Father and Son: Pioneers of Two States

Posted on November 28, 2015 by Dawn Bingaman

Josephus Bingaman and his father, Henry Bingaman, were early pioneers in Kansas and Indiana, respectively

John Tecumseh “Tauy” Jones House on Tauy Creek in Franklin County, Kansas. Stonemason Josephus Bingaman helped build this historic home which was completed by 1870.

I have been occupied the better part of two months by combing through digital copies of 19^th and early 20^th century newspapers online. Newspapers from this time period offer genealogists a wonderful lens into the lives of our ancestors, often covering major life events as well as snippets of their comings and goings.

Sometimes more than just a sentence or two was published in the local newspaper. The article below recounts how two of my Bingaman ancestors were acquainted with a locally well-known Native American man named John Tecumseh (“Tauy”) Jones in Indiana, and later, Kansas.

This article is chock-full of clues to pursue about Henry Bingaman, the father of my great-great-grandfather Josephus Bingaman. I present a transcription of the article in its entirety below.

***

When Tauy Jones Came to Wabash
The Evening Herald (Ottawa, Kansas), 19 Nov 1913

JOSEPH BINGAMAN’S FATHER KNEW HIM IN INDIANA.

Father and Son, Pioneers in Two of the States–Ottawan Worked as Stonemason on Chief’s House on Tauy Creek.

When Henry Bingaman, father of Joseph Bingaman of this city, was a pioneer in the Wabash River country of Indiana almost 100 years ago, John Tecumseh Jones (Tauy Jones) came down on the Wabash from the Great Lakes country. He was an emissary of the government to the Miami Indians in Indiana, asking them to take up lands in the West.

Almost half a century later Joseph Bingaman met Tauy Jones in Franklin county and the venerable old Indian recalled the family name of Bingaman. The two talked together many times and Mr. Bingaman still recalls many interesting events about Jones.

The Bingaman family has sent out pioneers to new countries for over 100 years. An uncle of Henry Bingaman was a pioneer in Kentucky. A party of Indians attempted an attack upon the home and Mr. Bingaman killed seven of them. Theodore Roosevelt mentions this event in one of his books.

Henry Bingaman as a boy was a soldier under General Harrison and was at Tippecanoe. It was there that he became charmed with the Indiana country. He went back to Ohio and three families emigrated to Indiana. They were the Neffs, the McCombs and the Bingamans. These three sturdy families settled on the Wabash twelve miles west of Logansport. General Tipton had a trading post there then and it was the first post above Vincennes.

Joseph Bingaman, a son of Henry, came to Kansas in 1869 after serving two enlistments in the war. He was an apprentice stonemason working under Mack and Damon Higby, known to many of the old settlers around Le Loup. The Higbys were building the Tauy Jones home which is now the big stone residence on the estate of the late Captain William H. Woodlief.

Mr. Bingaman assisted in completing the house and he became acquainted with Jones who remembered the Bingamans of the Wabash country back in the ‘20s.

Joseph Bingaman is one of the pioneers of this country. He helped build the Forest Park mill and several other stone buildings here. He was a workman on the old L. L. & G. the first railroad in Ottawa. Mr. Bingaman and an uncle also rode for eighteen miles on the first engine traveling between Cincinnati and Chicago.

“We gave the engineer fifty cents to let us ride,” said Mr. Bingaman today.¹

***

Reverend Jones, also known as “Ottawa Jones”, was an interpreter for the Ottawa Indians who were removed from Ohio to eastern Kansas in territorial days. He and his wife were instrumental in the founding of Ottawa University, a Baptist college.² His image can be seen on the Kansas Memory website, along with additional images of his home.

Sources and credits
Image credit: “John Tecumseh “Tauy” Jones House on Tauy Creek” by user: Bhall87 / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0. Original image located here. Edited by Dawn Bingaman.

¹“When Tauy Jones Came to Wabash,” The Evening Herald (Ottawa, Kansas), 19 Nov 1913, p. 6, col. 3; digital image, Newspapers.com (http://www.newspapers.com : accessed 27 Nov 2015).

