The Orphans of John Nelson Erwin

I suppose it is in the history of all families we find the stories of children facing the death of a parent. We see this recorded in my families and notably on this blog several times in the stories of Rufina Vincent and Nancy Street.  It is through the 'Robert Woodley Family History Web Site' that I was able to find record of the death of John Nelson Erwin (1789 - 1841) and how his large family was placed under the care of another. As it is with genealogy, many of our discoveries are found from the detailed work of our far distant cousins. Though I found some collected data in this source that may not be correct (namely, the history of the family in America before John Erwin), the recorded documents by the courts speak for themselves.

John, a young farmer of Pennsylvania, was married to Susan Bailey (1796-1885) on December 4, 1814.  Peter Erwin, their first born in 1817 (and my great-great grandfather), would later lead his own family westward to settle near Tecumseh, Nebraska. In the years after the birth of Peter, Julia Ann, Rebecca, Hannah, Else, Susanah, Jacob, Christiana, Charles, and John, Jr. came along before the elder John Erwin died in 1841.  

The following was recorded.

"Book D, page 211, Orphan’s Court January Term AD 1842

A summary of the minor heirs of John Erwin:

Minor children under the age of 14:

Jacob Erwin
Christiana Erwin
Else Erwin
Charles Erwin
John Erwin

Minor children over the age of 14:

Hannah Erwin
Julian Erwin
Susanah Erwin

Children, not minors, mentioned in this or in other Court documents:

Peter Erwin, listed as their next friend
Rebecca Erwin, listed as the wife of George Richart in signing off on a deed.

Note that Jacob Bailey, named as guardian, was probably the brother of Susan Bailey, the mother of the children and widow of John Erwin.

Petition of Peter Erwin for Guardian for the Minor Children of John Erwin Deceased

The Petition of Jacob Erwin, Christiana Erwin, Else Erwin, Charles Erwin & John Erwin by their next friend Peter Erwin 

Humbly showeth that the said Jacob Erwin, Christiana Erwin Else Erwin, Charles Erwin & John Erwin otherwise late of said County Decd. all under the age of fourteen Plead That the said Minors have no person legally authorized to take charge of their persons and Estates, therefore the said Peter Erwin, in behalf of the said Minors, prays the Court to appoint some suitable person as Guardian for the purposes written mentioned and he will ever pray the etc. - Peter Erwin July 5th AD 1842.

Petition made and the Court appoint Jacob Bailey Guardian for the Minor Children as set forth in said petition etc. direct him to give bail in the sum of $500 each Samuel Bellman approved as bail.

by the Court, E. Youngman, Clk

Petition of Hannah Erwin, Julian Erwin, Susan Erwin for Guardian

The Petition of Hannah Erwin, Julian Erwin & Susanah Erwin 

Respectfully represents That your Petitioners are Minors Children of John Erwin late of said County Decd. that they are above the age of fourteen years state they have no person legally authorized to take care of their persons and Estates and they pray the Court state they may be permitted to make choice of a Suitable Guardian for that purpose and they will pray etc. - Hannah Erwin, Julian Erwin, Peter Erwin for Susanna Erwin.

July 5th AD 1842. 

by the Court E. Youngman Clk

Petition read and the Court give leave to choose whereupon the Minors Choose Jacob Bailey and the Court approve & direct him to give bail in the sum of $500 for each Minor. Samuel Bellman approved as bail."

It appears that Susan Bailey received assistance from her brother(?), Jacob Bailey for a period of years after John's death. However, a later recording indicates that Jacob Bailey would pass away and a new person was appointed to care for the young Erwin children. Peter Erwin, the eldest brother, was nearby to support his mother and his siblings.

"Book E pg 25, Nov term 1846

Susan Erwin widow of John Erwin comes to the court and says that Jacob Bailey is now deceased. Needs a new guardian for children. Charles Tallman is appointed."

All of the children would eventually grow up and find themselves married to raise their families in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, or move on to distant places.  Peter had married Mary Goodlander in 1838.  He, with his family, would go west with his young brother Charles, to Jo Daviess County, Illinois and eventually Nebraska.  Peter's eldest son William, who was just two years of age when John Erwin passed on, would be killed at Missionary Ridge, Tennessee in 1863.  Having successfully raised her children with the support of the family and local community, Susan Bailey died in 1885 in Jo Daviess County.

