Samuel Peterson: New Jersey shipwright

After spending two years focused on my paternal line, I've been eager to look at the other branches of my family. Since the Callin Family History started with my 5th great-grandfather on the paternal side, it seemed inevitable that I should re-start this blog project by going to the exact opposite end of the tree: my 5th great-grandfather through my maternal line. Records are still sparse online, but perhaps one of these days I'll get the chance to visit the places that have the records that might fill in the blanks. 

Tracing back from my maternal grandmother's mother, Edna Lyle (Frey) Tuttle, here's what I can tell you about her great-great grandfather:

Samuel Peterson (1783-1862) - my 5x-great grandfather

Sam Peterson was a New Jersey shipwright who was born in 1783 in  Cape May, New Jersey. He had three sons and three daughters with his wife Mary between 1814 and 1830. He died on July 9, 1862, in Middlesex county, New Jersey, having lived a long life of 80 years.

Edna Lyle Frey (1895-1985) pedigree chart
click for full size version

There is a great deal that I don't know, and even some of the facts I have may be wrong. I had to make some educated guesses from the available records, but here's a breakdown of the evidence I have.

U.S. Federal Census records for 1830, 1840, 1850, and 1860 show a Samuel Peterson residing in Middlesex county, New Jersey. The first three place him in North Brunswick, presumably in his home with his wife and children; the 1860 places him in the town of Washington (the borough of South River, today), where he is living with the Palmer family.

I believe that James and Martha Palmer are Sam's daughter and son-in-law. There are also two children with the surname Peterson in the household that year: Samuel (14) and Annie (12); other records for Martha and James identify them as a niece and nephew, which I'll talk about in more detail later.

In addition to the four census records, I have an index record from the New Jersey, Deaths and Burials Index, 1798-1971. That record identifies Samuel Peterson, born about 1782 in Cape May, New Jersey; died 9 July 1862 in Washington, Middlesex, New Jersey at 80 years of age. Occupation: Shipwright; marital status: Widowed.

I have not found any records, local histories or old genealogy texts with any information about Sam's parents, but several Peterson families were listed in the New Jersey Tax Lists in Upper Township, Cape May county, during the 1780s and 1790s. (I found records for Aaron, Isaac, Hance, Joseph, Thomas, and a Samuel Peterson - any of whom might be Sam's father.)

Mary Peterson (1782-1852) - my 5x-great grandmother

Mary was born in 1786 in New Jersey. Other researchers give her maiden name as Hoffman, but I have not been able to confirm that with the available records. I only have two records that name her: the 1850 Census, where she is listed in Sam's household in North Brunswick, and the record of her death in the New Jersey, Deaths and Burials Index, 1798-1971. She died on February 17, 1852, in South River, New Jersey, at the age of 66.

Their Children

This section should be considered a work in progress. I had to piece together clues from a lot of different records, some of which contradict each other. There are several common names used across several generations, and children who seem to have lived with aunts and uncles while their parents were still alive, but I'll do my best to piece things together.

Assuming that the children living in their household in 1830 and 1840 were their sons and daughters, I expect to someday find all six of them. There were three boys and three girls in 1830; one girl and two boys in 1840; and one of each in the household in 1850 (the first year that named all household members). Here is the current list of Sam and Mary's descendants, as best as I can prove:

I. Thomas Peterson (1814–1880) - since none of the records I have found online identify Thomas as the son of Sam and Mary, there was a son listed in the "age 15-19" block of the 1830 Census. Also, the 1860 Census shows the Thomas Peterson family living next door to the James C. Palmer family, where Sam Peterson was also living. This is probably the strongest evidence I have to suggest that Thomas is related to our Sam Peterson. So, while I offer the caveat that he may not be a member of this family, the facts that follow are supported by five Census records (1840 through 1880), which place him in the area of East Brunswick, as well as his death record in the New Jersey, Deaths and Burials Index, 1798-1971, and memorials in the U.S. Find-a-Grave database.

Thomas Peterson was born on August 8, 1814, in New Jersey. He had two sons with his wife, Sarah Eliza, between 1838 and 1843. He was listed as a "waterman," "boatman," and "master sloop" in the various census records. Thomas died on October 26, 1880, in East Brunswick, New Jersey, at the age of 66, and Sarah Eliza died January 31, 1906, at age 88. They are both buried in the Washington Monumental Cemetery in South River, New Jersey.

On the 1870 Census, two young men, Perry (age 22) and Isaac (21) are listed as "farm servants" - their race is listed as "black" and their birthplace as "Virginia." They are indexed as Perry Peterson and Isaac Peterson, but the original census does not actually indicate a surname for them, so I'm not sure whether they used the name or not. 

     A. William H Peterson (b. 1838) married Mary F Reid (b. 1839) in 1858. They had one child during their marriage, Martha R Peterson (b. 1860). In addition to six U.S. Census records (1850-1910) that place him in East Brunswick and South River, William is recorded in U.S., Civil War Draft Registrations Records, 1863-1865. 

     B. Theadore F Peterson (1843–1877) was born in 1843 in East Brunswick, New Jersey. He his wife, Louisa, had one daughter, whom they named Carrie, in 1869. He died at age 35 on April 1, 1877. All we know about Louisa and Carrie comes from the three Census records that feature Theadore.

II. Unknown sister - born between 1816-1820, she only appeared on the 1830 Census in the "Females aged 10 thru 14" block.

III. Martha Peterson (1815–1882) - is my 4x-great grandmother; we will go over this family in more detail in a later post. She married James C. Palmer in 1836, and they had four daughters. This family took in Martha's nephew Samuel and niece Annie when Martha's sister-in-law died; and Martha's father, Samuel, lived with them after Mary died in 1852. In 1860, Samuel was listed in the Palmer household with the occupation constable.

IV. James H. Peterson (1821–1900) - was born in January 1821 in New Jersey. He had one son and two daughters with his wife, Sarah A, between 1847 and 1848. He died in 1900 having lived a long life of 79 years. You will notice a significant gap there, as I only have two Census records for James - one from 1850 that shows him, Sarah, and two of their children living in North Brunswick, and then 1900, living with his niece (Martha's daughter), Sarah Decker, and his brother-in-law, James Palmer.

While I have not been able to find James in the Census between 1850 and 1900, two of his children appear in the records consistently. I haven't been able to find records that would explain what happened, but I suspect that Sarah and one of their daughters, Martha, died during the 1850s. That said, there could be any number of explanations for these patterns.

     A. Martha L Peterson (b. 1847) was three years old in 1850, according to the 1850 Census; after that, I have not found records to indicate her fate.

     B. Samuel H. Peterson (b. 1847) was five years old on the 1850 Census, but later records peg his birth date closer to Martha's. On the 1860 Census, Samuel and his other sister, Annie, appear listed in the same James Palmer household as their grandfather, Sam Peterson (the same Sam we started with). According to a newspaper obituary for his wife, he married Amelia J. Opp in 1873, and they moved to New York state.

Samuel and Amelia were in Deerpark, New York, according to the 1875 New York State Census, and they were in North Dansville with their daughter and three sons in 1880. When Amelia shows up in 1900, she is listed in North Dansville as a widow, but I have not been able to find Samuel's death records. Amelia lived in North Dansville until her death in 1922, and she was buried near two of her sons in Green Mount Cemetery.

Because Amelia Opp is the sister of my 3x-great grandfather, Jacob Edward Opp, I plan to explore this family in a future post - there are a lot of Peterson descendants in this branch!

     C. Annie E. Peterson (1848–1880) presents a few tragic puzzles. She does not appear on the 1850 Census, but she and her brother Samuel appear on the 1860 in the home of the Palmer family. Annie apparently married a man named Eugene Morter, and they both appear in the Palmer household on the 1870.

According to the New Jersey, Marriage Records, 1670-1965, she married John A. Darlington on 11 December 1871, and they lived in Brooklyn, New York, according to the 1875 New York State Census. That marriage record names her parents as "James H. Peterson and Sarah Peterson." In 1880, John and Annie lived in Brooklyn with their three sons: James (b. 1872), John (b. 1877), and Orrin (b. 1879).

