More On Asbury Taylor and Minerva (Corderman) Browning

I've been contacted by/have contacted a few new cousins this past week. Coincidentally, all of them are connected to the same Browning and even more coincidentally, it was the Browning I wrote about most recently -- Asbury Taylor Browning, the ninth child of Samuel and Margaret! Taylor died of smallpox in the Civil War but he had three children (Charles Otho, Sarah Viola, and Emma Ellsworth) who lived to have descendents. I'm currently corresponding with a descendant of Taylor's son, Charles. I've been contacted by a descendant of Emma Ellsworth but I've sent two emails so far and I haven't heard back from her. I sent yet another email to a man who I believe is descended from Sarah Viola. If I'm lucky I'll hear back from everyone soon.

Speaking of Asbury Taylor, I've also been thrilled to discover that a historian named Rhonda M. Kohl has been researching the Regiment that Taylor belonged to in the war, the 5th Illinois Cavalry. She's written the following scholarly articles about the regiment:

Kohl, Rhonda M. "'This Godforsaken Town': Death and Disease at Helena, Arkansas, 1862-63." Civil War History, 50, no. 2 (June 2004): 109-144.

Kohl, Rhonda M. "The Hard Lessons of War: The Fifth Illinois Cavalry at Helena, Arkansas." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 99, no. 3-4 (fall-winter, 2006-07): 185-210.

Unfortunately I don't belong to the IL State Historical Society so I haven't been able to read either of these. I sent an email to Ms.Kohl inquiring about Taylor and where he might possibly have been buried if he'd died in a hospital in Helena. Ms. Kohl kindly and quickly sent a response and gave me a few suggestions. She said many soldiers were buried on hills overlooking Helena, each was given their own grave and honored with crosses listing their name and unit. She said there was embalming at the time and Taylor's body may have been shipped back to IL (though if it was, I haven't found a gravesite for him.) She also suggested that I may want to contact the Phillips County Historical Society. I hope to follow up on some of her leads. Ms. Kohl is also in the final stages of submitting a book about the Regiment to her publisher. I'll be sure to obtain a copy when it's released.

Since this post is all about Asbury Taylor's family I thought I'd post a few photos of his children's tombstones as well as speak about another interesting document that Taylor's widow filed after his death. First things first, though!

The picture to the left is the tombstone of Sarah Viola Browning, Taylor and Minerva's fourth child. Sarah is buried at the Seaney Cemetery in Montgomery Township in Crawford County, Illinois. She sure was an interesting lady. She married four times and might have buried all four of them! She was born on 2 Aug 1859 in Prairie city (now Toledo) in Cumberland County, Illinois. She married Alfred Newton Criss around 1877, probably in Sullivan Co., IN. I don't know what happened to Alfred but Sarah married Daniel H. Ripple on 11 Jul 1886 in Crawford County, Illinois. She and Daniel settled in Crawford County and something happened to Daniel as well for Sarah married William J. Purcell on 2 Apr 1896, also in Crawford County. William and Sarah lived in Honey Creek Township. William died in Feb 1905 and Sarah married Abraham Walters on 24 Nov 1910. Sarah and Abraham lived in Oblong township for many years before Abraham died in 1924.

Sarah was living in Robinson on North Madison St in 1930 with her grandson Harold/Herald Reynolds and she remained in Crawford County until her death on 18 Nov 1942. Now I don't know who Harold's mother is. He says that both his parents were born in Indiana. As I'm quite sure I don't know exactly how many children Sarah had, much less their names (since I'm missing that precious 1890 census!) then Harold's most likely my best link to another daughter of Sarah's who married a Reynolds. I'll be looking Harold up on my upcoming trip to Robinson. Hopefully his marriage to Laura c1929 is in the Crawford County courthouse and he'll give his parent's names!

The next picture is the tombstone of John Abram Pirtle and his wife, Emma Ellsworth Browning. I won't post that one here because the picture was posted by Nynaeve on Find-A-Grave and I would much rather just link straight to her picture. Emma was born on 29 Sept 1862 in Prairie City in Cumberland County. She was only six months old when her father died and likely grew up feeling that Matthew Starbuck (her mother's second husband) was her father. Her mother died in 1873 when she was only 11 years old. I don't know what became of her from that time until 1880 but that year she was in Fox Township in Jasper County, Illinois as a 17-yr old hired domestic in the household of George Barnett. George was Emma's brother Charles and his wife Laura Belle Tritt's next door neighbor. I feel Emma was likely living with Charles and Laura but the census caught her at work.

