Genealogy Jottings

Archive for the ‘Genealogy’ Category

Online genealogy sites can provide valuable genealogical information. People can post their family trees and link their family members to one another on these sites. We can then use this information to help extend our own family lines.

Yet one must be cautious when reviewing this type of information. These pages are secondary sources at best, and facts must be verified.

This week I found Reed family information that I believe is incorrect posted on two such sites:

1. Family Search. This site has a crowd sourced family tree. There I found my ancestor’s second wife, but she was reportedly married to his son, not him. Caleb Reed (1756-abt 1832) married Elizabeth Van Dyke in Shelby County, Kentucky in 1816. Caleb had a namesake son, Caleb C. Reed (d. 1829), who lived in the same county. The online tree at Family Search claims the son, not the father, married Elizabeth Van Dyke. A close review of Shelby County records reveals that Caleb C. Reed had married a different woman, Prudence Kirkham, in 1812, several years before the Van Dyke marriage. In 1829, Caleb C. Reed’s widow Prudence Reed offered his will for probate and became guardian of his children. Caleb C. Reed did not marry Elizabeth Van Dyke while married to Prudence. Elizabeth was his stepmother after her marriage to his father.
2. Find A Grave. Sometime after Caleb C. Reed’s death, Prudence relocated her family to Sullivan County, Indiana. She is buried in the Little Flock Cemetery there. Her Find A Grave memorial is linked to that of a purported husband, Caleb S. Reed who was buried nearby in 1866. We know from the Shelby County, KY records that her husband Caleb C. Reed died much earlier, in 1829. Contrary to the information posted on Find A Grave, Caleb S. Reed was not her husband and not the father of her children. The confusion here is understandable because Caleb was a common name in our family.

Whenever I come across mistakes such as these, I sigh and wonder how much effort I should make to correct the information. I do not like to see errors perpetuated, but posting better information takes time away from my own research.

I did send a message to Find A Grave asking them to edit the connection between Prudence Reed and Caleb S. Reed. I may take the time to correct the Family Search online tree because the senior Caleb Reed was my ancestor.

Prudence Kirkham and the Reeds lived long enough ago that they had many descendants. For their sake, the record should be correct.

The organizer of our upcoming annual Colorado Genealogical Society seminar called me earlier this month with a request. Would I stop by the hotel on my way to the seminar and pick up our speaker, Judy Russell, The Legal Genealogist?

Of course I am more than glad to do this. I have long admired Judy. I keep up with her blog. The opportunity to meet her and talk about genealogy is something I do not want to miss.

Years of following her blog have given me a lot of background information about her. She has roots in Madison County, Kentucky, and I do, too. She is half German, like my husband/tech advisor. We can find common interestes to talk about.

In past years our Society has awarded lunch with the speaker as a seminar door prize. I have never won, and I do not know if that will happen this year.

In any case, I think my chance to transport the well-known Legal Genealogist beats that. I will not have to share her with a group at lunch. We will have time for a memorable (for me!) conversation.

As the kids say, I am so stoked.

Now that it is spring, I find myself planning another genealogy road trip. We will go south this time to visit historic sites, cemeteries, and perhaps a library or two.

Our sight-seeing loop will include places I always have hoped to see:

1. Chalmette National Cemetery in Louisiana. My second great-grandfather, Daniel Ryan, was re-interred here when it was built for Union Civil War dead.
2. Vicksburg National Military Park in Mississippi. Another great-grandfather’s cousin, George Boyd, fought and died here during the Civil War.
3. St. Augustine, Florida. We will tour this oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the United States.
4. Fort Sumter in South Carolina. The American Civil War began with the battle here.
5. Cowpens National Battlefield in South Carolina. I do not know whether any of my Carter relatives participated in the Revolutionary War battle at Cowpens, but we will take a look at the area as we pass through.
6. Fort Boonesborough State Park in Madison County, Kentucky. Several ancestors lived in this county. One, Robert Kirkham, served here during the Revolutionary War.
7. Lindsborg, Kansas. We will stop here to check out the biennial Swedish Festival. We are not Swedish, but we are part Scandinavian. The food and entertainment should be good.

We have completed most of the planning for this trip. The only detail left to determine is whether to stop at the municipal libraries in the Louisville, Kentucky area.

I need to search their online catalogs to see what they may have that is not available digitally. Family Search has a rich store of records for Shelby and Spencer counties where my Reed ancestors resided. To find anything more than that might require an archival visit. That would be beyond the scope of the trip we envision.

