Ammon Goode Hancock

Ammon Goode Hancock
A bad copy of a copy of a photograph handed down by
my Great Aunt Lillian, his great-granddaughter

I'm going to post biographical sketches of my ancestors as I fill in their wikitree.com pages, so I can use the blog as a way of organizing the information and creating a more coherent narrative. I'm currently working on the Hancock line, so let's start with my great-great-great-grandfather, Ammon Goode Hancock.

The Hancock line is Virginian. Like really, really Virginian. As in, we-go-back-to-Jamestown Virginian. They definitely count as family "skeletons in the closet": they were Southern gentry, slave-owners, and supporters of the Confederacy. 

Harriet Walden Hancock
Another awful copy

Ammon Goode Hancock was born April 17, 1815 in Bedford County, Virginia, an area just west of Lynchburg. Unfortunately, this is too early for the U.S. Census to list people individually, but his father, Justus Hancock, was living in the southern census district of Bedford County in 1820 (1). Based on the ages of the people enumerated in the census, it appears Ammon, who was the oldest child, was living with his father, his mother Harriet Walden Hancock, his brother Johnathan, and his sister, Martha. Ammon would later have another brother and sister, Daniel (name uncertain) and Lucy. That census also shows four slaves: two young boys, and a man and a woman in the 14-26 age range. We don't know their names, but in 1846, after his father's death, Ammon sold 3 or 4 slaves as Justus's executor. In a newspaper advertisement for the upcoming sale (a rather cold-blooded word for

Again with the awful copies

forceably removing a person from their home and, potentially, their family), one of the women is described as "valuable" because she was a good cook, weaver, and washer. Perhaps this was the 14-26 year old woman of the 1820 census?


The 1973 Historic Map of Bedford County, which includes information from 1750-1865, shows multiple Hancock farms south of Flint Hill, off Goose Creek (2). I don't know which of these farms belonged to Justus.

Ammon's unusual name comes from his paternal grandmother, Ann Ammon Hancock, and was repeated many times in the family. His middle name, Goode, may come from John Goode (or another member of that family), whose farm is visible on the historic map, east of Lowry, near the small town of Goode. I don't know if there was any connection by marriage or descent between the families. Other names appear on the map that are prominent in Hancock family records, for example, Read and Fuqua. Clearly, these were the prominent families of the county.

Close-up of the historic map. Click to enlarge.

Ammon (or at least someone Ammon's age) appears in the household of Justus Hancock through the 1840 census, always living in southern Bedford County (3). We don't know much about his childhood, however, his sister, Martha (Hancock) Wheat kept a journal beginning in 1850. I have not read the journal myself, but it was the subject of an interesting academic paper on evangelical women in rural Virginia (17). Martha was born again as a young woman, during a wave of evangelization in the 1840s, and married an equally pious man. Her journal states that she attended school at the Antioch Methodist church, but, like many of the Virginian founding fathers, such as Washington and Jefferson, Justus Hancock was only nominally Christian. This indifference toward institutional religion appears to have continued in her brothers, as well, since Martha relates attempts to convert her brothers' households. Her spelling, grammar, and penmanship show her to have been better educated than the average woman of her time and station. Ammon, therefore, grew up in a family that valued education for all of its children, although it did not much value religion.

Ammon's father died in April of 1845. As mentioned above, Ammon was the executor of his will, and probably spent a good deal of time putting his affairs into order. He was also beginning his own business and tobacco plantation, as we can see by the events of the 1850s.

1903 Advertisement for Hancock Bros. Co.
This comes from Lynchburghistory.com, which charges
way too much for their images, so I screen-shot it and
we'll just have to put up with the watermark.

I cannot find Ammon in the 1850 census. His mother, Harriet, is still living in Bedford with her two youngest children (4). Ammon may have been in and out of Campbell county, setting up his own plantation. According to an early 20th century advertisement from Lynchburg, Ammon founded the Hancock Tobacco Company in 1851, around the time he married Charlotte Elizabeth Hewitt, in Bedford County, on July 1. D.P. Read was their surety (5). Ammon was 36, and Charlotte was 26. She came from a French Huguenot family that also had deep roots in Virginia, and she had grown up in Bedford County.

Around 1853, Ammon built a large factory at the end of Cabell street, in Lynchburg. The factory is still standing, as part of the historic Daniel's Hill neighborhood. (6). Later, around 1855, Ammon and Charlotte built a home on the same lot as the factory. The Daniel's Hill neighborhood first opened up in the mid-1840s, when a large plantation from a century earlier was divided into plots and sold, mostly to wealthy businessmen and landowners. A number of 19th century mansions still line the streets, but the cross streets - one of which is named Hancock St. - were filled with "vernacular architecture" (aka shacks) for the people who worked in the big houses and the factory. The neighborhood was one of the most well-to-do suburbs of the city.

