The Hair Book Families Pt 1 -- Thomas F. and Mary (Plymell) Emery

We start my series of posts about the families whose names are in my Hair Book with the Emery family.

Thomas Emery was born in 10 July 1814 in Ohio and married Mary Plymell -- born 13 May 1817, the daughter of James Plymell and Margaret (rumored to be half Wyandot, a Native American tribe) -- on 17 October 1838 in Marion County, Ohio. His parents are currently unknown.

To put this in perspective (and to better clarify her relationship to the two women who filled out the Hair Book) -- Mary Plymell was my 3rd-g-grandmother Delinda Jane Plymell's sister; hence, she was Eliza Ursula (Nichols) Swan's aunt and Estella Jane (Swan) Browning's great aunt. Mary is my 3rd great-grandaunt.

Thomas and Mary had the following children:

1) Elton Amos Emery (b. c1840 Marion Co., OH , never married, d. 22 Dec 1907 MT)
2) Alzina D. Emery (b. c1842 IL, m. John H. Hatchett 19 Dec 1867 in Macon Co., IL, d. 25 Sep 1898, bur El Paso Cemetery, Derby, Sedgwick Co KS)
3) Lorinda Emery (b. c1847 IL?)
4) Mary A.Z. Emery (b. c1849 IL?)
5) Elmer Francis Emery (b. 3 Jul 1855 IL, m. Fanny G. Parker 14 Aug 1881 in Sedgwick Co., KS, d.14 Jan 1933 bur El Paso Cemetery, Derby, Sedgwick Co KS)

Thomas Emery is found living in Marion Township in Marion Co., OH in 1840. He is listed as 20 -under 30. Living with him is Mary his wife (20 - under 30), a male under 5 (an unknown son who died before 1850 or most likely Elton Amos b. c1840), a female (5 - under 10), and a man listed as 50 - under 60. I don’t know who the older man is (perhaps Thomas’s father?) but the young female can only be Olive Ann Plymell, Mary’s youngest sister. By 1837 Mary’s parents had died. As Olive Ann Plymell (aged 7 in 1840) was found living with Thomas and Mary ten years later in the 1850 census, it stands to reason she’s the young female in the 1840.

By 1850 the couple and their children had settled in Crawford Co., IL, probably because Mary’s Plymell relatives were already there. They lived in Crawford County at least ten years (showing up on both the 1850 and the 1860 censuses) and during that time Mary’s sister Olive Ann Plymell died (on 2 Feb 1858) and was buried in the New Hebron Cemetery in Crawford County. By 1870 the Emery’s had moved to Decatur in Macon Co., IL. In 1871 they moved again, going overland by wagon to Wichita, KS. They settled in Rockford Township in Sedgwick Co., KS and lived there until 1882, when they sold their farm and moved to the nearby city of Mulvane, KS to join their youngest son Elmer and his family. Mary died on 18 Jan 1889 and Thomas followed on 9 Mar 1893. Thomas and Mary are buried in the El Paso Cemetery in Derby, Sedgwick Co KS. (Their headstone picture at right was taken by Kyle on Find-A-Grave in 2004 -- he deserves all the credit I can give him for his volunteer efforts there.)

There is some confusion about Thomas and Mary’s children -- meaning, how many did they actually have? 5…….or 4?

Mary A.Z. Emery and Lorinda Emery show up on two different censuses but neither girl shows up on a census with the other. The 1850 census shows a 1-yr old girl named Mary A. Z. born in IL. The 1860 census doesn't show a Mary A.Z. (who should be around 11 yrs old) but does list a Lorinda, aged 12 (the census says born in OH but it’s an obvious enumerator error; two of her siblings suffer the same error.) The confusion lies because Lorinda is NOT listed on the 1850, where she should be, but is on the 1860. There’s argument to be made that Lorinda Emery could have a year of birth c1847 and have a year of death after the 1860 census, and have a sister named Mary A. Z. Emery with a year of birth c1849 and a year of death prior to the 1860 census, but....is it possible that the 1-yr old “Mary A. Z.” on the 1850 is the “Lorinda” on the 1860?