This week holds a smorgasbord of offerings for furthering one’s genealogical education:

1. The Legacy Family Tree 24-hour genealogy marathon runs today and tomorrow. This free event includes a different class every hour beginning at 3:00 p.m. MDT (https://familytreewebinars.com/24-marathon/). I have registered for the final session, Elusive Ancestors by noted genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills.
2. On Saturday the Colorado Chapter of Palatines to America will host part 2 of its spring seminar. This Zoom session features Mark Rabideau speaking on The Effects of Shifting Boundaries (Switzerland, France, Germany) on Lives, Migrations, and Cultures.
3. DAR Museum Tuesday Talk. I participated virtually this week’s in the April program on Revolutionary Appearances: How Portraits of Women Evolved Around the Revolution. The next of these monthly talks, on May 8, will be Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine. See https://www.dar.org/national-society/events.

All these classes meant several hours of sitting in front of a computer for me. I find it worth it because I always learn something I can use in my own research. I skipped RootsTech with its rich offerings this year, so now I am catching up on my continuing training.

When land in eastern Illinois opened for settlement, Thomas Reed (1783-1852) and his wife Ann Kirkham (1783-1869) arrived in Coles County with their children in 1829. They were in their mid-40’s by then and had lived their adult lives so far in Kentucky. Their Illinois years have been well documented by the Reed family, but we do not know a lot about the couple’s time in the Bluegrass state.

Ann was born there, in what become Nelson County, but Thomas arrived in Kentucky from Pennsylvania when he was a boy. His family settled in Shelby County, along Elk Creek in an area that became Spencer County in 1824.

Several Reeds resided in the same area, and sorting them into family groups presents a challenge. Census records survive although they do not name everyone in the household. The Reeds repeated first names, adding to the confusion.

Thomas and Ann married in Nelson County, where her family lived, about 1806. The 1810 census is the first record for their household. They lived among the other Reed families in Shelby County. This census record presents a couple of questions:

1. Two boys under the age of ten resided with Thomas. One must be his eldest son Robertson Reed, born in 1808. Who was the other boy? Another son who died young and whose memory was lost to the Reeds? A nephew? Or daughter Eliza, born in October 1810, and mistakenly enumerated as a boy? The official census day that year was August 6, so Eliza should not have been counted even if the census taker visited after she was born.
2. The family immediately preceding Thomas on the page was headed by Caleb Reed, a man over 45. Who was this Caleb? Thomas had both a father and a brother with that name. Caleb’s household included three children under 10 and two more aged 10-16. There were no adults other than a probable wife who was also over 45. Caleb the father was 54 in 1810, but none of his known children would have been under 10 that year. The brother Caleb was probably younger than 45 in 1810, and he was unmarried with no known children in 1810. The Caleb on the census record does not fit the profile of either Thomas’ father or his brother.

Family relationships and vital statistics for the Reeds in Shelby County during the early 1800’s remain unclear. Much work remains to do in the county records to assemble the Reed family that lived there.

Kentucky marriage records can be viewed online for weddings as early as 1795. Some of my ancestors lived and married in Kentucky at the beginning of the 1800’s. This week I needed to verify a date by looking at these early records.

As I reviewed research notes from my Reed cousins, I came across a curious discrepancy for the marriage date of our ancestors Thomas Reed (1783-1852) and Anne Kirkham (1783-1869).

Our family history The Reeds of Ashmore by Michael Hayden, written in 1988, reports their marriage date as 24 Nov 1806. This date is repeated in Coles County, Illinois county histories compiled during the 1870s.

The original notes for the Reed book contain a reference to another researcher’s claim that the marriage took place two years later, on 6 Oct 1808. My cousins discounted this idea and went with the 1806 date when they compiled the book.

Good genealogical practice dictates that conflicts must be resolved, and this date difference presents a big conflict.

I turned to FamilySearch for more information. There I found images of Kentucky marriage bonds, returns, and a Nelson County, KY marriage register. What did they tell me about Thomas’ marriage date?