Charlotte Elizabeth Hewitt Hancock

Lynchburg, at the time, was booming. By 1850, it had the second-highest per capita income of any city in the nation. The reason for this was tobacco (and, apparently, the first mass-produced, mass-marketed enema). Lynchburg was a transportation hub, where the railroads met and trade boomed between the North and the South.

Despite their house in a fashionable neighborhood, the Hancock family didn't live in the city of Lynchburg year-round. It appears they spent the summer on their plantation in Campbell County, just south of Lynchburg. In both the 1860 and 1870 censuses, the growing family is shown as living in Campbell County (7)(8), and not until 1880 did the census taker actually find them on Cabell St.(9). An 1860s map of Campbell County shows the Hancock plantation in the far east of the county. They were presumably growing tobacco.

The 1860 census recorded Ammon and Charlotte and three sons: James, Ernest Justus (my great-great grandfather), and Edwin (7). Two other whites were living in the household, an R.L. Bigby (male) and an E. Roberts (female). They may have been boarders, employees, tenants, or family.

In addition to the white household, Ammon's slaves were recorded on the 1860 slave schedule (but he is not on the 1850 slave schedule)(10). He is listed as having three "slave houses" (I put that in quotes because I'm not sure what it means, in terms of actual accommodations), with a total of 34 slaves. These men, women, and children ranged in age from 6 to 50 years of age, but the vast majority were under 25, most in mid-adolescence. Their names are not listed, we only have their age and their color, but we can imagine their lives were difficult, and the large number of young people suggests many had been taken from their families far too young. It's painful to see a list of 12 year old children and know they were probably crying themselves to sleep at night, as were their mothers.

The article about Martha (Hancock) Wheat, mentioned above, confirms that the ownership of 34 people put Ammon Hancock among the economic elite of the city. Although most white landowners in the area did own slaves, the vast majority owned fewer than five people.

Ammon and Charlotte with their three youngest children (l-r)
Edwin (Ned), Ernest, and Lilly. Around 1865.
Even by standards of the day, their expressions are pretty
miserable. Must be their guilty consciences.

Presumably, the statistics that tout Lynchburg's per capita wealth didn't include slaves as "capita". Their labor produced the tobacco that fueled the economic boom - and the wealth of the upper class - but they did not share in that wealth.

Ammon was 46 years old when the Civil War began in 1861. His sons would have been 9, 7, and 4. (The last child, a daughter named Lily, was born near the end of the war, in 1864.) I have very little information about the Hancock family during the war. Ammon appears on a list of privates in the Lynchburg Rifles (11). However, since he had cousins and nephews who were also named Ammon Hancock, it is possible that he is not the person in the war record. We know from letters written to Charlotte that three of her Hewitt nephews were officers in the war, on the Confederate side.

Ammon's sons, Edward, Ernest, and James
Late 1860s?

Unsurprisingly, given its importance as a transportation and trade hub, Lynchburg became a critical resupply and hospital location for the Confederacy. It even served as the state capital for four days, April 6-10, 1865, which history buffs will recognize as the time between the abandonment of Richmond and Lee's defeat at Appomattox. The largest women-run hospital in the Confederacy, the Ladies' Relief Hospital, was in Lynchburg (12). I cannot find documents from that hospital, but it is possible that Charlotte and Ammon's sisters volunteered there.

The Battle of Lynchburg was fought just outside of town in June of 1864. Jubal Early, the Confederate commander, used the local population to mislead the Union commanders into believing they were outnumbered, eventually pushing them into retreat. Early ran a train up and down the line, while the population stood at the station and cheered, as if they were receiving reinforcements. The local prostitutes also helped by misleading their Union clients with false reports of reinforcements (13). We will probably never know if the Hancock family participated in that battle, or in the deception, in any way.

Historic photograph of the Hancock Tobacco Factory.
This was also taken from lynchburghistory.com with watermark

What we do know is that Ammon was not financially or personally ruined by the loss of his free labor supply, or by the ravages of war. In 1865 he signed a loyalty oath and received a pardon from President Andrew Johnson (14). In the 1870 census, he reported land holding worth $2,500 (about $50, 000 in today's money), and a personal estate of $1,800 ($32,000). Not bad for someone who, only five years earlier, had backed the losing side in a war, and as a result lost control over the people upon whom he relied for free labor. I suspect the former slaves who had earned him that fortune were considerably less well off.

One indication of changed circumstances can be seen in the 1870 census. Ammon and Charlotte are living with Ammon's mother, Harriet, who was 75 at the time, and with his sister, Lucy V. (Hancock) Haynes, 34, who was presumably widowed, although I have not found any information about her husband. The household also had one Black servant, Mary Shelton, aged 25, from Virginia.