Tragically, Annie died on 17 June 1880 - there is a record that attributes her death to "consumption," but it also gives her race as "mulatto" (all other records that list race describe her as "white") and the date of death as June 1879, so that may be a different Anna Darlington. Whatever the cause of Annie's death, little Orrin also died a few weeks later on 14 July 1880.

Her husband and two surviving sons remained in Brooklyn, none married or left any children as far as I have been able to determine. The younger John died in 1902 at age 25; his brother James died in 1924. Their father traveled to England, and returned to New York in July 1886. The most recent record I see for him is the 1900 Census.

V. Larisa Peterson (b. 1826) - appeared in her parent's home in 1850.

VI. Samuel Peterson (b. 1830) - like his sister, appeared at home with his parents in 1850.

 - -- --- -- - 

As always, I would be eager to hear from anyone who might be related to any of the families mentioned here. It is a real challenge to research a surname as common as "Peterson," especially when everyone marries someone named either "Sarah" or "Mary" and then names their sons Samuel, James, or John!

But that is the challenge, I suppose, and I wouldn't really have any fun without the challenge.

I can be reached through my Gmail address, which is "callintad" and I will be notified if you comment below. My DNA is in the FTDNA.com database, if you are looking for genetic connections.

And happy hunting!

Update: Lillie and Nellie Campbell

Sometimes, the tiniest of clues can lead to a breakthrough.

Just before Christmas, I received an email from someone who came across this blog while going about her own research. She offered to help me fill in some gaps after the holidays, and even though she only told me that she was the widow of the grandson of Lillie May Campbell, that one fact - that Lillie grew up and married - was enough to open up a whole treasure trove of records on Ancestry. Even before hearing back from my new distant cousin, I was able to add about two dozen missing descendants of James Callin to the tree!

Of course, some of those records only raised more questions; if I didn't have someone to ask, I would have no way of answering them myself. So thank you to Barbara for reaching out to me!

As it happens, I have been able to update two families based on what I've learned, so here we go:

Lillie May Campbell (1871–1946)

Lillie was the eldest daughter and the second child of Harrison M Campbell (1837–1924) and Catherine Hoot (1846–1930), the subjects of the post The Campbells Take Missouri (originally posted in January 2015). The only information I had about Lillie in that post was based on her 1800 U.S. Census record, which gave her name and age: "Lillian, age 9."

At 16 years of age, on 27 December 1887, Lillie married George G Weaver (1858–1918) in Morgan county, Missouri. George was a farmer who was born in Fort Scott, Kansas, before the Civil War, and they settled in Haw Creek, Missouri, where they began their family.

They had a son, Roy, in 1893, followed by their daughters Edith, in 1896, and Gladys, in 1900. Sadly, Gladys died at age four in 1904. Eight years later, they had another little boy, Frank.

Both George and Roy died in 1918. George suffered from heart and kidney failure, likely from untreated kidney disease. He was only 59.

Lillie's parents, Harrison and Kate Campbell, are known to have moved to Oregon in 1919, where Lillie's sister, Mary Hodges, had moved with her family about ten years prior. Lillie seems to have decided to move with them, bringing her two surviving children to Oregon with her, only to lose young Frank in 1921.

Lillie married again before 1930, this time to a doctor named George Thomas Darland (1857–1935) whose first wife had died in 1924. He cared for her in Hillsboro until his death in 1935, and then she moved to be closer to her children and grandchildren in Beaverton. She was living with the Cady family in 1940, and died in Washington county in 1946.

     I. Roy R Weaver (1893–1918) grew up in Haw Creek, Missouri, and was farming there in 1918, when he registered for the World War I draft. He died in 1918, and was buried in Verasailles Cemetery in Morgan county, near his father.

     II. Edith Vivian Weaver (1896–1960) also grew up on the farm in Haw Creek, and served as a nurse overseas during World War I. After the war, she moved with her mother and grandparents to Beaverton, Oregon, where she married  Willis Lawrence Cady (1896–1961) on 7 November 1923. Willis's grandfather, Alonzo B. Cady, was the 1st mayor of Beaverton in 1893; his father also was mayor and built the first brick building in Beaverton, which is still standing.

       A. Maxine Elizabeth Cady (1925–2011) attended Beaverton Schools and University of Oregon (Gamma Phi Beta) graduating from the School of Music. In 1946 she married "the boy I fell in love with in the 2nd grade", Bob Barnes. A piano prodigy, Maxine taught piano lessons, and organized the first high school choir at Bethel Congregational Church, becoming Director of Music and Organist in 1955. In 1956 she began teaching music in the Beaverton School District. There she was famous for her elaborate mini Broadway musicals. In 1973, she was awarded Teacher of the Year honors. As a teacher, director and musician Maxine was admired, respected and loved by her peers, but especially by her students.

Following the passing of her husband, Maxine started a new adventure as real estate broker. After her second career, Maxine directed and played for the Way Off Broadway Singers that toured local Senior Centers. During this time she became a companion of Earl Bolliger, a friend since Beaverton High days; they happily shared life's journey until Earl's passing in 2006.

Maxine is survived by her son, three daughters, 11 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren.

       B. David Lawrence Cady (1928–2008) was born June 5, 1928, in Portland, Oregon. David was reared in Beaverton and was a 1946 graduate of Beaverton High School. He served in the Army from 1951 to 1952 during the Korean conflict. In 1959 he graduated from the University of Oregon with a bachelor's degree.

He was a CPA, with his own practice in Gladstone. He retired in 2004. He was a member of Beaverton and West Linn Lions clubs, a charter member of South Park Unitarian Fellowship of West Linn, and served Friends of Clackamas Community College for 20 years.

He and his wife lived in West Linn for 46 years before moving back to retire in Beaverton in 2004. She survives him, along with their son and daughter, and two grandchildren.

     III. Gladys M Weaver (1900–1904) died at age four, and was buried in Versailles Cemetery, where her father and older brother would eventually join her.

     IV. Frank E Weaver (1912–1921) was only nine years old when he died from pneumonia after suffering a case of measles. He died in Forest Grove, Oregon, and he was buried in the Forest View Cemetery there.

There you have the update for Lillie - but in the process of digging for those records, I learned more about her sister, who we only knew as "Ella, age 3," from the 1880 Census! We also solved the mystery of the "Deronshire Campbell" who appeared in the 1920 Census as a grandson of Harrison and Kate. 

 Nellie Viola Campbell (1877–1967)

Nellie was the fourth child, and third daughter, of Harrison and Catherine (Hoot) Campbell. She was born 13 April 1877 in Tipton, Morgan county, Missouri. She married a man called Earl C De Avonshire in Morgan county on 31 July 1907, and moved with him to Indianapolis, Indiana, where their son, Campbell De Avonshire was born in 1908.

Piecing together conflicting clues from the records to get a picture of what happened to Nellie and Earl was difficult, but they were living in Ohio when their second son, Wellington, was born in 1911. Their daughter, Lucille, was born back in Tipton, Missouri, in 1913, but Earl's World War I draft registration card showed they were living in Akron, Ohio, in 1918. This record also gave his name as "Edward Clinton Deavonshire" and I might have ignored it as a different person if it hadn't listed his nearest relative as Mrs. Nellie De Avonshire.

(I don't know whether "Edward Clinton" was his given name and "Earl" an actual title of nobility, or if "Earl" was a nickname. One of his daughter's marriage records says he was born in England, but another says he was born in Virginia; and two other records place his origin in Ohio.))

Nellie and Earl seem to have parted by 1920; Nellie and Wellington appeared in the Census in Washington county, Oregon, near the other transplanted members of the Campbell family. Campbell De Avonshire showed up in that Census living with his grandparents, Harrison and Catherine, in their Forest Grove, Oregon, home - but it mistakenly lists his aunt Frances as his mother. (And calls him "Deronshire Campbell.") Earl shows up (as Edward C) in 1930 in Libertyville, Illinois, running a restaurant with a new wife.

Nellie married again about 1927. Her new husband was the recently widowed Jacob H Shearer (1855–1940). She lost Jacob just two years before Campbell died; and later, in 1949, she married
William Oscar McConnahay (1878–1969), who survived her by two years.

     I. Campbell De Avonshire (1908–1942) was born in Indianapolis, and came with his mother and her family to Oregon around 1919. In 1930, at age 22, he was a patient resident at the Oregon State Hospital for the Insane. He died in 1942, and was buried in the Forest View cemetery in Forest Grove.