• The 24 Nov 1806 date used by my cousins and the county history belongs to the date of the marriage bond, not the marriage ceremony. On that day, Thomas Reed and Anne’s brother Henry Kirkham bound themselves for the sum of 50 pounds for a marriage between Thomas and Anne to be solemnized “soon”.
• A marriage did take place, evidenced by a return from the Officiant Reuben Smith. This marriage return is undated, and it does not provide a marriage date.
• The Nelson County, KY marriage register also verifies this marriage of Thomas Reed and Anne Kirkham, performed by Reuben Smith. The given date, 6 Oct 1808, matches the one claimed by the other researcher. It must have been her source.

My cousins, then, had only the 1806 date of the marriage bond. The register reports that the marriage took place two years later, in 1808. This seems odd.

On a hunch, I turned to the beginning of the register book and found an interesting disclaimer. This register was compiled from an older register in the summer of 1873. It says that marriage bond dates in the new volume are accurate, but the dates of the marriages themselves may not be. It refers to marriage certificates as the best source for information.

So, what about Thomas’ marriage?

It seems clear that he executed a marriage bond on 24 Nov 1806. Because the marriage return includes no date, we do not know whether he went on to marry the same day the bond was executed or at some later date. But did he wait nearly 2 years to marry, until after the birth of his first son in August 1808, as the marriage register states?

I suspect the couple married after the date of the marriage bond, sometime in late 1806 or early 1807. Without a marriage certificate I will never know the exact date. This document was not passed down through my branch of the family, and I do not know whether it has been preserved.

My cousins had the marriage bond date, not the marriage date. The other researcher had the date reported in the marriage register, an admitted probable miscalculation.

Neither could claim the correct date for the Reed marriage. That date is unknown.

This year I am focusing my research on my third great-grandparents, Thomas Reed (1783-1852) and Ann Kirkham (1782-1869).

The first step was to review and analyze all the material I have collected concerning their children. They had five who reached adulthood:

1. Robertson Mitchell Reed (1808-1871).
2. Eliza Reed McAlister Walton (1810-1886).
3. Jane Reed Galbreath (1817-1899).
4. Caleb Reed (1818-1903).
5. William Reed (1822-1845).

To accomplish this task, I emptied my Reed bin of everything concerning Thomas and his children. I also pulled all the pertinent Reed folders from the genealogy filing cabinet I inherited from a Reed cousin.

Much of her material duplicated my own research, and I was able to discard many extra copies of documents. Then I made sure to enter all the evidence into my database.

In the filing cabinet, I found a few papers I had not seen before.

One was an 1817 Kentucky land conveyance to Thomas Reed and his two brothers Caleb and John. The grantor parties included a man named Robert Robertson. I know nothing of this man, but I have often wondered why Thomas named his eldest son Robertson. Was the Robert Robertson in the land transaction the inspiration for Robertson Reed’s name? Was he related to Reeds?

The other discovery I made concerned a childhood friend of Thomas’ son, Caleb. The friend’s name was Robert Boyd, and I learned they had known one another in Spencer County, Kentucky. The two of them relocated to Coles County, Illinois and eventually married Carter sisters.

Now I am wondering whether Caleb Reed and Robert Boyd were more closely related than just in-laws. Caleb’s maternal grandmother was Jane Boyd, so it is possible that Robert Boyd was a member of her family.

A Boyd researcher has told me that they have reached a brick wall with the Kentucky Boyds. This line is crying out for further research. Perhaps the Reed/Kirkham connection to the Boyds offers a valuable clue.

Reviewing Reed documents already in my possession has uncovered some interesting avenues for learning more about the Reed family. The Robertson and the Boyd affiliations might give me a better understanding of my Reed line.

Genealogists use the term “cousin bait”. We post family information on websites and blogs hoping to attract the attention of distant, unknown cousins. We are interested in exchanging family information.

I have met several family historians this way. Earlier this week, a posting on this blog caught the interest of another collateral relative. He would like to work together to fill in a branch of our shared family tree.

We do not have a common ancestor, but one of his Boyd relatives married one of my Carter relatives. Robert Boyd (b. abt. 1817) married Nancy Carter (1818-1901) in Coles County, Illinois in 1840. Their two oldest sons, George and James, both died in the Civil War.

The man who contacted me has posted his information on the WikiTree website, which I also use. I will go there to see what additional information he has on the Robert Boyd family.

In turn, my online tree cites another cousin’s scrapbook containing a page with information about the Boyds. I will scan the page and forward it to the man who contacted me.

There is a possibility that the two us are related in a way other than the in-law relationship with the Carters. I have a Boyd ancestor in an earlier generation.

