Black Sheep Sunday - The Murder of William Hoy

I wrote about William Hoy a few weeks ago and completely forgot that I should have included him on a Black Sheep Sunday!  So do click here and read his story!

Hallelulah! (or however you say it in German)

Tonight my good friend Suzi (she writes a new genealogy blog here so do go there!) and I were talking genealogy, as we often do when we're together.   I was telling her of my longstanding troubles finding the passenger lists for either of my mother's German grandparents, the Deppermans and the Papsteins.

In the Papstein case (August Karl Papstein, his wife Anna, and their daughter Minna) I have some naturalization records and a story written for their 50th wedding anniversary about how they met and where they lived in Germany (Koslin District, Neu Lobitz/Janicow, Kreiß Dramburg, Hinterpommern, Prussia (now Poland) and what August did (served in the German Cavalry training Lippanzer stallions) and the date that they came over (29 Mar 1889, no sure place where they disembarked, but they ended up in Peotone, Will Co., IL.) I've had no luck finding them in the lists, however.  None.  Grrrr.

Then there was the even trickier one -- my great-grandfather Franz (Frank) Herman Depperman.  Franz ended up marrying Minna, the daughter of August and Anna.)

I'd been looking online for Franz for years, and in books for years before that, with no luck whatsoever.  I told Suzi the little I thought I knew --  that family stories had been that Franz had come over from Germany as a teenager and had spent some time in Pennsylvania as a barber before finding his way to Peotone in Will Co., IL.  As the years passed I wondered if these stories were completely true because I found that his mother Henrietta had died in Peotone, so that meant she'd come over too.  I also learned that she had married at least twice more....once to a Schmidt and once to a Johann Koehn.  She was buried in Peotone next to Johann.

 I'd tried every possible combination of spellings that I could think of to look for Franz and his mother (and for Johann too since the immigration date was 1897 on the 1900 census.) Nothing.

I was convinced that both my German families had just grown wings and flapped over here.

Anyway, Suzi was looking over the lists on Ancestry with me and out of the blue she said,  "Have you tried D-O-E-P-P-E-R-M-A-N-N?"

*blink*  Huh.  No.  No, I hadn't.  I typed it in, and POW!  There it was!  Ta daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I am fairly certain I squealed.

The stories were true or at least partially so.  My great-grandfather didn't come over alone, but he was a teenager, and he came over with his mother and stepfather (mistranscribed as Kolhn) on the ship Switzerland out of Antwerp, Belgium.  Whatever were they doing in Belgium?  They landed in Philadephia, Pennsylvania, in May 1896, and there's the Pennsylvania connection.   They were from either Bramburg or Dramburg -- it's hard to read.  Which one do you think it is?  I hope Dramburg since so were my Papsteins, and even if the two families didn't know each other in Germany (which I wonder about -- Franz's mother-in-law Anna Papstein's maiden name was Koehn!) it allows me to concentrate on one area of Germany for further research.  Their passage was paid for by a man named Ferd/Fred/Ferdinand Nickel, Johann Koehn's son in law.  Is that Johann's daughter's husband from a first marriage, or Henriette's?  Who knows?  Anyway, they were going to join Ferdinand in Peotone.

I looked down the list and saw another teen going to Peotone named Gustav Borwig.  He states he is going to be with his uncle Ferdinand Nickel. So who is Gustav?

Well, I have more avenues of research now.  I will have to find out who all these people are and that'll be fodder for another post.  As it was, I jumped up and gave Suzi a big old hug.

She said, "My bill will be in the mail."

Now THAT'S a debt I'll be happy to pay!  *cue genealogical Happy Dance music*

Happy 71st, Dad!

My dad is 71 today.

From the infant held in his mother's arms:

To the young Elvis lookalike:

 ...and playing in a rock and roll band.....

















To the newly married husband:

To the loving son taking care of his aging mother, my adored grandmother:

And of course, a fabulous father and grandfather!

For the many roles you've played in your 71 years and to the many people in your life that you've touched, I want to thank you. Keep on keeping on.   I love you, dad.

The Browning Series Pt. 7g, or The Elusive William D. 'Jim' Hoy

A couple posts ago I shared the life story of Samuel Browning Hoy, the second child of John Hoy and Julia Ann Browning.  Today I"m going to feature Samuel's "double cousin" William D. Hoy.  William and Samuel were double cousins because William's father James was John Hoy's younger brother and his mother Margaret was Julia Ann Browning's younger sister.