     II. Wellington De Avonshire (1911–1930) was born in Ohio, and he was living with his mother in the home of his step-father, Jacob Shearer, in Forest Grove in 1930 when he died at only 19 years of age.

     III. Lucille Frances De Avonshire (1913–1992) was born in Missouri, and lived with her mother and brother Wellington in 1930. She married Russell W Craine (1906-1966) on 31 January 1932 in Vancouver, Washington; they were together for about eight years. She was married again, this time to Fredrick Melvin Graham (1920–1993) on the day after the Pearl Harbor attacks, 8 December 1941, in Vancouver. They lived in Portland.

Based on the obituaries for Lucille and her last husband, Howard Verne Busch (1914–1993), whom she married on 5 July 1952 in Vancouver, they were survived by three daughters, but it isn't clear whether they were his daughters from a previous marriage, or hers. Regardless, Lucille and Howard are buried together in Mountain View Memorial Gardens, Forest Grove, Oregon.

 - -- --- -- - 

I've been lying low the past several months, working on bringing the revised Callin Family History to publication. The computer I was using was not powerful enough to produce the manuscript using Family Tree Maker, and when I upgraded to a newer computer, I was not able to download and install Family Tree Maker, despite having paid extra for that feature in 2014, when I bought FTM in the first place.

Since the new company making FTM wants me to pay $40 for an upgrade, and is charging $80 for the new version, I decided to migrate over to RootsMagic. I've been following Randy Seaver's blog for a while, and he writes about his experiences with various software experiments, and with RootsMagic - click here for an example. The price was right, and the features similar.

While I'm learning and churning, I will probably not be posting with any regularity. If anyone is interested in sending in a guest post, I'd be happy to post that!

And, as always, if you're related to anyone in this post (or any of the previous 137!), please drop me a note at callintad at gmail dot com. Descendants of James Callin are invited to join the Callin Family History Facebook group. And I'm always up to something on Twitter.

What Have We Learned from The Callin Family History?

When I set out to revise the Callin Family History two years ago, I thought I had a pretty good idea what kinds of people I might find in the family tree. I did name the blog "Mightier Acorns," after all, because I knew that few, if any, of our relatives would turn out to be recognizably famous, important figures in World History.

As it happens, a few of our cousins really did have exciting and unique lives. Perhaps the most famous of our cousins has his own Wikipedia entry, due to his record-setting Air Force career and his science fiction novels. A few were missionaries who traveled to Africa or India to build hospitals or schools. One disappeared with Flight 19 in the infamous Bermuda triangle.

But we have largely been ordinary. We have mostly been farmers, and when farming gave way to industrialization, many of us became factory or railroad workers. We also had a few doctors, some lawyers, and in rare cases, successful corporate business leaders. Among our folks, there have always been a prominent number of teachers mixed in, as well.

We have many talented musicians and artists, woodworkers and craftsmen (and women!), some of whom even earned a living or academic honors for their efforts. Most of us have at least enjoyed making a joyful noise, whether literal or metaphorical. Many - including my dad, my grandfather, cousin John, and several others - built furniture as a hobby after retiring.

The legend of our family identity has had a profound influence on us, even though few of us have any idea what the family legend says, and even fewer have done the research necessary to find out what is truth and what is legend. Our common ancestor, James "1st" Callin, was a Revolutionary War hero, so it seems almost inevitable that his descendants take pride in serving the country. And because we have passed down the story that he was from Ireland, we seem to hold a rebellious Irish spirit close to our hearts.

It almost doesn't matter that we haven't definitively proven that the Revolutionary soldier James Callin was the father of James and John Callin of Ashland county, Ohio; our cousins have served in every branch of service and in every American conflict throughout our nation's history. I don't think there was a single post in this two-year project that didn't include at least one World War II or Union Army veteran. Less common, but just as crucial, we have had mighty women from our family serving in the military, in the medical corps, or on the home front.

James may or may not have actually been Irish - he was almost certainly the "orange" variety if he was - but we tend to identify that way when we think about our ethnicity, rather than as English or Scots-Irish. Because we started with an immigrant from the 1750s, I didn't expect to find many immigrant stories in the ranks of Callin descendants, but we certainly married a dazzlingly diverse group.

James 1st's descendants have married into the streams of German and Western European immigrants who washed across Ohio and the Midwest. We have married Eastern Europeans and people of the Slavic and Jewish diaspora; many of us have married into Latino and Hispanic families; and two of our cousins married into Japanese families who were interred in the camps established at the beginning of World War II. At least two of the nearly 5,000 marriages documented in this project have been same-sex couples, though that number might have been larger if such marriages had been accepted in earlier generations.

The religious diversity of people in our family is bewildering, as well. If one was inclined to squint and call the vast majority of them "Christian," that wouldn't be wrong - almost all of them held to some flavor or Christian faith - but the reality is that each family struggled with their faith in their own way, and even when they shared a label, they probably didn't hold to the same set of beliefs for more than a generation or two. There are Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Roman Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Pentacostals, Baptists, Southern Baptists, Nazarenes, Universalists, Unitarians, and a few more, not to mention those of us who either openly or quietly hold to no faith at all.

And of course we have many tragic stories of the broken and the fallen among our number. We have had our share of frailty, whether that was due to what we now understand to be genetic in nature, or from the diseases that used to plague the countryside. We've struggled with our share of mental illness, alcoholism, and we have lost our share to crime and to poor, selfish choices. We've lost more than one of our family to suicide, to post-war trauma, or to accidents involving guns. I've tried to tell those stories honestly, and without judgment, but it never stops feeling uncomfortable - especially when reaching out to a distant cousin who may not be happy about digging up that darker past.

As I've done this research, and unearthed your stories, whether through your own words or through newspaper stories about you, or your parents' and grandparents' obituaries, I've been constantly amazed by all of you. I love the names you've given your children; I am proud of your accomplishments; I've felt sympathetic to the disagreements and struggles that have pushed us apart or made us lose touch.

Those of us who are still living run the gamut of American thought and life. We live on both coasts, North and South, in Red and Blue areas; we are on all sides of the political spectrum; and we are in every economic niche. If there is a controversy facing modern America, it seems we have a relative at the heart of it, whether they are a recently married same-sex couple, a struggling blue collar family in the rust belt, students struggling with college debt, or older retirees trying to get by without being a burden to their children.

Between now and the publication of the Callin Family History revision, I will be reaching out, either directly or through another cousin, to as many of you as possible. Partly, I have to admit, I want you to get excited about the book - and maybe convince you to buy a copy for each of your children, grand-children, and local libraries. But mostly, I want you to know that we're all here, and that whatever this family connection does or doesn't mean to you, it exists.

I want you to know what I've learned - because it's a pretty cool feeling to know that even the most ordinary of us can still be so mighty.

The Angry Doctor and Other Stories

I've been looking forward to this post for a long time. Not only is this the last post in what I've thought of as the "research phase" of the Callin Family History revision, but one of the folks in this post is a character who kept popping up while I searched for other people. 

Hugh Callin (1817–1856) was the youngest son of John and Elizabeth (Simon) Callin. He was born in 1817 while his family still lived in Pennsylvania. His younger sister, Margret, was born in Ohio in 1819. Since we already took a look at Margret's family early on, in the post The Distance of Close Connections, that makes Hugh the last grandchild of James "1st" Callin in this family history for us to study.

The Callin Family History gives us the date of Hugh's birth, while the 1850 Census gives us the location as Pennsylvania; but the CFH also says that Hugh's father took the lease on his Ohio farm in 1816, so that may indicate that John went to Ohio first, then sent for Elizabeth and the children, later. Hugh's oldest brothers, James and George, would have been 15 and 13 years old, respectively, so they might have accompanied their father — or they might have stayed behind and helped their mother and siblings on the journey.

Hugh married Barbara Ann "Barbary" Mathews (1826-1886) on 13 April 1843, and they settled on a farm in Milton township, not far from where Hugh grew up. In 1850, they are listed next door to a Mathews family, which may be Barbary's parents, sister, and brothers. Hugh's occupation is listed as "chairmaker,"and they already had two of their four children.

