“Happiest when surrounded by little children”

Posted on March 16, 2014 by Dawn Bingaman

1944 newspaper obituary clipping for Anna Mary (Hopkins) Carson of New Jersey and Kansas

[Transcription follows]

[M]ORRIS COUNTY, KANSAS, THURSD[AY]

OBITUARY–CARSON
_____

Mrs. Andrew Carson, (Anna Mary Hopkins) was born December 25, 1857 in Trenton, N.J., and died at the home of her daughter, Mrs R. Knott in Abilene, Kansas, on Saturday, September 16, 1944, at the age of 86 years, 8 months and 19 days.

On June 9, 1875 she was united in marriage to Andrew Carson of Trenton, N. J., in 1882 Mr. and Mrs. Carson moved to Skiddy, Kansas, later they moved to a farm near White City, where they lived until 1919 when they moved into town.

She joined the Methodist church in White City on December 2nd, 1894, during the pastorate of Rev. J. S. Ford. She was a very faithful and active member until her health failed her. By such women of love and integrity are our churches and communities maintained. She was a good neighbor and loved by all who knew her. She was happiest when surrounded by little children.

Mrs. Carson greatly loved her home and family, always kind and thoughtful as a wife and mother, she lived in her own gentle way.

Her passing is a great loss, not only to her family but to all who knew her. A devout christian has gone to her God.

Mr. Carson preceded her in death on April 18, 1937.

She is survived by the following children: Mrs. Ralph Knott of Abilene, Mrs. George Tyson of Council Grove, Roy of White City, Elmer of Herington, Mrs. Amanda Carroll of Pittsburg, Frank and Raymond Carson and Mrs. Lillian Bailey of Wichita; thirty two grandchildren, eleven great grandchildren and one great, great, grandchild.

Mrs. Carson had been an invalid for nearly three years, spending most of her time with her daughter Mrs. Knott, who employed Mrs. Cordelia Williams to care for her. About two years ago she fell and broke her hip, and spent some time in the hospital. When it had almost healed several months ago, she had another fall and the hip was rebroken.

Funeral services were held at the Methodist church Wednesday at 2:30 with interment in White City cemetery. Frey funeral home had charge of arrangements; Rev. O. J. McCulloh preached the sermon.

The pall bearers were: R. R. Adam, W. H. Ashe, Howard Shepherd, C. C. Miller, George Hauserman and F. F. Girtch.

Music was furnished by Mrs. J. F. Bacon at the piano and C. C. Miller, Howard Shepherd, Mrs. E. G. Larson, and Mrs J E Bowert, who sang “The Old Rugged Cross,” “Sometime We’ll Understand,” and “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere.”

Supper was served by the Eastern Star at the Full Plate Cafe to relatives from a distance attending the funeral.

[End of transcription.]

I am a descendant of one of the eleven great-grandchildren mentioned in the above obituary. My grandmother would have been one of the unnamed 32 grandchildren, and would probably have attended the funeral of her grandmother, although I do not have any recollection of her telling me that. Our branch of the family has no photographs, letters or ephemera from the New Jersey Hopkins side of the family, and I am still working to prove her ancestry.

The clipping transcribed above is, just that, a clipping, so full publication data for a proper citation is lacking. Two facts suggest publication information: 1) the newspaper was published on a Thursday following the death and funeral of Anna Mary (Hopkins) Carson and, 2) the newspaper was published in Morris County, Kansas.

Consulting a perpetual calendar for 1944, I was able to determine that the likeliest publication date would have been Thursday, 21 Sep 1944, the first Thursday following her death on Saturday, 16 Sep 1944.

I was then able to narrow down the newspaper to one of two possibilities using the U.S. Newspaper Directory, 1690-Present online as part of the Chronicling America project of the Library of Congress, which I have blogged about previously.

Search of the U.S. Newspaper Directory using state of Kansas, and county of Morris, plus decade from 1940-1950, as shown in yellow, above.

Only the Council Grove Republican and White City Register (indicated in red, above) are likely candidates for this newspaper clipping based on the publication information. My belief is this obituary appeared in the 21 Sep 1944 edition of the White City Register, page unknown. Determining whether this is, in fact, true has been added to my “to do” list.

Notes: The formatting shown in this post is not true to the original; it was a very long, narrow column in the original newspaper, which I have chosen not to replicate. In the original, each new section is indented, and there is no spacing between the paragraphs. I was unable to get it properly formatted in this blog post but felt that sharing the information was more important than formatting of same.