Historic photo of the Hancock house in Lynchburg
lynchburghistory.com

By 1880, the family's circumstances may have improved further, although the family didn't report their net worth in that census. In addition to the family, and Harriet, another ten people are living in the household, or perhaps are tenants in small workers lodgings around the house and factory. These additional people include one white grocer, Walter H. Wilson, 24, and two married couples, William and Laura Carter, and Humphrey and Frances Sherman. William and Laura Carter were 50 and 40 years old, respectively. William was a black man who worked in the tobacco factory (presumably the Hancock Company factory), and his wife, who was described as mulatto, worked as a servant. Humphrey Sherman, age 62, was a servant, as was Frances Sherman, age 35. Both are listed as married, but given their age differences, it is possible that Frances was Humphrey's daughter, rather than his wife. Humphrey was categorized as Black, Frances as mulatto. Another Black woman, Sallie Johnson, 28, worked as a servant and was listed as married, but her husband doesn't appear on the census record as part of this household. A single young woman, Laura Preston, 23, working as a servant, was also Black. Finally, Mourning Paige, 100, a widow, Black, was living in the household. Charlotte's grandmother's name was Mourning, and I wonder if there is a connection. If all of the people listed as servants were actually working for the Hancocks (which isn't necessarily the case), then they had seven servants.

Google maps image of the Hancock factory today

Another change had occurred by 1880: Their second son, Ernest Justus, then 25, was no longer living with the family. James, the eldest, was living with his father and working in the family business. He's listed in the 1880 census as married, although his wife does not appear on the census roll as a member of the household, unless his wife is Sallie Johnson. Edward and Lilly, ages 23 and 16, are also still at home, with Edward working in the family business and Lilly in school. Ernest Justus, however, had emigrated to Whidby Island, Washington, in 1879. Although he returned home briefly in the early 1880s, he moved west permanently in 1883 (15).

Ammon Goode Hancock died May 15, 1888, in Lynchburg (16). The Lynchburg Daily Virginian has no fewer than three obituaries listed for him in their index. However, they charge far too much for a copy, so I have not read them. Ammon was buried in Spring Hill cemetery. Ernest Justus, with new wife and child in tow, traveled across the country to help his brothers settle the estate. The family business lived on for many years, as did his wife, Charlotte, who died in 1894.

Monument for Ammon and Charlotte Hancock
Photo from http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=5608949&PIpi=5143818

UPDATE: My mother called to tell me she has Ammon's original pardon from President Johnson, a huge certificate that is (apparently) actually signed by the president. This prompted me to look into Confederate pardons. Surely the president didn't have to sign a certificate for every able-bodies man in the Confederacy? Turns out, no, most ordinary soldiers could just take an oath and be done, but certain individuals had to appeal directly to the president (ex., higher-ranking officers, West Point graduates who had defected to the Confederacy, and citizens with personal value over $20,000). Since Ammon had a personal fortune over $20,000, he wrote a petition to President Johnson. It's a two-page document detailing his role in the war, which is available through an on-line database. I'm sure it will be fascinating, once I figure out how to read the horrible handwriting. Hopefully, I'll have more on this later.

References:

1.  "United States Census, 1820", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XHLC-TSW : accessed 27 October 2015), Justus Hancock, 1820.

2. The map

3. "United States Census, 1830," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XH54-LYN : accessed 27 October 2015), Justus Hancock, Bedford, Virginia, United States; citing 139, NARA microfilm publication M19, (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), roll 194; FHL microfilm 29,673.; and "United States Census, 1840," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XHBM-ZQK : accessed 27 October 2015), Justice Hancock, Southern District, Bedford, Virginia, United States; citing p. 258, NARA microfilm publication M704, (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), roll 550; FHL microfilm 29,683.

4.  "United States Census, 1850," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M88P-K7F : accessed 27 October 2015), Harriet S Hancock, Bedford county, Bedford, Virginia, United States; citing family 607, NARA microfilm publication M432 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).

5. http://www.vagenweb.org/bedford/bedf-m_h.htm

6. "Daniel's Hill Historic District", National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form.

7.  "United States Census, 1860," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M41F-4JY : accessed 25 September 2015), A G Hancock, Western District, Campbell, Virginia, United States; from "1860 U.S. Federal Census - Population," database, Fold3.com (http://www.fold3.com : n.d.); citing p. 7, household ID 43, NARA microfilm publication M653 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 805,338.

8.  "United States Census, 1870," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MFLK-NVT : accessed 25 September 2015), S G Hancock, Virginia, United States; citing p. 62, family 468, NARA microfilm publication M593 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 553,137.

9. "United States Census, 1880," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MCPP-H7P : accessed 1 October 2015), Jennie Davis in household of Ammon G Hancock, Lynchburg, Campbell, Virginia, United States; citing enumeration district 194, sheet 378D, NARA microfilm publication T9 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), roll 1359; FHL microfilm 1,255,359.

