earliest known ancestor of our Callin family, (1.) James Callin. This descendant report uses the Register Style of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society. 

Please use the Contact Form (at right) to send questions or corrections.

The Second Life of Mrs. McNabb

Hello, cousins!

Over the past several weeks, we learned that Elizabeth Belle Ferguson's first husband, James McNabb, died in 1860 leaving Elizabeth widowed with a small daughter, Ella. We just spent three posts covering the descendants of Ella, "The Carper Children," and now we will move on to her half-siblings.

Just to help re-orient yourself:

Elizabeth B Ferguson McNabb Reed

James, Elizabeth, and Ella appeared on the 1860 U.S. Census in Cedar Creek, Allen County, Indiana, living in the household of a William and Fanny McNabb (this William most likely being the older brother of Reuben McNabb). William and Fanny McNabb's household is listed just above a Robert McNabb (age, 38; wife, Prudence) and another William McNabb (age, 28; wife, Celia) who appear to be from another McNabb family. The upshot is that we don't have many records, and we have a LOT of people with similar names, which makes the puzzle of who's who in the McNabb zoo a very tricky one to solve.

But thanks to Elizabeth's obituary, quoted in our earlier post, and this 1860 Census record, we can assert that James most likely died in Cedar Creek after the date on this record: 12 July 1860. And that's where we'll rejoin Elizabeth's story - but first, we must introduce Mr. Reed:

George Washington Reed (1825–1874) was born in Ohio around 1825. I believe his parents were James C. Reed and Mary Glass, but the evidence for this is somewhat thin. We do have the record showing that George married his first wife, Clarinda "Clara" Trindall (1828–1853) on 26 October 1847 in De Kalb County, Indiana. They then appeared on the 1850 Census with their son, Jacob, in Mifflin, Ashland County, Ohio. Their household consisted of:

• George W Reed, Age 23
• Clara Reed, Age 22
• Jacob M Reed, Age 1
• Mary Reed, Age 53 (possibly George's mother)
• James P Reed, Age 21 (possible brother)
• S. A. Reed, Age 18 (possible sister)

George and Clara had more children, notably Lovina Reed (1853–1925), who would grow up and marry John D. Ferguson (1848–1922), the younger brother of the very same Elizabeth Belle Ferguson George is about to marry!

We don't have a record to say when Clara died, but Elizabeth's obituary tells us that she and George married on 27 March 1861. In 1870, we see George and Elizabeth on the Census record for Jackson, De Kalb County, Indiana, listed below the households of James Ferguson Jr and Sr. There are two boys, Franklin and William, who are older than Elizabeth's daughter, Ella, so presumably they are Clara's younger children. From that, we might assume that Clara died after William's birth around 1857.

There is a memorial on Find-A-Grave for a "Clarana Reed, wife of George W. Reed, Died 11 March 1859" located in the Vesper Cemetery in Mifflin Township, Ashland County, Ohio; in the same cemetery, there is a memorial for a Mary Reed, d. 1882, "wife of James Reed" - that could be George's mother. Until we can confirm some of this with additional records, all of this is just speculation, but these facts do seem to fit together.

At any rate, from this point, we will be focused on the children born to George W. and Elizabeth Ferguson (McNabb) Reed. Since we numbered Ella Florence McNabb, Elizabeth's first child, as "I." in our earlier post, I'll continue to number her half-siblings for consistency:

     II. James F. Reed (1863–1936)
     III. Emma A Reed (1865–1934)
     IV. Eliza A. Reed (1866–1951)
     V. Mary Reed (1868–1869)
     VI. Margaret Jane Reed (1870–1952)
     VII. Charles Albert Reed (1871–1927)

George W. Reed died on 21 February 1874, and he was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Auburn, DeKalb County, Indiana. According to her obituary, Elizabeth "lived in the present home [the farm she and George moved to in 1867] for 28 years. She kept the family together, and looked after their welfare." When she died on 8 June 1896, she was buried in Evergreen Cemetery with her husband.

     II. James F. Reed (1863–1936)

James was born on 5 January 1863 in Indiana, most likely in De Kalb County, where he grew up. It should be noted that out of the six children born to George W. and Elizabeth Ferguson Reed, James is the only one not mentioned in The Callin Family History.

In 1885, he married Ellen Walter (1866–1941), the youngest child of Joseph Walter (1818–1882) and Sarah Nixon (1818–1888). They lived in Auburn until moving to Fort Wayne in 1900. I should note that the records were very inconsistent on whether their surname was "Walter," "Walters," or even "Waters" or "Watters." The family appears to have preferred "Walter."

James worked for the railroad, and then as a laborer until winding up working in the streets department of the City of Fort Wayne. He suffered from liver and heart trouble and died at age 73 on 2 September 1936. Ellen also died in Fort Wayne on 22 January 1941. She and James were buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Auburn. They were survived by their two sons and one grandchild.


     A. Elmer Charles Reed (1886–1954) was born in Auburn on 27 February 1886 and lived there until his father relocated the family to Fort Wayne in 1900. Elmer married Seauretta Bonsay (b. 1887) on 21 May 1909, but divorced her five years later, claiming she "up and left" him.

Elmer was a barber and worked in a number of barber shops in Fort Wayne over the years. He appears to have remained single after his divorce and left no children behind. He died on 28 December 1954 in Fort Wayne and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery with his parents.


     B. Ralph R Reed (1888–1946) was born 3 December 1888 in Auburn and married Lucille L Havert (1893–1964) on 5 August 1913 in Fort Wayne. She was born on 21 March 1893, the daughter of Alphonsus Havert (1850–1903) and Ellen Didier (1861–1947).

Ralph retired as a switchman from the Casad Ordnance Depot in New Haven and then worked as a taxi driver in Fort Wayne. He suffered from heart disease for several years and died at the age of 57 on 31 May 1946. Lucille died on 20 March 1964 after suffering from uterine cancer for 6 years. They are buried in Catholic Cemetery in Fort Wayne.

     i. Ralph Raymond Reed Jr (1916–2007) was born on 3 October 1916, and listed his birthplace as Jackson, Michigan, though he was raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He was living in Los Angeles, California when the war came, and he enlisted there on 23 October 1943.

After the war, Ralph married Anna Marie McLaughlin (1922–2017) on 11 February 1946 in McKeesport, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of Francis H McLaughlin (1881–1965) and Estelle M Bigley (1888–1966).

Ralph worked for the Uniroyal Corp. in Mishawaka, Indiana, for more than 30 years. Anna was a secretary for Wilts Office and Sears. He died on 5 July 2007 from renal failure after suffering from kidney trouble for many years. Ralph donated his body to Indiana University Anatomical Education Program, Indianapolis. Anna died on 16 May 2017, and they are buried in the Bigley Family Cemetery in Coulter, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

They left behind one son (now deceased), one daughter, two granddaughters, and three great-granddaughters.

     a. Raymond Richard Reed (1950-2017) was born on 1 July 1950 in Fort Wayne and served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. Ray died in Coulter, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, 6 May 2017. He is survived by his daughter, sister, two grandchildren, niece, and great-niece.

- -- --- -- -

Next week, we will continue with James Reed's younger siblings. I'm still in summer school for a couple more weeks, and then I get to take some vacation in August before settling into my "senior" year!

As always, if you've found one or more of your relatives mentioned in this blog, please get in touch. You can comment below (anonymous comments are usually not as helpful), or email "mightieracorns" at Gmail.com.

We now have more ways to reach out:

a Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/MightierAcorns/
a Twitter feed - https://twitter.com/MightierAcorns
a Ko-Fi cup - https://ko-fi.com/mightieracorns


...and if you prefer a private group, we still have the Callin Family History group on Facebook for "cousins only" (there will be a question about how you're related to the family before you can join).

Until next time.... Happy Hunting!

Call A Copp

We made it!

After beginning our look at their descendants in February, we've arrived at the youngest of John and Eliza (Callin) Ferguson's children. Telling her story, and that of her children, has been tough. The records I have been able to scrape together don't corroborate much of what we knew about them - but let's look at what they do tell us.

Here is what the Callin Family History had to say about her:

Record of Minerva Ferguson, 7th daughter of Eliza Callin Ferguson, 3rd daughter of John Callin, 2nd son of James 1st.

Born 1850, died 1881.
Married to Copp.
To this union three children were born:
Clarissa, born 1880, died 1909; 2 children:
Letha, died at 3 years old.
John, born 1881; married, one child.

The Census records vary, but they seem to show that Minerva J. Ferguson was born about 1853 in De Kalb county, Indiana. She married Abner G. Copp (1849–1919) on 8 June 1871.