There are always people in your family tree that stump you and William is one of these.  I was lucky to find him, actually -- without the help of some cousins (descendants of William's older brother Edward Jasper Hoy) I don't know that I would have found him!  He was a traveling man, that's for sure, and a lot of what he did to make a living was on the other side of the law.

I wrote briefly about William in this earlier post, and in this one, when I discussed his parents James Hoy and Margaret Browning.  At that time I teased him a bit by saying he was a bootlegger and died an interesting death.  Now's the time to reveal all!

William was born on 26 Nov 1860 in Palestine in Crawford County, Illinois.  He was one of the youngest of James and Margaret's brood.  His father James was a farmer and no doubt the family lived on a farm in the vicinity for some years prior to the Civil War and afterward.  They were still living in Palestine in July of 1863 when James was one of many men listed from the Palestine Princt as a Class 2 draftee.  James stated he was 44 at the time.  I've never found any proof that James was called to serve. 

I don't know much about the draft lists and it would benefit me to learn more.  I know the difference between Class 1 (men between the ages of twenty and thirty-five years and unmarried men between thirty-five and forty-five) and Class 2 (pretty much everyone else) and that men who were mentally or physically impaired, the only son of a widow, the son of infirm parents, or a widower with dependent children were exempt from the draft.  But if they were exempt did that mean they weren't written down on the lists at all?  I ask because James Hoy was listed.

I am not sure when things went south for William and his family but I can narrow it down to a window of a few years.  William's mother Margaret died at some point between the birth of his younger brother Zera (likely early 1862) and October of 1864, when his father married Amelia Funk.  Since I have no death record, burial record or tombstone to refer to concerning Margaret's death, this is where the Drafts list comes in.  Right now my window for Margaret's death is 1862-1864.  If the rule was "if a widower with children, do not list on draft records" and James is listed, then it would stand to reason that James was not yet a widower in July 1863. His name on this list would narrow the window of Margaret's death a bit, to between July 1863 and October of 1864.

William probably barely remembered his mother, if at all.  He had better opportunity to remember his stepmother but even her time with them was short-lived.  She was with the Hoy family for at least one year but less than five; by 1870 she was living with her brother Augustus Funk.  By all appearances James Hoy had died between 1865-1870 and his children were scattered out all over Crawford County.  What I find sad is that by the age of 10, William had lost both his parents.

In 1870 there is a bit of a question about where William was living.  He appears to be listed twice in this census: once in Hutsonville Township in a poorhouse run by a man named William Beers with his younger brother Zera and a woman named Sarah Hoy (perhaps his eldest sister?) and second in the household of Roland and Elvira (Ellison) Fuson in Honey Creek Township. Guardianship records for any of the Hoy children would be fantastic but so far I've come up with nothing. 

William’s whereabouts from 1870 until 1910 are sketchy. He never married or had children (but that might be up for argument?) and was by all accounts a traveling man. He has been particularly hard to trace after 1870 because throughout his life he gave either misleading or false information to the census takers.  He was at least migrating northwards because the next time I find him for certain (in 1910) he had settled in the village of Ashton in Fremont County, Idaho. He was boarding with Charles Nordvall, a divorced man from Sweden who'd come to the US in 1871.  Nordvall was the proprietor of a livery and William was listed as a carpenter.  

During this time (1902-1910) William made friends with a man named Benjamin Alvin Matthews and according to all the sources I have, this friendship was a long term one.  It was also to end in tragedy.

Benjamin Alvin Matthews was born in July 1858 near Scipio in Millard Co., Utah and was the son of James Matthews and Mary Ann Johnson of England.  In 1900 Alvin and his wife Mary McArthur and their children (including a son named Wallace) were living in Scipio. Around 1902 or so Alvin and his family moved to the Green Timber district in Fremont County, Idaho.  By 1910 Alvin had become a widower (his wife Mary died in 1904) and had moved to the Green Timber precinct.  By 1920 he had moved again, living in dwelling number 105 in the Warm River precinct.

In dwelling number 156 was a man named "James" Hoy. "James" (now listed as a Snake River trapper) stated that he was 55 years old, had been born in Iowa, and that he didn't know where either of his parents had been born except that they were from the "U.S."  That this man is William is almost certain.  He'd just decided, I suspect, to use his brother's name.  I also have some reason to suspect he'd been using it for a while.