Note:  I found a record of a Charles Tallman in the Lycoming Co. area, but it is unclear if this would be the same person. There are connections of the Tallman and Bailey families in Pennsylvania and this may be a Charles Tallman cousin.

Genealogy Site Rankings

A fellow blogger has made a compilation of the global rankings of a selection of genealogy-related websites.  Link in and begin your search.  I've also listed them below.  My favorite sites are noted in bold.

Most of these websites are not linked on the reference page of my website.

ancestry.com 1,103, (1,076), (984)

myheritage.com 3,524, (4,573), (3,886) - My site is basic and not yet built.

geni.com 7,768 (7,068), (8,086)

familysearch.org 8,497, (9,138), (9,120)

genealogy.com 12,295, (12,691), (12,190)

archives.gov 17,366 (17,053), (18,209) - recently upgraded with census records.

ancestry.co.uk  15,944, (17,199), (17,243)

nationalarchives.gov.uk 21,600, (21,801), (18,550)

23andme.com  41,077, (38,146), (41,700)

genesreunited.co.uk 50,347, (51,699), (46,279)
ancestry.ca 54,036, (51,631), (42,325)

familytreedna.com  57,972, (67,246), (80,397)

findmypast.co.uk  68,220, (69,394), (81,411)

cyndislist.com 116,532, (101,523), (86,990)

eogn.com 135,238, (123,589), (150,226)

jiapu.com 129,664, (176,217), (168,666)
genuki.org.uk 177,305, (194,673), (193,436)
freebmd.org.uk 178,177, (204,998), (212,655)

familytreemaker.com 216,098, (198,889), (161,170)

worldvitalrecords.com 205,946, (250,031), (175,547)

familytreemagazine.com 296,260, (309,746), (201,288)
cwgc.org 304,733, (307,860), (527,236)

legacyfamilytree.com 325,569, (334,563), (273,131)

automatedgenealogy.com 471,773, (452,499), (296,376)

rootsmagic.com 528,067, (469,630), (372,173) - excellent free tree builder. 

ngsgenealogy.org 292,785, (507,702), (770,719)
americanancestors.org 568,638, (413,274), (276,418)
genealogyintime.com 615,133, (839,046), (784,440)

geneabloggers.com 671,941, (635,502), (438,407)

genealogywise.com 702,073 (895,754), (525,834)

whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com 1,023,413, (993,634), (994,049)

sog.org.uk 1,050,849, (965,288), (708,746)

globalgenealogy.com 1,101,224, (1,019,853), (830,338)

ffhs.org.uk 1,201,950, (1,210,668), (1,267,779)
anglo-celtic-connections.blogspot.com 1,407,276, (1,624,999), (2,418,382)
scottishancestry.blogspot.com 1,414,288, (-), (-)

ogs.on.ca 1,487,132, (1,440,397), (1,289,655)

genealogicalstudies.com 1,555,150, (1,328,035), (1,093,695)
rootsuk.com  2,030,679, (2,724,618), (1,340,610)
bcgcertification.org 2.329.800, (1,874,498), (1,601,646)

family-tree.co.uk  2,407,513, (1,684,518) (1,836,425)

lostcousins.com 2,427,784, (1,815,516), (2,677,921)

deceasedonline.com 2,452,985, (1,902,137), (1,648,569)
bifhsgo.ca 2,541,927 (4,938,796), (7,145,992)

familychronicle.com  2,763,979, (2,224,075), (1,881,611)
arcalife.com 2,803,254, (2,343,474), (2,356,437)

bcgs.ca 3,361,982 (3,459,358), (3,313,414)

internet-genealogy.com  10,981,334, (10,510,651), (3,234,636)

qfhs.ca 12,118,104, (9,884,139), (6,654,860)

Historical Recordings Online - Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

Historical Recordings Online - Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

The Howard Family and The Huguenots

The Huguenot Cross

In my short time of conducting our family tree(s), I've come across some interesting branching that not only links our heritage to Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland but go to other shores.  The Oklahoma Howard lineage also has some connections to German (Trout) and French ancestry.  The Huguenot Society of the Founders of Manakin in the Colony of Virginia is the standard bearer in America for helping us understand the history of the people of France who had escaped the worst kinds of religious persecution.  

The family ties to the Huguenots includes five generations of Allegre's:

HOWARD - Monroe Howard - David Charles Howard - Helen WARHURST - Rufina VINCENT - Elizabeth ALLEGRE - Giles Allegre - Matthew Andrew Allegre - James Giles Allegre - GILES ALLEGRE.