Living two households down from Emma was a family headed by a man named John Kellar, aged 28, who was married with a 7-month old daughter. John was born in Illinois but both his parents were born in France. John Kellar becomes interesting because Emma had a daughter, Elsie May, in Sullivan County, Indiana on 1 March 1882. When Elsie married James Skidmore in Sullivan County in 1899 she listed her father's last name as Keller and his first initial as either an "L", a "J" or an "S." As Emma didn't marry John Abram Pirtle until 29 May 1884, she was unmarried at the time of Elsie's birth. Could this John Keller have been Elsie's father? Did Emma get pregnant and move to Sullivan County to give birth? Her older sister Sarah was in Sullivan county at the time. It's certainly a possibility. At any rate, John and Emma lived in and around the Oaktown, Knox Co. IN and Carlisle, Sullivan Co., IN area all their lives. They were buried in the Carlisle Odd Fellows Cemetery in Carlisle in Sullivan County.

Rewind a bit again with me as we come back to Asbury and Minerva, Sarah and Emma's parents. After Taylor's death in 1863 Minerva married Matthew James Starbuck and the couple and their children moved to Greenup Township in Cumberland County. You can see Matthew and Minerva's marriage license to the right. What's nice about this document was that it's a copy of the original document that Minerva had provided to prove her marriage to Matthew in her pursuit of guardianship of her children with Taylor. I'm thrilled to have it because Cumberland County's courthouse burned in 1885 and the original document is now lost. But yay, I have a copy of it right here!

Speaking of the pursuit of guardianship -- I'd always found it a bit odd that Minerva needed to pursue a guardianship for her OWN children! All the pension documents she filed in 1863-1867 never mention that she had given guardianship of her children to anyone else; as a matter of fact that state unequivocably that she had not. So why did she file? I turned once again to Bouvier's Law Dictionary and found my answer.

Minerva, as the children's mother, could be considered a 'Guardian By Nuture' but by the late 1850's that distinction was rapidly becoming obsolete. She of course had care of her children, but upon her marriage to Matthew she needed to have the rights to maintain and manage her children's estates as well as their persons; i.e., become their Testamentary Guardian. Now I'm only making an inference here, but it seems that if she'd allowed Matthew to become her children's legal guardian instead of herself, she would've been unable to continue to draw her children's minor's pensions from Asbury's estate. So Minerva filed for guardianship of her children with Asbury on 25 February 1868 under her married name, Minerva Starbuck, and her petition was granted on 29 June 1868.

I also initially found how they worded the guardianship papers odd as well. Take a look at the document over there on the left. Each of the children (Charles, Sarah and Emma) were listed as being "__ years on the __ day of ___", that day being one day before their birthday. For example, Charles was born the 6th of April -- he is listed as being seven years old on the 5th. It was strange to begin with but it's not as odd to me now with a second and third read-through. It makes sense, really. The day mentioned is the last full day each child was legally considered a minor and therefore also the last full day Minerva would hold guardianship over them.

Minerva died in May of 1873. If Matthew filed for any guardianship papers over Emma and Sarah -- who were still minors and still eligible for Asbury's pension payments -- after Minerva's death, those papers were lost in the 1885 Cumberland County courthouse fire.

The Browning Series -- Part Nine, or Asbury Taylor Browning and Minerva Corderman

With this post I continue what I call "The Browning Series." Samuel and Margaret Browning had thirteen children between them and after Margaret's death, Samuel chose a widow named Sarah Ann (Bell) Gaddis for his second wife. The two of them had two more children together. My plan has been to feature each one of the fifteen children in a separate post and finally tie the family together with a discussion of their parents.

This post is about Asbury Taylor Browning, the ninth child of Samuel Browning and Margaret Markee. Asbury was born around the year 1831 in Harrison County, Ohio. Asbury lived with his family until at least the age of sixteen. I've never been able to locate him on the 1850 census.

There is some evidence to suggest that in his youth he may have visited relatives in Licking County, Ohio. Asbury's wife, Minerva Corderman, stated in her Civil War widow’s pension application that she “always knew him since he was a small boy.” As a child, Minerva had lived in Licking County. There were Browning families in Licking County as well (one of the Licking county Brownings, Van Browning, later also moved to Crawford County IL) so there is some circumstantial evidence to argue that these Brownings may have been some relation to Asbury’s father, Samuel.