Anyway, by 1930, William had moved to another part of Fremont County, in the Green Timber Precinct near Ashton.  He made a homestead about a mile or so from his friend Alvin Matthew’s ranch.  This time, he stated his name as William D. Hoy and that he had been born in Kentucky.  He also stated that his father had been born in Scotland and his mother in Ireland.  He again claimed he was a river trapper.

 I know some of you are wondering how on earth I figured out that James Hoy and William D. Hoy were the same person. Well, I don't know that I would have if I hadn't had a helpful bunch of newspaper reports to assist me!  They're all posted here.  Take a look at all of them.

 These sources also indicate that William entered into some sort of business partnership with Alvin Matthews. I don't know for certain but my best guess is the manufacture and distribution of  whiskey, for sometime in1935 William was held in the Fremont County jail in St. Anthony on charges of selling whiskey to the enrollees in the Porcupine Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp near his homestead.  Charges were not pressed and William was released.

One Sunday, on 29 March 1936, Alvin Matthews ventured up to William’s cabin east of Ashton for a visit but did not return.  The next morning Matthew’s son Wallace went up to the cabin to find his father and found that Matthews had shot William six times, killing him.  The two men had argued sometime during the course of the day or into the evening.  The coroner determined that William had most likely died sometime on Sunday afternoon or evening. The remains of a still and a quantity of whiskey were found at the scene and Matthews was highly intoxicated.  Matthews was placed under arrest on Monday morning and held in the Fremont County Jail.  During his stay he acted strangely and spoke of suicide.  Three days later, on Thursday, 2 April 1936, Matthews was found dead in his jail cell.  The coroner’s jury ruled his death a suicide. You can read more about it in the article to the right.

William was buried in the Riverview Cemetery in St. Anthony near the Snake River in Fremont County, Idaho in an unmarked grave.  Benjamin Alvin Matthews was buried at the Pineview Cemetery in Ashton and you can see a picture of his tombstone here, taken by John Warnke and posted on Find-A-Grave in 2006.

Obviously the deed that Benjamin Alvin Matthews did weighed upon him heavily.  Who knows what happened up in that cabin; if the men were drinking and got angry, whether they argued about past slights or if they weren't seeing eye to eye on any of the business dealings they had with each other.  Maybe one too many insults were flung around along with the alcohol and the guns.  Whatever happened, once he sobered up Alvin could not live with the thing that he'd done, which was kill his best friend.  As I read all these articles and absorb what happened in the aftermath of the shooting and subsequent suicide, I don't find anything in my heart other than sadness. A lot was lost that day, a lot more than just William's life.  Alvin's children and grandchildren lost their loved one as well.

A few more final thoughts and theories about the elusive William D. 'Jim' Hoy.  In my last post I asked that Jodi Blackhawk contact me if she would.  I did so because she left me a note about a possible connection.  I will speak more about that connection now and you'll see why I hope she will contact me. 

I said earlier that I didn't have any record of William's whereabouts from 1870-1910.  That's 40 years!  A man can marry and have grown children in that span.  Maybe this is something that William did. From members of his brother Edward's descendents I learned that William ran afoul of the law by bootlegging whiskey to the Indians in Idaho.  Though he ended up in Ashton in Fremont County and died there at the hand of his friend, some of his life in the interim might make more sense if he, is, indeed, the Jim Hoy that Jodi mentions in her comment on this post.

According to her elders, Jodi's 2nd-great-grandmother Yeehavitz, a Shoshoni born on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in 1868, married a James/Jim Hoy and had two children with him. (Fort Hall, a mere 110 miles from Ashton, was a stop on both the Oregon and California Trails and exists in present-day Bannock and Bingham Counties.)  Jim left Yeehavitz to look for work but was gone so long that she remarried, to a Joseph Blackhawk.  Jim Hoy apparently came back years later and Joseph told him never to return or risk losing his life.  Jim never did come back and Yeehavitz's son by Jim, Henry, was Jodi's great-grandfather.

Could the Jim Hoy who left Fort Hall be the same man as William D. Hoy, who used Jim as his nickname in Fremont Co., ID?  It's certainly possible.

JodiBlackHawk, Get In Touch with Me!

It was my intent to feature William D. Hoy (the son of James Hoy and Margaret Browning) on my blog today but I think I will continue to write his story and post a plea instead.  Back in February a person named JodiblackHawk left a comment for me and I am hopeful that she will get in touch with me. 