1. The children of Anna Mary (Hopkins) Carson all lived in towns and cities in Kansas, although that may not be clear to those unfamiliar with the area.

2. “Mrs. Lillian Bailey of Wichita” was actually Mrs. Lillian Barley, wife of Christian Arthur Barley. They lived in at 850 Faulkner in Wichita in 1943, per Polk’s Wichita City Directory (Kansas City, Missouri: R. L. Polk & Co., 1943), p. 57, entry for Christian A. and Lillian Barley; digital image, “U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989”, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 Mar 2014). The 1944 Wichita directory, if one exists, is not available on Ancestry currently.

Where There’s a Will…

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Dawn Bingaman

Tracking down the Will of Morris Kelly Sheppard of Ohio on the FamilySearch website

My 3^rd-great-grandfather, Samuel Fryman, allegedly born in Virginia in 1807, married as his first wife, Mary Shepherd (aka Shepard, Sheppard, Sheppards etc.) in Belmont County, Ohio in 1832. When research on this line commenced nothing was known of her birth family, siblings or early life, outside of the fact that her father was living at the time of her marriage and that the couple were both residents of Smith Township. Census households headed by Shepherd males in the vicinity suggested possibilities for further research but nothing concrete had been established.

Shepherd families can be found in the starred counties of Belmont, Morgan and Richland counties, Ohio between 1820-1847.

At a later date, I serendipitously pulled a book off the shelf at the local library and found this will abstract linking a Samuel Fryman to a Sheppard man in Richland County, Ohio, several counties and fifteen years removed from the Belmont County marriage. Here is the information from the will abstract, as entered into my genealogy software program:

SHEPPARD, MORRIS KELLY, Bloomfield Twp. 21 Jun 1847 23 Aug 1847
To Samuel Fryman, $250.00.
To Arnold Sheppard, $250.00.
To brothers and sisters Prudence, Rebecca, David, Priscilla, and John, residue of estate equally.
Witnesses: William Baskins, Francis P. Griffith.¹

Could this be my Samuel Fryman?

I wondered if I could learn anything further by looking at the original will. My attempt to do just that failed when at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City in 2005. At that time I was simply unable to locate the appropriate volume. Now that image copies of these records are available online at FamilySearch.org, I thought that I would try again.

At the main page, I clicked on the Search button, then scrolled down to the bottom of the page and clicked the United States link, which took me to the Historical Records Collections page. From the Place list on the left, I selected Ohio. Under Collections, I selected Probate & Court, which left me with a manageable list of seven collections.

Richland County was not listed out separately, so I clicked in to the larger collection of court records called Ohio, Probate Records, 1789-1996. I then located Richland in the list of counties. Since I knew I was dealing with a will, and had a date of 23 Aug 1847 for when the will was probated, I selected Wills 1816-1864 vol 1/2-2.

There are 677 images on this microfilm, so I should be able to find what I need. Volume 1/2 on FHL film 388,794 covers the years 1816-1822.

Volume 1 on the same film covers 1849-1855.

What about 1823-1848? Clearly, this gap in the records is what I ran into in 2005, when I quit looking. But surely, I reasoned, the author of the book on will abstracts was working off of something. This time, I advanced the images to read the information at the front of volume 1, to see if there was any explanation for this gap. That is when I found this note penned on the inside cover of the volume:

Index for the years 1849 to 1855
~~to which is added~~

To which is added an Index to the Wills in

the Administration Records

from 1813 to 1849

Embracing all the wills in the old
Records
Made for the benefit of all whom it may
concern by John Meredith, P. J., 1859

Thank you, Judge Meredith. I scrolled forward to find the S section of the index. Eureka! There I found the index entry for the 1847 will of Morris Kelly Sheppard.

Clicking back in to all the Richland County, Ohio probate and court records, I located the link for Administration Records, volumes 7-8.

The index entry to the will of Morris Kelly Sheppard said it was located on p. 28, but information regarding the settlement of the estate actually starts on p. 27, filmed on frame 12 of FHL microfilm 960,100.

