Tombstone Tuesday - Joseph and Delinda (Plymell) Nichols

It seems a lot of my time on this blog recently has been taken up with the Plymell family and their relations. I'm not exactly sure why that's been happening since the major focus of my research (as well as the impetus for beginning this blog!) has been my Brownings.

However, I'm a firm believer in the idea that you go where these things lead you and lately they've been pointing me towards Plymells. So be it!

The headstone to the left is the stone marking the final resting place of Joseph Nichols and his wife Delinda Jane Plymell. They are my third great-grandparents. This stone is in the New Hebron Cemetery in Honey Creek Twn., Crawford County, Illinois.

Joseph's already been featured on this blog with a post; you can find it here. Delinda has been mentioned a couple of times before as well -- if the Man With The Fiddle from the post below is indeed George Edward Vane, then he would have been Delinda's nephew.

I have spoken a few places about Delinda's as-yet-unproven Indian heritage. According to descendants of her brother James Fuller Plymell, Fuller's children and family members claimed Indian descent from the Wyandot tribe although they refused to make it "official" by going through the government. I heard something slightly different in my family. In mine, it was that Delinda's mother Margaret was half Iroquois. (I have since learned that the Wyandot tribe is of Iroquoian extraction.)

I remember going over to my grandparent's house when I was young -- the house that Joseph Nichols built with his own hands, though I didn't realize it at the time -- and being fascinated by two large oval-framed pictures hanging on the walls. One was of an old man holding a little boy in a dressing gown. I was sufficiently awed at being told that little boy was my grandfather. It paled in comparison, though, to the other person in the other oval frame, Joseph's wife Delinda. My grandfather would say, "That's my great-grandmother Delinda. She was a Plymell. She was also Indian. Iroquois Indian. Can't you see it in her face, Patti?"

I would stare for a long time looking at her. Something about her bearing fascinated me and even slightly scared and intimidated me. With my peaches and cream complexion and red hair, I simply couldn't believe she was related to me. Her coloring was dark; I pictured ramrod straight black hair pulled back into that bun at the nape of her neck. Though she looked very tired she still held her head up so proudly. Her cheekbones were sky high, and her eyes! Deep set and intense. Her eyes, I imagined in my youthful feverish way, were those of a hidden warrior princess imprisioned in the trappings of a gingham dress.

Yes, grandpa, I can see it! I would always say. It was our ritual. And as I write this post, all I have to do is look up over my computer desk and hanging on my wall, still in its same oval frame, is Delinda's picture. Those intense eyes look down on me still. The picture I've posted above and to my right is a smaller version of the photo in the oval frame and without the artist's inkings added to it.

She does look Indian. Doesn't she? Or is it just my still-youthful, feverish imagination?

Tombstone Tuesday - Sweet Sweet Jane (b. & d. 1859) and Olive (1834 -1858)

Today's stone is actually two. One (the small stone leaning over on the left of this picture) is a small, partially buried stone in the New Hebron Cemetery in Crawford County, Illinois. It is the final resting place of Jane, the first of the three girls born to Joseph Nichols and Delinda Jane Plymell.

Jane was born on 4 May 1859 and died a week later on 11 May 1859. Her stone is covered with the grime of age and it leans backward, as if it is tired. It feels like such a sad little stone to me.

It's not as sad as the stone that rests to Jane's right, though. Jane's aunt Olive Ann Plymell is buried there. Olive's stone sunk into the ground a long time ago and then the top part cracked and snapped off in the center. When I was there last August I managed to dig half of it up but the other half has sunken so deep that it would take more effort and tools than I had available to me at the time.

Luckily Burl Rich in Crawford County had transcribed this cemetery in 2002, seemingly prior to the damage that Olive's stone has undergone. According to this site, it says:

Plymell, Olive Ann
Dau. of J&M
died February 3, 1858
aged 23Y 6M 22D

That puts Olive born about 1834. Olive was Delinda Jane's sister and both were daughters of James Plymell and his wife Margaret. We don't know Margaret's last name or if she even had one -- I'd always been told that Margaret's father was Iroquois. Other Plymell researchers are looking into it but as it stands now, my family's lore appears fairly accurate. Other Plymell branches from James and Margaret have more direct avenues of information and say that she was actually half Wyandot. You can read more about the origins of the Wyandot people at Wikipedia, but basically they were of Iroquoian extraction, a blend of the Huron Confederacy peoples and their Petun (Tobacco People) neighbors. It's a very interesting read!

The James and Margaret Plymell family originally lived in Delaware County, Ohio, and then moved onward into Marion County. Delinda Jane was born in Delaware County in 1822. James and Margaret were buried in Marion County, Ohio. Soon thereafter their children came to Crawford County.

Sweet, sweet Jane. And Olive too.