Hugh died on 17 April 1856, at 39 years of age. I have not turned up any record that would tell me how he died. The Callin Family History only tells us the years of his birth and death, and the fact that he married Barbary. After Hugh's death, Barbary's older sister, Mary Mathews, appeared in the household on the 1860 Census, likely helping Barbary raise the children.

In November 1874, Barbary married William Davis (1836–1915), a widower with three small children of his own. His first wife, Rebecca, had died in May 1874, barely two years after the birth of their son. Barbary died at the end of 1886, and her will was executed in January 1887. She left money, furniture, and bedding to her daughter, Mary Sattler, and her granddaughter, Amy (whom Barbary names in the will as "Emma B. Sattler"). She left the rest of her estate to Mary and to her son John, minus $133 he owed her. She specified in her will that the forgiveness of the debt of $400 she loaned to Fred when he went to medical school would be his bequest.

     I. Mary Etta Callin (1846–1913) was ten years old when her father died. She grew up in Milton township, and married Jacob L. Sattler (1846-) on 26 September 1871. He also grew up in Milton township. His parents were Jacob Ludwig Sattler (1817–1881) and Elizabeth Steinheiser (1821–1894). Jacob Ludwig was born in Bavaria, and immigrated to Pennsylvania Dutch country, where he married Elizabeth; they had three sons, including Jacob, in Pennsylvania before coming to Ohio around 1850, when they settled in Milton township.

Mary and Jacob had two children before 1880, but there is some mystery as to where the family was in 1880, and what happened to Jacob. Several researchers have accepted an 1880 record for a Mary and Jacob Sattler in Cleveland, but that Mary's details don't match our Mary. Also, there are two extra children in that family, and it's a stretch to say that our two match any of them.

In 1900, Mary appears in Ashland, listed as widowed, with her daughter (listed as "Ammie") in the household. That census asked married people when and how long they were married; Mary responded that she had been married in 1876, and was married for 24 years. The census also asked women how many children they had delivered and how many were still living (in order to gauge the nation's infant mortality rate); Mary answered "2" to both questions.

I take that to indicate that Jacob died just before the census, probably in 1899; I have yet to find any record of him after their 1871 marriage record. Mary died in 1913, and left her estate to Amy.

       A. John E. W. Sattler (1872–1907) grew up in Milton township, and found work in Akron. He was working as a fireman (or stoker) in the Akron Arcade in 1907, when he died after asphyxiating on gas from an open stove in a room he was leasing. His body was found along with that of a women he was seeing. He was only 36 years old, and single, but he was apparently involved with Mrs. Emma Boyle who planned to marry him after finalizing her divorce.

The coroner ruled their deaths to be "natural causes," or at least not due to foul play.

       B. Amy B. Sattler (1879–1967) appears under several different names in our early records. The Callin Family History refers to her as "Annie B. Sattler," and her grandmother's will names her as "Emma B." But the vast majority of the records give her name as Amy.

Amy married William Tawse Forbes (1881–1956) on 7 March 1901, and they had four children before they divorced about 1920. William was a telegraph operator for the Pennsylvania Railroad. After he retired from that job, he worked part time at the Southern Hotel as the night-desk clerk. He died on the job, and was found by another employee at the hotel on 3 January 1956.

Robert Marion Greenlun (1880–1966) was Amy's second husband. They married on 31 July 1923, and he became a step-father to Amy's younger children. Bob was state highway supervisor, and a veteran of World War I. He and Amy were charter members of the Grace Brethren Church; Amy was a member of the Women's Missionary Council of the church. He died a year before she did, and they were buried in the Ashland Cemetery together.

       1. Marabelle Forbes (1901–1995) was the eldest child of William Tawse and Amy B (Sattler) Forbes. She grew up in Ashland, and married Noah C Shull (1897–1986) on 27 December 1919. Noah had served in the National Army at the tail end of World War I, from 29 August 1918 to 10 December 1918. Noah was a steelworker, and retired as a supervisor. The couple lived in Ashland, and raised their two sons there.

       a. Lyle Richard Shull (1921–2001) served in the U.S. Army during World War II, from 21 August 1942 to 15 November 1945. He married Norma Ruth Luxon (1927–2006) in 1947, and they divorced 1969. They had three children, according to their divorce record; presumably all are still living.

Lyle later married Arden Kay Huston (1934–1994) on 17 April 1982, and they lived in Lorain county for many years.

       b. Ronald James "Jim" Shull (1924–2013) was born April 2, 1924 in Ashland, Ohio, Jim graduated from Ashland High School in 1942 where he played football, baseball and basketball. He then attended The Ohio State University where he played football for Paul Brown until joining the United States Navy serving during World War II. When he returned from the war, he played football for Ashland University until his graduation.

Jim married his first wife, Marjorie L Bordonaro (1923–2008), on 10 March 1945. They had a son and a daughter, Susan and Stephen, before they divorced in the late 1960s. Marjorie remarried in 1973; Jim remarried in 1969, and his second wife and their two sons are still living.

He was employed by the United States Government retiring after 37 years of service. He enjoyed traveling and visited all 50 states. He mostly traveled on motorcycle as he was a motorcycle enthusiast and owned several of them. He also enjoyed swimming and working out at the Ashland YMCA up until a few weeks before his death on June 20, 2013 following a short illness.

Susan J Shull, 1964
Ashland High School

     i. Susan Jane Shull (1946–2004) was the daughter of Jim and Marjorie (Bordonaro) Shull, born 3 January 1946 in Ashland, Ohio. She graduated Ashland High School in 1964.

We don't have a lot more information about Susan; we know she was divorced from James M Lindsey in 1995 after 14 years of marriage. The divorce records indicates that she was married twice before, and that the couple had no children. There is an index record of her 2004 obituary, but I have not found it, yet.

     ii. Stephen J Shull (1949–2012) was born Sept. 29, 1949, lived in Ashland most of his life. He attended Ashland College and Wright State University, where his studies included Old English literature and psychology, which later earned him a universal counselor's license. He was employed by, among others, Wayne County Children Services, Richland Hospital and The Medina County Jail (ADDS), where he provided counseling, rehabilitation and substance abuse programs for youths and inmates for many years.

Steve was said to be a unique person with a big laugh, best remembered for his storytelling, unusual trivia, poems and various quotations. He passed away at Ohio State University Medical Center on Sunday, 8 January 2012, after surgical complications. He left behind a wife and two sons.

       2. Margaret A Forbes (1903–1997) was born 20 August 1903 in Ashland, the daughter of William T. and Amy (Sattler) Forbes. She graduated Ashland High School in 1921, and after working at several businesses in Ashland, she went to Dayton in 1943 to work at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. She was a civilian employee working for the Air Force 22 years at different locations including Hickam Field, Hawaii, and Shelby Air Force Base, an Ohio facility used to store medical supplies, airplane parts, clothing, rations, and vehicle parts and supplies.

After her retirement in 1965, she traveled in this country and abroad, going to Scotland six times to follow up her family tree. She was a past member of the Ohio and Ashland Genealogical Society, and in her eighties, she volunteered at the Ashland County Historical Museum.

Margaret died at Kingston of Ashland when she was 94 years old.

       3. Robert L Forbes (1907–2008) married Eva Labelle Willis (1908–1992) on 21 January 1931 in Ashland, and he became a civil engineer. They stayed in the Ashland area until the 1950s, when they moved to Jackson, Michigan. They lived in Salem, Massachusetts for several years, as well, before they retired to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Eva died in 1992, and Robert lived to be more than 100 years old. They did not leave behind any children of their own.

       4. Scott Callin Forbes (1914–1979) attended school in Ashland and was a member of Grace Brethren Church. He enlisted in the U.S. Army on 15 October 1940. He married Dorothy Elizabeth "Dot" Mahn (1924–2007) in her hometown, Biloxi, Mississippi, on 11 November 1941. She was born June 10, 1924, in Biloxi to George Mahn & Mary Ethel (Stafford) Mahn, and was a member of Biloxi H.S. Class of 1942.

Scott served in World War II in the Medical Corps, 94th Division of Patton's Third Army in Europe. After the war they moved to Ohio, where Scott was a painter, a member of Painters Union of Cleveland and VFW Post 2434 in Cleveland. They raised their children in Cleveland, and moved back to Biloxi after Scott retired. He died there on 1 July 1979.