Taylor, as he was commonly known, moved to Crawford County with the rest of his family around the year 1851. He married Minerva Corderman in Robinson on 23 May 1852. Minerva was the daughter of David Corderman and Sarah Viola Barron and was born in 1837 in Ohio. For more information on the Corderman family, please go here to get the scoop. That was the research that my cousin Pat (descendant of John Wesley Browning and Matilda Corderman, who were Taylor's brother and Minerva's sister) worked on.

Taylor and Minerva lived in Crawford County after they were first married and Minerva gave birth there to Olen Barron Browning on 21 Sept 1853. On 6 Apr 1856, when their second child (son Charles Otho) was born, Minerva’s sister Matilda (who married Taylor’s brother John Wesley Francis Browning) was their assistant midwife. Five months later, in September 1856, their son Olen died. The little boy was buried next to his paternal grandmother Margaret (Markee) Browning in the Wilkin Cemetery in Licking Township, Crawford County. The couple's third child, Manerva, was born in November of 1858.

Sometime between the time of Olen’s death in 1856 and the birth of their fourth child, Sarah Viola, on 2 August 1859, Taylor and Minerva moved from Crawford County to Cumberland County, Illinois. They originally settled in Prairie City. Prairie City was a small community that was located in Sumpter Township and was later renamed Toledo. By 1 March 1860 (when their daughter Manerva died) however, the couple were living in the town of Pleasantville in present-day Woodbury Township. Pleasantville was a small community annexed to the west of the town of Jewett and today no longer exists in the county. The road that presently goes south out of Jewett was the dividing line between Jewett and Pleasantville. Taylor and Minerva lived there next door to Minerva’s parents and may have moved to the township to be closer to the Corderman family. Taylor made his living as a carpenter.

In mid-April of 1861 the Civil War began. At the end of May the first Union casualty, Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth, became a martyr to the cause when he was killed by the owner of an inn after tearing down a Confederate flag it was flying. The slogan “Remember Ellsworth” was popular in the North throughout the war and his death roused many a Northern man to enlist.

Likely Taylor was one of these men. He enrolled in the service of the Union and became a private in Company A, 5th Regt. Illinois Cavalry Volunteers. He enlisted in Prairie City, Illinois on 31 August 1861. Taylor is described in the company’s Muster And Descriptive Rolls as 5’10” with blue eyes, sandy hair, and a sandy complexion.

Taylor was stationed in Camp Butler IL until Feb 1862 and must have had at least one furlough back to visit Minerva as their fifth and last child, Emma Ellsworth, was born on 29 Sept 1862. The attending physician at Emma’s birth was Dr. John W. Lee. I feel fairly certain Taylor was honoring Elmer Ellsworth's memory and his strong feelings about the war by giving his daughter Emma the middle name of Ellsworth.

Taylor’s regiment served at the beginning of the war in and around Helena in Phillips County, Arkansas, and it was there that he came down with smallpox. His records state that he became ill on the 1st of April and died – accounts differ – on either the 19th or 20th of April, 1863. While both the company’s descriptive rolls and the adjutant general’s report state his death occurred on the 20th, his sergeant stated that it had occurred on the 19th. To me it seems most likely that Taylor had died on the 19th and his death went unreported until the following day. His burial location is unknown.

I don't know whether the entire family had moved from Pleasantville back into the Prairie City area at the time of Taylor’s enlistment in mid-1861, but certainly by the latter half of 1863 Minerva and her children had become residents. Minerva pursued a widow’s and a minor’s pension and claimed at the time of her pursuit that she was a resident of Prairie City. She received both pensions and was paid $14 a month until her last child, Emma, had reached the age of sixteen.

By July of 1865 Minerva and her children moved again and lived next door to her sister Matilda in Sumpter Township. I don't know how long Minerva remained near her sister but she remained in the county for the next couple of years before she married Matthew James Starbuck, the son of William Starbuck and Mary S. Hester, on 26 December 1867. Matthew was born on 11 April 1830 in Stokes County, NC and had served in Taylor’s company, Company A, 5th Regt. Illinois Cavalry Volunteers. He was first married to Jane Fulp, the daughter of Franklin Fulp, around the year 1848. Before Jane’s death in Cumberland County on 11 August 1866 the couple had nine children.