10. 1860 slave schedule

11. http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/campbell/military/history01.txt

12. http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/lynchburg_during_the_civil_war#start_entry

13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lynchburg

14.  http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/civil-war.htm

15. "An Illustrated History of the State of Washington" by Harvey Kimball Hines, p. 568

16. "Virginia, Deaths and Burials, 1853-1912," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X5YY-7L7 : accessed 25 September 2015), Ammon G. Hancock, 15 May 1888; citing Lynchburg, Campbell, Virginia, reference Image #236; FHL microfilm 2,048,589.

17. Kierner, Cynthia A. 1992. Woman's Piety within Patriarchy: The Religious Life of Martha Hancock Wheat of Bedford County. The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 100:79-98.

Woods of Wisconsin

I blogged extensively about my mother's family, whose graves/homesteads we visited this summer in Columbus, Wisconsin. In one of life's strange coincidences, my husband's family was also living in Columbia County, Wisconsin, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Woods lived in Wyocena, on the other side of the county, and were of a different religious and ethnic background, so our families probably had little to do with each other at that time. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see the parallels.

Douglas Wood, my husband's grandfather, was born in Wyocena in the early 1900s. His parents were both born there. James Howard Wood (1869-1949) was the son of an Englishman (John Wesley Wood) and an Irish woman (Anne Rutherford), who married in Wisconsin, after immigrating to the United States. James Howard married Bessie Estelle Hodges (1880-18620 in 1904 in Wyocena. She was the daughter of Judson Adonirum (sometimes Adoniram Judson) Hodges, of New York, and his wife, Mary Ann Wait, born in Vermont. Judson Hodges was one of the earliest European settlers in Wyocena, arriving in 1857(1).

While we were in Columbia county, we stopped in the Wyocena cemetery to take pictures of the gravestones there. The tombstones of James Howard and Bessie had recently be replaced by the Wood family. The others are significantly older.

The Wyocena cemetery is in a lovely spot along the river

These are the tombstones recently replaced by the Wood family. They are near the front entrance to the cemetery, away from the other Wood family plot.

My husband's great-grandmother, Bessie Estelle (Hodges) Wood, wife of James Howard Wood

My husband's great-grandfather, James Howard Wood, husband of Bessie Estelle (Hodges) Wood

Enone, daughter of James and Bessie (Hodges) Wood

Farther into the cemetery is a Wood family plot with a large family marker:

Wood family marker (5 year old for scale)

Wood family marker has some, but not all, of the Woods buried around it engraved on the marker itself.
Adult Beaver in background for scale.

The Wood family marker from the side, 3 year old for scale.

Here are the tombstones in the plot surrounding the large family marker. We can make some pretty good guesses at their relationships to each other, but I have not yet done enough research to know their relationship to the other Woods.

Arthur LaMont Wood, 1869-1944

Alta Elizabeth Wood, 1870-1945(?)

Mother, Elsie E. Wood, August 12, 1840-December 15?, 1904

Father, Samuel F. Wood, April 4, 1836-Feb 13, 1915

Cecil, son of A.L. and A.E. Wood
(presumably Arthur LaMont and Alta Elizabeth)

Samuel Edwin, 1896-1897

Ida Maude, 1867-1943

James Manely, 1852-1927

Jno. W. Wood. The rest is hard to read, but it looks like "Wis" on the third line,
perhaps the unit in which he served during the Civil War?

Finally, the Hodges also are buried in the Wyocena cemetery:

Hodges family monument. Adult Beaver for scale.

Adoniram Judson Hodges. Oct 11, 1835-March 30-1904
Mary Ann Wait, his wife, Aug 25, 1836-July 21, 1903

Another side of the monument:
Emma C and May (other writing illegible)
both were daughters of Adoniram and Mary

Unfortunately, the other side of the monument wasn't readable

Edna M. I assume this is another daughter, but I don't
actually have a record of her.

The individual graves were marked by these small stones (five year old feet for scale)
This one says "May", but many of them were impossible to read

References:

Ogle, George A. Memorial and biographical record and illustrated compendium of biography of Columbia, Sauk and Adams counties. 1901. 

The Deans in a Nutshell

I've been going back through the WikiTree pages and filling in the siblings and their first-generation children for every one of my direct ancestors. I've finished the Deans (that is, the straight patronymic line, not including all of the wives who married in), so this seems a good time to summarize the Deans in America.*

The Deans were Scotch-Irish, an ethnic/religious group mostly from northern England and southern Scotland. They were Protestant dissenters, strong Calvinists, who were first settled in Ulster in the 1500s (because they were causing too much trouble as border raiders in England), and later encouraged or forced to migrate to the American colonies, particularly in the 1700s. Over 300,000 Scotch-Irish migrated from Ulster to the Americas between 1710 and 1810, mostly to Pennsylvania, which had the most welcoming religious laws, or south along the Appalachian mountains, particularly into the Carolinas.