Abner was the youngest son and second youngest child of one Jacob Copp, who was born on March 2, 1812, in Pennsylvania. Jacob married Isabella "Zibby" Kees on April 11, 1834, in Columbiana, Ohio. They had seven children in 18 years; depending on which records you consult, some of them were born in Ohio, at least one was born in Pennsylvania, and the rest in Indiana. Abner was born on 3 December 1849 in Allen county, Indiana.

Minerva would have been about 17 years old when she and Abner married, and contrary to what the CFH record says, they had their first daughter right away (at least according to the 1880 Census). I have not found any record of Minerva's death or burial, and there were no newspaper items available from that time, but I would guess that she either died giving birth to her youngest child, or that she died soon after, possibly from one of the outbreaks of typhoid that were common at the time.

After Minerva's death (at age 27) in 1881, Abner remarried in 1884. He and his second wife, Anna Alice Boran (1864–1939) had three children; a son and two daughters. (I haven't included their complete family history here because they aren't, strictly speaking, descendants of James Callin. If you're interested in learning more about them, I'm happy to share whatever I have.)

1. Jesse Roy Copp (1884–1962)
2. Vera Copp (1888–??)
3. Flossie C Copp (1891–1982)

     I. Clarissa "Callie" Copp (1872–1909)

detail from 1880 U.S. Census showing the Copp family
(click to see it full size)

As you can see in the section of the Callin Family History quoted above, great-uncle George mis-stated her birth date. I don't know if he got her name right, but he recorded her as "Clarissa;" that is also how she was referred to in her grandfather James Ferguson's will: "Clarissa J Copp daughter of my daughter Minerva Copp deceased"...

I have only found three records that show her name: the 1880  Census (shown at right), the 1900 Census, and an Indiana Marriage Index record. The 1880 clearly says "Caroline," but I suppose that could be a mistake on the part of the enumerator. The 1900 calls her "Callie," which doesn't conclusively tell us anything. And the marriage index record lists her name as "Clara C Jane Copp," which could be a corruption of "Clarissa," but it is not very helpful without the original document to consult.

Callie also gets her own entry in the CFH:

Record of Clarissa Copp Mears, eldest daughter of Minerva Ferguson Copp, 7th daughter of Eliza Callin Ferguson, 3rd daughter of John Callin, 2nd son of James 1st.

Born in 1880.
Married to Frank Mears.
Died in 1909.
To this union two children were born.
Fred, born
Farfield, born

Callie actually married Franklin "Frank" Meese (1870–1945) in De Kalb county on 6 February 1892. Frank enlisted in May of 1892, probably serving in the National Guard. Frank farmed, and hired out as a day laborer; sometimes he worked as a drayman. The couple had two sons in the eight years they were together.

Once again, I have been unable to find any records that tell me how or when Callie died, but on the 1910 Census, her sons were shown living with Frank's parents, Isaac G Meese (1844–1931) and Amanda Melton (1844–1910). Amanda died in December of that year.

Frank eventually remarried in 1920. He was living in a boarding house in Columbus, Ohio, at the time, and married another lodger listed at the same residence - a widow named Queen Breedlove (b. 1886). He died in January 1945 at the age of 74. He was struck by a car in Fort Wayne on 10 December 1944, and succumbed to his injuries a few weeks later.

     A. Fred Jay Meese (1892–1947) was an iron worker, by trade. In 1917, when he was 24, he listed his occupation on his World War I draft registration as "structural iron works," and was employed by Bethlehem Steel, in Pennsylvania. While he still listed his home address in Indiana, it seems he settled in Philadelphia for the rest of his life.

There is a 1922 Philadelphia marriage record for a Fred Meese and Ethel D Heatherington (b. 1896), and they appear in the 1930 Census; however, I have not been able to find any other information about her. I don't know whether they had any children after 1930, or whether they divorced or she died; all I do know is that by 1940 he was listed as single in the Census.

In the 1940 Census, Fred was a lodger in the home of the widowed Mary Leonard and her adult daughter, Katherine. Mary's maiden name was Mary Elizabeth Jessen (1894–1945), and by April 1942, she was Mrs. Mary Meese, according to Fred's World War II Draft registration. In 1942, he worked for the United Engineering Company in Philadelphia. Mary died of a coronary thrombosis in 1945.

His third wife, Martha King McAdoo (1903–1958), was the widow of Howard Charles Booth (1898-1943). Fred and Martha were married in Philadelphia in 1946; sadly, Fred died in August 1947. He collapsed while working at a construction site on Barbadoes Island during a heat wave, and he died on the way to the hospital. Martha died, also of a coronary thrombosis, in 1958, and was buried near Howard.

Found on Newspapers.com


     B. Fairfield Isaac Meese (1895–1959) enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1911, and earned a commission, rising to the rank of Commander. He was on the USS Oklahoma, stationed in Portsmouth, Virginia, according to the 1920 census; and he was an instructor in the Reserve Officer Training Corp unit in Berkeley, Alameda County, California, according to the 1930 census. He taught there for many years before retiring in 1940. In 1941, he was re-activated as a chief gunner's mate at the very beginning of World War II. His service career included duty in both world wars and Korea.

Fairfield was married to Virginia L Loveland (1905–1953) in 1949; after her death, he moved back to Garrett, De Kalb county, Indiana. There, he was married briefly to Marie Hester (Leichty) Draggoo (1895–1975) before he died in 1959.


     II. Letha Copp (abt 1877-1880)

All we really know about Letha is what George Callin tells us in the Callin Family History; that she died at the age of 3 years old. Since she did not appear on the 1880 Census; she may have been born as early as 1873, and as late as early 1877. I have not found any records that name her.

     III. John Ora Copp (1881–1972)

 Was raised by his father and step-mother. Ora married Isabella "Belle" Zeigler (1881–1944) on 12 April 1904, in Steuben county, Indiana. They started their new family in Angola, where Ora (or, now that he was grown, "Jack") worked in a hardware store. In 1910, he survived a bout of typhoid.

Jack worked in the hardware store until he found a job in Detroit, where he worked for the Studebaker company as a sheet metal worker during the 1920s. By 1930 he had returned the family to Indiana, and they settled in Hamilton, in Steuben county, where he again worked in a hardware store.

Isabella died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in March 1944, at the age of 62. Jack remarried Esta (Reed) Swift (1890-1965) on 4 November 1944; they were married 21 years before Esta died after suffering hypertensive heart disease. Jack died of complications from prostate cancer at the age of 91.

     A. Russell A Copp (1907–1969) graduated Southwestern high school in Detroit, and found work as a factory worker. He was married briefly to Ethel Mildred Clay (1911–1995); they married on 8 February 1927, and were divorced in October 1928.

In 1934, he and his father worked for the Jewell Tea Company in Angola; in 1937, Russell was working in a factory in Fort Wayne. At some point prior to 1949, he did marry again. His second wife, Eleanor Reed (1921-1987), was the niece of Russell's step-mother, Esta, and she was pretty interesting.

Eleanor was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Elbert R. Reed (1897–1961) and Fern Cassidy (1900-1987). She was married briefly, to Gordon Leroy Miller (1921–1999) from June 1943 to October 1944. October 1944 is also when she enlisted in the U.S. Navy, which she served until 22 June 1946. I have a hunch that her October divorce and enlistment were related to each other.

I surmise that she married Russell after her discharge; he did not serve because he did not pass his Army Board physical. Without records or newspaper accounts to tell me otherwise, I guess that they married between 1946 and 1949 - that is when they began appearing in the social pages of the Angola Herald and "Mr. and Mrs. Russell Copp." Not long after that, they were also accompanied by a son, whom I presume to still be living.

Eleanor survived Russell when he died of a heart attack at age 62 in Hamilton, Steuben county. Russell was buried in the Hamilton cemetery, along with his parents. She returned to Kalamazoo, where she may have been living with her mother, Fern. They each died in 1987: Eleanor in February and Fern in December.

 - -- --- -- - 

So there you have it - we've reached the end of the line for the sons and daughters of Eliza Callin Ferguson. And while I was afraid at the end there would be no survivors, it seems there may be one descendant of Minerva J. Ferguson still out there - that son of Russell and Eleanor!  (Hopefully, he has a long, healthy life, and many happy grandchildren.)

I'll leave you with a special treat today, since I'll be taking a break next week to prepare the next branch of the family. This song has been stuck in my head since I started researching all of these Indiana families. I hope it stays with you for a while, too!

Myers Family B - Welby and Eliza

For the last several weeks, we were looking at the descendants of Sarah Ferguson and her husband, Daniel Myers. This week, we begin looking at Sarah's younger sister, Eliza, who married Daniel's older brother, Welby. (And if you want to start with Sarah's and Eliza's parents, see February's post: The Rise of the Fergusons.)