Who were the Huguenots? The Society provides details and resources to help learn more about them.  

"In France as early as 1522 certain clergy and laity became so concerned with the worldliness within the Established Church of France that they sought reforms. This having failed, they began to withdraw and form congregations which they felt adhered more closely to the Bible. The French Court and the Church were allies and considered the Reformers heretics, calling them Huguenots in ridicule. Persecutions became so severe that hundreds fled to other countries rather than give up their new faith. After two tragic massacres King Henry IV granted them the Edict of Nantes in 1598. This Edict gave them limited religious and civic privileges. Afters his death in 1610 the extreme persecutions were renewed. In 1685 Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes thus outlawing the Reformers. Hundreds of thousands escaped under drastic circumstances to friendly countries, many of whom reached the American Colonies.

In 1700 King William III, and other prominent leaders of London, concerned with the welfare of the Huguenots who reached England, made possible the emigraiton to manakintown. The first settlers came on the "Mary and Ann" and "Ye Peter and Anthony." Some who came on the "Nassau" and two other ships also settled at Manakintown.

The Virginia House of Burgesses granted them 10,000 acres for homes and farms on the south side of the James River west of subsequent Richmond. On December 5, 1700 the House of Burgesses established King William Parish and the church which became manakin Episcopal Church. The first church building was erected in 1701 on glebe land granted for that purpose. The present brick building, the fifth church building, is modeled after Col. William Byrd's Church at Westover. The Parish House is nearby. manakin Church is the only congregation in King William Parish."

Giles Allegree is listed as a 'qualified Huguenot ancestor' for purposes of tracing a connection to the Virginia colony and is important for seeking membership into the society. I have yet to pursue the question of membership qualifications for members from our family, but this will be a matter for consideration once I can provide confirmations of my research to date. Membership is not my goal but I am looking to learn more of a bit of history of America that I have never explored.  I also wish to learn more about Giles and his parentage, and the region of France (Lyons) from which he originated. 

Before this is over, I may wish I would have learned French.

Charles Page and The Home

In 1903 Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory, Hardie Street and Margaret Kennedy married and started their lives together in Phillips, a town just south of Coalgate. They had six children, with a seventh on the way, when Hardie died suddenly of a stroke on December 8, 1917. Hardie was buried near his mother, Nancy (who had died just two years earlier), in Rose Hill Cemetery in Wapanucka. As harsh as this was, times were to become much more desperate for Margaret and her family. On February 13, 1918, her new son William Hardy was born.

Charles Page, a man building a fortune in oil, had planned and built the city of Sand Springs and was sharing his wealth with the orphans of Tulsa County. He had built a dormitory, called 'the home', where the children he rescued from a failed orphanage could be raised with many of the same opportunities as more fortunate children. Aside from the dormitory, he built a widows colony in 1912 to provide shelter and aid for widowed and divorced women with children to support.  The colony had a chapel and nursery and provided for free rent and utilities and a quart of milk per child per day.

Margaret learned of the home and made the decision to travel north to Sand Springs where she and her family would find a new start and have hope of staying together.  However, the sorrows did not end as Margaret's toddler son, William, died in 1919.  Margaret did all she could do to keep her children safe and fed, but how she could keep her six children together without the help of Charles Page and the colony is uncertain. She worked as a laundress to make her way while the 'Charles Page Home' provided for the additional care and education of the children, the oldest of which, Dreada, was fifteen.  She did not give up and the children would grow up healthy and ready to venture on to their new lives.

Margaret's second daughter, Nancy Lou, or 'Nanny', was my grandmother who, from all accounts, was a most loving and caring soul who gave her all for her family.  Perhaps some of that love was grown from knowing the generosity of another caring soul like Charles Page.

Sand Springs Home is going strong still today, nearly 100 years later, providing hope for desperate and divided families. The legacy of Charles Page lives on in not only in the city he built, but for the many lives given hope.

Internet Archives Find: Rupert, VT - Historical and Descriptive 1761-1898

Internet Archives is a fabulous site for rare historical documents of towns, counties and other various topics of interest.  One great find in recent days has been this book from the Cornell University library system.

Angeline Phillips, Ada Phillips' mother.