Richland Co., Ohio administration of estate of Morris Kelly Sheppard, 1847.²

From my experience, it is rather unusual that a will would be filed in with the Administration Records when there are separate volumes for wills. That fact most likely signals that we are dealing with a special type of probate, called an Administration C.T.A. (C.T.A. being an abbreviation for a Latin term “cum testamento annexo“. Black’s Law Dictionary explains the phrase this way:

L. Lat. With the will annexed. A term applied to administration granted where a testator makes an incomplete will, without naming any executors, or where he names incapable persons, or where the executors named refuse to act.³

The will of Morris Kelly Sheppard was entered into the bound volume of the Administration Records and clearly shows that no executor was named. What I have not yet verified is whether all wills in Richland Co., Ohio were for some reason included in with the Administration Records between 1823 and 1848.

Sources and credits:

1848 Ohio map by Jeremiah Greenleaf, courtesy David Rumsey Historical Map Collection online at http://www.davidrumsey.com/ via a Creative Commons license.

All screenshots in this post are from the FamilySearch.org website created and maintained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), accessed 06 Feb 2014.

¹ Anne Lockwood Dallas Budd, Richland County, Ohio, Abstracts of Wills, 1813-1873 (Mansfield, Ohio: Ohio Genealogical Society, 1974), p. 71.

² Richland County, Ohio, Court of Common Pleas, Mansfield, Administration Records vol. 7, 1844-1848 p. 27, entry for Morris Kelly Sheppard, 21 Aug 1847; digital images, “Ohio, Probate Records, 1789-1996.” FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 06 Feb 2014), imaged from FHL microfilm 960,100.

³ Henry Campbell Black, Black’s Law Dictionary, abridged 5th ed. (St. Paul, Minnesota : West Publishing Co., 1983), p. 200.

Carson Family Group Sheet: Early Research

Posted on December 28, 2013 by Dawn Bingaman

Part 2: Research on the Carson family of New Jersey and Kansas in the early days before Internet-based genealogy records became commonplace

We left off last time having learned the names of four Carson siblings from New Jersey: my 2^nd great-grandfather Andrew F. Carson and his brothers: Charley, Furman, and Wes. From informal oral interviews with my grandmother mostly in the 1980s and a cemetery trip to her hometown, I learned that three of the brothers had migrated from New Jersey to Kansas at some point in their lives, lived in the vicinity of White City, Morris Co., Kansas, and were buried in White City Cemetery.

Location of White City within Morris County, and of Morris County within the state of Kansas¹

The information presented below is from my compilied family group sheet and 1992 cemetery field notes.

Typically when doing genealogical research you start with the known, and then move backwards in time, searching for clues that link people and generations. One of the building blocks of an American family tree is the United States Federal census, taken decennially (i.e. every 10 years) beginning in 1790. To access the census microfilm, I made a trek to the local branch of the National Archives in Seattle, where I searched for each of the Carson males in the 1920, 1910, and 1900 census enumerations for Morris County, Kansas. Because of a 72-year black out period before the census is released to the public at large, later federal census listings were not available when this research was first conducted in the 1990s. Here I have extracted the information from the census listings into a table in my word processing software for comparison purposes.

1900-1920 U.S. census entries for brothers Charles, Andrew and Furman Carson. Wes Carson was not indexed or otherwise located in Morris Co., Kansas.

Doing the census research provided important background information. Not only did it establish the presence of the three Carson brothers over three decades in a small community, it also consistently placed their origins, and that of their parents, in New Jersey. However, since none of these census households included a father or mother, it did not help me answer my research question which was “Who were the parents of Andrew, Charley and Furman Carson of White City, Kansas, and of Wes, location unknown?”

Because I wanted to learn who the parents of the brothers were, I needed to choose a census where they were all likely to appear together in the parental household. Looking for four people together rather than just one individual increases the likelihood that, when found, you have identified the correct family group.

In this case, the census closest to their birth dates was the 1860 census. If I was doing this research today, the 1860 census would be the first census to search. However, if you were doing research fifteen years ago, you may recall that the 1860 census index was available in book form, and only the heads of household were typically indexed – not children. Since I did not know the name of the parents of the Carson brothers, that census wasn’t my first option. Instead, I chose to search for the brothers in the 1870 census using a published Heritage Quest index that included children.

In 1870, Charles would have been about 18, Andrew would have been about 16, and Furman would have been about 14. Therefore, I needed to look for young males of these names and ages in the census index for New Jersey. If all were indexed, all entries should lead us to the same household assuming that the brothers had not yet left home. Finding Wes in the household would have been a bonus, since no information regarding his life had been uncovered up to that time.

The net result of this exercise was that the only entry in the census index that matched up was that of “Firman” Carson.² True to form, Wes was not found at all, and the entries for males named Andrew or Charles Carson were all older than our subjects.