After their marriage Minerva, Matthew and the children moved to Greenup Township in Cumberland County. She filed for guardianship of her children with Asbury on 25 February 1868 under her married name, Minerva Starbuck, and her petition was granted on 29 June 1868. Minerva and Matthew may have one child that died around the year 1869 but they definitely had at least one known child, a son, David Clinton Starbuck, on 23 Sept 1871.

Minerva died in Cumberland County, Illinois on 7 May 1873. She may have been a victim of the national influenza outbreaks of the years 1873-1875. Her burial location is unknown. After her death Matthew and David moved to Benton Co., AR. Matthew died 18 May 1902 and was buried in the Gamble Cemetery in Centerton, Benton Co AR.

--

For more about Asbury & Minerva's family:

1) Sarah Viola Browning and Emma Ellsworth Browning, their daughters

2) Charles Otho Browning, their only surviving son

Madness Monday, and The Browning Series -- Part Eleven, or John Wesley Francis Browning and Matilda Corderman

This post is a three-for-the-price-of-one post. Why? Well, it manages to blend one of my Monday Madness problems with my continuing series on my Browning family as well as directly relating to my previous post about a photo comparison. It concerns John Wesley Browning, the eleventh child of Samuel Browning and Margaret Markee.

John Wes is a Monday Madness problem for me because after 1864, he just.....vanishes. Did he leave Illinois? Go serve in the War? Did he die? I'd love to know but even if I did manage it somehow it would be a bittersweet victory because my cousin Pat -- who's descended from him -- is no longer here to enjoy the knowledge.

Here's what I do know.

John was born around the year 1835 in Moorefield Township in Harrison County, Ohio. He came to Crawford County, Illinois with his parents and siblings when he was about 12 years old. John almost always used his middle name (Wesley) with one exception; upon his marriage to Matilda Corderman in 1856 he placed the name Francis on his marriage certificate. Matilda was born around 1834 in Ohio and was the daughter of David Corderman and Sarah Viola Barron. She was also the older sister of Minerva Corderman, who had married John Wesley’s brother Asbury Taylor Browning in 1852.

Evidence shows that the Corderman family and the Browning family knew each other for some years (and in two states) prior to the intermarriages between them. Matilda’s sister Minerva claimed in her widow's pension papers in May 1863 that she had known her husband Asbury Taylor Browning "from a young boy." (As Taylor was a young boy in Harrison County, Ohio and Matilda and Minerva grew up in Licking County, Ohio this little clue is important -- other Brownings lived in Licking County and I'm very interested in where that leads me research-wise.) Anyway, it seems evident that Matilda got to know Taylor’s younger brother better as a result of her sister’s marriage. Matilda was likely already engaged to John Wes when she was listed as the assistant midwife at the birth of Charles Otho Browning, Taylor and Minerva’s son, on 6 April 1856 because she and John married the next month on 23 May 1856 in Crawford County.

After their marriage the couple may have lived briefly in Crawford County before they moved to Pleasantville in present-day Woodbury Township in Cumberland County, Illinois. The couple is found with their daughter Alice on the census there in July of 1860. Pleasantville was a small community annexed to the west of the town of Jewett and today no longer exists in the county. (The road that presently goes south out of Jewett was the dividing line between Jewett and Pleasantville.) John Wesley and Matilda lived next door to Matilda’s parents and very near to John’s brother Asbury Taylor. At that time, John listed himself as a laborer. By September the couple had moved to Pleasant Grove Township in Coles County, Illinois and are found enumerated on the census in that township. Wesley’s occupation at that time was listed as engineer. It's possible that the family moved to Coles County because John had found a job as an engineer in either Charleston or Mattoon, both well-populated cities at the time.

The next documented evidence found for John Wes and Matilda is October 1864, when Wes filed a patent application in Mattoon, Coles County, Illinois stating that he was a resident of Mattoon. The patent was numbered #44594, was dated 11 October 1864, and was for a “new and improved device for transmitting motion." An engineer I know took a look at the patent drawings and said that John was technically adept and his ideas were good ones (though of course perpetual motion machines have folly written all over them!)

This patent is the last record that John Wesley Francis Browning leaves behind. By July of 1865 his wife Matilda and the couple’s two daughters were living alone in Sumpter Township in Cumberland County. They were enumerated beside Matilda’s sister Minerva, who'd become a widow a few years before. It's uncertain whether John Wesley left his family for reasons unknown, joined the war effort, or simply died. If he did die, I've never been able to locate where he was buried.

