Genealogy Jottings

Archive for the ‘Sherman’ Category

My Sherman family lived in southeastern Illinois from about 1870 on. I have spent several hours with the United States census records for Coles and Edgar counties trying to learn more about this family. I had hoped to learn the following:

• How this extended family moved through the area,
• Where the Sherman family originated,
• Whether other Shermans who lived in these counties are related to me.

The earliest Sherman ancestor I have identified is Daniel Sherman (about 1800-aft. 1862). Not all of Daniel’s children settled in Illinois, but I know that Anderson, Evaline, Thomas, John, and Jasper passed through there. Daniel himself does not appear on the Illinois census, and I believe he died before 1870.

In that year, Anderson Sherman lived in Indiana, but the others had moved on to Illinois by then. According to the census, most of them lived in Paris Township, Edgar County. Daniel’s widow Rebecca lived in a household with her son John and her 4-year-old granddaughter Annie, who was Thomas’ daughter. Jasper Sherman and his wife Armecia, and Evaline Sherman Alvey also lived in Paris Township. Thomas was also widowed, and he worked in nearby Hunter Township at the time. Other Sherman families lived in Embarrass and Grandview townships, but I do not know whether any of them are related to my family. My Shermans had lived in Kentucky before the Civil War, while these other Shermans seem to have come from Germany, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

By 1880, I can find no family members still living in Paris Township. Thomas now lived with his daughter and new wife in Edgar Township. Rebecca and Jasper had died and are buried in Symmes Township. John had married and gone back to Kentucky. Anderson had joined Thomas in Illinois, but he lived in Elbridge Township, as did a Sherman couple from Pennsylvania. I have not located Evaline Sherman Alvey on the 1880 census. The unidentified Shermans who had lived in Embarrass Township in 1870 remained there in 1880, but the other Sherman family no longer lived in Grandview Township.

These migrations through Edgar County do not provide much insight into my Sherman family. I have learned only that while their mother was alive, they all lived fairly close together, but they split up and began to go their own ways after she died in 1876.

So what, if anything, can I learn about Daniel Sherman from these census records? Of course, they indicated he probably died before 1870, but they do not tell me when or where. Furthermore, the records conflict on where he was born. Each child reports different information for his/her father’s birthplace:

• Anderson (the oldest son) identifies his father’s birthplace as Kentucky or Pennsylvania,
• Evaline said her father was born in Kentucky or New York,
• Thomas listed his father’s birthplace as unknown or New York,
• John always said his father was born in Kentucky,
• Jasper died before the birthplace of parents was recorded.

Daniel himself always reported his birthplace as New York, a state sometimes echoed by Evaline and Thomas, so that is probably correct. Unfortunately for me, New York is a big place, and I know only that Daniel lived in Kentucky by the late 1820’s. None of the other Sherman families in Coles and Edgar Counties came from New York. No help there.

I have learned all I can from these census records. Now I have four other daughters (Polly, Emily, Eliza, and Gilla) to locate on census records for the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. As far as I know, they did not move to Illinois, so I will need to look for them in other states. First, I need to verify married names for Polly, Emily, and Eliza. Then I will search for their census records, too, in hopes of learning more about this family.

This week I came across two databases I hoped would provide some new family information. No such luck!

Perhaps others can find something they need in these places:

• Edgar County, Illinois Death Records, 1877-1892. Family Search has digitized these records, and you can browse them online at https://familysearch.org/search/catalog/290347?availability=Family%20History%20Library. My Sherman family lived in Edgar County in the 1870’s, and two of them died there. I hoped to find their death records. Unfortunately, Rebecca Sherman passed away in 1876, the year before this record-keeping began. Jasper Sherman died in 1878, but his name does not appear on the register.
• Michigan Marriage Records, 1867-1952. Ancestry.com, a subscription site, added this database recently. After years of searching, I have not found a Michigan marriage record for my great-grandmother Laura Riddle, who is said to have married George Edmonds in the 1870’s. Would this comprehensive Michigan database reveal a long-sought marriage record for her? In a word, no. This woman’s life in Michigan continues to elude me.

Searching these databases did, however, open some new lines of inquiry:

• Did Jasper Sherman die in another county even though he is buried in Edgar County? I could check the death registers in surrounding counties.
• Who was the “other” Laura Riddle I did find in the Michigan database? That Laura, the same age as my Laura, also married a man named George (Whitney). Their marriage took place in 1871 in Van Buren County, one county northwest of St. Joseph County, where my Laura lived. The record states the Van Buren Laura was born in Kalamazoo while my Laura was born in Mendon. Are they related? Perhaps research into the Riddle family of Van Buren County can shed some light on my own Riddle family.

Even though I did not find the quick answers I sought in these databases, I have eliminated a couple of sources, and I have some ideas for further research. I will continue hunting.