My 4^th great-grandmother was named Jane Boyd. I know little about her and have never done any research on this Boyd line. I wonder whether they were connected to the other Boyd family. I plan to ask my new contact about this possibility.

This interesting message from someone with a shared interest in a surname reinforces my commitment to keep posting “cousin bait”. You never know when new family information will turn up.

This year I am focusing my research on my third great-grandparents, Thomas Reed (1783-1852) and Ann Kirkham (1782-1869). They were among the original settlers in Coles County, Illinois in 1829.

One of their closest neighboring families, the McAlisters, settled there about the same time. The eldest two of the Reed children married McAlister siblings.

Healthwise, these marriages did not turn out well. The McAlister family had a pattern of early death:

1. Robertson Reed (1808-1871) married Nancy McAlister (1815-1853). This couple had five known children before Nancy died at age 37. All but one of their children died young, too, including Daniel at age 23, Nancy Jane at age 34, William Fred at age 30, and Mary E. at age 19. Nancy Jane was the only child from this marriage to wed, but both her children died in infancy. Robertson and Nancy (McAlister) Reed have no descendants.
2. Eliza Reed (1810-1886) married John Mitchell McAlister (1812-1836). The had one daughter before he passed away around the age of 24. The daughter Susan Ann (1835-1856), along with her only child, died from complications of childbirth when Susan was 20 years old. Eliza (Reed) and John McAlister have no descendants.

These Reed siblings who married into the McAlister family experienced much heartache. Robertson Reed lost his wife and outlived his oldest son. Several of his other children died about the same time he did. Eliza Reed McAlister witnessed the deaths of both a young husband and their daughter.

Both Robertson and Eliza remarried after the deaths of their first spouses. Their second marriages produced more children who lived long lives.

And what of the McAlisters? I have not done much research on this family. Their name does not survive in Coles County. Perhaps they died out, or maybe the surviving family members moved away.

The Reeds and the McAlisters had become fast friends when they first settled in Illinois. They must have had high hopes when their children joined in marriage. Those dreams were dashed when the McAlister grandchildren did not survive. Death at a young age stalked their family.

Caleb Reed (1818-1903) was my second great-grandfather. He had an older brother named Robertson Reed (1808-1871). The details of Robertson’s family have eluded Reed researchers over the years.

Turns out that the reason for including little of their information in the 1988 The Reeds of Ashmore by my distant cousin Michael Hayden is that Robertson left few, if any, descendants.

Robertson lived in Ashmore Township, Coles County, Illinois. He was married twice and had seven children:

1. Daniel. The unsourced Reed history calls him Daniel T. Reed (1836-1859) and says he never married. Daniel was listed on the 1850 US census as a 14-year-old in his father’s household. In 1860, a Dan Reed was on the Coles County mortality schedule. Dan P. Reed, 23, of Pleasant Valley Township had died in March (1860?) of lung fever. Were Daniel T. and Dan P. the same person? There is a FindAGrave memorial for Daniel Reed who was buried in the Reed Cemetery, but it claims the child lived only 2 months in 1837. Although these records conflict, it does seen clear that Robertson’s son Daniel had no children.
2. Nancy Jane. She (1838-1872) and her husband Hezekiah Ashmore remained in the Ashmore area and had seven children. Robertson Reed may have Ashmore descendants.
3. Caleb Robertson. “R” (1841-1903) inherited his father’s land. He never married.
4. William Fred. This son (1844-1875) left Ashmore and went to Texas to work. He died there having never married. His body was returned to Ashmore to be buried there.
5. Mary E. This young woman (1852-1872) never married.
6. Joseph Van. He (1857-1936) survived the San Francisco earthquake and settled in Eugene, Oregon. He had a step-daughter.
7. Anna Belle. This daughter (1860-1927) proved tricky to trace. A county history claimed she married Skyler Glassco from a local family. Further research revealed that she had not married a Glassco but instead a Glasgow. Anna Belle and Schuyler Glasgow eventually settled in Texarkana, Texas and had at least three children. One, Clara Glasgow Ellis, is buried near where I live. Anna Belle may have had other descendants as well.

From this, we see that of Robertson Reed’s seven children, only two daughters had families. There were no Reed-surnamed descendants, only Ashmores and Glasgows.

If Robertson has descendants who are living today, they have not turned up as DNA matches to my father or me. I still do not know whether Robertson’s line has just daughtered out or has ended altogether.