Pat told me that stories passed down through her family expressed the belief that he may have served “in the Grey.” This is interesting for it suggests that John Wesley may have been a southern sympathizer and might have fallen in with the Copperhead movement that was prevalent in Mattoon during the Civil War years. He might have joined the Confederate cause -- it's certainly possible -- but despite my research into southern war records I haven't uncovered anything to substantiate Pat's family tale. Lacking hard evidence to the contrary, it's tempting to assume that John Wes died sometime between October of 1864 and July of 1865. This assumption, however, is by no means proven.

In March of 1867 Matilda went before the county clerk of Cumberland County as a witness to help her sister Minerva gain a minor’s pension for the children of her marriage to Taylor Browning. Matilda testified to her attendance at the birth of her nephew Charles Otho Browning and claimed that she was a resident of Prairie City. Three years later, in July of 1870, Matilda was still living in Prairie City with her daughters Alice J. (b. 1857) and Sarah Viola 'Kate' Browning (b. Mar 1863) a few doors down from her parents. She was listed as a seamstress.

After July of 1870 there is no further record of Matilda either. She isn't found on the 1880 census but this might be because she was remarried before that date. Sadly, a courthouse fire in 1885 caused the loss of all Cumberland County records filed before that date so I may never know if Matilda remarried. I can't even hunt her down through her daughters -- if Alice married in Cumberland County her marriage, too, is lost, and then of course there's no 1890 census.....

And what of Kate? By 1880 Kate -- Pat's g-grandmother -- had become pregnant out of wedlock and stories in Pat's family relate that Kate and Matilda never got along again after that. The pregnancy drove a wedge between Kate and her mother and before she gave birth Kate took her father's picture and his patent papers and ran away to Terre Haute in Vigo Co., IN. I wonder, though -- if Kate took his papers that mean John didn't take them. Surely if he left the family for some reason other than death, he'd have taken his papers?

I just don't know what happened to John Wes. I don't know whether Matilda remarried or died. I don't know what happened to their daughter Alice. John Wes and his family drives me mad. I do have the patent papers and I do have the one photo that Pat gave me (the positively identified photo from the previous post) though it is not a good copy. Pat was given the other unidentified photo (the black and white one, not the sepia toned one) from another cousin who believed that it was John and I think she was right. The collar that he is wearing reminds me of a war uniform, perhaps? If so, maybe the story about John Wes going into the service isn't just a family rumor. Anyway, I'm working on obtaining good, high-resolution scans of both photos and when I do I'll unashamedly take Brett up on his offer of digital overlay.

Tombstone Tuesday - Matthew Starbuck (1830-1902)

The pictures in this post* are of the headstone of Matthew Starbuck, who was born in Stokes County, North Carolina, on 11 Apr 1830.

Matthew was the son of William Starbuck and Mary Hester. He married Jane Fulp (daughter of Franklin Fulp) and the couple moved from North Carolina to Indiana before finally settling in Cumberland County, Illinois in the early 1860's. Matthew joined up in the Civil War and served in Company A of the 5th IL Cavalry. He and Jane had nine living children before Jane's death in 1866.

Meanwhile, by 1859 Asbury Taylor Browning and his wife Minerva Corderman (the daughter of David Corderman and Sarah Viola Barron) had also moved to Cumberland County with their three living children -- Charles, Sarah and Emma. Asbury also joined up for service in the Civil War and served in the same company that Matthew Starbuck did. Alas, Asbury died in Arkansas of smallpox in 1862, leaving Minerva a widow.

I can't say for certain but it might be safe to assume that Matthew got to know Minerva and her children because of his acquaintanceship with Asbury before the latter's death. Perhaps the two men were even friends. In late December of 1867 (a little over a year after the death of his first wife) Matthew and Minerva married.

In the early spring of 1867 Minerva had applied for a widow's pension for herself and a minor's pension for her children. By 1868, however, she and Matthew Starbuck had been married so she applied for and received guardianship papers as well.

(It seems strange that Minerva -- their mother! -- would need to obtain guardianship papers. I'm curious why this is so. Since she was married again, did she think she needed a paper saying SHE was guardian of their persons and properties and not her new husband? Comments or thoughts would be welcome.)