James Dean (about 1740-?) and Catherine Gamble (about 1740-?): These were the first Deans in the Americas. They were both born in Ireland, almost certainly in Ulster, and settled in Pennsylvania. They were married after their arrival in the Americas, which suggests that Catherine's parents and siblings could also be somewhere in Pennsylvania, although I haven't found them. They arrived sometime before 1760, since that was the year their first child, Margary, was born. In History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties, Pennsylvania, by J. Simpson Africa (p. 329), James is listed under the pioneers of Oneida Township, with his son, Abraham. This is an area of central Pennsylvania that was badly hit during the Seven Years War (aka French and Indian War). In the generation before, it had been largely cleared of people, Native and European alike. When the war ended, the Scotch-Irish were particularly prevalent among the new settlers. The same source says James was a member of the first board of elders elected by the congregation of Hart's Log Church, Sept. 10, 1787. He and Catherine may very well have settled elsewhere in Pennsylvania earlier, but there is no record of them before their arrival in Oneida Township. His farm was located near what is today Alexandria, Pennsylvania.

Old Hartslog Church

We only have records of two children, Margary and Abraham (see below). Margary married Colonel John Canan, who was also Scotch-Irish, and stayed near her parents in Pennsylvania. I blogged about the Canan family previously. John Canan was a Revolutionary War soldier and served in the General Assembly and as state senator for Pennsylvania. He developed coal and iron deposits, building one of the first furnaces in the region. Small families were very rare at this time, although childhood mortality was high. It is possible/likely that there were other children born to James and Catherine, but we have no record of them.

Tombstone of Abraham Dean, Ross County, Ohio
photograph by Scott
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=mr&MRid=47082416

Abraham Dean (1763-1806) and Sarah Stewart (1766-1837): Abraham and Sarah were both born in Pennsylvania to Scotch-Irish families. He served as a private 3rd class in the 7th company, 1st battalion, of the Cumberland County Militia during the Revolutionary War (1). In 1784 he bought land north of present-day Alexandria, Pennsylvania, and named the tract "Mexico" (2). He and Sarah were married sometime around 1790. By 1811, however, they had moved their family to South Salem, in Ross County, Ohio. Ohio had been Shawnee and Lenape land (along with other tribes), and under military occupation by the French until the Revolutionary War. Freed from restraint by the British government, the new United States started pushing westward soon after independence. The first major Euro-American colony in Ohio was at Marietta in 1788, with statehood following in 1803 (after decades of war to enforce Euro-American rule). The Deans entered an Ohio that was only recently conquered and sparsely inhabited by Euro-Americans.

At least one of Sarah Stewart's sisters, Margaret Stewart Brown, and her family, also moved to South Salem. More of her siblings may have joined them. As I mentioned in a previous post, this type of clan migration was common. Abraham and Sarah had eight children who scattered throughout the Midwest. Their fifth child (and second son) was John Stewart Dean.

John Stewart Dean (1792-1872) and Hannah Baird (1800-1828): John was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He was a child when his family moved to Ohio. Hannah was probably born in Lincoln County, North Carolina, near King's Mountain, where her father fought during the Revolutionary War (3). In fact, he was one of the original signers of the Tryon Resolves, an early declaration of resistance to British rule. The Bairds were another Scotch-Irish family that had originally been from Pennsylvania. The Bairds moved into Ohio in the early 1800s, partly because of their opposition to slavery, Many Bairds were participants in abolitionist activities.

Hannah and John were married in Brown County, Ohio, in 1819. Hannah's older brother, John Hill Baird, was a good friend of John Stewart Dean. They served together during the war of 1812 (3). After returning to their homes (they had to walk across Ohio after being discharged), John Hill Baird married the eldest Dean sister, Catharine, and John Stewart Dean married his friend's sister, Hannah. Hannah and John had three children, the oldest of whom was Abram Stewart Dean. Unfortunately, Hannah died quite young and was buried in the Dean cemetery in South Salem, Ohio. John went on to marry twice more.

In 1847, John led a group of five families (mostly his relatives) from South Salem to Polk County, Iowa(4). They were among the first families to settle in the area. The U.S. Army had built a fort on the Des Moines River in 1843. (Fun fact, the fort was originally going to be called Fort Raccoon, after the other river that joins the Des Moines at that point. Only by the grace of the War Department was Iowa saved from having Raccoon as its state capital.) The fort was there to control the Sauk and Meskwaki tribes, who had been forcibly resettled there from eastern Iowa. It wasn't long, however, before the army moved the tribes farther west, and in 1846 the fort was abandoned as Native people were denied land rights in Iowa. The city was opened to settlement as the seat of Polk County in May of 1846, and the Deans arrived in November of 1847.