Dot worked at Hugo's Restaurant and Weems Shrimp Factory into her 70s. She lived with her daughter's family in Los Alamos, New Mexico for 2 years following a minor stroke. She returned to Biloxi living at Santa Maria Del Mar retirement home until Hurricane Katrina destroyed the Home. She moved to Tampa, Florida, in October 2005. She was survived by two sons, and one daughter, 6 grandchildren, and 3 great-grandchildren.

     II. John F. Callin (1850–1907) was six years old when his father, Hugh, died, and he grew up in his mother's household in Ashland county. His story was hard to sort out, as he only had a brief entry in the Callin Family History:

"Record of John Callin, who was the eldest son of Hugh Callin, 5th son of John Callin who was the 2nd son of James 1st.

Born in 1850, died 1907.
Married Ann Ohlin.
To this union one child was born:
Barbara Estella, born in ---."

As it turns out, he married Catherine Ann Steigerwalt (1847–1922) on 26 May 1879, when he was 29 years old. She was the widow of William A Ohl (1830–1879), and she and four Ohl children lived in John's household in Vermillion in 1880. (Ann's name was recorded with variously garbled spellings on a number of records; the best example would seem to be her daughter's Indiana death certificate, which gave Ann's maiden name as "Katherine Stierwalt.")

John and Ann had one daughter together. Ann's first husband, William Ohl, had moved the Ohl family to Indiana, and after his death, Ann returned to Ashland. But after living for a decade in Ohio, it would seem she prevailed upon John to move to Frankfort, in Clinton county, Indiana. They would have made this move around 1890.

Upon John's death in 1907, his body was returned to Ohio, where he was buried in the Ashland Cemetery. Ann lived with her daughters; first with the Doty family, and then later with her older daughter, Jeannette Ohl Peter. Ann died in 1922, and she was buried in the Fairhaven Cemetery in Mulberry, Indiana.

       A. Estella Barbara "Stella" Callin (1882–1960) was born in Ashland, Ohio, and moved with her parents to Indiana when she was about 8 years old. She married William Arthur Doty (1880–1967) on 23 April 1902 in Clinton county, Indiana. William was a machinist who worked for the railroads. They had two children, a son and a daughter, and when they died, they left behind five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

       1. Carolyn Annetta Doty (1903–1988) was the daughter of Stella and William Doty, born in Frankfort, Indiana. Her parents called her "Carrie" when she was little, but she preferred her middle name when she grew up. Annetta married Harold Dallas Eggers (1897–1979) around 1921. He was the son of Jesse Dallas Eggers (1868–1935) and Florence Thorpe (1867–1924). Harold, and later their son, worked for the railroads.

       a. Theone Francis "Ted" Eggers (1922–2002) was the only son of Annetta and Harold Eggers. Born in Frankfort on 11 March 1922, he graduated Frankfort High School in 1940, and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He married Betty Jane Stevenson (1922–2010) after the war; they left behind two sons.

       2. William J Doty Jr (1913–1989) was born 11 April 1913, also in Frankfort, Indiana; the son of of Stella and William Doty. He married Roxie Louise Gallaher (1917–2000) on 4 March 1936, and later enlisted in the U.S. Navy during the last year of World War II. they were survived by four daughters.


     III. Frederick Blecker Callin (1854–1920) was only two years old when his father died, and was 22 when his mother remarried. As discussed above, Barbary loaned Fred the money he needed to attend medical school, and she forgave his debt as her bequest to him when she died in 1886. He graduated Ohio Medical University, Columbus, in 1893, and established an allopathic medical practice in Akron, Ohio.

He married Harriet R "Hattie" Crippen (1859–?) in Ashland on 25 March 1883, and they had a son, Sampsell Callin (1884–1887), in May 1884. Sampsell died in January 1887, and his brother was born in October.

I always hesitate to judge people based on the records I find, but Fred seemed to get into a lot of trouble. As I've researched the various Callin families over the past two years, articles about Fred kept turning up in my other searches, painting a picture of a proud man who may have had a bit of a temper.

Two 1901 newspaper clippings, shown at the right, chronicle one dispute with an older man who sold him some oats. Another clipping from 1912 recounts a dust up between Dr. Callin and a would-be poet:

Akron, O., June 22 [1912] - It wasn't an iceberg that struck M.L. Atwater, author of the poem, "The Titanic Struck an Iceberg," but the fist of Dr. Fred B. Callin, Akron physician, according to the story the poet told the police today. Atwater asked Callin to buy a copy of the poem, and Callin asked to read it. Atwater held the paper up, but with the blank side toward Callin. Callin's blank stare turned to wrath, and he is alleged to have slapped Atwater, first on one cheek and then on the other. The doctor was arrested on the charge of assault and battery.

Dr. Callin was also sued by one patient in 1917, which was reported in the newspaper. The article seems to show that despite the incidents chronicled above, he was well known in Akron, and had many friends, which made jury selection difficult.


Fred planned to spend the winter of 1920 in Florida on his son's farm, but after he arrived in St. Augustine, Fred unexpectedly dropped dead in the street on 28 March. After his death, his body was returned to Akron, and he was buried Stow Cemetery.

     A. Moreland Guy Callin (1887–1964) married Maude Lovina Morgan (1891–1987)

       1. Blecker Morgan Callin (1916–2013) was born Sept. 21, 1916 in Shreve, Ohio. He joined the U.S. Navy after Pearl Harbor. Blecker retired from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1970 after 40 years of service. He was a resident of LaBelle, Florida, from 1991 and loved being on the water. He left behind two step-sons, and his nieces and nephew.

       2. Bruce John Callin (1930–2005) was born in St. Augustine, Florida, on 1 October 1930. He was an Army veteran of the Korean War, and moved to Haines City from Jacksonville in 1972. He was a plant manager for General Die and Mfg. Corp. and a member of both the Cypress Gardens Sertoma Club and the Central Florida Air and Power Boat Association.

Bruce died of lung cancer on 11 April 2005 in Haines City, Florida, at age 74. He was survived by his wife, son, and two daughters, two grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

     IV. Maggie L Callin (1856–1882) never knew her father. The Callin Family History put his death in 1856 and her birth in 1858, but even with a birth date in 1856, she would not have remembered Hugh. When she was 18, she and her older brother Fred appeared in the 1880 Census as step-children of William Davis. Maggie died only two years later, and was buried in Chestnut Grove Cemetery. She was 26 years, 9 months, and 2 days old.

 - -- --- -- - 

And there you have it...

Next week, I'll post an overview with some thoughts about what we've learned, and then we'll see where to go from there. Happy February!

Stout of Heart

There are some stories that get told over and over again; that's how they become legend.

You've read the beginning of this story before. You've read how James Callin may have been a Revolutionary War soldier who fought at Brandywine and Monmouth. You've read how his sons, James and John, took their families from Pennsylvania and moved to settle in Ohio.

James Callin was the seventh of John Callin's children. He was born in 1815 in Pennsylvania, just before the 1816 journey to Richland county, Ohio. He grew up on that Callin family farm, and he was twenty years old when his father died of tuberculosis in 1835.

Susanna Stout

James married Susanna Stout (1807–1899) in Richland county, Ohio, on 17 December 1839. We know very little about her for certain; the Census pegs her birth in about 1812, in Pennsylvania. She may have been from one of the German families that migrated from Pennsylvania Dutch country after the Ohio territory opened up to settlers.

James and Susanna raised their daughters and farmed in Huron county, near New London. James retired from farming in the 1860s, and he moved with his wife and daughter, Sabra, to Rochester in Lorain county, where they remained after James's death 2 November 1873. Susanna died on 5 June 1899, and was buried near her husband in the Day Cemetery.

Which brings us to the Day family of Huron county:

Moses Ransom Day was born on 8 April 1806 in Vermont; his grandfather was a Samuel Day born in Massachusetts in 1748. Moses and his brother Oliver settled in Ohio; they had other brothers who went further west to Iowa. Moses married Sarah Jane Booth (1815-1877), daughter of John Booth. Moses went to Huron County in 1837, where he lived with his cousin Ephraim Day and Upton Clark. He left his wife and young son behind in Underhill, Vermont, until he moved to New London, Huron county, around 1853. Once he settled there, Sarah and  Elliot Glyde Day, now 19 years old, to Ohio.