Eliza Ferguson (1847–1920) married Welby Nathan Myers (1842–1931) on 16 April 1863 in De Kalb county, Indiana. While his name is rendered several different ways in the various records I found (Willoughby, Wiloby, Wilbey, and sometimes as William), Welby N. Myers is the name given in the Callin Family History, and seems to me to be the most common rendering among the sources where he is likely to have had any input.

Welby's death certificate calls him "William N. Myers," but the informant on that record is the Home Hospital in Lafayette, Tippecanoe county, where he was residing at the time of his death, and I have the impression that their record was wrong or garbled when the form was filled out. Ironically enough, his daughter, Almeda's death certificate gives his full name - Wilbey Nathan Myers - and lists her mother's full name as "Eliza Calin Ferguson." The handwriting was slightly damaged on that record, though, so the transcriber rendered it as "Eliza Caline Fergeebr." (Moral of the story: be wary of poor transcriptions - and sympathetic to transcribers! They know not the context of what they do.)

Welby and his brother Daniel are both listed in 1860 as "Laborers" on their father's farm. Like his brother, there is no evidence that Welby fought in the Civil War; judging by the timing of his marriage and the birth of his two eldest daughters, Welby and Eliza remained in Indiana and began their family during those war years.

• I. Mary Augusta "Mollie" Myers (1864–1927) 
• II. Amanda A. Myers (1865–1905) 

(Mollie and Amanda each left behind a lot of descendants for us to discuss, so we'll look at them in more detail in coming weeks.)

In the year between the birth of Amanda (July 1865) and Carrie (April 1866), the family moved to Eaton county, Michigan, where Welby was working in carpentry according to the 1870 census. They lived in Roxand, at least for the four years between 1866 and 1870, when they had their two younger daughters, Carrie and Minerva.

By 1880, the family moved back to the Auburn area in De Kalb county, Indiana, where Welby established himself as a farmer. There, when Welby was 39 and Eliza 34, they had their youngest child and only son, James.

• III. Carrie A. Myers (1866–1954) 

Carrie married Oscar Haines (1859–1934) in 1886. He was a farmer, and they lived in Auburn township, where they raised their adopted son, who came to their family when he was five years old. Around 1910, Oscar and Carrie moved to the town of Ashley. In the 1930s, Oscar's health began to fail, and Carrie took care of him after he suffered a serious of strokes; he died in 1934. Twenty years later, Carrie died in the convalescent home in Butler.

     A. Oscar "Harry" Harris (1892–??) had six children, according to Oscar Haines's 1934 obituary; however, I have been unable to locate any reliable records to tell me more, partly due to how common the names "Harry" and "Harris" are. Without knowing where he lived or his wife's name, any of the records I found could be the family I'm looking for. The search continues.

• IV. Almeda Minerva Myers (1869–1900) 

Almeda married Clement V Brandon (1865–1926) on 15 January 1887 in De Kalb county, Indiana, and promptly had their son, George, on 12 September of that year. Almeda died in August of 1900 from tuberculosis, and Clement carried on alone, raising 13 year old George. He bought a farm outside the town of Garrett in 1920, where his son's family was living with him when he died.

     A. George Curtis Brandon (1887–1959) married Lottie Belle Clark (1889–1970) on 20 February 1906, and he went to work for the B. & O. Railroad as a trainman. He inherited his father's farm in 1926, which was valued at $875, and in the early 1930s, he sold the farm and moved to Indian River, Michigan. He died in in 1959 at the hospital at Petoskey, Michigan, after a two month illness. Lottie survived him, and moved back to Fort Wayne to be near their daughter. Lottie died of a heart attack at age 82 while living in the National Nursing Home in Fort Wayne.

     1. Imadean May Brandon (1906–1992) married Theodore R Crooks (1902–1985) in April 1924 in Garrett, Indiana. They had two children; a son and a daughter. Theodore worked as a "trimmer" in an auto factory - most likely the Auburn Automobile company - and later worked for General Electric in Fort Wayne. He was long retired when he died at 83 from a "recurrent cerebrovascular accident" in 1985. Imadean lived until 1992, and they were buried together in the Garden of Devotion section of Lindenwood Cemetery in Fort Wayne.

     a. Darel Arthur Crooks (1924–2013) was a veteran of the U.S. Army Air Corp, and served in the South Pacific Theater during World War II. He married in 1974, and was employed as a pharmaceutical salesman for the former Michigan Pharmacal, located in Auburn Hills, Mich. He retired in 1988, when he moved with his wife to their home on Burt Lake. They spent their winters in Ft. Meyers, Florida or Orange Beach, Alabama.

As well as his wife and four of his five children, Darel left behind eight grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and one great-great grandson.

     b. Geraldine Joan (Crooks) Green (1928–1970) graduated from Kendallville High School in 1947, and went to Fort Wayne, where she worked for Sears as a typist in 1950. She was living in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband when she died at 41 years of age.

• V. James N Myers (1881–1923) 

James lived on the farm and worked with his father until his late twenties. His sister Amanda married in 1881, and Mollie in 1884, so James probably did not know them as well as he did his younger sisters.

James married Grace A Perry (b. 1881) in June 1910. She had been married before, and divorced, and brought a son from her first marriage, Harry, into the family. She had been supporting herself  by working in the home of the Link family when James married her. When their son was born the following year, they named him in honor of that family.

James took his family and moved to Toledo some time before 1920; they were living there when James died in July 1923, killed in an accident involving an electric street car. According to the reporting in the Toledo Blade:

J.M. Myers, Ottawa road, was killed instantly when hit by a Toledo bound Lake Shore limited car at stop 337 in the Woodville road Thursday morning.
It was first reported that Mr. Myers had intentionally thrown himself in front of the car but Coroner Henzler gave a verdict of accidental death.
"Mr. Myers was crippled. One of his feet was shorter than the other and it is my opinion that he suddenly fell in front of the speeding car when he stepped into a hole beside the track," the coroner said.
Witnesses say that Mr. Myers had been standing in a shelter house at stop 337 for several minutes when he walked out at the approach of the limited. They say he suddenly lurched forward and that within a second the car was upon him.
The car was operated by J.B. Emmons, Toledo, who said that he did not see the man until he left the shelter house.
He said that then the car was less than 50 feet away and although he put on the brakes it was too late to stop.

A few years later, Grace re-married to James Erven; she died in July 1948.

     A. Marshall Link Myers (1911–1976) was an electrician for the Norfolk and Western Railway 30 years, retiring in 1974. He was also a dock master for the Ottawa River Yacht Club. His wife and daughter survived him.

 - -- --- -- - 

Special thanks to the kind and helpful staff of the Local History & Genealogy Department of the Toledo Lucas County Public Library for providing the obituaries for James N. and Marshall Myers.

Also, credit to Ancestry user baraboo84 for finding and uploading several wedding and death documents for James & Grace Myers - without which I would not have been able to find out nearly as much about them as I did!

As always, if you are related to any of the people in this post, I'd love to hear from you. This is part of an ongoing project to update the 1911 Callin Family History, compiled by George W. Callin of Bowling Green, Ohio. If your family is listed here, then you belong in that book!

Comment below, email me (callintad at gmail dot com), or follow the link to our Callin Family History Facebook page, and tell me how you're related so I can add you to the group.

Next week: The Cowans of Missouri (there are a lot of them).

Myers Family A - Stubborn Henry

Last time, we began looking at the first of two Myers families. Sarah Ferguson, the daughter of Eliza (Callin) Ferguson, married Daniel Myers, and they had four sons. We looked at the descendants of their eldest son, Samuel Ralston Myers, and now we will kick off with his brother:

     II. Henry Tilman Myers (1868–1918) grew up on his father's farm in Perry township, Allen county, Indiana, and he married Frances "Fannie" Thompson (1879–1908) on 12 May 1898. They moved to Union township in neighboring De Kalb county, where Henry worked as a teamster.

Remember, that is a job that was changing drastically during Henry's lifetime. When he started out, he was probably still working with teams of horses pulling wagon loads of timber; by the mid 1910s, it was more likely that he was working with trucks or tractors.

Found on Newspapers.com

As you can tell from the obituary linked here, Henry met his end in 1918, after what appears to have been a frustrating day at work. He was only 50 years old, though at this point he would have been driving loads of timber for twenty years; and after making a delivery of heavy timber to the work site, he probably just wanted to stand out of the way and rest. I know that I don't respond well when I'm tired, and people keep yelling at me, so while the newspaper makes it clear that Henry was stubbornly ignoring warnings to get out of the danger zone, I can't help thinking that he was just confused and annoyed.

