The Hair Book Families Pt 2 - John and Adaline (Plymell) Vane

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

John Vane was born in Feb 1824 in Brown Co., Ohio, the son of John Vane (1795-1860) and Eleanor Blair (1795-1845). He married Adaline Plymell -- born 7 Apr 1827 in either Delaware Co OH or Marion Co., OH, the daughter of James Plymell and Margaret (rumored to be half Wyandotte) -- on 2 Nov 1848 in Crawford Co., IL.

To put this in perspective (and to better clarify her relationship to the two women who filled out the Hair Book) -- Adaline 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. Adaline is my 3rd great-grandaunt.

John and Adaline had the following children:

1) Martin Luther Vane (b. 1850 Crawford Co., IL , d. bef 1860)
2) William ‘Wiley’ Shannon Vane (b. 1852 Crawford Co., IL, m. Augusta King 24 Apr 1887 in Crawford Co., KS, d. unk)
3) George Edward Vane (b. 16 Jan 1853 Crawford Co., IL, never married, d. 15 Jan 1903, Arcadia, Crawford Co., KS.)
4) Cymantha Jane Vane (b. 25 Sep 1859 Richland Co. or Macon Co., IL, m. James William Curnutt Feb 1874 Arcadia, Crawford Co., KS, d. 21 Jun 1925 Arcadia, Crawford Co., KS.)
5) William James Vane (b. Mar 1869 Macon Co., IL, m. Martha Dodson c1891 KS, d. 1948 Arcadia, Crawford Co., KS)

I haven’t found the family on the 1850 census but they were located living in Denver Twn in Richland Co., IL in 1860, possibly because Adaline’s brother William Wallace Plymell was also living in Richland County at that time. By 1870 the Vane family had moved on to Decatur in Macon Co., IL. I’d place their move to Decatur a little earlier, though, because of a picture I have in my collection of John and Adaline’s two youngest children Cymantha and James (Chimie = probably a phonetic spelling of “Jimmie.”) The back stamp of the photo indicates it was taken in Decatur; I can date this photo fairly precisely to 1869. How can I? To find out more, please click over to the post I wrote about the picture and the photographer HERE.

I have no doubt that the reason Adaline’s sister Mary (Plymell) Emery and her husband Thomas moved to Decatur and then on to Kansas had a lot to do with the decisions that other family members made about their family’s futures. As it happens time and again, John and Adaline Vane had also decided to follow in the footsteps of their relatives. Thomas and Mary (Plymell) Emery were in Decatur, Macon Co., IL by 1870 and had moved to Wichita in Sedgwick Co., KS in 1871. William Wallace Plymell, Adaline and Mary’s oldest brother, had a few sons that moved to Wichita as well. I’m not sure when the boys moved there, but family tradition in Wallace’s family says Wallace himself arrived in Belle Plaine in Sumner Co., KS by 1873. John and Adaline (Plymell) Vane also packed up and moved to Arcadia in Crawford Co., KS in approximately the same time frame -- c1872.

The younger children of John and Adaline (Plymell) Vane grew up in Arcadia, KS and raised families there but their two oldest are more of an enigma. Wiley (probably a phonetic spelling for "Willie") or as he was more commonly called, Shannon Vane, married Augusta King in Kansas but I’ve been unable to locate him in the 1900 census. And George? He died a bachelor and was buried on his 40th birthday. I believe I do have a picture of him, though! To see it (and how I came to believe the unidentified picture is George) you’ll have to go HERE.

I don’t have any identified samples of hair from any of the Vane family. Their names are listed in the book and dates are under many of their names but no actual hair samples are sewn in. I may actually have some hair from them since I have a few clumps of unidentified hair tucked into the lip of the front cover of the Hair Book, but of course I'll never know for sure if I do. That’s too bad.