 If you recall the story we told in the post The Distance of Close Connections, you might remember that the Callin Family History told us this about the son of James Callin's younger sister, Margaret:

"William Callin [born 1845] was left an orphan in childhood about the age of 3. Was adopted by and raised by a family named Day near New London, O."

At this writing, I have not been able to identify which Day family adopted him; I have not located him in the 1850 Census at all. But I did find a "William Collin, age 15" in the 1860 Census; he appears in the household of Ambrose Ames - as does a Lucretia Day, age 29, who is listed as a servant. She is most likely the daughter of Josiah Day, another of Moses Ransom Day's cousins. Lucretia appears in the 1850 Census in Josiah's household, but William does not.

It's still something of a mystery, but I think the 1860 record is enough to confirm what the original CFH had to say on the matter.

     I. Mary Ann Callin (1838–1900) married Elliot Glyde Day (1834–1907) on 3 May 1860 in Huron county. Glyde farmed and traded in horses; the Norwalk Daily Reflector referred to him as "a noted horseman and real estate owner." He was described as a thrifty farmer and was liked and respected by his neighbors.

After the arrival of their first child in 1862, the couple did not have another until 1876, when they had a son Clarence C Day (1876–1877), who died in infancy. Just three years after Clarence's death, they had Thor in 1880. Glyde's obituary claimed they had four children altogether, but I have not found any records of a fourth.

The turn of the century was not kind to this family. Mary Ann's mother died in 1899. Her sister, Sabra, came to live with her and Glyde, but Mary Ann was found dead in her bed on the morning of 20 November 1900; and a year later, in December 1902, Sabra died. Mary Ann and Glyde's son, Thor, died in 1904.  Then, in 1907, Glyde suffered a stroke, and died after lingering for three days without waking.  They were all buried in the Day Cemetery.

       A. Estella Lillian Day (1862–1912) also suffered from poor health, though it is not clear whether that was true from childhood, or if she became ill or suffered an accident later. Her father's obituaries in 1907 described her as "an invalid daughter," and as being "frail in health."

Lillian was married to the same man, twice. She first married William Benson King (1857-1940) on 17 December 1885; they divorced at some point before 1900, when she was listed in her parents' home as "widowed." They remarried in 1911, just before Lillian's death. They did not have any children.

Thor Day (1880-1904)

       B. Thor Glyde Day (1880–1904) has one of my favorite names in the whole family history. He might be what we would today call a "miracle baby," as is parents had been married for twenty years when he came along. I assume his father must have been grooming him to follow in his field as a horseman (all puns intended).

Thor married Donna Belle Carl (1880–1947) on 12 November 1901 — barely a year after his mother's death. Donna was the daughter of Arthur Winfield Carl (1846–1930) and Delilah M. "Lila" Morris (1848–1903), and she grew up in New London, where her family and the Day families would have been well acquainted. They had a daughter the following year, after the usual waiting period. Sadly, as mentioned above, Thor died unexpectedly in 1904.

Donna raised her daughter on her own for several years, but eventually remarried in 1913. Her new husband was the recently widowed William Benson King (1857–1940), Thor's brother-in-law. They had a son, Richard M King (1915–1990), and lived out their days in New London.

       1. Marian Estelle Day (1902–1953) was the only child of Thor and Donna Day; and the only grandchild of Glyde and Mary Ann Day. She married Leonard Harold Fletcher (1902–1950) on 2 September 1922. He was an insurance agent, and they lived in Cleveland, where they raised two daughters and a son.

       a. Suzanne A Fletcher (1924–1959)  was born in 1924 in Ohio. She was a 1941 graduate of Lakewood High School and received her B.A. degree from Kent State University in 1948. When she was an art student at Cleveland Institute of Art, won the annual Gund Scholarship in 1944. She was a portrait painter and frequent contributor to the May Show in Cleveland.

Suzanne married Glenn H. Andrews (1922-1995), a US Navy veteran and an English teacher at Madison High School, Madison, Ohio. He served in the Navy during World War II, from 22 June 1943 to 25 May 1946; they were married in 1949, after she graduated from Kent State. They lived at 1194 Hall Avenue, Lakewood, Ohio until 1957. Glenn was born 19 December 1922 in Painesville, Ohio, and died March 4, 1995 in a Cleveland nursing home at age 72.

Suzanne died 20 May 1959 of cancer in Memorial Hospital of Geneva, Ohio, at age 35. Her funeral was 22 May 1959 in the Kennedy Funeral Home, Geneva. They left behind four children, all still living.

       b. Marian Estelle "Stella" Fletcher (1926–2000) lived her early years in the Cleveland area, moving to Toledo after her marriage to Robert Armand Lareau (1919-1988). She was a violinist, playing for the Toledo Symphony in her younger years. He was a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps who served from 26 September 1938 to 19 February 1946.

Bob was President & General Manager of White Products Corporation in Middleville, Michigan, then succeeded to the Presidency of Air-Way Industries of Toledo, Ohio, the parent company. After that firm closed, he became affiliated with Tassie & Bock, a Toledo CPA firm. After some time in Toledo, the family moved to Apopka, Florida. In 1982, he and his son founded Lareau & Associates Accounting & Tax Service in Apopka.

Stella was a devout Catholic, a loving mother and a lover of music. She and Robert left behind two sons, a daughter, 7 surviving grandchildren, two grandsons deceased, and 5 great-grandchildren with one on the way.

George Elliott Dean (1978-1984) was a grandson of Stella and Robert Lareau. He was diagnosed with an incurable cancer in 1982, and died in April 1984, just three months after the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Northwest Ohio arranged for a week-long visit for him and his family to Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

       c. Leonard Howard Fletcher (1929–1995) married his Lakewood High School sweetheart at age 19, and they lived in Lakewood, which is in the Cleveland area, where Leonard worked for his father's insurance company.

Sabra A. Callin (1841-1902)

     II. Sabra Ann Callin (1841–1902) was born in November 1841 in Huron county. She shared her name with her 1st cousin - the Sabra Ann Callin born to George Callin and Polly Lewis in 1837. Her cousin Sabra died in Monroeville in 1849, sadly (see A Tragic Beauty).

Our Sabra lived to adulthood, but she was blind as a child; it isn't clear whether she was born blind or suffered from one of the ubiquitous diseases that often struck small children on the frontier. In 1870 we see that she is a pupil at the Ohio Institute for the Blind  where she learned to read braille, bead baskets and to sew. It does not seem that she was institutionalized, as she also appeared in Rochester, Lorain county, with her mother and father on that year's census.

There is also an 1880 "Schedules of Defective, Dependent, and Delinquent Classes" which lists Sabra as the sole Blind resident of Rochester. Unfortunately, the only information included about her there is her name, which seems to defeat the stated purpose of the Schedule, to "furnish material not only for the complete enumeration of the blind, but for an account of their condition." Just the name of that list seems bizarre and unnecessarily cruel to modern sensibilities; but at least they seem to have been trying to take care of their most vulnerable members.

Sabra stayed with her mother until Susannah's death in 1899, and in 1900, she lived with her sister and her family in New London. She died 1 December 1902 and was buried in the Day Cemetery near her parents.

- -- --- -- -

We are almost done, everyone!

Next week we will take a look at the last family descended from James Callin! But don't think that means I'm totally done, here. The next phase of this project will be editing these posts into a proper Family History - a task that I suspect will be very time consuming. And along the way, I am firmly convinced there will be more discoveries.

Ancestry is constantly adding new databases to their service - like their recent addition of some major Marriage certificates databases; and their incredible U.S. Social Security Applications database came online during the making of this blog, which means a lot of the early posts will probably have some previously un-seen clues.

I've also been getting better at using Newspapers.com, which I did not have when I started this project. If I find anything interesting, I will definitely post it here.

Meanwhile, I have some other ideas for the next project - so don't expect this blog to go idle. Focusing on the Callin Family as I have since 2015 means I've got a backlog of the other 15 great-great-grandparents hints and records to look at.

As always, if you belong to the family in today's post, please get in touch. You have the comments section below, you have my "callintad" address on Gmail, and you have the Callin Family History Facebook group. I hope you'll send me your praise and corrections.