This article was important to my research, because finding records to tell the story of Henry's life had been difficult, and until I saw this article, I had no idea whether he and Fannie had any children. Even this obituary isn't as helpful as it could be, since it says he was "survived by the widow, five children" but appears to list six children and not name his widow. Which means that after Fannie's death in 1908, Henry re-married, but crucial details like his second wife's name are lacking. Piecing this puzzle together meant working backwards from limited information, complicated by the fact that there was more than one Henry Myers in Indiana at the time.

To the best of my abilities, here is what I think I figured out:

     A. Ruth Mabel Myers (1899–1958) was surprisingly difficult to research, and there are some gaps in the records that raise questions about where she was for long periods of time. In most records, she is referred to as Mabel, though she seems to have preferred to be called Ruth after the 1930s. When her mother died in 1908, Mabel would have been just 9 years old, and three of her younger siblings (Hubert, Ford, and Oleva) were listed in the household of grandparents Daniel and Sarah Myers in 1910, Mabel and her other sister, Marie, were not. Henry moved in with his younger brother, Edward.

Mabel married Harry Paul Clement (1892–1933) on 11 March 1916; their marriage certificate is the only record I found that listed her birth date as 29 March 1897. Most records say 29 March 1899, and the earlier date would be unlikely, since her parents weren't married until May 1898. That means she and Harry wanted to get married when she was only 16, and the couple probably didn't want to have to seek her father's consent.

They had one child, a daughter, when they were together, but they soon divorced, and Mabel remarried to Arnold R. Wolf (b. 1898) in December 1921. They also divorced, some time after 1925, and Mabel (now preferring the name Ruth) was married to Walter James Baker (1894–1971) by 1940. He was a widower with several grown children, and he and Ruth were still together when Ruth died of rectal cancer in 1958.

     1. Kathryn Maxine Clement (1917–1995) seems to have preferred a quieter life than her mother's. She lived for some time with her aunt, Oleva, appearing in the Zimmerman household in 1930. She married Carl E Beam (1909–1990) around 1935, and they stayed together in the Fort Wayne area for the next 55 years. Carl worked as a bottler for the Falstaff brewery for 32 years, retiring in 1967. He died of respiratory failure after suffering from chronic lung disease which developed into pneumonia. Kathryn died of mesothelioma in 1995, leaving behind a son, a daughter, six grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

     B. Hubert J Myers (1900–1974) was something of an outlaw. After the 1910 Census, when he appears in his grandparents home, there isn't much in the way of recorded evidence that he was around, except for a few mentions in the Fort Wayne newspapers. In 1922, he was fined $5 for public intoxication, along with several friends. Ten years later, he was sentenced to 180 days "at the state farm" for selling a stolen car. By 1940, he seems to have married and settled down to work as a bartender. His wife's name was Flossie, but other than a 1907 birth date, I don't know much about her. They were together through at least 1945; his death certificate says he was widowed. He died of intestinal cancer in 1974.

Ford R and Edith Myers headstone
Lindenwood Cemetery, Fort Wayne, IN

     C. Ford Ruford Myers (1902–1960) is someone about whom I still know very little for all the records I was able to locate. His father's obituary seems to be the only place his name is recorded as "Rutherford," and he usually appears as "Ford R."

The U.S. City Directories database records for Fort Wayne show a Ford R Myers working as a "wire drawer" or "tinsel operator" for many years. He married Helen Ethel Willson (b. 1901) in October 1925, and they were together through at least 1930, though I have been unable to locate a Census record (which would tell us whether they had any children). He seems to have been married to a Florence (Souder) Bullerman (1906-1989) in 1939, but she appeared in the 1940 Census living in her parents' home (under the name Myers), and Ford's directory listings in the early 1940s show him living with Edith (1906-1968), who is buried next to him in Lindenwood Cemetery in Fort Wayne.

As with his brother, I can't tell whether Ford left behind any progeny.

     D. Minerva Marie Myers (1905–1998) married Edward Lawrence Welch (1903–1944) on 14 August 1922, when she was still 16. Edward and Marie raised two sons together, and Edward worked for the Fort Wayne Drug Co. until his death from a coronary embolism at the age of 41. She remarried to a Mr. Dunn who preceded her in death, as did both of her sons. Marie died of a sudden stroke at the age of 92.

     1. Edward Lawrence Welch Jr (1923–1976) served in the U.S. Army's new Air Corps from 27 November 1942 to 13 January 1946. After the war, I am unable to locate any information about where he went or what he did, though I presume he remained in the Fort Wayne area for the following 30 years, as the U.S. military and Social Security files indicate that's where he died.

     2. Arnold Leroy Welch (1925–1987) enlisted a year after his brother did, serving in the U.S. Army from 17 November 1943 to 20 January 1946. He married on 2 December 1952, and he and his wife raised a daughter in the Fort Wayne area. Arnold died of colon cancer in 1987; his wife survived him and is still living.

     a. Joanna Lee Welch (1953–1990) died very young, leaving behind a new husband and a career as a hotel manager. Her death certificate indicated the cause of death being due to intravenous drug use, but without more details, I wouldn't want to speculate or moralize about that. She was married briefly when she was eighteen, and had just remarried a couple of years before her death, not long after her father died.

     E. Oleva Gertrude Myers (1907–1996) was the most elusive of Henry and Fannie's five children to track down. It would seem that the obituary that named her was confused about her name, but after piecing together a number of records, I'm satisfied that I have the right person. Of course, nothing about this family was easy to figure out, so please bear with me. I think this is what happened:

Oleva married Sherman L Zimmerman (1904–1956) around 1924, and they had three children before 1930; a daughter, and two sons. Oleva and Sherman divorced at some point, and from what I can tell, the two younger children, Donna and Harold, were adopted by Ralph and Elsie Yarde. Sherman remarried and had seven more children (three sons, four daughters) with his second wife, Mary Imogene Likes (1923-1957). Sherman died from a cerebral abscess in 1956, and Mary was killed in a car accident a year later.

Oleva had remarried to Arthur F Everett (1910–1993) by 1940, and Henry Zimmerman lived with them for a time. She outlived her husband by three years, then died at age 90 of a heart attack, leaving behind 10 grandchildren, 14 great-grandchildren and 5 great-great-grandchildren.

     a. Henry Clayton Zimmerman (1925–2002) married Marilyn E Glasgow (1926–1975), probably around 1968, and they had one daughter, who is still living. He did remarry in 1977, after Marilyn's death, and his second wife is also still alive today. Interestingly, that second wife was also married to Henry's brother, Harold.

     b. Donna Louise (Zimmerman) Yarde (1926–1998) married Edgar Dale Grabill (1923–2006) on 29 December 1946, and they raised three daughters and a son, all still living. Edgar and Donna raised their kids in the Goshen area, and moved to La Otto in Noble county later. Donna eventually succumbed to heart disease.

     c. Harold L (Zimmerman) Yarde (1928–1990) married Beverly G Nelson (1930–2010) on 4 June 1949, and they had four children over the following five years; a son and three daughters. In March 1955, Beverly filed for divorce, and in July, so did Harold. In September, the judge awarded custody of one of the children to Beverly, and required Harold to pay child support in the amount of $7 a week.

By December 1955, Harold was remarried; his second wife later married his brother, Henry, in 1977. I don't know how long they were together, but Harold married twice more in 1978 and 1979. His third wife was Gladys O (Smith) Durham (1921–2011), and their marriage did not last long, but Anna Jean "Oma Jean" Vanover (1933–2002) moved with Harold to Nashville, where they were together at his death.

     i. Sheryl Lynn Yarde (1954–2012) was the youngest of Harold's four children. She seems to have suffered from kidney disease, and left behind two grown sons and a grand-daughter.

 - -- --- -- - 

When one does this kind of research as a hobby, it's easy to think of every mystery solved as a masterpiece worthy of Sherlock and Batman, even though most of the time the most difficult challenge comes from figuring out how to fish facts out of a new database. This family, though, represented a crazy quilt of half-correct clues, missing records, and logical leaps that left me scratching my head (and not just from the shingles).

I'm not complaining. This is what I do for fun, after all. But each of Henry's children presented a new set of questions to untangle one piece of evidence at a time. Except for Hubert and Oleva, all of them used their middle names, and Oleva's name was rendered as everything from "Olive" to "Alevia" in her records. Their relationships took unexpected, and sometimes bitter, turns; and I had to keep digging for tiny clues that would unlock the next fact until I pieced it all together. For all that, I still have no idea who Henry's widow was!

