Genealogy Jottings

Archive for the ‘Sherman’ Category

My Sherman family lived in Indiana during the 1860’s, mostly in Johnson County. I have a little information about them at that time but not enough. Big events occurred in the family during that decade, events for which I have no proof or documentation:

1. My ancestor Thomas Sherman (1841-1912) is said to have married a German girl named Katherine sometime during the Civil War. They had a daughter, Anna Petronellia, born 1 April 1865 near Indianapolis. The wife died shortly thereafter. I have found no proof of this marriage in Indiana civil or church records. I have found no grave for Katherine. Her reported maiden name, Stillenbaugh, does not appear in the modern-day German phone book, so I suspect this name has been corrupted by the family through the years.
2. Thomas and several family members had relocated to Indiana from Kentucky in the early 1860’s. His father Daniel sold land in Madison County, Kentucky in 1863. Daniel disappeared from the record after that. I have not found a grave or any other information about him in Indiana or elsewhere after the land sale. His wife Rebecca was a widow by 1870.
3. Some of Thomas’ descendants claim he served the Union during the Civil War, enlisting at Louisville, KY. I have not found a service record for him from Kentucky or Indiana.

Over the years I have searched every Indiana record I can find in an effort to learn about Thomas’ first marriage and his Civil War service. I have looked for information on the death of Daniel Sherman which must have occurred during the same time period. Nothing.

I have heavily researched most of the children in the family in an effort to shed light on the lives of Thomas and Daniel. I have a couple of people to go—sisters, Polly, Emily, and Elizabeth. As we all know, searching women’s lives presents quite a challenge. Yet this is the only avenue I have left in my effort to uncover information in the Sherman men in my direct line during the 1860’s.

As I have worked on my Sherman line, I have spent a lot of time chasing down my ancestor Thomas Sherman’s elder brother, Anderson (1832-1910). Because of difficulty in researching such a common surname as Sherman, which the brothers shared with a couple of famous Civil War general officers including one named Thomas, searching for an unusual name combination like “Anderson Sherman” has proven easier than searching for my own Thomas. An added distinguishing bonus is the brothers’ blacksmith profession. Uncovering Anderson’s life has helped me shed light on Thomas’ life.

Yet Anderson has presented me with a conundrum. How did he free himself to marry a second wife?

I have prepared a short timeline of his life to help me sort this out:

1. 1832—Anderson Sherman born in Bath County, KY.
2. 1854—Anderson Sherman marries Sarah Jane Prewitt (1838-1907) in Madison County, KY.
3. 1858—Anderson Sherman resides in Johnson County, IN.
4. 1860—Anderson Sherman resides in Brown County, IN.
5. 1863—Anderson and Thomas Sherman register together for the Civil War draft in Johnson County, IN.
6. 1870—Anderson Sherman works as a blacksmith in Johnson County, IN.
7. 1874—Anderson Sherman works as a blacksmith in Johnson County, IN.
8. 1876—Anderson and Sarah Jane’s last child, Minnie, is born in Johnson County, IN.
9. 1880—Sarah Jane Sherman, widow, lives in Johnson County, IN. Anderson Sherman, widowed, lives in Edgar County, IL. Huh?
10. 1882—Anderson Sherman marries his brother Jasper’s widow, Armecia, in Edgar County, IL.
11. 1884—Anderson Sherman of Edgar County, IL applies for a Civil War pension based on his service as a blacksmith.
12. 1889—Twins Maud and Claud Sherman born to Anderson and Armecia Sherman in IL.
13. 1900—Anderson Sherman works as a blacksmith in Saline County, MO.
14. 1910—Anderson Sherman, local blacksmith, dies at Saline County, MO and is buried at Antioch Cemetery in Liberty Township.
15. 1912—Thomas Sherman’s obituary lists Anderson Sherman of Missouri as a survivor.

Again I ask, how did Anderson and Sarah Jane’s marriage end? He left Indiana sometime between the birth of their youngest child in 1876 and his enumeration on the Illinois census in 1880. His wife held herself out as a widow that year.

At least one person has taken her at her word and built a FindAGrave memorial for Anderson in the Nineveh, IN cemetery showing an 1880 death date. The cemetery has no record of this interment. I suggest that is because he did not die that year, nor was he ever buried there. Sometime before 1880, he left Indiana for Illinois and ultimately Missouri, where he died in 1910.

I thought perhaps Anderson and Sarah Jane actually divorced and simply claimed widowhood to avoid social stigma. Unfortunately, the Johnson County, IN courthouse has no record of such a divorce. So did Anderson simply desert his wife and eight children in Indiana to start a new life in Illinois between 1876 and 1880? I can find no other explanation.