She may have some information for me, and I may have some information for her.  She speaks of a Jim/James Hoy and I'm wrapped up in William, and I know it's too early to say for certain -- but we may very well be talking about the same person.

Jodi, if you're reading this, please contact me at the email address on my sidebar under my picture!

April 29th, 2012 - Scanfest!

I have never participated in a Scanfest before but I am bound and determined to start doing so.  The amount of records, photos, etc., that I have is simply astounding.  I was the only repository for my paternal grandmother AND grandfather's families and those people (I'm sorry, but it has to be said) were packrats!  Not that I'm complaining, mind you.  Packrats + Genealogy = Happiness!

Anyway, the Scanfest is being hosted by the AnceStories blog on Sunday, April 29th, from 11 AM to 2 PM, Pacific Daylight Time (that's 1 PM - 4 PM for those of us in Central.)  There will be live chatting along with the scanning to make it less tedious -- which is a brilliant idea.  For more information, hightail it over to this blog entry!

The Browning Series Part 3b, or Samuel Browning Hoy, the Young Soldier

Today I will share what I know about Samuel Browning Hoy, one of the sons of Julia Ann Browning and her husband, John Hoy. I hope you'll remember the Browning vs. Beck trial that I featured on my blog last year, but if you don't, take a look at the sidebar on the right. I promise you that you won't be bored reading the full case but just in case, here's a short summary: It was 1837. Julia was sixteen and had given birth to a son named Washington out of wedlock. She and her father accused James Beck and sued him for Bastardy, child support, and Trespass On The Case. It's a long case, with a famous lawyer (Edwin McMasters Stanton, later to become President Buchanan's Attorney General and President Lincoln's Secretary of War), likely a famous juror (Emanuel Custer, the father of General George!) and some fascinating insights into how differently trials were conducted then than they are now. It's a fascinating case and you should go read it now. Go, go, go!

Back now? Good! Okay, so some years after the trial (in 1843) Julia married John Hoy and their story was one I told here. This post is about their second child, Samuel Browning Hoy. Of all John and Julia's children, I know the most about him.

Samuel was born on the seventh day of July in 1848 in Harrison County, Ohio. He was living with his parents and his older brother William (b. c1846) and younger sister Josephine (b. Aug 1850) in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, in the 1850 census. Samuel's half-brother, Washington (the result of Julia's liaison with James Beck, b. Mar 1837) wasn't living with his mother and half-siblings; he was living with Julia's parents Samuel and Margaret (Markee) Browning.

Sometime between 1851-1855 the Hoys joined most of the rest of the Browning family relations and moved on to Crawford County, Illinois. The 1855 IL state census makes it appear that John Hoy had died, because Julia and her sons Samuel and William (by this time both Washington and Josephine were also dead) were again living with Julia's parents, Samuel and Margaret (Markee) Browning.

By 1860 Samuel's mother Julia had married again to James E. 'Melton' Legg and was living with him, his five children, and her nephew Elias Browning. You'd think she'd have her boys with her but that wasn't the case -- both William Hoy and Samuel Hoy, aged only 15 and 13 at the time, were once again living with their grandfather Samuel Browning and his second wife Sarah Ann (Bell) Gaddis Browning in Crawford County. (Samuel's first wife, and Samuel Browning Hoy's grandmother, Margaret, had died in 1856.)

The following year Samuel B. Hoy (perhaps along with his older brother William M.J.) moved with his grandfather and step-grandmother to Windsor in Shelby County, Illinois.  I'm not sure about William M.J.  If he did also move to Shelby County he'd returned to Crawford County before February of 1865, when he mustered into service in Company H of the 152nd Illinois Infantry out of he town of Palestine.  I'll mention William again in a moment.  Back to Samuel B.

When the Civil War started Samuel was thirteen and much too young to sign up immediately. He waited until 1864 (when he was 16) before he traveled to Mattoon, a city in Coles County about 15 miles northeast of Windsor. On 21 March 1864 he signed his volunteer enlistment papers, claiming that he was eighteen years old. He was assigned to the 54th Illinois Infantry, Union forces, and was told to muster in on the 30th. But on 28 March 1864, the veterans of the 54th Illinois Infantry were on furlough and had been ordered to reassemble in Mattoon. According to the Adjutant General’s Report, “an organized gang of Copperheads led by Sheriff O’Hair attacked some men of the Regiment at Charleston, killing Major Shubal York, Surgeon, and four privates, and wounding Colonel G. M. Mitchell. One hour later the Regiment arrived from Mattoon and occupied the town, capturing some of the most prominent traitors.” Copperheads were also known as Peace Democrats and were a group of anti-abolitionist Midwesterners.