But now that I've solved most of the mysteries here, I feel the usual hesitation about publicizing what might have represented some difficult childhood experiences for the surviving cousins who might read this. I always hope that for the families involved, nothing I've found in the public record is considered a secret, and that no one is hurt by what I've uncovered.

I know that my grandmother would have been uncomfortable talking about things like divorce and adoptions, and it could be that a distant cousin might be disturbed by something that was hidden or forgotten which they find out about through my blog. That is never my intent, but I have to take the approach that if I can find the evidence on the Internet, then the truth is already "out there" waiting to be discovered. In the case of this post, much of that evidence came from digitized archives of the Garrett Clipper on Newspapers.com - which you can see at this link.

Of course, if I simply got things wrong, I'm always happy to make corrections. If you have evidence that helps me correct my records, please contact me and let me know. You can comment below, email me (I'm "callintad" on Gmail), or join the Callin Family History Facebook group and say hello!

Myers Family A - Samuel Ralston

Nathan Myers was born in Lehigh county, Pennsylvania in 1812, probably into a German-speaking family. His parents were Johannes (or John) and Anna Maria (Wuchter) Meyer. Johannes was a weaver. They married probably before 1808 in Heidelberg Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, which later became Lehigh County.

Nathan married around 1833. His wife, Leah Wagner, was the daughter of Johan and Maria; she was baptized in the Upper Milford Reformed Congregation (which is now known as Zion's Reformed Church). They had four sons between 1834 and 1844, including two who we'll be discussing in the coming weeks: Welby, and Daniel. Then, probably in 1845 or 1846, Nathan moved the family to Ohio. In 1850 they were listed in Thompson township, Seneca county. Nathan and Leah had four more children in Ohio, two sons and two daughters. Then, by 1860, they had relocated further west, to Perry township in Allen county, Indiana, where they lived near the Eel River post office.

Sarah Ferguson (1846–1934) was also born in Ohio, as you may recall from our February post, Rise of the Fergusons. The Fergusons also relocated to Indiana in the late 1840s, settling in Jackson township, De Kalb county. This placed the Myers and Ferguson families about 70 miles apart, on opposite sides of Fort Wayne. This was apparently close enough, as Sarah married Daniel Myers (1844–1922) on 3 September 1864. (I was not able to determine whether he served in the Civil War - there were a lot of "Daniel Myers" of varied spellings!)

They settled on a farm in Cedar Creek; they farmed and Daniel worked as a carpenter. They raised four sons, who were born in the space of ten years. Daniel suffered from arteriosclerosis later in his life, and died at the age of 78 at their home in Huntertown. He was survived by Sarah, three sons, 12 grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. Sarah moved in with Edward, the youngest son, whose two surviving sons were grown and out on their own. She died in 1934.

     I. Samuel Ralston Myers (1865–1947) married Nora Dale Green (1870–1955) on 24 September 1887. They had two sons and two daughters over the following decade, and Ralston farmed in Perry township, near Fort Wayne, Indiana, until some time in the late 1910s, when he and Nora moved to Toledo, Ohio. There, he took work as a machinist and pump operator for an oil company. Ralston and Nora are buried in the New Huntertown Cemetery in Huntertown, Allen County, Indiana.

     A. Clyde Alfred Myers (1888–1955) married Mabel Leona Schrader (1892–1978) in Allen county, Indiana, on 28 January 1909. Clyde retired as a master mechanic from I&M Electric, and died of a heart attack in 1955.

     1. Mildred L. Myers (1909-1910) died at ten months and 21 days old, on 29 April 1910, after a six week bout with pneumonia. (I calculate an 8 June 1909 birthday from that.)

     2. Ethel Ailine Myers (1910–1997) married Owen Jones Morris (1911–1986), probably after 1935. Owen was an accountant who worked in Fort Wayne, eventually becoming the corporate controller for Dana Corp. After his retirement, the couple seems to have had a home in Sun City, Arizona (at least, they did in 1984). Owen died of prostate cancer in Angola in Stueben county, Indiana, in 1986. I know they had at least one daughter, who completed Ethel's death certificate in 1997.

     B. Daniel Albert "Danny" Myers (1890–1985) was raised on his father's farm, and grew up to be a farmer. In the 1920s and 1930s he also drove a truck for a dairy. He married Edith Amanda Barker (1892–1942) on 18 June 1915. He was her second husband, and I feel I should take an extra moment to tell you her story, because it was difficult to puzzle out.

Edith was born 16 April 1892 to Benjamy Barker and Amanda Kimes (according to the Indiana marriage certificate from her wedding to Danny). Before 1900, she was adopted by Allen G. and Julia (Wilcox) Dunten, and that is the name she used on all of her official documents (birth/death certificates, marriage records, etc.). Edith married Earnest Burdette Mesel (1885-1936) on 10 August 1908. Earnest was originally from Chataqua county, New York, and he was in Indiana working on the railroad as a section laborer,

The couple had two daughters: Dorothy Lillian Mesel (born 8 January 1909) and Virginia Luella Mesel (born 12 December 1911). It isn't clear what happened between them, but by 1915, Earnest was back in Cherry Creek, Chataqua county, New York, married to Gertrude Johnson (1892-1990); he had Dorothy listed in his household on that year's state Census. In 1920, Virginia appeared in the household of Allen and Julia Dunten; she appeared in 1930 in Danny and Edith's household, listed as married and with the surname "Lee."

Danny and Edith had six children together, four of whom survived to have families of their own. They were all grown when Edith died in 1942, and Danny remarried to Goldie C Freeman (1882–1964) in 1943.

Found on Newspapers.com

     1. Maurice Dale Myers (1916–1935) was 19 years old when he fell and was run over by a tractor on the family farm in Swan, Noble county, Indiana. (The newspaper account linked here may be disturbingly graphic; it does contain some genealogical information, though.)

     2. Eugene Allen Myers (1918–1972) joined the U.S. Army on 2 October 1940, more than a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and served in the Army Air Forces as a technical sergeant during the war.

His record shows that he was discharged on 11 September 1945, but he married Ruth June Hemphill (nee Rowe; 1926-2008) in Randolph county, Arkansas, on 10 June 1946. I suspect he was still stationed at what would have then been called Blytheville Army Air Field, waiting for his discharge.

After their wedding, Eugene and Ruth moved back to the Fort Wayne area, where he worked as an assembler. They had two children, a son and a daughter, both still living.

     3. Betty Arleen Myers (1919–1999) was the only daughter of Danny and Edith. She married Thurlo Samuel "Frog" Gaff (1916-2004) on 25 September 1938, in Fort Wayne. He worked in welding and painting for LaOtto Fabricating for 23 years. They had a daughter and a son, both of whom are still living.

     4. Samuel Albert Myers (1920–1997) was a career military man, enlisting in the U.S. Army on 6 October 1939. In 1940 he was a private serving with the 21st Field Artillery at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and in 1945 he and a wife were listed living in Denver, Colorado, his occupation still "United States Army." Since he retired in 1970 from the U.S. Air Force as a Lieutenant Colonel, I'm going to make the educated guess that he was selected for officer training some time after the close of World War II, and received his commission in 1953. I believe he had at least one son, who is deceased, but I have not been able to find records to confirm this.

     5. Robert Lee Myers (1925–1952) also enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1944, serving through November 1945. He married in March of that year, and the newlyweds settled in Avilla, Noble county, Indiana. After his unexpected death in 1952 from leukemia, his wife remarried, and she is still living.

     6. Calvin C. Myers (1926) was born prematurely on 12 January, and died one month and one day later; the cause of death listed was "exhaustion."

     C. Sarah Oseola "Ocie" Myers (1892–1964) married Anthony Barney Spain (1887–1920) on 8 October 1915, and they lived in Fort Wayne. Anthony was a laborer and crane operator who caught pneumonia and died in February of 1920. Two years later, on 27 May 1922, Ocie married Jessie Marion McCord (1884-1960), and they moved to Toledo, Ohio. I have found no evidence to suggest that Ocie had any children with either of her husbands.

     D. Gercie May Myers (1896–1951) married Stephen Raymond Hayes (1891–1970) on 10 June 1915, and in 1920 the couple was living in Ralston and Nora Myers's home in Toledo, Ohio, along with their baby daughter. Stephen worked as a switchboard operator for the power plant.

     1. Mary Maxine Hayes (1916–1991) grew up and married Francis J "Frank" Lininger (1917–1986), and together they raised two daughters, who are still living. According to her 1991 obituary, they had four grand-children.

- -- --- -- -

That rounds out the descendants of Ralston Myers. Next time, we'll begin with his fatally stubborn brother, Henry.