Walnut Street Bridge, Des Moines, Iowa, 1866
On the far side of the bridge was the site of the original
Dean household in Iowa.

The John Stewart Dean became a leading man in Des Moines (4). He was known as "Uncle Johnny" throughout the area. He and his family settled on the east side of the river, and were founders of the Presbyterian church, which met for the first time in his home. He was instrumental in getting the state capital located in east Des Moines, donating some of his land to the project. To this day, the state capital sits at the end of Dean Street, just to the west of Dean Lake. The Dean's original homestead was in downtown Des Moines, along the river. In 1851 a massive flood destroyed much of the area. The Deans resettled a few miles east, closer to where John's son, Abram, had placed his farm.

Abram Stuart Dean (1820-1859) and Anne Retta Welsheimer (1819-1905): Abram was born in Ohio, where he met and married Anne Welsheimer. Anne was a first in the direct Dean line: a wife who was not primarily of Scotch-Irish stock. In fact, her mother was probably Scotch-Irish (there's very little known about her), but her father was German (5). The Welsheimers had settled in Pennsylvania in the 1760's. They came from Berlin, probably for religious reasons (they were Calvinists). Anne's grandfather and great-grandfather had fought in the Revolutionary War, then her father had moved westward into Ohio.

The Dean plot in Sims cemetery, Des Moines

Abram and Anne had five known children, three born while they still lived in Ohio. They were about 27 when they moved to Des Moines. They spent the first winter in an old barracks, then built a log cabin on the north shore of Dean Lake (6). Their last two children were born there. Like his father, Abram was a devout Presbyterian and founding member of the church in Des Moines. Unfortunately, he only lived about a decade after their move to Iowa. He was 39 when he died in 1859. He lived long enough to see the city incorporated in 1851, and the capital moved to part of the land he donated in 1857. Anne never remarried. They and many of their children are buried in Sims Cemetery in Des Moines.

David Philip Dean (1852-1941) and Sarah Jane "Jennie" Brattain (1855-1919): David was the youngest child of Abram and Anne, born after their move to Des Moines. His father died just before his 7th birthday. Luckily, he had an extensive network of cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents in Iowa. I wonder if that is what turned him into such an avid genealogist.

The Brattains deserve their own blog post, but, briefly, they were another Scotch-Irish family. The Brattains, like the Deans, had married into Protestant German families. Jennie Brattain was born and raised in Henry County, Indiana, then married David in Des Moines, Iowa in 1876. I don't know how she met David. Jennie's father, Hiram, had spent time in Iowa as a child. In the 1850 census, he was living with his family in Van Buren County. Perhaps the families had met then, but Van Buren is not very close to Des Moines. My guess is that David was working in Indiana and met Jennie there.

However they met, their marriage was very successful. They had fourteen children, nine of whom survived past early childhood. Sometime between 1910 and 1919, the family moved to Coupeville, Washington, where they stayed until the current generation. Honestly, I have no idea why they moved there. One of the things I've learned from genealogy is that, in some ways, I know more about my distant ancestors than my more recent ones. David, his children, and his grandchildren were so busy discovering the Deans of the distant past that they didn't always document the Deans of the 20th century. Either that, or the documentation was gathered by my great aunt, Lillian Dean Huffstetler (David's granddaughter) whose materials I have not yet had a chance to see.

References:

1. American Revolutionary Soldiers of Franklin County Pennsylvania, by Virginia Shannon Fendrick, p. 59

2. History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties, Pennsylvania, by J. Simpson Africa, p. 329

3.  "Wilson-Baird History" by Fran C. Shepherd, 1942 (exerpt on page2 here: http://baird-bard-beard.org/BB/downloads/Volume5-March1995.pdf):

4. From "Portrait and Biographical Album of Polk County, Iowa", 1890, p. 428, (https://archive.org/stream/portraitbiograph08chic#page/428/mode/2up)

5. "A History of the Welsheimer Family", by Edith Welsheimer, Bronson Printing, Las Cruces, New Mexico, 1969.https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE97573

6. Portrait and biographical album of Polk County, Iowa, Lake City Publishing Co., Chicago, 1890

_____
*I can't summarize the Deans before America because I have nothing in the way of records prior to their arrival here.

Deans of Iowa

On our recent family trip, I spent most of genealogical energy on the Cunninghams of Columbus, Wisconsin (see the seven posts on that family). However, since we were driving through Des Moines, I did take the opportunity to stop in at Sims Cemetery, where a number of the Deans are buried.