Two days later, on 30 March 1864, Samuel mustered into Company F. His muster papers say he had sandy hair and gray eyes and was 5' 10".  That's pretty tall for a boy his age!  Anyway, his regiment was immediately on the march and the young Samuel could not keep up. During the march Samuel began growing lame in his left foot. The company moved to Duvall’s Bluff and Clarendon and fought General Shelby, and in time Samuel’s lame foot degenerated into a running sore with small bones working their way out of the upper front part of the foot. The foot prevented him from marching and he had to be hauled in an ambulance part of the way back to Duvall’s Bluff. He was given light duty for the remainder of his service. His regiment was then assigned to guard a section of the Memphis and Little Rock railroad. Many of his regiment were captured during a battle near the railroad, but Samuel’s company was spared.

I said I'd mention Samuel B.'s older brother, William M.J.  As I said earlier, William had also joined the war, mustering into service out of Palestine in Crawford County, IL, in February of 1865.  According to the muster and descriptive rolls of Company H, William was 6’0” with dark hair, dark eyes and a dark complexion.  His regiment was assigned to duty as a railroad guard for the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad until July of 1865.  A month before that, on 2 June 1865, William died of an unknown disease (most likely smallpox) in Tullahoma, Tennessee.  I haven't ever been able to locate his burial.

On 20 August 1865, two months before he mustered out, Samuel was hospitalized for chronic diarrhea in the General Hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was released for duty on 28 August 1865. Samuel mustered out on 15 October 1865 and was discharged at Camp Butler on 26 October 1865.

Sometime after his discharge Samuel went to a party at the home of Cornelius Stephenson of Robinson. According to Charles F. Huls and Sarah Ann (Huls) Browning, the spouses of Samuel’s first cousins Margaret Ann Browning and Thomas Nevitt Browning (children of James Browning), Samuel did not dance because of his lame foot but walked with a cane. Samuel was employed by Martin B. Woodworth between 1866 and 1870 as a day laborer. Martin also employed Effie Emmaline Browning (Samuel’s first cousin and the daughter of Samuel J. Browning) as a domestic servant. Samuel worked for Martin out in the fields but Martin claimed Samuel would “frequently give out on account of his lame foot.”

Samuel married Emily Ellen McCarter, the daughter of Samuel G. McCarter and Polly Ann Cannon, on 11 September 1875 in Crawford County. Emily was born on 5 July 1851 in Crawford County. Samuel and Emily Ellen settled in Montgomery Township in Crawford County and had four children (John, Charley, Lillie and Oscar.) In the mid-1880’s Samuel pursued a soldier’s pension, which was granted, and Samuel and Emily spent the remainder of their married lives in Heathsville and Flat Rock in Montgomery Township.

Emily died on 2 February 1930 in Flat Rock and was buried on 4 February 1930. After Emily’s death, Samuel went to live with his son John William Hoy. John, who never married, took care of Samuel for the remainder of his life.

Here's where it gets interesting. When he took Samuel in to take care of him John William applied for an increase in pension for Samuel and during the filing, documents were prepared that seemed to support Samuel’s original statements to his recruiting officer that he had been eighteen years of age at the time of his enlistment. I have copies of Samuel's original soldier's pension files and one of the documents within is a copy of his enlistment papers. This document, signed in March of 1864, specifically states that Samuel was eighteen (which would place his birth in 1845-6.) These documents, along with Samuel’s typed state death certificate and the typed county clerk’s copy of his death certificate, give his year of birth as 1845.

However, I also have his original death certificate. It is handwritten. Take a look at the listed date of birth. Don't you think there is clearly a numeral "8" underneath that numeral “5”? I do.

While it is possible that Samuel had been born in 1845 there is stronger evidence to make a case for the 1848 date. In the 1850 census Samuel was two years of age; in the 1860 census he was thirteen. On the birth certificate of his second child, Charles (born in March 1879) he stated he was thirty years of age. At the birth of his third child, Amy Lillian (born in March 1881) he claimed he was thirty-two years old. As these birth certificates were prepared at the time of the event and not years afterward (as his pension documents were) only one conclusion can safely be drawn: I think that Samuel or his relatives desired to protect his youthful decision to claim lawful age at the time of enlistment (not to mention making sure that the government couldn't demand his pension money back for lying on his enlistment papers!) In reality, Samuel was not yet sixteen years old when he entered into service in the Civil War.