Anderson is not my direct ancestor, so I will not pursue this question any further for the time being. But if any of his descendants (he had eleven children) have an explanation, I would like to hear it.

I happened upon a treasure the other day. While contemplating the next step in my Sherman family research, for some reason I looked into a desk drawer that I had not opened in a while. There I found a folder marked “Sherman.” I had forgotten all about it.

It contained several Sherman-related documents I have collected over the years. I had tossed them in the folder awaiting a time when I could focus on the Shermans. Surprisingly, some of the papers were documents I had just been considering seeking as a next step in my research. What a find! (not to mention the opportunity to clean out something from the desk drawer).

First I turned my attention to a Civil War Widow’s pension file. It pertains to my ancestor Thomas Sherman’s brother-in-law, John Alvey. I learned the following from this file:

1. Private John Alvey’s widow Evaline (Thomas’ older sister) filed for a pension in 1867, and she began receiving $8 per month. The pension continued until her death in 1922—a period of 55 years.
2. The discrepancy on the 1851 Alvey marriage record between her name Evaline Sherman and the recorded name Emeline Shearer was explained as an Estill County, KY scrivener’s error.
3. Pvt. John Alvey enlisted as a Union volunteer in August, 1862 at Hendersonville, KY. He served in the 8^th Kentucky cavalry.
4. Pvt. John Alvey died of diphtheria in January 1863 in a hospital at Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
5. When Evaline filed for the pension, both she and two sisters who served as witnesses (Elizabeth Sherman Glover and Gilla Sherman Cobb) had moved from Kentucky to Williamsburgh, Indiana.
6. Evaline and John Alvey’s only child, Roena, was born December 25, 1852.

Finding this Sherman folder just when I needed it becomes another example of that genealogy serendipity I experience every so often. Other genealogists talk about it, too. It is almost as if our ancestors want to be found, and they nudge us in the right direction. I cannot wait to see what else I find in this long-forgotten folder.

For more than half the year as I have searched for information on my ancestor Thomas Sherman (1841-1912), I have focused on people with a Sherman surname, namely Thomas and his brothers Anderson, John, and Jasper. I feel that I have about exhausted the research I can do on them from home.

Now I will turn to the Sherman sisters, Polly, Evaline, Emily, Eliza, Gilla, and an unknown sister. As genealogists know, finding information on women presents a more difficult case. So far, I have this evidence for them:

1. Polly A. Sherman. She appears as a tick mark in her father’s household on the U.S. census for Morgan County, KY in 1830. She still lived in his household Estill County, KY in 1850, where she is named with an estimated birth year of 1828. She did not live with her father in 1860 or with her mother in 1870.
2. Unknown daughter. This girl also appeared as tick mark on the 1830 census. The 1840 census for the Daniel Sherman household has not been found, and by 1850 this daughter was not in the household.
3. Evaline Sherman. She was born 5 Aug 1834 in Kentucky, and she married John Alvey in Estill County, KY in 1851. They had a daughter Roena before John was killed in the Civil War. Evaline migrated to Illinois where she worked as a dressmaker in Coles and Edgar Counties. She died in Paris, Illinois on 9 September 1922 and is buried in the Mound Cemetery in Charleston, Illinois.
4. Emily E. Sherman. Her first appearance in the record was the 1850 U.S. census listed above with an estimated birth year of 1836. She did not live in her father’s household in 1860.
5. Eliza A. Sherman. Like Emily, her name first appears on the 1850 U.S. census. She was born approximately 1838.
6. Gilla Ann. Her name appears variously in the records as Gilla Ann, Gilly Ann, and Gillian. This sister was born 26 March 1843 and married John Cobb in Johnson County, Indiana on 4 August 1864. They had five children (Albert, William, Amanda, John, and Walter). They ultimately settled in Barton County, MO. Gilla died 16 March 1923 and is buried in the Lake Cemetery in Barton County.

The Kentucky records present a couple of interesting questions for these girls:

1. Who was the Elizabeth Sherman who married John H. Glover in Madison County, KY in 1853? Was she Emily E. or Eliza (who would have turned 15 that year) or the unknown sister? The marriage bond was signed by the father Daniel Sherman and witnessed by the brother Anderson and the sister Pollyann. The 1880 census record for the John H. Glover household in East Nelson, Moultrie County, IL gives Elizabeth’s birth year as approximately 1836, the same as for Emily E. Sherman.
2. Who was the Louisa Jane/ Luezah Jane Sherman who married Stephen Dyke in Madison County, KY in 1856? Again, the marriage bond was signed by Daniel Sherman. Was this the same couple that appears in 1870 in Johnson County, Indiana (near the Anderson Sherman household) with a wife named Eliza Jane born about 1839?