A Doctor and a Saddler

Of the three youngest children of William H. Callin, only one survived to leave a family of his own behind. The eldest of them, Hugh, was born in 1848, and died too young; Zimri was born in 1850; and the baby of the family, Milton, was born and died in 1852 at 5 months.

Hugh H. Callin, born on 16 May 1848, was the last of the Callin children born on the farm in Ashland. The following year, William moved the family to Peru, Huron county, and cleared a new farm there. Hugh would have been 13 years old in 1861, and watched his older brothers - first James and John, then George - enlist to fight for the Union.

Hugh took to school, as his brothers did, and taught in Bowling Green while studying medicine. He finally took his degree from the Cincinnati Surgical and Medical College in 1878, and he must have felt that this was the real beginning of his life.

He married Sarah A. Leonard (1849-1900) on 20 April 1879, and began his practice - only to take sick and die on 12 September 1880. As you can see from his obituary:

Dr. H. H. Callin, of Portage, who has been, for several weeks prostrated, breathed his last, Sunday about noon.  There has been a slight difference of opinion among the doctors as to his ailment, but after a post mortem examination, on Monday, by Drs. Tuller and Lincoln, of this place, they pronounced his ailment sick stomach, as they had done at the beginning of his sickness.  Deceased was a man about 32 years of age, a graduate of the Cincinnati Surgical and Medical College, who had established quite a large practice already, and gave promise of a life of usefulness, both in his profession and as a citizen.  The body of deceased was brought to the cemetery in this place for burial Tuesday forenoon.

Wood County Sentinel; 1880, Sept. 16, page 3

In his Callin Family History, Hugh's older brother George wrote:

By profession he followed teaching school several years and studying medicine.

Finally graduating at the Cincinnati Medical College in 1878. He had a large practice in and around Jerry City and Portage, Ohio, where he contracted Milk Sickness or Sick Stomach which resulted in his death. He lived a beautiful life, was just to all men, and liked by all who knew him.

Hugh's widow, Sarah, married Oziah Culver on 6 September 1888 in Wood County. They had no children, and she died twenty years after Hugh, on 17 November 1900.

Zimri G. Callin was born in December of 1850, and when he was two years old, his little brother, Milton, died at only 5 months of age. This tragedy at the beginning of his life seemed to follow Zimri in a way that his brothers did not seem to feel in the same way.

Young Zimri had a lot to live up to. His father was the quintessential frontiersman - a big, strong man who had cleared land for at least three farms by the time Zimri came along. When Zimri was nine, his sister married into the Sly family, and started bringing little Sly cousins into his world - and when he was 11, the Confederacy turned the always-divisive slavery issue from a political battlefield into the more literal kind.

His older brothers each went off to join the Union - first James, then John, and George a year later. At least Hugh, who was only 17 when the war ended, was also too young to go; but when they returned from war, John and George as teachers and James a wounded veteran, Hugh went off to school and started on his path to become a doctor. That's a lot for a kid brother to live up to.

When it came time to seek his fortune, Zimri began working as a saddler in a blacksmith shop. He worked hard and did well for himself. In 1874 he married Ella Franklin (1855–1875), and they set out to begin a family of their own. Sadly, Ella died the day of the birth of their son, Edward Milton, on 10 July 1875. The newspaper attributed her death to a "brain fever brought on by childbirth."

Zimri must have been heartbroken, and if he chose that middle name for his son - the name of his own, long dead baby brother - it could be a sign that his sadness ran deeper than our evidence can show. But after his month of mourning, Zimri re-established his business on Wooster Street, and set about raising his son.

Zimri's second marriage was to Minnie E. Parker (1864–1939) in 1881. Eddie was about seven years old - and his new step-mother was only about ten years older than he was. Minnie Parker was young, and had what would be described as a delightful personality; it's a safe guess that she brought much needed sunshine into Zimri and Eddie's lives. That year or so was a hard one, considering that Zimri's brother Hugh died in October at only 32 years of age, and his father, William, died that December.

Zimri and Minnie had four children; three daughters separated by two years each, and then a little son in 1892. Zimri died in 1907, just five years after the death of his beloved oldest son. Minnie carried on, raising the remaining children, and eventually moved to Toledo, where she went to work as a matron in a juvenile home. She tended her charges for 20 years, and died in 1939. She was buried with Zimri in Oak Grove Cemetery, Bowling Green.

     I. Edward Milton Callin (1875–1902) grew up and served in the Spanish-American War. I wrote a more detailed biography of Eddie in Remembering the Maine; though at the time he was the only member of the family I had found who had served in that war, it turns out his cousin, Clement Carl Callin, George Callin's son, also served.

Eddie had a very public breakdown after returning from the war, and died after being arrested for disturbing the peace. (I don't mean to imply that there is reason to believe that he died in jail, just that the events happened in that order.) The articles in the newspaper from the time imply some substance abuse and a form of Post-Traumatic Stress that seems sadly familiar, now.

     II. Della B. Callin (1882–1950) was thirty years old when she married Arthur Garfield Shroyer (1880–1947) on 13 July 1912. He worked in a grain elevator, and later as a janitor in the public schools, but mainly worked as a carpenter. They lived in Portage township, and raised their only son there.

       A. Arthur B Shroyer (1918–1989) married Ruth Anna Wilson (1917–2000) on 24 October 1942. Arthur's records don't tell us much about him, but he was listed as a factory worker in 1940; Ruth worked as a secretary for Miller Dairy and Cain's Potato Chips, both of Bowling Green, retiring in 1967. Arthur died September 26, 1989, and Ruth survived him by 21 years. She also was a member of the Grace United Methodist Church, Perrysburg. They did not have any children.

Nellie May,
dau of Z.G. and M.E. Callin

     III. Nellie May Callin (1884–1887) was born in Henry county, Ohio, on 1 January 1884, and died 1887. She is buried in Knipp Cemetery, in Henry county.

     IV. Naoma B. "Oma" Callin (1886–1951) married Clyde O Meeks (1886–1952) in November 1906. They had a son, Harold V. Meeks, who died in infancy about 1908. They farmed near Toledo.

     V. Harry Valus Callin (1892–1959) married Pearl G. Kosman (1892–1967) on 28 October 1916. He worked as a brick layer, and except for a brief time around 1920 when they lived in Detroit, he and Pearl remained in Sandusky. They had two sons who died in infancy - Charles Valus in 1924, and Valus H. in 1925 - but their third son survived and grew to adulthood.

       A. Norman Robert Callin (1926–1983) was born 14 September 1926 in Sandusky, Ohio. He served in the U.S. Army from January 1945 through November 1946. He married Catharine L. "Katie" Hoffman (1923–2014) they have two sons, still living.

Katie was born Feb. 15, 1923, in Sandusky, daughter of the late Jacob and Catherine(McNamara) Hoffman. Katie graduated from Sandusky High School in 1941 and worked for Philco, Ohio Bell, and Sandusky Memorial Hospital, where she served as switchboard operator until retirement.

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This post was a difficult one to write, in part because a lot of sad things happened to the people in this branch of the family, and partly because they were quiet people and did not leave many records. Hugh's promise made his loss something to write about; Eddie's demise was both scandalous and uncomfortable; and while it seems like I had to write about a lot of infants dying in today's record, the reality is that this was rather normal for the time.

But remember that between the recorded moments with documents, there were - and are! - bright spots. When we deal mainly in birth/marriage/death records, those times in between are when people are living "happily ever after." Zimri's children all grew up during an exciting period of American history, when scientific and economic advancements seemed to promise an exciting new world of convenience and plenty - our world, for all its faults.

And while today's family seems to have been stopped short, it's worth remembering that Harry Valus's two grandsons are still with us - and their children and grandchildren are still writing their own stories.

If you're related to these, or any other descendants of James Callin, I hope you'll reach out and let me know you're there. I'd love to hear your stories. I'd especially love it if you would let me know about the inevitable mistakes I've made in putting these posts together. You can comment below, email my Gmail address, callintad at gmail.com, or drop by the Callin Family History Facebook group. It's a private group for relatives only, so please be ready to tell me where you are in the family tree.

That's it for the family of William H. Callin; next week, we move on to his next youngest sibling. Do you know who that is? You will!