Matthew and Minerva had one child of their own -- David Clinton Starbuck, born 1871 -- before Minerva died in 1873. Matthew married one more time, to Ellen Cook around the year 1875 or so. (I don't know the dates for sure since Cumberland County records from 1843-1885 were lost in a fire.) Matthew then moved to Benton County, Arkansas and lived out the rest of his days there. He died in 1902 and is buried in the Gamble Cemetery in Centerton in Benton County.

(*The headstone photos came from a great site called Cindy Marcell's Family Cemeteries. It's located at http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~marcell/CEMETERIES.html)

Tombstone Tuesday/Genealogy Happy Dance, Pt III

At the end of the last post we were in 2001 and had just discovered the pieces of Margaret's stone. We looked that day without success for her grandson Olen's stone. According to the cemetery plat we had with us, it was supposed to have been placed to the right of Margaret's when you faced her stone. It was missing, and we assumed it had been felled by the same tree that had sheared Margaret's in half. As thrilled as we were about locating Margaret (and for the particulars of that story refer to my last post!) the four of us -- me, my cousin Pat, my other cousin Linda, and her husband Cliff -- were still pretty disappointed. We left the cemetery without anything left of poor Olen but a piece of paper and some memories.

Did I mention that my cousin Linda and her hubby Cliff were intrepid souls? Well they are! They went back to the Wilkin Cemetery a couple of times and continued looking, hoping to find little Olen's stone. They were frustrated until three years later, when in July 2004, Cliff decided to take a chance and utilize a probe to poke around in the ground. He did exactly that and lo and behold, he got a hit!

They very carefully delved into the ground, barely wanting to hope. It took a while but slowly Olen's stone emerged from its earthy prison. It had fallen over flat and was lying about 3-4 inches deep. No lawnmowers had chipped it and no trees had clipped it. The base was evenly broken and the stone had no grooves or fissures. It was in near-pristine condition, like it had been made only yesterday.

Cliff pulled it up and set it at the same time he set Margaret's. Having been there since 1856, you would never believe this little stone (the one to the left) was 152 years old. It's a beautiful piece of work. Though I was thrilled to see it and even more thrilled to have it standing proud beside grandma like the family had meant it to be, there was a part of me that was sad. Being in the ground had kept it whole; protected from the ravages of time and the elements. It's not so lucky any more. Someday its words will be gone forever. But for right now, little Olen sure looks grand!

Olen Barron Browning was the son of Asbury Taylor Browning and Minerva Corderman. He got his middle name from his maternal grandmother Sarah Viola Barron. He was born on 21 Sept 1853 in Crawford County IL and died on 8 Sept 1856 in Crawford County, IL. Olen was Taylor and Minerva's firstborn child.

Genealogy Happy Dance, aka "In Search Of......Margaret, Part II"

I told the first part of the story below and you definitely need to read that first. So go, go go.....

You're back? Okay! So now.....The Rest Of The Story.

Er, sorta.

Anywayyyy.......after finding Margaret's name in the Wilkin cemetery plat, other research tasks spurred by its discovery caught my attention. Realizing that Samuel likely wasn't buried next to Margaret had disappointed me even through my giddiness at finding her on the Wilkin Cemetery plat records. To help ease the disappointment I set about trying to find out who Olen was. It didn't take long to learn that little Olen (1853-1856) was the son of Samuel and Margaret's ninth child Asbury Taylor Browning and his wife Minerva Corderman.

The discovery did inspire me to begin tracing all of Samuel and Margaret's children, one by one, in the hopes that by doing so I would learn more about who Olen had been. This was when I finally learned the benefits of researching one family exclusively. By the time I'd been at it for a while I began to feel like I "knew" each and every one of them like the back of my hand. That familiarity is essential to good work and without it you may miss vital pieces of information that would have no context otherwise. Never let anyone tell you that hunches borne of familiarity aren't valuable tools. Follow them.

Anyway, the time and opportunity for a visit to Crawford County finally came. I flew down to Crawford County in July 2001 with Patricia O'Connor, a cousin that I'd been working with since the late 1990s. She and I had never physically met but we'd formed a solid bond during our researches. I was so excited to finally get to meet her! Her ancestor, John Wesley Browning (b. c1837) was Samuel and Margaret's 11th child while my ancestor, James (b. 1815) was their first.