Eliza Ursula, the first owner of the book and Adaline (Plymell) Vane’s niece, definitely cared about her aunt and uncle and they cared about her. I have a letter that John Vane wrote from Kansas to Eliza Ursula and her daughter Estella Jane back in Illinois. Even though they were separated by many miles and by many years (at the time of this letter it was 1886 and the Vanes had been in Kansas for over a decade) it appears that they wrote back and forth to each other fairly often. The letters reference hearing from them "once more," so the two families definitely stayed in touch.

Since I don’t have any hair samples, I’ll post the letter instead:


The transcription is as follows:
{All comments in [brackets] are identifying notations for people and places}

1) Dec 16th 1886

Dear Nieces [Eliza Ursula (Nichols) Swan & her daughter Estella Jane (Swan) Browning]-

We received your letter in due time were very glad to hear from you once more - but sorry to hear of you all being so much afflicted it does seem that is the lot of some to have a great deal of affliction in this life - but if faithful to our trust it will let us more fully enjoy rest in the sweet beyond. We are all tolerably well but Shannon [William Shannon Vane, b. 1852]. He has been very sick for the last six weeks the doctor says he has the chronic malaria fever originating from a chronic enlargement of the spleen - he suffer very great pain at times

Pg 2) he very wild some times - his nervous system is all unstrung he dont know what he is talking about a great deal of the time the doctor says it will be three or four and maybe six months before he is well I for my part think his recovery is very doubtful - he has been ailing so long and it has so prostrated his whole system that it dont seem possible to build him up again -- Though the Doctor seems to be very hopeful of him our light has not been out of rights for six weeks.

Pg 3) We will try to answer your questions. Norton [probably Norton Vane, b. c1828 in Ohio] sends me a roll of papers every few weeks The Argus and Enterprise -- John Plymell and his wife were parted a few years ago I dont know whether they ever went together again or not Cordova and his wife were parted we never heard whether went together again or not. I wrote to Wallace twice to tell us the boys were doing [John & Cordova are sons of Wallace W. Plymell and either Margaret J. Grimes or Sophia Jane Cox]

Pg 4) doing but not got an answer yet have not heard from them for over two years - have not had a letter from Fuller [James Fuller Plymell] for seven or eight years I answered his last but he never replied. Well Estella [Estella Jane (Swan) Browning] your Aunt [Adaline (Plymell) Vane] thinks your dresses are very nice and would be very glad to see you with them on - we are all very much pleased to get a letter from you - you are improving very much in your writing Our love to all - Please write one and all whenever convenient

John Vane

(on page three, written upside down:
We send our best respects to Miss Susan McCarty - tell her to write to us

(and on page three, written in the left hand side margin:
Your aunt says she would like some of (those seed)
---

And what happened to John and Adaline?

A few years after writing this letter to Eliza Ursula and Estella, both John and Adaline passed away. According to Ken Groves, a cousin of mine and a great researcher on the Plymell, Emery and Vane lines, "John’s obituary is listed in the 23 May 1889 edition of the Arcadia (KS) Democrat. It listed his death on Friday 17 May 1889 and his age at death as 65 years 3 months and 7 days. It also listed his burial on the next day. According to Adaline's obit from the Arcadia (KS) Democrat, she died on 24 Apr 1890 at home from paralysis. Age at death was 60 years 3 months and 18 days. John and Adaline are buried together (in the Old Arcadia Cemetery in Arcadia, Crawford Co., KS) with no headstone."

Treasure Chest Thursday - My Hair Book (c1859)

(Hmm, my posts are making a habit of becoming a day late and a dollar short....)

The family heirloom I've been mentioning lately (and posted a picture of in my last entry) is a small black book that belonged to my great-great grandmother Eliza Ursula Nichols, the daughter of Joseph Nichols and Delinda Jane Plymell. Eliza was born in 1847 in Crawford Co., IL, and it is there that the book has its origins.

This book is made of some sort of stock lined with something resembling a thin piece of fabric that gives it some amount of flexibilty. Though the picture of the front cover that I posted yesterday might give the impression that it's made of leather, it's not. It's on the small side and can fit in the palm of your hand with just a little bit hanging out over each side.