John Stewart Dean, my great-great-great-great-grandfather was one of the founders of East Des Moines (or Desmoines, as he preferred to write it). He led a group of families (mostly his children) to the area in 1847. The first Presbyterian church in the city met in his house. The state capital building sits on part of his farm. Both a "Dean Street" and a "Dean Lake" are still on the map.

Also buried there (among others) are John Stewart Dean's second and third wives (I'm a descendant of his first wife, who died while they still lived in Ohio), and my great-great-great-grandfather, John Stewart's oldest son, Abram Dean, and his wife, my great-great-great-grandmother, Anne Welsheimer Dean.

A few notes for anyone inclined to visit Sims Cemetery:

1) The cemetery is located at E. 36th St. and University. You may be tempted to follow University (which is a major road through East Des Moines) until you reach 36th. Don't. It turns out that University intersects a road named E. 36th St. at least three freaking times. (It may be more, but we found the intersection we needed on the third try.)

2) If you are heading east on University, you will pass the entrance to the cemetery. It doesn't look like much, so you'll just blow right by. You will then have to drive for, seriously, a mile before you can turn around again. The entrance looks like a pull-out for RVs visiting the State Fair (see #3).

3) Never, ever try to visit the cemetery during the State Fair. Just trust me on this one.

4) The cemetery is fully fenced. It is clearly being mowed, but they must beam the damn mower in using advanced teleport technology, because I couldn't find a gate.

5) Watch out for the edges of the fence when you climb over.

6) Bring candy to reward the kids for putting up with an hour-long detour trying to find the damn cemetery, and the wounds from entering it.

The red badge of genealogy

And now, on to the cemetery pictures:

There is a monument in the family plot to our illustrious ancestors.
Under the name it says "Pioneers of Des Moines, November 1, 1847" 

The oldest monument is to John Stewart Dean and his second and third wives:

A close-up of the inscription. It reads:
"John S. Dean Aug 9, 1797-Dec 21, 1872
Nancy Taylor, 2nd wife Feb 27, 1805-Nov 16, 1851
Rachel Scroggs, 3rd wife Dec 2?, 1812-March 3, 1906"

Also in the cemetery are John's son Abram Stewart Dean and his wife Anne Welsheimer Dean:

"Father
Abram S.
Jan. 9, 1820
Jan 25, 1859"

Note that he's designated as "father". I believe these headstones may have been put up by David Philip Dean. All except John Stewart's appear to be identical in stone and style. I believe they may have been replacements for earlier, less durable, monuments. I hadn't heard of anyone in the family replacing the stones, but the family designations suggests David was the person who did so.

"Mother
Ann R.
Feb 16, 1819
Dec 29, 1905"

Some of the tombstones belong to children of Abram and Ann. These include Hannah Catherine Dean and Nancy Elizabeth Dean Barnes. Nancy was the wife of Marion L. Barnes.

"Hannah C.
Dau.
Dec. 9, 1844
Dec. 21, 1969"

"Nancy E.
Dau. - Wife of
M.L. Barnes
May 1, 1848
Jan. 5, 1873"

One of the children of Marion and Nancy Dean Barnes was also buried at the cemetery. Really, the number of young children in cemeteries from this time is heartbreaking.

"Charles F.
Son of M.L. and N.E.
Barnes
Dec. 29, 1872
June 2, 1873"

Most of the children memorialized in the cemetery were children of David Philip Dean and Sarah Jennie Brattain Dean. David and Jennie moved to Washington later in their marriage, but a number of infants and young children were left behind in the graveyard. I can't imagine how they handled such loss.

"James
son of
D.P. and S.J. Dean
Feb 16, 1889
Feb 9, 1890"

"Edna
Dau. of
D.P. and S.J. Dean
Oct. 10, 1887
Feb. 5, 1890"

"Havey E.
Son of
D.P. and S.J. Dean
April 18, 1883
Feb. 7, 1885"

"Daisy
Dau. of
D.P. and S.J. Dean
May 8, 1881
Feb 8, 1885"

About the last headstone: my parents like to tell the story of how, when I was five years old, I wanted to name my unborn sibling "Daisy Dean". (Alas, I suspect this was an homage to Dukes of Hazzard, although daisies are my favorite flower) Well, apparently my great-great-grandparents didn't think the name was quite so laughable! Granted, I suspect my brother prefers Philip over Daisy. Still, I did name my first-born Margaret, a name which means "daisy" in its French, Spanish, and Portuguese versions.

The Case for Christina Kissling Miller

My great-great grandmother, Jennie Brattain, was married to David Philip Dean, the first systematic genealogist of the family. He gathered information on her family, too, so I knew going into my genealogical research that the Brattains (pronounced Brat-ton, not Bruh-tayn) were a Scottish family who arrived in the United States around 1750. They were Presbyterian when they arrived, but the scion of the family married a Quaker. Like many other Scotch-Irish families, they settled in North Carolina before moving west.