Anna Petronellia Sherman lived a very long life. According to death certificate information provided by her son Thomas Aaron Reed, she was born on April 1, 1865 to Thomas Sherman and Catherine Stanabaugh and died in Clinton, Missouri in 1961 at the age of 95. Contrary to the information on her death certificate, she was probably born in Indiana. No record of her mother has been found, and family lore claims that she died in Indiana before 1870. The mother was reportedly from Germany or Holland, making little Petronellia either half German or half Dutch.

The motherless girl strongly disapproved when her father remarried 19-year-old Alice Farris in 1881. Ironic then, that two years later on September 6, 1883 Petronellia herself, at the age of 18, married an older widower, 38-year-old Samuel Harvey Reed, in Coles County, Illinois. She became the stepmother to his two daughters, Annie and Clara. He called her “Pet” and drove her around in a buggy while she held a fancy parasol. She later said she was attracted to his big, white house (which actually belonged to his father) and to the highly-respected Reed name. The Reeds, in turn, hardly approved of Samuel marrying the daughter of a poor blacksmith who drank, especially when Samuel’s first wife had been very well off. Samuel immediately moved his new bride to Kansas and later, to Missouri. They had seven children: Bertha Evaline (1884), Caleb Logan (1887), Viola May (1889), Robert Morton (1891), Samuel Carter (1892), Thomas Aaron (1894), and Owen Herbert (1896 or 1897).

People who knew Petronellia have described her as temperamental, religious, and hard-working. Sometimes she kept a perfect house; at others she allowed chickens indoors. One time she chopped down all the trees in her yard because the songbirds annoyed her early in the morning. She had a fiery temper and could not get along with others. She and Samuel divorced in 1904.

She joined the No. 1 Methodist Church in Mountain Grove, Missouri when she was 23 and remained a member for the next 73 years. She read the Bible completely more than 20 times, played the church organ, and taught Sunday School until she was in her 90’s. She lived a simple, frugal life without an indoor toilet. If her children tried to give her money, she would donate it to Boy’s Town in Nebraska.

Petronellia worked for the Post Office off and on. She met Samuel Reed while working at the Charleston, Illinois post office. She was the first Postmaster at Graff, Missouri, serving from 1895 to 1899.

After her divorce from Samuel Reed, she married Captain James W. Coffey, a Confederate veteran of the Civil War, in 1906 in Texas County, Missouri. Some of her sons worked on Coffey’s farm. The marriage lasted only a few years and ended in divorce. With her children grown and no husband, Petronellia needed to earn a living.

She resumed the Reed surname and decided to apply for a homestead. Selling a proved-up homestead was a good way for single women to build a nest egg. To do so, she needed to move to a public-land state with homesteads available.

Several of her younger children had relocated to the Nebraska-Wyoming area, and her son Robert Morton Reed was the railroad station agent at Farthing, Wyoming, near Iron Mountain in Laramie County northwest of Cheyenne. Petronellia joined him there and took up a stock-raising homestead in 1918. She raised chickens and a few head of cattle, and she tried to grow some crops, without much success. One year, she harvested only a bucketful of potatoes. She became a crack-shot antelope hunter to survive.

By the end of her five-year homestead term, her son’s family had moved on to Wheatland, Wyoming with his railroad job. Petronellia hated the cold, windy, treeless prairie, so she sold her homestead and moved alone back to Missouri. Her homestead is now part of the large Farthing Ranch.

She lived out the rest of her long life in Mountain Grove, Missouri, growing blind in old age and eventually moving into a nursing home the last year of her life. She is buried in the churchyard of the No. 1 Methodist Church. She lies next to the grave of her daughter Bertha’s unnamed stillborn daughter who had been laid to rest there over 50 years earlier, in 1909.

I keep several stackable trays on the credenza near my desk. I have each one labeled with one of my family surnames. As I come across documents pertaining to a surname, I make a copy and toss it into the appropriate tray.

If I kept digital copies of these items, I never would think to go back and look at them. But with paper copies staring me in the face, I remember to go through the bin whenever I am working on a surname. This week I pawed through the Sherman tray.

I found several things in there that I had forgotten I had:

1. Thomas and Anderson Sherman’s 1863 Civil War draft registration record from Johnson County, Indiana.
2. Evaline Sherman Alvey’s Civil War widow’s pension index card.
3. Thomas Sherman’s listing as a taxpayer in Edgar County, Illinois in 1878, and as a blacksmith in Loxa, Illinois in 1895.
4. Sherman death listings in various places where Thomas lived, including Johnson County, Indiana and Coles County, Illinois. Can these people be relatives of his?

All of these documents shed light on the life of my great-great grandfather, Thomas Sherman. I need to analyze them for all the information I can glean. Hopefully they will help me focus my next research steps. I feel like there is so much more to discover about Thomas.