I have more documentation for Evaline and Gilla Sherman than I have for the other sisters. This is because they are named as survivors of Thomas Sherman in his 1912 obituary. Given their places of residence that year, it was not too difficult to find additional records on them.

After the nineteenth century, I have no information on the other sisters. I plan to begin hunting for the remaining Sherman sisters by following the paths of the Glovers and the Dykes to see where this leads me.

This week I spent my research time looking at land records for Illinois. My ancestor Thomas Sherman lived there from about 1870, and many of these records are online at Family Search (https://familysearch.org). I hoped to find some mention of his second wife, Mary. Unfortunately, I found no record of land ownership for him in the records I could search from home.

Thomas worked as an itinerant blacksmith for most of his life. After the Civil War, he lived in the following places:

• 1870 – Baldwinsville, Hunter Township, Edgar County, Illinois
• 1872 – Logan, Brouiletts Creek Township, Edgar County, Illinois
• 1880 – Edgar Township, Illinois
• 1881 – East Nelson Township, Moultrie County, Illinois
• 1884 – Mattoon, Coles County, Illinois
• 1887 – Nelson, Coles County, Illinois
• 1889 – Johnstown, Cumberland County, Illinois
• 1891 – Janesville, Cumberland County, Illinois
• 1900 – Morgan Township, Coles County, Illinois

According to the U.S census, Thomas owned no real estate in 1870, but by 1900 he owned a home. From the land records available to me for the intervening years, I can conclude that normally he did not own land. I can still look at a few of the records not yet available online, but I do not expect to find anything.

Thomas probably was a man who followed the work, owning just his personal property and blacksmith tools. His family led a nomadic life. The rich information sometimes found in our ancestors’ land records is not available for Thomas Sherman.

What is it with my family? They seem to have had an aversion to getting their vital statistics recorded.

Take my second great-grandparents’ generation, the Shermans. I can look in vain for their death information. Some examples:

1. Thomas Sherman (1841-1912). His obituary says he died at Charleston, Coles County, Illinois. The county kept a death register at the time of his death, but is his name on it? No. Nor is his name on the cemetery listing for Mound Cemetery where he reportedly was buried.
2. John Sherman (1845-?)l He was Thomas’ brother, and he was still living at the age of 85 in 1930 in Madison County, Illinois. Yet his name does not appear on the Illinois list of deaths for the period 1916-1947. Is his name just missing, or did he live to be older than 102?
3. Jasper Sherman (1849-1878). Another of Thomas’ brothers, he died in Edgar County, and he was buried in Swango Cemetery. Unfortunately, his name does not appear on the Edgar County death register.
4. Mary Scott Sherman (ca. 1845-?) Thomas’ second wife who disappears from the record after 1880 when the couple lived in Edgar County. Thomas remarried in 1881, so I hypothesize that Mary died 1880-1881.

Why are all these people missing from the Illinois death registers? I can understand one, or maybe two going unreported. But everyone? This seems to be a familial pattern of noncompliance.

To get my family tree filled in, I need to turn to some other records. Land records come to mind, but these folks were blacksmiths without a lot of money. They did not purchase much land, and they often left no wills.

I find this line very difficult line to document, a good mental challenge. The vital records can offer a nice place to start, but they do not provide a lot of answers for this family.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have spent time on the Find A Grave site (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gs&) to document burials and family links for my Sherman family. I looked for my ancestor Daniel Sherman, his wife Rebecca Howe Day, and their children, including my great-great grandfather, Thomas Sherman. Things did not go smoothly. So far, my results look like this:

1. Daniel Sherman, about 1800- ? I do not know when or where he died, and no likely candidate comes up in a Find A Grave search.
2. Rebecca Howe Day, 1808-1876. She was buried in the Swango Cemetery, Symmes Township, Edgar County, Illinois. I have requested a photo of her cemetery marker.
3. Polly Sherman, about 1828 – ? I know only that she was born in Kentucky, not enough information to do a Find A Grave search.
4. Anderson Sherman, 1852-1910. Oddly, he has two burial monuments on Find A Grave. I believe he was buried in the Antioch Baptist Cemetery in Saline County, MO in 1910. I contributed a photo of that cemetery marker to Find A Grave. Someone, however, created a monument for him in the Nineveh Cemetery in Johnson County, Indiana alleging a burial thirty years earlier in 1880. This week a Find A Grave volunteer could not find a record or marker for Anderson at that place. The person who created the Indiana monument has been asked to either provide some evidence for his burial there or take down the Find A Grave memorial.
5. Evaline Sherman Alvey, 1834-1922. Her obituary states she was buried in the Mound Cemetery, Coles County, Illinois. The cemetery has a record of her burial but there is no marker on the plot.
6. Emily Sherman, about 1836 – ? and Eliza Sherman, about 1838 – ? I do not have enough information about these girls to do a Find A Grave search.
7. Thomas Sherman, 1841-1912. His obituary states he was buried in the Mound Cemetery in Coles County, Illinois. The cemetery has no record of his burial, and no marker has been found.
8. Gilla Sherman Cobb, 1843-1923. She was buried in the Lake Cemetery, Barton County, Missouri. I have requested a photo of her cemetery marker.
9. John Sherman, 1845- after 1930. I do not when or where he died. In 1930, he was living with his son Frank in Madison County, Illinois.
10. Jasper Sherman, 1849-1878. He was buried in the same cemetery as his mother in Edgar County, IL. I have requested a photo of his cemetery marker.

In summary, I have three outstanding requests for cemetery marker photos (Rebecca, Gilla, and Jasper), two that were not found (Evaline and Thomas), and one person who purportedly died and was buried twice (Anderson). I need to do more research on five others for whom I have not located any death information (Daniel, Polly, Emily, Eliza, and John). No one has a complete record.

Find A Grave is a wonderful tool, and I contribute to it whenever I can. So many volunteers have answered my call for photos of cemetery markers. The site provides a great way for us to lend a genealogical helping hand.

Thomas (Lane?) Sherman always reported on the census records that he was born in Ohio on November 23, 1841, but most of his siblings hailed from the state of Kentucky. The family lived in various Kentucky counties, including Bath, Clark and Madison before and after his birth. His father Daniel worked as a blacksmith, and the sons, including Thomas, all followed him into this profession. Thomas’ precise birthplace in Ohio has not been found, nor is it known why the family briefly resided in Ohio around 1840.

The first record of Thomas outside of the census records appears during the Civil War when his name appears as plaintiff on a court record in Madison County, KY in the case of Sherman v. Raines. Thomas alleged that in September, 1862, Deft Raines had taken a grey horse for use in the Confederate Army. Thomas sued for the value of the horse, $240.

Shortly after this case, the Shermans left Kentucky and relocated to Johnson County, Indiana. There Thomas and his brother Anderson registered for the Civil War draft in June, 1863. Whether Thomas actually served remains unclear. According to his obituary, he had enlisted in Louisville in 1861. No record of his service has been found, nor did he or his third wife apply for a pension based on his service.

Family tradition says that Thomas married for the first time during the Civil War. His bride was said to have been a German girl named Katherine Stillenbaugh or Stanabaugh, but no record of this marriage has been found. Their daughter Anna Petronellia came into the world at Indianapolis in 1865, and Katherine died shortly afterwards.

Thomas’ obituary says he lived at St. Louis after the war, but by 1870 he resided in Hunter Township, Edgar County, Illinois. His four-year-old daughter Anna lived nearby with his mother Rebecca while he worked as a blacksmith in the Fawcett Keyes household. His siblings John, Evaline, and Jasper also lived in Edgar County at the time.

On March 21, 1872, Thomas remarried. His second wife was Mary Scott. They lived with his daughter Anna in Edgar County in 1880 where he continued working as a blacksmith. Mary Scott Sherman disappears from the record after that.

Thomas married for a third time a year later on September 8, 1881 in Moultrie County, Illinois. His wife, Alice Farris, was half his age. The couple appears to have relocated to Missouri after the wedding, and their oldest son Charles Frederick Sherman was born there in 1882.

Afterwards, they returned to Illinois and lived there for the rest of their lives. They had four more children:

1. George Raymond, born in Coles County in 1884,
2. Ethel, born in Coles County in 1887,
3. Claude, born in Cumberland County in 1889, and
4. James Walter, born in Cumberland County in 1891.

By 1900, the family had returned to Coles County where Thomas worked as a blacksmith in Seven Hickory and Morgan Townships. Sometime in 1910 he suffered a work-related accident when he was hit in the head with a hammer. This head injury brought on acute insanity, and in May of that year his son George petitioned for his commitment to the Illinois Eastern Hospital for the insane. Thomas was released five months later. When he returned home, the court ordered George and Claude to each contribute $1.50 a week toward the support of their father.