This index entry led me to the correct roll of microfilm and page number, which yielded this result:

1870 U.S. census entries for Carson family members showing known siblings Furman, Charles and Andrew in the household, highlighted in yellow.³

Although not stated, we can surmise that Caroline Carson may have been the mother of all the Carson children in the household, including Charles, Andrew, Furman, Eley, Amanda, and Jane Carson; the ages fit into a logical birth sequence, and all bore the same surname. Oddly enough, the census index got two data points wrong: the spelling of Firman – clearly “Forman” in the census entry, and his age, which shows as 13 (not 14). Still, it led me to the correct family. Using the printed index was easier than cranking through a whole county’s worth of entries on the film.

Now that I potentially had the name of one parent and the Hamilton Township location in Mercer County, New Jersey, I continued my research – operating under the assumption that Caroline was the children’s mother. Where was the Carson father, and who was Lewis Rainear?

***
Sources:
¹ Image: “Morris County Kansas Incorporated and Unincorporated areas White City Highlighted” courtesy Wikimedia user Arkyan under the GNU Free Documentation License (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Morris_County_Kansas_Incorporated_and_Unincorporated_areas_White_City_Highlighted.svg : accessed 21 Dec 2013).

² Raeone Christiansen Steuart. New Jersey 1870 Census Index (Bountiful, Utah: Heritage Quest, 1998), p. 246.

³ 1870 U.S. census, Mercer County, New Jersey, population schedule, Hamilton Township, p. 82 [stamped], dwelling 270, family 268, Caroline Carson family in Lewis Rainear household, National Archives microfilm publication M593, roll 871. The original of the edited image shown here downloaded from Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 21 Dec 2013) rather than scanning a poor copy printed from microfilm at the time.

Headstone Record for Civil War Soldier Perrine Carson

Posted on June 1, 2013 by Dawn Bingaman

Civil War soldier Perrine Carson (1821-1866) was the brother of my ancestor, Caroline Carson (ca. 1829/30-1915). He was injured in service when building a bridge, and died within a year of his honorable discharge from the Army. His widow, Sarah Ann Carson, died in 1867, leaving five children under the age of 16.

Headstone card for Perrine Carson from National Archives RG 92, Office of the Quartermaster General.

Name: Carson, Perrine
Rank: Pvt.
Service: Co. I, 38^th Regt., N.J. Inf[antry]
Cemetery: Presbyterian
Cemetery Location: Hamilton Square, Mercer Co., N.J.
Grave: [blank]
Date of Death: May 21 – 1866
Headstone Supplied by: Sheldon & Sons, West Rutland, Vermont
Contract Date: Aug. 21, 1888¹

Leigh Miller posted an image of his headstone on my behalf at Find A Grave.² The marker is of the typical shield design, with only his name and regiment inscribed. A similar headstone for Sarah Ann Carson is adjacent.³ Other Carson family members are interred in the Presbyterian Churchyard at Hamilton Square, New Jersey as well.⁴

Sources:

¹“Headstones Provided for Deceased Union Civil War Veterans, 1879-1903”, card for Perrine Carson (1888?); digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 01 Jun 2013), citing NARA microfilm publication M1845, roll 4.

² Find A Grave, online database (http://www.findagrave.com : accessed 01 Jun 2013), Perrine Carson, memorial no. 37797943, First Presbyterian Churchyard (Hamilton Square, Mercer County, New Jersey).

³ Find A Grave, online database (http://www.findagrave.com : accessed 01 Jun 2013), Sarah Ann Carson, memorial no. 37797975, First Presbyterian Churchyard (Hamilton Square, Mercer County, New Jersey).

⁴ Nine persons bearing the Carson surname have been included in the Find A Grave database for this cemetery to date, including Caroline Carson and her husband, Charles Carson. See First Presbyterian Churchyard, Hamilton Square, Mercer County, New Jersey, Carson family markers; memorials, Find A Grave, online database (http:www.findagrave.com : accessed 01 Jun 2013).

Ancestor Roundup

Reining in my American Ancestors

Category Archives: Family Research

“Happiest when surrounded by little children”

1944 newspaper obituary clipping for Anna Mary (Hopkins) Carson of New Jersey and Kansas

Where There’s a Will…

Carson Family Group Sheet: Early Research

Headstone Record for Civil War Soldier Perrine Carson