There were a lot of gaps in the records that probably led to a number of mistakes and omissions in this post. If you're one of the still living sons or daughters that I allude to in this post, please contact me and let me know what I got wrong so I can fix it. You can email me at my Gmail address (callintad at gmail dot com), comment on this post in the comment section below, or follow the link to our Callin Family History Facebook group and get to know more distant cousins.

The Nick Ferguson Family

Last time, we looked at Nicholas P. Ferguson, and the descendants of his eldest daughter, Mildred.

If you're new to the blog, or if you simply haven't noticed, I've been trying to stick to a more consistent outline format when I list descendants. Since Nick Ferguson is our "main subject" right now, Mildred was enumerated with a Roman numeral one: I.  Her siblings will be listed with these large Roman numerals; their children will get capital letters (A., B., etc.), grandchildren will get the Arabic numerals (1., 2., etc.) and if great-grandchildren are not still living, they'll be listed with lower case letters (a., b., etc.)

I try to vary the use of Bold and Italics to make it easier to scan down the page and pick out names. I would use colors, but that's not as easy to read, especially for those with color blindness.

So, to continue Nicholas Ferguson's descendants:

     II. Ida May Ferguson (1871–1872) - sadly, we begin this week's list with a tragedy. We only know about her because she is mentioned in the Callin Family History, which says only, "Ida May, died at 1 year old." I've estimated her birthdate, based on the assumption that the CFH listed the Ferguson children in order of birth.

     III. Anise L Ferguson (1873–1906) married John L Bailey (1871–1967) in 1891, when she was 18. They had three daughters and a son together, and then in 1906, Anise died. John remarried in December 1911, adding the children of his new wife, who was suddenly widowed earlier that year, to his family. They had two more sons, but I won't be listing them here, since they are not descendants of Anise. (I'm happy to share what little I know about them upon request.)

I know little more than names and birth dates for Anise's children; they appeared on the 1900 and 1910 Census; the former with their mother, the latter without. By 1920, James was married, and his older sister were nowhere to be found.

     A. Elsie L Bailey (b. 1893)

     B. Hattie Bailey (b. 1895)

     C. Georgie Bailey (b. 1897)

     E. James E Bailey (1899–1981) married Helen L Morris (1901–1973) about 1920. They settled on a farm in Crane, Paulding county, Ohio, and had one daughter: Ida Annise Bailey (1930–1986). They moved back to De Kalb county, Indiana, probably some time in the 1930s. Ida's obituary said she lived in Saint Joe most of her life, and she had been the theater manager for the Auburn-Garrett Drive-In.

     IV. James F Ferguson (1877–1964) married Florence Grube (1880–1953) in 1899, and farmed in DeKalb county his whole life.

     A. Arthur D Ferguson (1899–1964) married Velma Pauline Sliger (1903–1982) in November 1927. Arthur worked as a foreman for Rieke Metal Products Corp. in Auburn, until his death in March of 1964. The couple had three sons in the 1930s who are still living.

     B. Chalmer Ferguson (1903–1989) lived on his father's farm at least until 1964. Unlike his more adventurous cousin of the same name (the son of Terry Victor Ferguson), this Chalmer Ferguson does not appear to have ever married or had any children.

In 1939, Chalmer was employed by his aunt, who lived on a neighboring farm. This aunt was Florence's sister, Ida. On the 23rd of November, Chalmer went over to milk the cows, and when he went into the basement of the house to run the milk through the separator, he found that Ida had hanged herself with a length of clothesline. The papers suggested that she was despondent after her husband, Joseph Lige, had left her.


     C. Alice L Ferguson (1908–1990) was also still single and at home on the farm in 1964, when her father died. According to the Indiana death certificate, she died at the age of 82. She was a resident of the nursing home when she died, and she never married.

Alice and Chalmer also made an appearance in the local paper in 1952, after their father's barn was struck by lightning during a bad storm, destroying thousands of dollars of property.

Found on Newspapers.com


     V. John Henry Ferguson (1880–1919) married Harriett C. "Hattie" Milliman (1890–1969) on 20 July 1907 in De Kalb county, Indiana. John is listed in the 1910 Census as a machinist in an auto factory; I'm willing to bet that he worked for the Auburn Automobile company. He died unexpectedly in 1919 from "cerebral spinal fever" and peritonitis. Hattie remarried in 1920 to Samuel Shutt Springer (1885-1963) in Detroit, Michigan; they lived in Indiana.

     A. Mildred Irene Ferguson (1911–1923) died at age 12, about four years after the death of her father.

     B. Mary Jane Ferguson (1916–1996) was four years old when her father died, and only eight when her sister died. She married Vernon Renalto "Buck" Halter (1912 - 1992). Buck served in World War II, and then worked as a truck driver. He died of a malignant brain tumor at the age of 80.

     VI. George Ferguson (1883–1883) died in infancy, according to the CFH. As with his sister, Ida May, I've estimated his birth date.

     VII. Margaret J Ferguson (1884–1947) married Jacob Stebing (1879–1956) in September 1904. They raised four sons, and had a little girl in 1920 who died.

     A. George Nicholas Stebing (1910–1990) married Harriet Elizabeth Thimlar (1911–1991) on 24 June 1933 in Auburn. George served in the U.S. Army from 21 April 1944 to 10 May 1946.

     B. Robert Paul Stebing Sr (1913–1979) married Kathryn A Klopfenstein (1916–2011) in the 1930s, and he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II,  from 7 March 1944 to 1 January 1946. He worked as a tin smith, and I gather from the "Senior" suffix that the couple did have at least one child, who is probably still alive.

     C. Everett Romain Stebing (1918–2004) married Beverly E Kline (1922–1980) and they had two sons (still living). Everett enlisted in the U.S. Army on 13 November 1942, and served in the war as a technical sergeant.

     D. June Irene Stebing (1919–1920) died at 10 months of age, and was buried in Roselawn Cemetery, Auburn.

     E. Vernon Eugene Stebing (1924–2003) was an insurance agent for Western Southern Life Insurance Co. for 23 years, retiring in 1984. He was also a retired member of the Auburn Fire Department. He served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army and was a veteran of World War II and the Korean War, enlisting on 9 July 1943 and leaving the Army on 30 November 1952. When he died, he was survived by his wife, son, two daughters, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

     VIII. Dorothy Mail Ferguson (1889–1967) married Lloyd Alton Mitchener (1886–1963) on 15 November 1915. Lloyd was employed by the Auburn Automobile company (like his brother-in-law, John Henry Ferguson), and by the Warner - Motor Division. They raised two daughter, the younger of whom is still living.

Dorothy's mother, you may recall from last week's post, lived with the family until her death in 1930.
Since it was evidently a law that no two records could spell the woman's name the same way, Latita Kiester Ferguson is listed in the Mitchener household in 1930 as "Latisha L Ferguson."

     A. Hilda Mae (or "Hildamae") Mitchener (1924–2007) married Ray Donald Steward (1923-2012) in November 1942. They moved to Charles City, Iowa, in 1962. Hildamae worked as a salesperson, office clerk and teachers aide at various places. Ray enlisted in the United States Army on January 6, 1943, and served as a Private until he was honorably discharged. After the war, he worked for International Harvester as a draftsman, then for the Dana Corporation, working on Indy 500 cars. Ray began working as a mechanical engineer employed by the J.I. Case Company. This career led him to Charles City, where he worked from 1962 until his retirement in 1989.

The couple raised a son and two daughters, and had three grandchildren, all still living.

- -- --- -- -

As I mentioned last time, I will be playing a little more loosely with the posting schedule here. I have some other things going on that may require me to skip a week here and there. Don't Panic! And please consider sharing something that you think would be interesting as a guest post.

This post is late, in part, because of a rookie mistake I made. By this point, I should know better than to accept information that seems "not quite right" - but when I started digging for records about Hilda Mae Mitchener and her sister, I found some marriage records that weren't quite right...but were "close enough." This is always a judgement call, and I do go over what I find and look for corroborating evidence or records that might help me weed out facts that aren't right.

In Hilda's case, I ran with the first marriage records I found for her, and expanded her part of the family tree quite a way before finding a birth record that named different parent from OUR Hilda! After half an hour of painstakingly reviewing each record I had added, I figured out where I made my mistake, and then spent another hour deleting the records of people who are not at all related to our family.

Lesson: even with relatively unique names, like Hilda Mitchener, you have to take your time and verify that you have the right person - the OTHER Hilda even had a younger sister with the same name as our Hilda's living sister.

Happy Hunting!

The Middle Child: Nick Ferguson

James L. Ferguson and Eliza Callin's middle child was a boy born in 1843. I don't know if I'm making too much of his name, but it always struck me as a unique choice among the many Johns, James, Williams,  and Georges in use by the rest of the family. It may have come from Charles Dicken's third novel, Nicholas Nickleby, or James and Eliza may have learned it from reading about Czar Nicholas I of Russia.