He did not leave many footprints in the historical record. Once I pull everything out of the Sherman bin that pertains to him, I can fashion a research plan that will enable me to learn more about his life.

Nearly one hundred years ago the young men of America marched off to register for the World War I draft. I looked at some of those registration cards this week. There I found Charles, George, Claude, and Walter, the four sons of my great-great grandfather Thomas Sherman. I learned several things about them:

1. Birthplaces. Interestingly, the draft boards did not use the same registration form every year. The forms filled out by the younger sons, Claude and Walter, in 1917 asked for birthplace. The forms filled out a year later by the older sons, Charles and George, did not. From census records I know that Charles was born in Missouri, but I wish the draft card had given an exact location. The other boys were all born in Illinois, and now I know that Walter was born at Janesville, Illinois. Claude’s card says he was born at Johnstown, Illinois. I am unfamiliar with this location and did not know that the father Thomas Sherman had ever lived there. I need to do some more investigating of this clue.
2. Residence. When they registered, George and Claude lived in Charleston, Illinois, as I expected. Walter lived nearby in Bushton. Charles resided in Dexter, Missouri. He had left Illinois that year at the request of the Coles County Overseer of the Poor after having lived hand to mouth on the county dole for many months. Charles was quite the black sheep.
3. Occupations. The Shermans were blacksmiths, and all but the youngest son Walter pursued this trade during World War I. Walter worked at a grain elevator.
4. Physical Descriptions. All the sons but George were described as slender. The older boys, Charles and George, were of medium height; the younger sons were tall. They all had dark hair. Only Walter had blue eyes while the others had brown. Does my dad look like any of them? He was tall, slender, blue-eyed, and had dark hair.
5. Claude and Walter claimed exemptions from the draft on the grounds of being needed to support dependents. The form did not name these people, but the list included Walter’s mother.

These draft cards gave me a good look at family members from another era. You can find the records on Ancestry.com.

My Sherman family lived in Illinois in the early twentieth century. Luckily for me, I can read the local Mattoon newspapers online to learn about them. I have searched for most of the Sherman names in my database, and this week stories of two of my grandfather’s cousins turned up:

1. Clara Sherman (1908-1926). The daughter of Charles Sherman, this young woman married Howard Cook at the age of fourteen. She suffered from tuberculosis, died at seventeen, and left behind a 5-month-old daughter. Members of the Spiritualist Society conducted her funeral service at her maternal grandparents’ home.
2. Clara Gladys McNamer (1905-1974). This Clara was the daughter of Ethel Sherman and Edward McNamer. One Sunday night in December, 1921 when Clara was 16, a local boy named Forrest Stoner arrived in his car to take her to a church meeting. They did not return that evening, and her parents notified the authorities. An all-night search commenced, but no one could find them. The next morning, the County Clerk in a neighboring county called to let someone know that the couple had eloped and married that morning.

I do not think my grandfather ever met these cousins. His family lived in the Missouri Ozarks. The families did not seem to keep in touch. The girls were the daughters of my great-grandmother Petronellia Sherman’s half-siblings, and she had not approved of her father’s re-marriage.

After these families lost touch with one another, we knew nothing of those cousins who had a close blood tie with us. The newspapers have helped me again to know these people a little better.

I have mentioned before that I have found a great deal of late 19^th century and early 20^th century family information in local newspapers.

I spent this week researching the life of one of my great-grandmother Anna Petronellia Sherman’s half-brothers. He can only be described as a black sheep. The newspaper repeatedly carried stories of his exploits including excessive drinking, wife-beating, womanizing, on-the-job injuries, and a divorce.

This man must have caused a lot of heartache to his family. I can only imagine the damage he inflicted on the lives of his four children. All this hard living finally caught up to him when he died in 1933 at the age of fifty-one.

Anna’s own father was said to have drunk to excess as well—a family trait? Anna herself did not imbibe as far as I know. In fact, she married young and left the state, never to return. Perhaps she had had enough.

I still have the remaining half-siblings to learn about, and I wonder if they all had trouble coping with life the way their father did. Most of them lived in the same small town, so I will be combing those newspapers again to learn more.

Have you ever used newspapers in your genealogical research? Most of us routinely look for obituaries, but newspapers often include other information about our ancestors. These great resources can really flesh out their stories, if we can locate them.

During my early years of genealogy, our large local genealogy library carried reference books that spelled out the names and dates of historic newspapers for most locales. For my research, I found that I usually needed to make a trip to view a relevant newspaper for the mostly-rural locations of my ancestors. This, of course, was an expensive undertaking, and I did it only a couple of times. One of those trips, to the Nebraska Historical Society in search of newspapers from southwestern Nebraska, yielded nothing useful.

As time went by, more papers were microfilmed. In theory, one could get these films on interlibrary loan. This was less expensive, but still awkward. Sometimes the process did not work very well.