Samuel died on 3 April 1931 in Flat Rock in Crawford County and was buried on 5 April 1931. Both he and Emily are buried in the Robinson New Cemetery in Robinson Township in Crawford County, Illinois.

The Browning Series -- Part Five, pt. 2, or The Mystery Effie

I mentioned in my last post that I would talk about a little girl named Effie Spangle who was buried in the Hamilton Cemetery in Otsego Township in Steuben County, Indiana.  She is buried next to Susannah (Crago) Browning, wife of Absalom Browning.  A few stones over are buried Susannah's daughter Sarah Margaret Spangle and two of the three children that Sarah Margaret's had (Franklin and little Belle) with her husband Lafayette Spangle.

Effie intrigues me.  She's a question mark.  No matter how hard I try I can't put her in this family.  Follow along with me and I think you'll see what I mean.

Take a look at the picture to the right.   It shows the burial locations of all the people I'm discussing here; I've labeled them for easy reference.

Sarah Margaret Browning married Lafayette Spangle on 24 Jul 1869 in Steuben County.   The couple had three known children (Franklin b. Aug 1870, Sarah M. b. Aug 1871, and Belle b. Nov 1872) before Sarah died a week after she gave birth to Belle.

Sarah was buried first and when little Belle died in early 1873 she was buried to the left of her mother's stone. When Franklin died four years later (in 1877) he was buried on his mother's other side.

Then there was a lapse in burials until Susannah (Crago) Browning died in 1890.  Hers is the largest stone in the background of the picture.  But as you can see, there's a small stone to the right of Susannah's stone....that's Effie.  But who was she?

The stone itself is nearly impossible to read.  I've included a picture that I've cobbled together of two views of Effie's stone -- the original on the right and a version that I've tried to alter to bring out some sort of relief on the stone.  The kind person who went to the cemetery to read the stones and take pictures for me tried to read it for me and said it was too far gone to do so.

However, there was a cemetery transcription book available that was read some years ago and in it, the inscription is said to read,

"Effie L Spangle D. May 28, 1867 Age 1y. 10m. 9d. Dau of S. M. Spangle"

I don't know about that at all.  To me it looks more like:

"Effie L., dau of LJ & S Spangle died May 28, 1867 aged 1y. 10m. 19d."

I'm not at all sure that it's LJ & S.  Maybe it's LJ & SM.  Or L & M.  Or none of those!  Argh!!

The date of death, however, is clear.  28 May.  The year?  I can't read it.  It "looks" like 186....something.  But here's the thing.  If it is 1867 then whose daughter is this little girl?  Lafayette and Sarah weren't married until 1869.  And if it's 1877 then that's equally bad, as Sarah was dead in 1872.  Perhaps it's 1871 and this little girl is Sarah's twin?  Or perhaps it is 1869 and Sarah Margaret Browning was pregnant before she and Lafayette got married?  Or perhaps the original reader was right and it's 1867 and wow, she was pregnant two years before she got married? 

*sigh*

You got me.  Effie's buried next to all the Spangles is all that I know for sure.  Someday, maybe, if I ever get to Steuben County, I can go see for myself.  I'd love to see what you all think.

The Browning Series -- Part Five, or Absalom 'Abner' Browning and Susannah Crago

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 Absalom 'Abner' Browning, the fifth child of Samuel Browning and Margaret Markee. Absalom was born around the year 1823 in Harrison County, Ohio.

Absalom married Susannah Crago, the daughter of James Crago and Sarah Jennings Fordyce, on 20 Aug 1848 in Tuscarawas Co., OH.  His elder brother, Elias, had married Susannah's sister Elizabeth eleven months earlier in Harrison Co., OH; no doubt Absalom and Susannah met when Elias and Elizabeth married if not before.

I wish I knew more about Ab and Susannah's early life but I don't. I don't really know that much about them at all in comparison to most of his other Browning siblings.  Of all Samuel and Margaret's children, Absalom's descendents are the ones I know the least about. Half of what I think I know about this family is suspect as well.  I'd love to find any descendants of theirs but once you hear their story you might conclude, like I tentatively have, that there might not be any to find.