Pat and I spent nearly a week in Robinson -- the county seat of Crawford County -- and during that week we got together with Cliff and Linda and took a trip out to the Wilkin Cemetery. They led me to Margaret's grave -- what there was of it -- and during the obligatory picture-taking/wandering the cemetery, a man drove up and got out and eventually approached us.

He introduced himself as the cemetery caretaker and when he noticed we were staring at Margaret's grave he pointed to the giant overgrown stump a few rows forward from Margaret's stone. "See that stump?" he said. "You want to know what probably happened to that grave there? About 50 years ago or so that was a huge tree that got hit by a stroke of lightning. Sent it crashing down into the middle of the cemetery and from what I hear, a lot of the stones in its path got busted up pretty good."

My heart sank to the pit of my stomach and everyone else looked like they were feeling the same. We thanked the caretaker and after a few more minutes we decided to take the last pictures and go ahead and go. It was July, the Illinois humidity was brutal, and everyone else was wilting. We all started back to the van to start the air conditioning but I was dragging my feet. I just kept thinking that there was something I was missing.

I turned back and told them to give me five minutes. They gladly cooled down in the van while I went back up to the cemetery, thinking to myself about what would have happened in the aftermath of that damaging lightning strike. Tombstones scattered everywhere, tree limbs all over. I noticed a large number of big branches thrown over the barbed wire fence around the perimeter and it started me wondering if they'd carted the stones towards the perimeter as well. I walked the perimeter and looked through all the underbrush with no results. I had about given up in frustration when something drew me back toward the stump in the middle. I looked at it a moment and then thought, "Well....surely they'd have propped the stones against the stump?"

Except there really wasn't too much of a stump anymore, just the remnants of one. So I bent down and started digging through the undergrowth -- which incidentally I recognized as poison oak! -- with my bare hands. I saw a flash of white and grabbed it, pulling it out into the light. Emblazoned on the face was a single word.

MARGARET,

and below it, faintly:

Wife of S Browning
died January 19

I don't really remember it but I know I let out a yell of triumph because Cliff came running out of the van. He said later he thought I'd been snakebit. I laid it down, shaking, and reached in again to pull out another part of the stone. This one showed a hand pointing to heaven. I laid it next to the part of the stone bearing her name and the two pieces fit like a glove.

I had to sit down then because I was weak, laughing and grinning and shaking like an idiot. It was easily the most exhilarating genealogical experience of my life.

To this day I recall the feeling I had standing in that cemetery and I can't help but wonder if Margaret herself wasn't calling me over to where her stone had fallen. Having been propped against the stump, had it toppled into the hole left as the tree decayed? It was the only logical explanation, of course. But the feeling of serendipity remains.

After a time I felt able to stand and the discoing commenced in earnest. All the cousins there were discoing that day! After we'd calmed a bit we lifted the stones and placed them on top of what was left in the ground. A perfect fit! I stood back and took the picture on the left. Cliff told me then that he was going to repair the stone. It took him a couple of years but he did it. The stone as it appears today is shown on the right.

Of course we still hadn't found Olen's stone. Margaret's stone had been busted into three pieces. At the time it seemed reasonable to assume that Olen's stone, sitting to the right of Margaret's like it had been, had caught the worst of the tree as it fell. I believed we'd never find it.

But that's.......not quite the the Rest Of The Story.

Part III, coming right up!

Genealogy Happy Dance, aka "In Search Of......Margaret, Part I"

I'm a little late in getting around to the Genealogy Happy Dance post I've been reading about in a number of genealogy blogs, but I figure it's better late than never. I've had so many occasions to jig and rhumba (or do my very best disco!) during my 16 years at this hobby, but the most intensely happy moment by far was when I located the gravestone of my Browning matriarch -- my 4th g-grandmother -- Margaret (Markee) Browning. It's been years since this happened, but just doing the writing to tell the tale makes the grin start creeping onto my face and my toe start tapping.

Get comfortable, people. This is a long story.

My 4th g-grandparents, Samuel Browning and Margaret Markee, married in 1815 in Harrison County, Ohio. They were both little more than children -- Samuel was about 18 and had just returned from serving six months in the War of 1812 with Captain Baruch Dickerson's Company, a part of Lieutenant-Colonel William Cotgreve/Colgrove's Second Regiment of Ohio Militia out of Jefferson County. Margaret, the daughter of James Markee (who was the son of James Markey and Amey Trigg of Taynton, Gloucester, England) was barely 15. They were married for 40 years and had 13 children during their marriage, all of whom lived to adulthood. They also took care of their daughter Julia's illegitimate son, Washington, throughout the term of his life. (Washington's story is an interesting one, which I'll blog about at another time.)