Regardless of the origin of his name, from the age of five Nicholas P. Ferguson (1843–1912) grew up on his father's farm in Jackson township, De Kalb county, Indiana. He was eighteen years old when the Civil War broke out, and as we discussed last week, his two older brothers enlisted; Nicholas does not appear to have done so, though there are a number of people named "Nicholas Ferguson" in other states who did. It is possible I simply couldn't tell that one of them was our Nicholas Ferguson!

Nicholas married Latita "Lettie" Kiester (1850–1930) on 26 April 1868 in De Kalb county. Poor Lettie is one of those people with a name that the people taking and transcribing records simply cannot grasp - her name appears variously as Letitia, Luticia, Letechia, and even Delotea in one source. And her surname gets the same treatment, rendered as everything from "Kester" to "Keister." The Callin Family History spells it "Latita Kiester," so that's what I've used here. The records also diverge on her birthdate; for example her obituary says 22 September 1850, but the 1850 Census that lists her with her family (Peter and Lydia Keister) was taken on 2 August that year, and most other sources indicate that she was born "about 1849."

You may recall that Nicholas's grandmother, Elizabeth Simon Callin, was living with his family during the 1860s. She died in 1864, just a few years before his wedding, and his mother, Eliza Callin Ferguson, died just two years after, in 1870. All of Nicholas's surviving siblings were grown by then, and his father went to live with Nicholas's younger brother, John. Nicholas established his own farm near Auburn, and he and Lettie raised their family there, until retiring from farming and moving into Auburn around 1900.

In 1912, when he was 67 years old, Nicholas was sent to the Lutheran hospital in Fort Wayne for a surgical procedure, and he died there on 26 January 1912. Lettie survived him by 19 years, eventually succumbing to a five week illness in 1930 and dying at the home of their youngest daughter, Dorothy Ferguson Mitchener.

Nick and Lettie left behind seven children. This week, we'll only have time to look at the eldest:

     I. Mildred Ferguson (1870–1952) was probably named for her aunt Mildred Ferguson Ettinger. She married her first husband, William Newton Penland (1867–1953) on 30 April 1896. They were not married for long; in 1900, Mildred was listed in the home of Fillmore Squires as his housekeeper. At that time, the Census said she was married, but she and her three-year-old son, William, lived in the Squires household, and her husband was nowhere to be found--at least not in the 1900 Census.

William Newton Penland turned up in Osborne county, Kansas in 1905, and by 1910 he had remarried Anna R. Simon (1887-1982). They would have three children between 1910 and 1914, and then relocate to Los Angeles county, California, in the early 1920s. They would remain in the Alhambra area until their respective deaths.

On 7 January 1905, Mildred remarried, too; her second husband was Fillmore A "Phil" Squires (1861–1948), whose name you may recognize as her employer in 1900. Phil was widowed some time prior to 1900, and had a son, John H.L. (or Leroy) Squires (b. 1877), from his previous marriage. By 1910, Mildred and Phil had two daughters, as well.

They raised their step-sons and their daughters in the Auburn, but at some later point, the couple moved to Muskegon, Michigan, where they died a few years apart. Since that is where Lavornia and her husband were living, also, that they may have moved there together.

     A. William Everett Pendland (1896–1981) was raised by his mother and step-father, and as far as I know, he never had contact with his father; particularly after the elder William Penland remarried and relocated to California. Everett appears to have preferred the spelling of "Pendland," while his father's records use "Penland."

William married Nellie M Emerick (1897–1990) on Christmas Eve, 1919, and they lived in Fort Wayne, where he was president of the General Printing Company during the 1920s. He and Nellie raised a son and daughter in Auburn, and lived out their lives there after he retired from business.

     1. Iris Maxine Pendland (1920–1980) married Lawrence Leroy Wible (1920–2003), and they had three sons and a daughter, all but one of whom are still living. Larry was a realtor in the Auburn area, and he retired in 1985. After Iris died in 1980, Larry remarried; his wife survived him.

     a. James Robert Wible (1958–1981) graduated from Waterloo High school in De Kalb county, Indiana. He died at age 23 in Los Angeles, California.

     2. James William Pendland (1926–1980) served in the U.S. Army during World War II as a Corporal. He graduated from the Indiana University School of Business and the I. U. Law School. He went to Lawrence County after receiving his law degree and practiced for a brief period in Mitchell before moving his practice to Bedford, where he was a practicing attorney and Lawrence County Public Defender. He was married several times, but left no children of his own; his wife and stepson are still living.

     B. Lavornia Squires (1905–1998) married Harry G Julian (1901–1979) on 23 March 1929 in Defiance county, Ohio. Harry was a salesman, and the couple moved quite a bit, living in Grand Rapids for a few years, then Indiana, then Ohio, and ending up in the Muskegon, Michigan, area. They also had an address in Pinellas county, Florida. They do not seem to have had any children of their own.

     C. Ruth Squires (1908–2005) and her sister were involved in a car accident in 1924, in which the car they were riding in was struck by a freight train. Two passengers were killed, and Ruth sued the driver and the railroad for her injuries.

Found on Newspapers.com

Ruth married Arol A Draime (1903–1967) on 15 September 1927 in De Kalb county, Indiana, and they settled in Willard, Huron county, Ohio, where they raised their daughter and three sons. Arol worked for the Baltimore & Ohio railroad as a chief clerk for 45 years. Incidentally, they were married by the Rev. Joseph W. Ferguson, whom you may recall from last week's post.

     1. Richard Eugene "Dick" Draime (1929–2001) was too young to fight in World War II, but he enlisted after graduating from Willard High School, and served in the newly established United States Air Force. He was stationed at Scott Air Force Base when he was married in 1951, and returned to the Cleveland area after his enlistment was up.

Dick was married several times, but I have not seen any records indicating whether he had any children; each of his wives may still be living, as well. Since Arol's 1967 obituary says that he left behind 17 grandchildren, I'm willing to bet that at least a couple of them were Dick's children!

     2. Donald A Draime (1930–1995) married his wife, Louise Ann Cline (1932–2004), probably in the 1950s. There was another Donald Draime family living in Canton, Ohio, during this time; unfortunately, all of my searches kept finding information about that other family, so I know very little about Donald and Louise.

     3. Beverly Ann Draime (1931–2012) was married twice; first to a boxer named Marlen "Mike" Roose (1927-2009), and in 1956, to Angelo J "Cap" Caporini. Mike Roose was a top-ranked amateur boxer in California, but he also served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and as a U.S. Marshal in Ohio. He married Beverly around the end of the war, and they had two children before they split up around 1951.

Mike remarried Maxine Faith in 1952, and in 1956, Beverly married Mr. Caporini, a veteran of the U.S. Army; they also had two children after moving to Ontario, Ohio. When she died in 2012, her daughter, step-daughter, and her three sons were all still living. Beverly left behind 12 grandchildren, 2 step-grandchildren, 9 great-grandchildren, and 8 step-grandchildren.

     4. David Max Draime (1933–2006) was a U.S. Navy veteran and graduate of Kent State University who established the Stoneridge company in 1965. The company produced wiring harnesses for the agricultural equipment. The company grew from five employees at the original factory to 6,000 employees on four continents. Max's son remained the company's director at his death.

I'm not renowned for my skills at mathematical computation, but if Arol Draime's obituary was correct, and he had 17 grandchildren in 1967, then there are 12 unaccounted for in my records. That is a lot of Draime family to track down! If you happen to know any of them, please send them this blog post, and let them know about our work, here.

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A couple of administrative notes:

1. My time management skills are not great, and I have been struggling to stick to a weekly posting schedule on this blog. It isn't that I don't want to put the time in - I do! - it's just that I have a number of other projects related to the grand "Tad Callin Retirement Plan" that I haven't been keeping up on. So for the next few posts, I'm going to do my best to stay on the weekly schedule, but I expect it will slip to a bi-weekly or even monthly post over the summer.

2. Since there will be empty space in the schedule here, I would like to extend an invitation to all of you: If you're related to me, and have a story about the family you'd like to share, I am always happy to put up guest posts. They don't have to be long, they don't have to be "proven" - family lore, photos (identified or not) and memories are all part of the family history.

And, as always, if you've come across this blog because you're one of the living descendants of someone I've written about, I'd love to hear from you! I am sure I've made some mistakes or left a lot out - I don't post information about living people, so if I can't tell whether they're still living, I err on the side of caution and don't write about them.