There are a total of 61 pages, each page lined like today's notebook paper. Not all the pages are filled in and some of the pages are sewn together. Names are written on the bottom of many of the pages, some with dates beside them and some without. The earliest date in the book is 1859 and the latest is 1861. Although it's obvious there are later entries, none of those are dated. There are 41 different names in the book and some are repeated more than once. It's quite apparent that two people wrote the names in the book; there are two vastly different writing styles represented. The first style is written in dark brown or black ink that has faded to brown and was almost certainly written with a quill pen. The handwriting is spidery and rather severe. The second style is in pencil and the handwriting is larger, more open and loopy.

The first writer I can definitively identify because I have samples of her writing -- she was Eliza Ursula (Nichols) Swan, born 1847. If I were to hazard a guess as to the identity of the other, later writer, I'd say she was Eliza's daughter Estella Jane (Swan) Browning. Though I can't say for sure I feel very safe in assuming she's the second writer because one of the entries refers to "My Gramma DJ Nichols" and Estella was Delinda's only surviving grandchild. Estella died young and her mother Eliza moved in with her spinster sister Missouri. Both women lived in the same house together for the majority of their lives and helped raise Stella's boys -- my grandfather and his two brothers -- after their mother's untimely death. That second author (Estella, in my estimation) filled some of the pages in with names of friends and relatives.

What makes this book truly unique, though, is WHY the pages are sewn together. Dotted throughout the book are samples of hair sewn onto the pages, mostly with thread but every so often with ribbon. The hair samples belong to the person whose name is listed under the sample. My grandmother always called it a Hair Book and told me she remembered people making such things when she was small (in the early 1900's.)

I can't adequately describe how I feel about this book. Awe, most certainly, and wonder too. It gives me such a feeling of connection to my ancestors when I can reach out and trace the contours of a braided piece of my 3rd great-grandmother Delinda Jane (Plymell) Nichol's hair. Her hair! It's not words on a page or my imagination working overtime. It's a solid fact and a true physical piece of her, a person born in 1822! Wow. It simply makes it all REAL, doesn't it?

I am so very lucky to have this book. Even if it didn't have the hair it would be a wonderful help to me, genealogically speaking. Many (indeed, most) of the names in the book are of relatives and in some cases this is the only documented way we have to link some of the family members together. No relationships are mentioned except the one I mentioned above. Most of the people in the book (28 out of 41) are people I recognize. There are many names without existing hair samples, though remnants of thread or empty holes where a needle once went through the paper tell me that they were there at one time.

---

The names in the book are as follows (with all spelling errors left as written, blank pages left out, asterisks by those who have hair samples, and capitalizations for those written by the second author):

Joseph Nichols*
Delinda J. Nichols*
Lorinda Emry
Missouri A Nichols
Alzina D. Emery 1859
Eliza U. Nichols
Elton Amos Emery 1860
Elmer F Emery
Joseph A Plymell
Nathan A Plymell 1861
James F Plymell
Rebecca Ann Plymell 1861
Arvine Plymell
William F Plymell
John Vane 1861
George Vane
Shanon Vane
Adline Vane 1861
Semantha Jane Vane 1861
Mary Emry 1861*
Thomas Emery*
Effie M. Steward 1861*
FLOSSIE HATCHETT*
NELLIE HATCHETT*
Wallace W Plymell
Jane Plymell
D.J. NICHOLS MY GRAMMA*
LUCY HILLS*
JULIA HILLS*
ANNIE WALKER*
Dovey Ann Gaddis
SARAH F COLINS*
ALVA AND GEORGE COLINS*
Olive A Plymell
Marget Plymell
Mary J McCarty*
HANNAH MINNICH
John Plymell*
Ann Nichol
Mary A McCarty*


---
The major players in this book are the Plymell family (specifically, the children of James Plymell and his wife Margaret, rumored to be half Wyandot) and the families they'd married into: the Nichols, the Emerys, and the Vanes. The Nichols and Plymell families had come together with the 1844 marriage of Joseph Nichols, son of John Nichols, and Delinda Jane Plymell, daughter of James and Margaret. The Plymell and Emery/Emory families had meshed with the 1838 marriage of Thomas Emery and Mary Plymell, daughter of James and Margaret. The Plymell and the Vanes blended together with the 1848 marriage of John Vane, son of Arthur Vane and Eleanor Blair, and Adaline Plymell, daughter of James and Margaret.