I do know that, unlike any of the other Browning family members save Ab's sister Rachel (who married John C. McConnell), Ab and Susannah decided to stay behind when the rest of the family moved to Illinois in the late 1840's/early 1850's. Indeed, Ab chose to remain closer to his wife's Crago family than his own and by early 1849 the couple had moved on to Defiance County., OH, where the Crago family lived.

Absalom wasn't completely cut off from his Browning family, however; his elder brother Elias may have lived in Defiance County for a while with his wife Elizabeth (Susannah Crago's sister) in the mid-1850's and his younger sister Susannah Browning definitely lived there in 1855-1865 with her husband Isaac F. Crago (Susannah Crago's brother.)  Isaac F. had made the trip from Defiance County to Crawford County, IL, in 1853-54 to visit relatives and when he returned in early 1855 he brought Susannah Browning home as his bride.  However, Elias and Elizabeth had moved to Crawford County by late 1853, and Isaac and Susannah moved on to Noble County, Indiana by 1865 and Labette County, Kansas by 1879.

(For more information on the family and ancestors/descendants of James Crago, refer to the Crago Connections website maintained by Brian Smith. The Crago family is of interest to me because three of James' children -- Isaac F., Elizabeth and Susannah -- married into the Browning family.)

Ab and Susannah settled in Washington Township in Defiance County and were living there when Susannah gave birth to their daughter Sarah Margaret on 22 Mar 1849.  In 1850 Absalom was working as a laborer two households away from a Ridenour family (George and Catherine) whose distant cousins, Matilda and Minerva Corderman, would later marry Absalom's younger brothers John Wesley Francis and Asbury Taylor.

Absalom and Susannah lived in Defiance County throughout the Civil War.  Absalom was listed as a farmer in the 1860 census as well as in the draft registration records in Washington township (see above) in June of 1863.  I feature this notation about him because it is one of only three records (other than census) that I have about the man!  Anyway, the couple lived in Defiance County until the spring of 1868, when they moved to Otsego Township in Steuben County, IN.  The first sign of their residency in Indiana was a record of their daughter Sarah Margaret’s marriage there to Lafayette Spangle in July of 1869. 

In 1870, Absalom and Susannah were enumerated in the census in Steuben County with a young girl named Priscilla Sewell.  Priscilla was born on 9 May 1860 in Defiance County and was the daughter of Andrew Sewell and Priscilla Crago, Susannah's sister.  The elder Priscilla had died thirteen days after her daughter was born and Absalom and Susannah took their young niece in to raise.

I've never been able to find out whether Absalom and Susannah had any other children but Sarah Margaret.  I suspect they did given the time period, and that if they did all their other children likely died. Despite this, Ab and Susannah spent much of their time raising children.  I've conducted a search but I've never located any gravestones for Browning children that would match up to the couple.  I've located tombstones, all right, but not too many Browning ones....

As I mentioned before, Ab and Susannah had one daughter, Sarah Margaret.  Sarah Margaret married Lafayette Spangle, the son of Henry Spangle, on 24 Jul 1869.  Lafayette was born around 1844 in Ohio and had served in the Union forces in the Civil War in the 29th Rgt. of the IN Volunteer Infantry.

In 1870 Sarah Margaret and Lafayette were living in Otsego Township in Steuben County.  They had three children in very close succession -  Franklin 'Frankie' in Aug 1870, Sarah Margaret 'Margie' in Aug 1871, and Belle in Nov 1872.  Their marriage was only three years old and they had three beautiful children....and then tragedy struck.  Sarah Margaret died a week after little Belle was born.  She was buried in the Hamilton Cemetery in Otsego Township in Steuben County, Indiana.

What happened to the children directly after the death of their mother isn't known for sure but I can infer a little from a comment in Susannah (Crago) Browning's obituary that states she "raised...three grandchildren...and one niece." This tells me that soon after Sarah Margaret's death the children went to live with their grandparents.  Lafayette was surely reeling from the death of his wife and it wasn't easy for a man to take care of three children under the age of three.  Since Absalom and Sarah were available and already taking care of their young niece Priscilla, taking their grandchildren into their household seemed like the best solution under the circumstances.