I’ve looked for further information on either girl (marriages, deaths, etc, in the counties in which their family lived) to no avail. Perhaps I won’t ever know. What I DO know, though, is that Lorinda Emery DID exist. Her name is in the Hair Book and in a script that's a perfect match to another entry (that of Nathan A. Plymell) dated 1861. Elton’s and Elmer’s, dated 1860, are as well. But Mary’s? No. Does that mean she died too early and wasn’t old enough to have been included in the book? Perhaps. But for me, I’m inclined to think that Mary and Lorinda are one and the same. Call it a hunch.

Lastly, to address another few entries in the Hair Book that connect to the Emery family -- Flossie Hatchett and Nellie Hatchett. These two names were written in the hand of the Hair Book’s second author, whom I’m confident is Estella Jane (Swan) Browning, born 1874. Flossie (probably Florence) and Nellie Hatchett were Stella’s second cousins, granddaughters of Thomas and Mary (Plymell) Emery. Florence was born in IL in Nov 1870 and Nellie was born in KS in 1873. I don’t know when Stella got the hair samples from both girls that she sewed into the book, but Florence died in KS in 1880 at the age of 10 and Nellie went on to marry McEnsie Cockrell on 7 Jan 1894 in Sedgwick Co KS before she died in Dec 1958. Hmmm, perhaps it wasn’t Stella who sewed Flossie’s sample in; she was only 6 when Flossie died! That means there’s a third author and the writing styles are very similar…

Next time, the Vanes (though I've covered them already in some detail and will be highlighting those older posts as well)!

The Man with The Fiddle

I like this picture. Too bad I don't know for sure who this man is. The picture itself and some background about my family history provides me with some definite clues to his identity and I think I can therefore narrow it down a bit.

I start with looking at the picture itself. The man is holding a fiddle. Someone correct me if it's actually a violin (since I'm no musician) but the way he's holding the bow seems more like a fiddle player would hold it. There's no apparent chin rest on the instrument.

The background is obviously a backdrop; look at the line it makes behind the chair legs. The man's clothing looks homemade. His pants are striped or corded and "bootcut," or narrow to the ankle. The boots are working boots, scuffed and worn. His coat and vest look like wool or some other sort of heavy fabric. He doesn't have a collar sticking out of his shirt, but that necktie! It's polka-dotted! And his hair is oiled and parted to the side. It looks like the tail of an otter got oiled and plopped on top of his head, poor boy. I know he was gussying up for the camera but it still makes me giggle.

He looks about twenty years old, maybe twenty-five at most. Though his tie and his hair seem to date the photo to the late 1860's, I'm thinking I might move that date up to the early 1870's. I say that for two reasons. When you turn the picture over, it says, "D.H. Hill, Arcadia, Kansas." I googled D.H. Hill in the hopes that I could narrow down the date range of the shot that way but came up with nothing. I'd love to find the photographer, but I can still fill in some blanks with my family history.

Around 1872, the Vane family moved to Arcadia, Kansas. John Vane and his wife Adaline Plymell had five children that I know of, but only two of their boys would be old enough to be the subject of this photo. Martin Luther was born c1850 but died prior to 1860 so he can be ruled out immediately. The other two are William Wiley Shannon Vane, who was born c1852, and George Edward Vane, born in 1853. (I featured the other two siblings of this family in a recent post; see Cymantha and William James Vane below.)

Not much is known about William Wiley Shannon, except that he married Augusta King. As for George, he did some traveling, probably for work -- he was in Labette County, Kansas in 1880 as a boarder and he was in Newton County, Missouri as a laborer in 1900. George never married and died of drospy in 1903 in Arcadia in the home of his sister Cymantha Curnutt. He was buried in the Old Arcadia Cemetery on his 40th birthday.

There are a few of the sons of William Wallace Plymell, Adaline Plymell Vane's brother, that would be about the right age and who also moved to Kansas in the early 1870's. I don't know enough about these boys to completely eliminate them. However, the 1875 Kansas state census shows Wallace and his boys (John Catlett, Cordova and Lyman) in Sumner County, Kansas. John C. was age 24, Cordova was age 21, and Lyman was age 19. This picture could be any of these boys if they happened to be in Arcadia when the picture was taken. Lastly, a note written on the back of the picture of Cymantha and William James Vane mentions that the Plymell boys were in Wichita in neighboring Sedgwick County. I've already dated the writing on that picture to the mid to late-1870's era.

Given this information, I lean heavily towards the supposition that the mystery man here is George Edward Vane. Was traveling George a fiddle player? I don't know. But if this picture was taken around 1873, our George would be 20 years old. It fits. What do you think?