By 1859 (the earliest date in the book) all three of these couples had children. Eliza, my g-g-grandmother, was 12. Many of the other names written in the book are her cousins, the children of her aunt Adaline and her aunt Mary. Other names are those of her aunts and uncles. Still others are friends of the family, and a few I am completely unfamiliar with. I'd sure like to remedy that.

Next time I'll concentrate on the collateral families -- Plymell, Nichols, Vane and Emery.


Update: I'll keep a record of the other posts in this series here, as well as on my sidebar:

Pt 1 - The Thomas and Mary (Plymell) Emery Family

Pt 2 - The John and Adaline (Plymell) Vane Family

Pt 3 - The Joseph and Delinda Jane (Plymell) Nichols Family

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?

(Not At All) Wordless Wednesday -- The Vane Children (c1869)

Wordless Wednesday again! Wordless? Riiiiiiight. Not happening!

The picture to the right is of Cemantha Jane Vane and her younger brother William James, called "Chimie" on the photo (which I believe is a phonetic rendering of the nickname 'Jimmy.') These two are the children of John Vane and Adaline Plymell. John and Adaline were married on 2 Nov 1848 in Crawford County, Illinois, and moved to Arcadia, Crawford Co., KS around 1872. The couple had five known children -- Martin Luther, William Shannon, George Edward, Cemantha Jane, and William James. John died in Arcadia in 1889 and Adaline followed shortly thereafter in 1890.

Adaline Plymell is my 3rd great aunt. Her sister Delinda Jane, who married Joseph Nichols, was my 3rd-g-grandmother.

This photo was taken in Decatur in Macon Co., Illinois. Originally I believed the time frame to be around 1865 because the style of photo (card stock, double bordered) looked familiar to me from others I also have. Sure enough, I have a set of pictures that look exactly like this from my Nichols family -- John Nichols, his wife Delinda Jane (mentioned above), and their daughters Eliza Ursula and Missouri Ann. That set of pictures is dated c1865 according to the writing on the back, which is in Ursula's hand.

There are two sets of handwriting on the back of this photo, however (see the back of the photo below.) One set -- listing the children's names -- is Ursula's. The other set is unknown but I think dates to a slightly later period since the "lives in Arcadia" notation could only have been mentioned after the Vanes moved on to Kansas in 1872.

Cemantha Vane looks about 8-10 years old in this photo so I'm guessing this photo is closer to 1869. I'm saying this because the little boy in the dressing gown in the photo is William James Vane and he wasn't born until late 1868/early 1869.

The back has a listing of a few Curnutts (Cemantha's children I presume, though to my admittedly limited knowledge I only show Oscar as her definite child.) Also listed are Cordova, Charley and Will Plymell. These three are nephews of Adaline and Delinda, sons of their brother Wallace William Plymell.

One of the most interesting things about this photo to me was the photographer. E. A. (Edward A.) Barnwell had a studio called the People's Ambrotype Gallery at 24 North Water Street in Decatur, Illinois. According to this site, it so happened that in May of 1860 Decatur was the location of Abraham Lincoln's endorsement for President at the Republican state convention. Lincoln got his picture taken after his speech on 9 May 1860 and E.A. Barnwell was the photographer!

I'm not sure when E.A. stopped taking photographs and sold his studio to W.C. Pitner, but the above link implies that he sold out around 1863 and moved to Cerro Gordo, IL, just a few miles east of Decatur. Perhaps Pitner continued to use Barnwell's name on the studio -- I'm not sure. Hopefully I can find out.