Jennie Brattain Dean's grandfather was Soloman Brattain, born in North Carolina in 1809, and dying in Henry County, Indiana, in 1892. (The Brattains were shockingly long-lived. Quite a number of them lived into their 90s). From the earlier research on the family, I knew Solomon's wife -- Jennie's grandmother -- was Catherine Miller. But what were her roots? Other than the 1850 census listing her birth place as Virginia and her birth year as 1812, we had no information.

I easily found the marriage license for "Solomon Bratton" and "Catharine Miller". They were married in Wayne County, Indiana, on August 23, 1832 by Hugh Cull(1). Hugh Cull was a well-known Methodist preacher in Wayne County(2). That tells us that the Miller family was living in Indiana in the 1830s.

Unfortunately the 1830 census did not record the names of individuals in each household. Only the names of the head of household were recorded, plus a count of the number of people in each household. There were 19 Miller households in Wayne County, Indiana, in the 1830 census. That doesn't narrow down the options very much, especially since Catherine Miller could have lived in a nearby county and not in Wayne at all. The number of Miller households in Indiana as a whole was in the hundreds.

I did have one more clue: Solomon Brattain's sister, Mary Ann, married a man named William Miller. In the Midwest at this time, "sibling-swap" marriages were relatively common. In other words, siblings from one family (often a brother and sister) would marry siblings from another family. I've mentioned this phenomenon before in my post about John Stewart Dean and Hannah Baird.

Luckily, William Miller lived long enough to be caught up in the mania for local history that swept the nation in the late 1800s. At that time, a rash of books were published by counties and towns chronicling the early European conquest of the area and featuring biographies of elderly residents (especially White Anglo-Saxon Protestant residents, but that's another story.) William Miller was featured in a book on the history of Wayne County, Indiana, published in 1884(3). This source gave his parents as John and Christina (Kissling) Miller, who had come to Indiana from Virginia in 1812. William was their youngest child, born in 1814, after they moved to Indiana. The same source gave the names of all nine of John and Christina's children, and the second-youngest was a girl named Catherine. Two years is a pretty standard birth spacing, so this Catherine could very well have been born in 1812 in Virginia, just like "our" Catherine Miller. The book also said that the Millers were Methodists (remember, Soloman and Catherine were married by the Methodist preacher) and that John Miller had died in 1822, but Christina Kissling Miller had lived until 1860. Soloman and Catherine Brattain named two of their children John and Christina. Yes, those are common names, but it is one more indication that John and Christina Miller could have been relatives of Catherine Miller Brattain.

Returning to the 1830 census, there was a Christina Miller who was the head of a household in Wayne Township, Indiana. On the same census page (meaning they must have lived close by) were John and Joseph Brattain, the father and uncle of Soloman Brattain.(4).

Unfortunately, the household of Christina Miller did not include a female of the correct age to be Catherine. However, the census may be in error, or Catherine may have been living with a sibling or working in someone's home. This would be all the more likely since William was the only son of the Millers, so Catherine's mother, a widow with only a 16 year old son, may have needed all the help she could get.

All in all, I believe the circumstantial evidence is strong suggesting that Catherine Miller Brattain was the sister of William Miller, and the daughter of John and Christina Kissling Miller.

There are on-line genealogies of both the Miller and Kissling families. Both are German and had been in the United States since the early to mid 1700s. At least two of Christina's fore-bearers fought in the Revolution. John's family is harder to trace (John Miller is a criminally common name), but it appears he was related somehow to the family of Martin Luther Miller of Wythe County, Virginia, where John and Christina were married. Martin's sons, Isaac and Daniel, also lived in Wayne County, Indiana, and Solomon and Christina named one of their sons Isaac. I'll post more on the deeper history as I get more information.

References:
(1)  "Indiana Marriages, 1811-2007," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:27VG-3TJ : accessed 27 August 2015), Solomon Bratton and Catharine Miller, 23 Aug 1832; citing , Wayne, Indiana, county clerk offices, Indiana; FHL microfilm 1,838,642..

(2) pioneerhttps://waynecountyhistory.wordpress.com/2010/12/07/rev-hugh-cull-of-wayne-county-indiana/.

(3) History of Wayne County, Indiana, 1884, p. 292. Available on-line:https://books.google.com/books?id=V8oUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA205&lpg=PA205&dq=isaac+miller+wayne+county+indiana&source=bl&ots=YoL6e1ljC5&sig=yx7S2AmreSKfu7D5xf_HS2ckbko&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC0Q6AEwA2oVChMIzvDwypLIxwIVQhaSCh3tmg-g#v=onepage&q=brattain&f=false.

(4) "United States Census, 1830", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XHPB-M26 : accessed 27 August 2015),