But tragedy wasn't ever too far away. Little Belle followed her mother into death in July 1873 and Franklin died in Dec 1877.  This left only Margie in the house by 1880, as her cousin Priscilla had married.  Priscilla didn't live much longer (she died in 1885) and the landscape changed again before 1890 when Margie, the last child of Lafayette and Sarah Margaret, also died. They were all laid to rest in the Hamilton Cemetery next to their mother.   While in 1880 Lafayette was still in Indiana, by 1895 he had no children or family in Indiana to stay behind for and so followed his brother Edmund to Kansas.

Oh....before I forget.  There is one more tombstone in the Hamilton cemetery that rests next to Susannah (Crago) Browning -- that of a little girl named Effie Spangle.  This tombstone is a mystery to me because it doesn't seem to match up, date-wise, to any of the others.  The dates are nearly unreadable now, but the transciptions I have from readings taken years ago seem to suggest that this Effie is another daughter of Lafayette and Sarah Margaret.  I will take the time soon to explain this in more detail.

Anyway, back to the story at hand.
Absalom and Susannah's house, once full of children, was empty again.  I can't imagine how it must have felt to lose your only child and then outlive all your grandchildren as well.  Then, as if there hadn't been enough sadness, the final blow came on 24 May 1890 when at age 59, Susannah (Crago) Browning died and was also buried in the Hamilton Cemetery beside her daughter and her grandchildren.  If you'll take a moment to read her obituary you can feel the sadness running through it.  Absalom - Abner - was well and truly alone.

Speaking of the obituaries of Susannah and Absalom (his is seen to the left), I noticed the usage of the name Abner instead of Absalom.  He was called Absalom when a child on the 1850 census, Absalom on the 1860, 1870 and 1880 censuses, and he was called Absalom on his 1863 war draft registration papers.  Yet here, he is called Abner.  Add this to the list of unknowns I have about him.  Absalom Abner, perhaps?  I don't know.

Absalom lived almost nine more years before he died at his home in Hamilton in Steuben County on 15 Jan 1899.  He doesn't seem to have had anyone around that was related to him; his obituary is short and vague on the details.  Nothing personal is included.  "Aged about 80 years," it says.  "Respected by all who knew him."  "Unassuming." 

Sad, is what it seems to me. 

I don't even know where he is buried.  He isn't beside his wife.  Was he indigent?  Did the locals have to bury him?  Did they just bury him in an unmarked grave?  My only clue is the name of the man who conducted the services (Elder Fred A Thomas) and my hope that Ab was likely Methodist, since most of his other Browning kin were.

He doesn't seem to have left any descendants, does he?  For that reason alone I would like to find him and stand in front of his tombstone if there is one.  I'd like him to know that at least one person remembers his name.

Anna, Minna and the Remaining Triplets (1918)

It's late and my intended post got inadvertantly deleted, so I'll add a simple picture and make this an almost wordless post (hahahaha, what a joke!) and consider it late as always.

This picture was taken in the late fall or early winter of 1918. The two little boys are the surviving siblings of a set of triplets. The two are my grandfather Franklin Louis Depperman and his brother Frederick Walter Depperman. The picture is not labeled and the notations in white under the picture are my own, but I am pretty sure that my grandfather Franklin is on the left and my g-uncle Frederick is on the right. The third sibling, their sister Florence, had died at six months of age in September 1918 of milk sickness.

Their mother Minna Anna Louise Papstein (1888-1985) is sitting to the right, in mourning black. Minnie had married Franz Herman Depperman (1879-1955), the son of Hermann Depperman and Henrietta Sennhausen, in September of 1904. By the time this picture was taken the couple were the parents of five living and two deceased children. The triplets were the last born.

Minna's mother Anna is sitting to the left. Anna Marie Louise (Koehn) Papstein (1868-1952), the daughter of Johann Koehn and Johanna Vierkow, was born in the Hinterpommern in Prussia (now Poland) and came to the US with her husband August Karl Papstein. August Karl (1864-1946), one of a set of twins himself and the son of Friedrich Papstein and Wilhelmina Koplen, served three years in the Prussian cavalry before his marriage to Anna and trained Lippanzer stallions for Kaiser Wilhelm I prior to his immigration to the US. He married Anna in October 1887 (very soon after he left the cavalry) and the couple had their daughter, Minna, before coming to Will Co., IL in March 1889. August (and by marriage, Anna) were both naturalized in 1894.

My German\Prussian ancestors are a tough bunch to research and locate. I have so little on them in comparison with my father's side of the family. However, I do like this picture. My great-grandmother Minna looks sad because she'd just lost her little girl, but her two remaining boys are adorable!