Please drop me an email (I am callintad at gmail), Tweet at me (@tadmaster), or find me on Facebook (we have a private Callin Family History group there) and help me make this history more accurate and complete.

Thank you for following along!

The Second James L. Ferguson

The sixth child of James L. Ferguson and Eliza Callin was a boy named after his father. He was their second son, born in Ohio, and at about 8 years of age, his parents moved the family to Indiana.

James L. Ferguson (1841–1907) married Margaret Walters (1845–1926) on 9 April 1865 - the same day that Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Court house, signaling the end of the Civil War. James served in the war, having enlisted in Company B, Ohio 11th Infantry Regiment on 20 June 1861. He mustered out on 21 June 1864.

I imagine that the joy of the wedding and the end of the war was dampened by the death of James's older brother, George, in February 1865. The Callin Family History says that George was killed in battle on the Potomac, but I believe George was serving in the Indiana 13th Infantry Regiment, which was in North Carolina in February. Whatever the details were, the loss could not have been easy to bear.

James and Margaret began their family on a farm near his parent's farm in Jackson Township, DeKalb county, Indiana. They had six children over the following 15 years, four of whom survived to adulthood. Some time during the 1870s they relocated to a farm in Union township, and in March 1906, a downturn in his health forced James to move into Auburn, where he died of heart disease in June 1907. She was sick for a long time with Bright's disease and neuritis and was bedridden for two years before she died at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Jennie Kosht of East Seventh street, Auburn.

      I. Sarah M. Ferguson (1867–1881) died at age 13, of unknown causes.

      II. Mary Jane 'Jennie' Ferguson (1869–1963) married Emmett Kosht (1869–1920) in 1892. They had a baby that year which died in infancy. Emmett died in 1920, leaving his estate to Jennie and their son, Walter. Jennie's mother, Margaret Ferguson, likely moved into their home around 1924.

      a. Walter Markley Kosht (1904–1925) graduated from Auburn high school with the class of 1924, but was taken to the Irene Byron sanatorium for treatment for tuberculosis in February 1925 and died on 31 July 1925.

After losing Emmett, Walter, and her mother in just a few short years, Jennie remarried John H. Flemming (1867-1944); as of 1930, they were living in Jennie's home. That is where Jennie remained after John's death in 1944, until about 1962, when her health deteriorated to the point where she needed to move in with the Ruchel family in Jackson. She died there on 3 April 1963.

      III. Rev. Joseph W Ferguson (1871–1963) married the younger sister of Emmett Kosht, Cora I Kosht (1871–1927), early in 1891. "In his early days" he served as a deputy sheriff in De Kalb county. In 1892, he entered the ministry of the United Brethren church, and he was sent to minister in the Hicksville, Ohio, area. He took his young family to Ohio, about twenty miles from Auburn, where they remained until Cora's health began to deteriorate in the 1920s.

Joseph resigned his ministry so he could stay in Auburn and tend to Cora. In February 1927, she died in their home "from a stroke of apoplexy."

After Cora died, Joseph remarried Delia Hassig (1893–1977) in November 1927, in Coldwater, Michigan, and returned to his ministry. Over the course of his career, he estimated that he officiated at 3,400 funerals; when searching through the Newspapers.com database for his obituary, there were many other obituaries listing him as the officiating minister, right up through the last months of his life. In 1962, his health began to fail, and he died in November 1963 at the age of 92.

      a. Justus A Ferguson (1891–1910) was born in September 1891, in De Kalb county, Indian, and grew up in Ohio, where his father's ministry had taken the family. He died 24 April 1910 in North Baltimore, Wood county, Ohio, at the age of 18, and was buried in Woodlawn cemetery, Auburn, Indiana.

      b. Ford M Ferguson (1904–1978) married Florence Ferne Hook (1906–2000) in April 1927, just two months after his mother died. Ferne was born in Hicksville, and that is where they were married, but they settled in Auburn, where they raised their daughter, who is still living. Ferne worked as a bookkeeper for Messenger Corp. for 19 years, and served as a deputy auditor for De Kalb county for 9 years. She retired as secretary of the Auburn Street Department in 1985.

      IV. Elmer Ellsworth Ferguson (b. 1875) died in infancy.

      V. Terry Victor Ferguson (1877–1961) married Grace Beatrice Rush (1882–1975) on 2 June 1900 in Hicksville, Ohio, probably by his older brother, and settled his family on a farm near Auburn, Indiana. This family suffered several severe tragedies, such as the 1935 hunting accident in which Terry was shot in the face by a shotgun, nearly costing him an eye. He was 55 years old at the time. After her retired from farming, Terry enjoyed good health until the late 1950s, when he moved into the Sheehy nursing home, where he died in 1961.

      a. Harold R Ferguson (1902–1995) married Freda M Warfield (1902–1989) on 28 November 1923, and as far as I know, they raised one daughter, who is still living.

      b. Chalmer Ferguson (1908–1970) is someone who will require more research. He was born 24 November 1908 in De Kalb county, Indiana, probably on his father's farm outside Auburn. He had a cousin with the same name (about whom we will learn more next week), and I was not able to easily distinguish between them in the Indiana records databases.

This Chalmer Ferguson was definitely living in Portland, Indiana (Jay county) in 1944, and he was married three years later in Butte, Montana. He married Louise Walter (b. 1917) on 7 March 1947, and the Montana marriage record lists his parents' names. There is also a Chalmer Ferguson listed in the Anaconda, Montana, city directory that year, and since the towns are 24 miles apart, I'll allow that this is our boy.

Less certain are marriage records which only list the bride & groom and the date. A Chalmer Ferguson married Danell Armstrong Sparks (1916-1993) on 3 September 1957 in Nez Perce, Clearwater county, Idaho. According to his father's obituary in December 1961, Chalmer was living in Orofino in Clearwater county, Idaho, so I'm inclined to accept that this is the same Chalmer. Danell Ferguson died in Orofino in 1993, so I presume they were together during his last thirteen years.

If anyone out there is/knows a descendant of this man, I'd love to find out more about him!

      c. Fidelis Lucille Ferguson (1916–1936) died of a heart attack at the age of 21 in the State hospital in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She was committed to the state school for the feeble minded at Fort Wayne in August 1934.

      d. Thomas Woodrow Ferguson (1917–1944) went by the name "Joe" growing up in Auburn; probably in honor of his uncle, the Rev. Joseph Ferguson. He attended school at St. John's and East Keyser, and graduated Auburn high school in 1936. He was working in Dayton, Ohio, and married to Mable Campbell when World War II broke out, and he enlisted in the Army August 22, 1942. He received his training at Atlantic City and was sent overseas on January 10, 1943 to be stationed in China for nearly two years.

On his last furlough before deploying, a baby girl was born to the Fergusons. They named her Helene. Sadly, she died that day: October 14, 1942. Mabel went back to Auburn, where she lived with Joe's parents and found work at the Donna beauty shop. He went back to New Jersey, and shipped out for China.

In the summer of 1944, Corporal Ferguson wrote home to let the family know that he had been sick with typhoid in July, but that he was getting better. On 24 August, however, his fever returned, and he died. He was buried in an American Military cemetery at APO 627, which his commander described in the letter to Joe's parents as "nestled in a broad fertile plateau over six thousand feet up in the mountains."

I do not know what became of Mabel, but I hope she lived a long, happier life after these awful years.

      VI. Thomas L Ferguson (1880–1958), the youngest son of James and Margaret Ferguson, married Mary Jones (1881–1960) on 13 April 1901 in Hicksville, Ohio - likely married by his brother. Thomas was a farmer and a railroader, and after he retired from those activities, he and Mary ran an apartment house in Auburn for nearly 30 years, until his death in 1958 from heart disease and complications from diabetes. Mary followed him a couple of years later, after suffering from cancer for two years. They left no children behind.

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As I put the finishing touches on this post, I was struck by just how sad the last half of it has been. With the exception of the adventurous Chalmer, who may have left behind a number of children for whom I simply found no records, the Fergusons in this branch of the family seem to have had few or no children, and suffered numerous tragedies. It's easy to forget sometimes how much life can go on between the dates at the beginning and ending of each person's story.

These were people living through the "Turn of the Century" - they saw the 20th Century begin, with all of the wild inventions, booms and busts, history-changing wars, and disease-defeating scientific progress. They traveled, they learned, they loved...and when they lost, they picked up and kept trying.

There were only a couple of daughters mentioned as still living within these paragraphs, but I hope there are more whom I simply didn't find. I hope they find out about this blog. And if they do, I hope they'll tell us a bit more about these people and the lives they led between the tragedies.

And next week, I hope we'll find a few more victories, with fewer of those tragedies to go with them!