Thomas lived for another year and a half in poor health. He passed away at his home in Charleston, Illinois at the age of seventy on February 3, 1912. He reportedly was buried in the Mound Cemetery in Charleston but the cemetery office there has no record of his interment .

Oddly, his obituary does not name his eldest daughter Anna Petronellia as a survivor. Who provided the information for the obituary? Anna and Thomas’ third wife Alice were said to dislike one another. Was the snub deliberate?

If one of the other children prepared the obituary, perhaps her half-siblings did not really know her and forgot to include her name. Anna had lived far away in southern Missouri since the time of Thomas’ marriage to Alice. Their obituaries did not list Anna as a survivor, either, and they may have lost touch. Yet she seems to have remembered the connection, always keeping photos of them. And she outlived them all.

We have no photos of Thomas, but there may be cousins out there who do. I would love to see them! In the meantime, I do have this photo of three of Thomas’ sons (George, Claude, and Walter) that gives me a clue as to what he may have looked like.

My research into my Sherman ancestors remains pretty much stuck in the mid-19^th century. I need to find some additional records to learn more about them.

Current information on their movements boils down to this:

1. The Daniel Sherman family lived in various central Kentucky counties from the late 1820’s on. Daniel and his wife Rebecca sold their place in Madison County in 1863, and he disappears from the record after that.
2. The oldest son, Anderson Sherman, relocated to Brown County, Indiana sometime before 1860. He and his family eventually moved on to nearby Johnson County.
3. Daniel’s sons Anderson and Thomas registered for the Civil War draft in 1863 in Johnson County, Indiana.
4. Daniel’s daughter Gilla Ann married John Cobb in Johnson County in 1864.
5. By 1870, numerous members of the family including the wife (widow?) Rebecca; sons Thomas, John, and Jasper; daughter Evaline Sherman Alvey; and 4-year-old granddaughter Anna Petronellia Sherman all lived in Edgar County, Illinois.

Now I have these questions:

1. When and where did Daniel Sherman die?
2. When and where did Thomas Sherman marry Anna Petronellia’s mother? Who was she? Her granddaughter’s report that she was Katherine Stillenbaugh from Germany has not been verified.
3. Did Thomas serve in the Civil War? His family claimed he enlisted at Louisville, KY, but so far I have found no service record or pension application. His brother Anderson filed for a Civil War pension, but it was denied due to lack of evidence of his service.

I intend to develop a research plan for each of these questions. They have plagued me for years, and I would love to answer any or all of them.

As I work on learning the details of the life of my great-great grandfather Thomas Sherman, I continue to puzzle over his activities during the 1860’s. The biggest riddle remains the identity of his first wife, and my great-great grandmother. According to family lore, she was German, and her name was Katherine Stillenbaugh or Stanabaugh. Thomas and Katherine were said to have resided in or near Indianapolis where their daughter, Anna Petronellia, was born in 1865. Katherine reportedly died shortly afterwards. No record of her has been found to verify any of the family story.

I know these facts about Thomas and his family during that decade:

• In 1860, Thomas’ name appears on the U.S. census for Madison County, Kentucky in the household of his father, Daniel “Shearman”. Thomas was a 19-year-old blacksmith.
• In 1862, a man named Thomas Sherman, presumably my ancestor, filed suit in Madison County over the taking of a horse by Confederate soldiers.
• In June 1863, Thomas and his brother Anderson registered for the Civil War Draft at Ninevah, Johnson County, Indiana.
• Thomas and Anderson’s younger sister Gilla married John Cobb in Johnson County in 1864.
• By 1870, Thomas worked as a blacksmith in another man’s household in Edgar County, Illinois. His four-year-old daughter lived with his mother, Rebecca, in the same county.

It seems that Thomas relocated from Kentucky to Indiana sometime during the Civil War. He joined his older brother Anderson and lived in the county just south of Indianapolis. This much fits the family story. But what about the rest of it?

Anderson had lived first in Brown County and then moved a few miles northeast to Johnson County. Among his neighbors was a German family named Stilgenbauer, a name several of them Anglicized to Stillabower or Stilabower. These names are tantalizingly close to the Stillenbaugh name reported by the grandchildren of my German ancestor. Did she belong to the Stilgenbauer family? If so, I cannot find a likely candidate named Katherine on the 1860 Indiana census. I have been unable to locate a marriage record for Thomas in Indiana, nor have I found burial information for Katherine Sherman. Nothing I have found so far verifies her identity.

I need to locate some more Indiana records! I need to do more research on the Stilgenbauer family. We have had this brick wall ancestor for far too long.