One year, I tried to get the newspaper from Charleston, Illinois via inter-library loan. Imagine my amazement when it came in for me—8 rolls of microfilm for a newspaper from that small town! Unfortunately, I soon realized they had sent me the newspaper from Charleston, South Carolina, not Charleston, Illinois.

Last year, I decided to take another chance on finding newspaper articles. A more modern tool has become available to me. I subscribed to Newspapers.com. When I looked at it, I was delighted to find that it has databases for papers from rural areas in Illinois and Indiana where my ancestors lived.

These papers are searchable, and I have found several articles of interest about my ancestor, Thomas Sherman, and his family:

• Accounts of marriages of his nieces Cynthia and Mary Sherman in Ninevah, Indiana,
• Reports of out-of-town travel and letters waiting for another niece, Laura Sherman, also of Ninevah,
• A story about a shower of gifts for local widows in Ninevah, including Thomas’ sister-in-law, Sarah Jane Sherman,
• Notice of an Illinois court order requiring Thomas’ sons George and Claude to each contribute $1.50 a week to the support of their elderly father,
• Week-by-week updates about the health of elderly residents of Coles County, Illinois, including Thomas Sherman.

Another surprising article from Mattoon, Coles County, Illinois contains the story of one Thomas Sherman who had confessed to counterfeiting and had been jailed. The article says the authorities searched the man’s shop and found metal ready for casting. My ancestor was a blacksmith, had a shop, and certainly worked with metal. Was the counterfeiter my ancestor? More than one man named Thomas Sherman resided in Illinois at the time, so this merits further investigation.

Obviously, local newspapers contained all sorts of interesting information. If you are persistent, you will have the opportunity to search one and discover something new about your ancestors.

Despite spending quite a bit of time this week on census records for my current research project, I did not discover anything new about my subject, Thomas Sherman of Coles County, Illinois.

Several men named Thomas Sherman lived in Illinois during the life span of my Thomas. If I have identified the correct man, he lived from 1841 to 1912. He resided in Kentucky as a boy, but he had settled in Illinois by 1870. The census records for 1870-1910 tell me this:

1. His birthplace is uncertain, having variously been reported as Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio.
2. He worked as a blacksmith in every census year and usually owned a shop.
3. His middle initial was A.
4. He was married three times. Two of the wives were named Mary and Alice.
5. He was a natural-born citizen.

Unfortunately, these records do not tell me what I want to know. The big questions:

1. Did Thomas serve in the Civil War as the family claims?
2. Who was the first wife, the woman who was my great-great grandmother?
3. Why was my great-grandmother, the daughter of Thomas and the unknown woman, omitted from Thomas’ obituary?

I must keep digging if I ever hope to answer these questions. I have done all I can with census records and county histories. Now I must move on to locate other records.

Sherman. The 422^nd most-common last name on a list of 5000 American surnames. A lot of people share the Sherman name, including my great-grandmother Anna Petronellia Sherman. Because she always went by her middle name, Petronellia, I usually have had an easy time locating her in the records.

Her father Thomas Sherman presents a more difficult case. Still, I thought I had him culled from the list of other Thomas Shermans who populated late 19^th-century Illinois. Then I looked for his family tree on Family Search. There I found him with his daughter Anna Petronellia—and two sets of parents. Uh-oh. Something needs sorting out.

To which family does he belong? Thomas, born in 1841 to Rebecca and Daniel, with siblings Polly, Anderson, Evalyn, Emily, Eliza, Gilla Ann, John, and Jasper? Or Thomas, born in Indiana in 1844 to Maria and Lewis, with siblings Mary, Chapel, James, Benjamin, Delilah, Greenlee, and Tilchman?

For the last ten years I have thought my Thomas belonged to Rebecca and Daniel. I have the following evidence:

1. According to The Reeds of Ashmore [Illinois] published in 1988 by Dr. Michael Hayden (another descendant of Petronellia), our Thomas Sherman was an Illinois blacksmith. Hayden relates that after Petronellia’s mother died, Thomas married Alice Farris and had several more children.
2. U.S. census records for Illinois in 1880, 1900, and 1910, confirm that Thomas the husband of Alice did work as a blacksmith. Daniel Sherman was also a blacksmith as were Daniel’s sons Anderson, Thomas, John, and Jasper.
3. The 1912 obituary for Thomas Sherman, husband of Alice, states he was born in 1841 in Ohio. It lists surviving siblings as John, Anderson, Evaline, and Gil.

This evidence points to Daniel and Rebecca Sherman as the true parents of Thomas, the father of Petronellia. What could link him to the other family? The Family Search tree placing him in the Lewis Sherman family has no attached sources.

Someone submitted that family tree to Family Search in 2014. Fortunately, she provided e-mail contact information. I will follow up with this researcher to see what additional evidence she can offer. We may be researching a common name, but we need to get it right.