The Callin Family Historian

George William Callin was born on the Fourth of July in 1846, on his father's farm near Ashland, Ohio. In 1861 he moved to a farm near Bowling Green on the Sand Ridge road. George served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and then returned home and taught school for 27 years. He was justice of the peace in Bowling Green for the 24 years prior to his death. And he was the family historian who published the Callin Family History.

On 11 December 1862 he enlisted in the 21st Ohio Battery of the O. V. I. at Cleveland, and served until the end of the war. The unit organized at Camp Dennison, Ohio, on 29 April 1863, and was ordered to West Virginia on 5 May. They returned to Camp Dennison on 20 May and stood duty there till September. This was no easy duty, as the unit pursued an invading Confederate army during what is known as Morgan's Raid through Indiana and Ohio July 5-28.

After that, on 22 September, they moved to Camp Nelson, Kentucky, where the 21st was attached to Willcox's Left Wing forces, 9th Army Corps, and moved to Greenville, Tennessee, where they saw action in the Battle of Blue Springs on October 10, and in a skirmish at Walker's Ford on December 2. They did duty at various points in Tennessee and Alabama until they mustered out 21 July 1865. The battery only lost 9 men during its service: 1 officer and 8 enlisted men by disease.

The George W. Callin family
c. 1890
(standing: Roy (left) and Clement;
seated: George, Mabel (center) and Mary Ann)

George married Mary Ann St. John (1850–1894) on 22 April 1871 in Bowling Green. By all accounts, they adored each other, and raised three children together. Sadly, she died as "the result of a serious intestinal derangement" in 1894 at only 43 years of age.

Mary Ann's parents were Stephen W St. John (1817–1893) and Harriet Jane Husted (1833–1899) of Bowling Green. When George's older brother, James, lost his wife, Rosalina Davenport Callin, in 1876, the St. John family took in the infant Jessie Callin and raised her as their own. Jessie was married to Albert Chudley only a few months before Stephen's death in 1893. (Refresh your memory of Jessie in last month's post, Leaving Only Traces.)

George took a second wife, marrying Lura M. Case (1861–1948) on 27 June 1899. Lura was the widow of Rev. Lemuel Lee Warner (1863–1888); they had both contracted typhoid fever in 1888, but only Lura recovered. Lura's son and daughter were just a few years younger than George's youngest, Mabel. George and Lura had another daughter together, Rosemary, born in 1903.

It isn't clear when George took up genealogy, but it is clear that he devoted many years to compiling his family history. In 1911, he had it published, and the resulting book has been passed down in some form or another to many of the descendants of James Callin.

George died at his home, 331 Pearl street, at 12:30 a. m. on 21 July 1921, after an illness of about two months. Death was "due to complication of diseases superinduced by old age." He was 75 years old.

     I. Everett Leroy Callin (1872–1957) married Myrtle A. Rumley (b. 1878) on 16 March 1898. They would raise a son and a daughter together over the next quarter century. Roy was a carpenter, and moved the family around quite a bit. After moving between Lorain and Toledo (which are about 90 miles apart, along the shore of Lake Erie), they were in Gary, Indiana, for a while around 1910 and 1911; then from about 1913, the family resided in Detroit, Michigan.

Roy and Myrtle divorced about 1925, and Myrtle supported herself as a seamstress in Toledo for a few years before marrying Edward M. West (b. 1881) in 1928. That marriage did not last long, and by 1930 she had taken lodging in the house of Edith Hanley - another divorcee, whose maiden name happened to be Edith Callin. (Her family was featured in The Distance of Close Connections.) The last I have been able to learn about Myrtle, she married James Mcnally (b. 1872) in 1933 and settled in his home in Perrysburg, Wood county, which is where they were in 1940.

Roy seemed to prefer to stay in Detroit after his divorce. He remained there until his death in 1957.

       A. Lionel Everett "Lee" Callin (1900–1962) was working as a chauffeur in 1917, according to his World War I draft registration. He lived in Detroit, and married Dorothy Adler (b.1901) there in 1919. They were together for 11 years, and divorced in 1930. Records indicate they had no children. According to his obituary, he was visiting a cousin, Warren Hasmer, in Florida, when he died of a sudden heart attack. He was buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Bowling Green.

       B. Katharyn Loraine Callin (1904–1950) was born 16 June 1904 in Perrysburg, Wood county, Ohio. She spent at least part of her childhood in Gary, Indiana, but after she married Cloyd J Markwood (1902–1973) in Toledo on 26 June 1926, she remained there for the rest of her life. Cloyd was born in Jackson Township, Ohio, and worked as a maintenance man for the Shell Oil Co. for 10 years until his retirement. After Lorraine died, he married again in 1953; he and his second wife, Letha L (Dubbs) Masters (1913–1972) moved to Phoenix in 1956.

Lorraine and Cloyd had two sons, one of whom is still living.

       1. Robert Kenneth Markwood (1933–1992) was born in Toledo on 24 February 1933, and served in the U.S. Army from 2 February 1954 to 17 January 1956. He lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, and died there in 1992. He was buried in the National Memorial Cemetery Of Arizona in 2001.

     II. Clement Carl Callin (1877–1944) was a veteran of the Spanish-American War, and graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1901, where he received the B.S. and A.B. degrees. While an undergraduate he excelled in football and was a member of the varsity. This is also where he likely met Gertrude DeWees Smith (1879–1955), whom he married on 15 February 1905.

He did graduate work at Temple University, where he re-received his master's degree, and also held a degree of B.C.S. at Rider College. He completed further studies at Teachers' College of the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University.

He taught, and served as principal of Morrisville schools in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, for many years, and from 1930, he served as head of the junior accounting department of Rider College, Trenton, New Jersey.

     III. Mabel Augusta Callin (1881–1970) was born 15 July 1881 in Bowling Green, and grew up to follow the family profession; namely, she became a teacher in the public schools. She attended Ohio Wesleyan University and Bowling Green State University. She moved to Lorain from Bowling Green about 1920, and after she retired, she returned to Bowling Green, where she died in 1970.

     IV. Rosemary Callin (1903–1978) was the baby of the family, born 15 January 1903. She was the author of the letter I published in the post Silk or Satin, in which she recalls what she knew about her grandmother, Elizabeth Berlein Callin; though it is questionable how much she would remember firsthand, as grandma Elizabeth died when Rosemary was 11 months old.

Still, Rosemary grew up surrounded by a family full of teachers, surrounded by pioneer family, Civil War veterans, and scholars. It seems inevitable that she would also go into teaching. After her father died, she moved with her mother to a new home in Richfield, Henry county, and eventually they settled in Lakeside, Ottawa county, on the shores of Lake Erie, east of Toledo.

The ladies entertained and stayed active in the community, hosting Thanksgiving dinners for the "lonely" townspeople during the tourist-free winter season. After Lura's death, Rosemary remained in Port Clinton until her death at 75 years of age - the same age her father reached.

She was the last surviving Callin from this branch of the family.

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I've said before that the Callin Family History is the book that inspired me to begin doing family history research and to start this blog. As difficult as it has been to re-trace the information that George provided, even with modern tools and access to millions of digitized online records and newspapers, I find it impressive that he was able to leave us such a reliable record of his scattered, extended family.

As a family history researcher, finding a family like this one is both inspiring and sad; inspiring to find a family so full of accomplished and professional people, but also sad because in the end, there are so few remaining descendants. Bob Markwood and his brother may have had large families for all I know, or that brother could be the last living member of this branch of the family.

But the important thing to recognize is that people make choices. Clement and Mabel chose to be teachers, and if they chose not to have children, that shouldn't diminish our appreciation of their lives. I only wish that the records our childless relatives left behind were as thorough and glowing as Clement's obituary, so I could adequately celebrate them for who they were. Nothing is as sad to me as not knowing enough about who someone is to be able to write more than their birth and death dates.

If you want to help celebrate these families, and you see any mistakes or omissions I should fix, please let me know! This is all part of the plan to give the original Callin Family History a 100-year overhaul, so I want to get it right.

Drop a comment in the box below, email me at callintad at gmail.com, or follow the link to our Callin Family History Facebook group and let me know how you're related to this family. There's a digital (PDF) version of the original Callin Family History available in that group, too, if you want it.