They lived 35 years together in Harrison County (moving from Cadiz Twn to Athens Twn to Moorefield Twn) before deciding around 1851 to move on to Crawford County, Illinois. Ten of their thirteen children and their grandson went with them. Samuel and Margaret's eldest son James and his wife Jane Nevitt had moved to Crawford County a few years before that, along with a few of Margaret's Markee nephews. At this point in my research, though, I wasn't aware that Samuel and Margaret had moved to Crawford County and I certainly didn't know that any of the Markees had! I only knew that MY ancestor James had. Not knowing that they'd went to Illinois turned out to be pretty important.

When I first began my genealogical research, I located Samuel and Margaret mentioned on page 535 of J.H. Beer's book, A Commemorative Biographical Record of the counties of Harrison and Carroll. The sketch was of John C. McConnell, who'd married Samuel and Margaret's daughter Rachel. (Rachel was the only one of the Brownings to remain in Harrison County her entire life -- the others moved to Indiana and Kansas -- but as I said before, I didn't realize that at the time. I thought only James had moved to Illinois!) Anyway, the biography spoke briefly of the Browning family and mentioned, as follows: "In 1864 he [Samuel] died, and his remains were laid beside those of his wife, who died in 1855." This small phrase and its implications sent me on a wild goose chase that lasted years and painfully highlighted my fledgling genealogical talents.

I looked all over Harrison County for the location of Samuel and Margaret's gravesite. I spent a very frustrating 6-9 months on the search and when I kept coming up empty I got sidetracked onto other research tasks with other families and decided to lay the burial mystery aside for a while. You must understand -- this was in the years before I learned to concentrate on one family instead of hopping about from family to family. Like I said, fledgling.

A few years later I came back to the Brownings -- to stay, it turns out -- armed with the then-new information that Samuel and Margaret had emigrated to Crawford County, Illinois not long after their son James. I looked at the phrase with new eyes. I finally realized that the phrase had only implied they'd been buried in Harrison County! Since all the other information in the passage about Samuel and Margaret had been true (their children, Samuel's 1812 service, their religious orientation, etc) I wondered if Beers could have been in error about their burial. But in looking at it, Beers never mentioned that they'd been buried in Harrison County. He simply said they were buried together. I thought perhaps they'd been buried in Crawford County instead. But I wondered anew.....where?

I started looking and after some amount of diligence, finally found a hit! Margaret! Buried in the Wilkin Cemetery in Licking Twn. Although I held off on the full-press disco because there wasn't a Samuel listed, I did stand up and allow myself a jig or three. I was pretty happy because next to Margaret there was another Browning listed, one I'd never heard of. A child named Olen B., a son of Asbury Taylor Browning (Samuel and Margaret's ninth child) and his wife Minerva Corderman.

My happiness was tempered by the fact that -- being in Texas -- I couldn't just run out the door and visit the cemetery like every bone in my body was dying to do. I did the next best thing and called a cousin that lived in the county -- one I'd located between my first search and the one that found Margaret -- and dispatched her posthaste to the cemetery to find the stone. She came back emptyhanded. We were crushed.

But my cousin Linda wasn't easily daunted. She started asking around, conferring with the most prominent historian/genealogists in the county. What she found was hugely exciting. Apparently an old cemetery plat existed for the Wilkin, and Margaret and Olen (though not Samuel) were on it! She got a copy made after some finagling and she and her husband Cliff -- who is a treasure, believe me! -- went back to the Wilkin and used the plat to find the position of Margaret's plot. They went armed with a camera.

Look over to the left for what they found. No name there at all, and merely the hint of a death date -- 1856. Hm, I thought, Beers was a little off after all. According to the plat, Olen was supposed to be buried to her right when you faced her stone but there wasn't a stone in sight.

There was little surprise that at their first run of the cemetery, Cliff and Linda had missed her. Without the plat, they'd surely have continued to do so.

As Paul Harvey likes to say, stay tuned, for "in a minute, you're going to hear...the Rest Of The Story."

(If you'd like to read further, go to Part II of this story here, then come back and read Part III of this story!)