The family of my great-great grandmother, Ada Phillips, came westward via Oswego, New York and a small town in western Vermont called Rupert.  Aside from the simple information taken from census records, these rare book gems provide resources beyond simple name recognition.  They help to define the community and the people and places around them.  This particular book introduced me to the name of the home - and the grave site - of Elihu Phillips of Vermont in Kent Hollow. I also learned more about the Weed family who married with the Phillips family - several times, actually.

Kent Hollow Cemetery - burial place of Elihu Phillips and his daughter  Cynthia Weed. (Find A Grave website)

You should really start venturing into Internet Archives if you haven't already.  The wealth of American history recorded here is tremendous.

A Proem For Their Yesterdays

Published in Dallas Trees blog on May 27, 2011.

As I have dedicated most of my spare time of late to genealogical research, I decided I wanted a common place of vision from which to stand to reflect back on my forest of ancestors.  Hey, I like trees. I cannot judge them as a people who had displaced and made war against native people, or even their own brothers and cousins. I cannot judge some of them individually for the enslavement of others. I did not know these people. I cannot judge them for how they viewed the world, ignorant of some realities or choosing not to see others. It's not my place. It's my place to learn and grow from their experiences and help make my own part of the world a better place. 

My family came from places like Howards Mill, Kentucky, Spring Creek, Nebraska, or Ward's Grove, Illinois. They lived in small communities like Mount Holly, Brandywine, Fair Play, Oswego, Stamford, Ripley, Mississippi, and Rupert, Vermont. I needed a simple perspective from which to view their world as they might have taught their children - on their farms, in their towns, in their small country schools, and in their churches. These people only knew of family, community, and survival in harsh conditions, and at times, against the odds. They knew how to do much that was handed down to them through previous generations and supportive families. Much of that is lost to most of us, but still hang on in the skills and fortune of a few. However, their experiences were not mine.  I am in a period of relearning all that I have unlearned or had never inherited from centuries of growth.  I recently remembered an old book on my shelf and I thought that to know the past, I need to read from it.

Harold Bell Wright is most recognized today for his novel, The Shepherd of the Hills. However, in the early 20th Century, he wrote other novels, including Their Yesterdays, which was more a grouping of essays than an actual novel. But publishing companies, being as they are, sold it as another great romantic novel from this writing pastor.  Their Yesterdays is available online and in various formats.  I have read it from a hardback book that was shared by someone who held it in their hands a hundred years ago.  Wright had reason to hate the world from his youth, but he found a different perspective and published it.  These are the common themes that stay in my mind as I look back to my yesterdays.

"There was a man.

And it happened--as such things often so happen--that this man went back into his days that were gone. Again and again and again he went back. Even as every man, even as you and I, so this man went back into his Yesterdays.

Then--why then there was a woman.

And it happened--as such things sometimes so happen--that this woman also went back into her days that were gone. Again and again and again she went back. Even as every woman, even as you and I, so this woman went back into her Yesterdays.

So it happened--as such things do happen--that the Yesterdays of this man and the Yesterdays of this woman became Their Yesterdays, and that they went back, then, no more alone but always together.

Even as one, they, forever after, went back.

What They Found in Their Yesterdays

And the man and the woman who went back into Their Yesterdays found there the Thirteen Truly Great Things of Life. Just as they found these things in their grown up days, even unto the end, so they found them in Their Yesterdays.

Thirteen Truly Great Things of Life there are. No life can have less. No life can have more. All of life is in them. No life is without them all.

Dreams, Occupation, Knowledge, Ignorance, Religion, Tradition, Temptation, Life, Death, Failure, Success, Love, Memories: these are the Thirteen Truly Great Things of Life--found by the man and the woman in their grown up days--found by them in Their Yesterdays--and they found no others.

It does not matter where this man and this woman lived, nor who they were, nor what they did. It does not matter when or how many times they went back into Their Yesterdays. These things are all that they found. And they found these things even as every man and woman finds them, even as you and I find them, in our days that are and in our days that were--in our grown up days and in our Yesterdays.

And it is so that in all of these Thirteen Truly Great Things of Life there is a man and there is a woman."

THE THIRTEEN TRULY GREAT THINGS OF LIFE

DREAMS

OCCUPATION

KNOWLEDGE

IGNORANCE

RELIGION

TRADITION

TEMPTATION

LIFE

DEATH

FAILURE

SUCCESS

LOVE

MEMORIES

from Their Yesterdays, by Harold Bell Wright, 1912