²“Ottawa U. Born Out of Pioneer Sacrifice,” Topeka Daily Capital (Topeka, Kansas), 11 Jun 1922, p. 6B, col. 2; digital image, Newspapers.com (http://www.newspapers.com : accessed 27 Nov 2015).

Historic American Newspapers Website Bug

Posted on September 23, 2015 by Dawn Bingaman

Last weekend, I became aware of the fact that the Library of Congress Historic American Newspapers website had recently added more than one million digitized American newspapers to its collection. I spent the bulk of my free time the next four days running searches and doing data entry in my genealogy database.

Main page of the Chronicling America Historic American Newspapers website

In the course of this activity, I noticed a “bug” in the display of filtered search results when using the Advanced Search form. By default, search results on this site are ordered in terms of Relevance, or how many times your search terms appear on the page. Since I typically prefer to see my results ordered by date, I change the Sort by parameter by using the drop down arrow. However, when this option is selected, search results limited by state are no longer retained. The upshot is that my “hits” balloon and include states that I did not select at the outset.

Chronicling America Advanced Search form

My search for Thomas Mulkey initially yielded 8 results from Missouri and Oregon newspapers

Changing the default sort order to Date causes my hits to increase, and includes states that I did not select in my original search

This problem does not occur when using the search box on the main page and changing the sort order of the results, but you cannot limit your search to newspapers from only two states if you use this form. For now, my advice would be to search a single state at a time if you want to sort your results by date.

I tweeted this issue yesterday, and reported the bug to the Library of Congress via their website comment form. Hopefully it will be an easy fix for them. I will report here when there is a response.

In case you are interested, John Thomas Mulkey is my third-great-grandfather, a son of the noted preacher, Philip Mulkey. Many from the extended Mulkey family were early pioneers who relocated from Missouri to Oregon via the Oregon Trail to stake Oregon Donation Land Claims.

Establishing a Death Date for Charles Carson

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Dawn Bingaman

Carson Family Group Sheet (Pt. 4)

Fourth in an ongoing series that attempts to document the early days of my research on the Carson family of New Jersey as it originally unfolded. In this installment describing research conducted in 2002-2003, I established a tentative death date for my ancestor, Charles Carson.

I suspected that my 3^rd-great-grandfather Charles Carson of Mercer County, New Jersey died at a relatively young age.

From prior research in the Federal census population schedules (highlighted in this post) I learned that he was 26 years of age in 1850, and age 36 in 1860. I estimated his year of birth as circa 1824 from those two records. The 1860 census was the last record in which he was found.

He was not among immediate family members by the time of the 1870 census. By 1881, his wife, Caroline Carson, was called a widow. Using all of this information, I can bracket his possible date of death as sometime after 1 June 1860 and before early 1881, a 20-21 year range. Thus, he would have been no younger than 35 and no older than 57 years of age when he died, depending on how early in the year he was born.

Can I narrow down that window of time?

Any American male aged 18-60 that disappears from a family in the first half of the decade of the 1860’s is a candidate for Civil War service. Charles was definitely in that age range.

Civil War service as a volunteer can be quickly verified by a look-up on the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System (CWSS) website maintained by the National Park Service. With over 6.3 million names of soldiers indexed, representing participants from both Union and Confederate forces, it is one of my first stops when beginning new research on a potential soldier in the American Civil War (1861-1865). Names in this database were entered as found on the Compiled Service Records, created in the latter portion of the 19^th century.

I clicked on Soldiers and entered basic search criteria:
First Name: Charles
Last Name: Carson
Side: Union

Search box detail. Click to enlarge this or any other photo.

Forty-seven soldiers named Charles Carson were included in my search results (including Colored Troops and Home Guards), but none saw service in a New Jersey regiment. I doubted with at least six children at home that he would have traveled to another state to join up.

I also ran a search for Charles Carson in the 1876 publication “Record of Officers and Men from New Jersey in the Civil War, 1861-1865″….by Adjutant-General William S. Stryker and found no listing for any officer or soldier named Charles Carson. This volume is available in digital form from the New Jersey State Library at this link.

If Carson died between 1861 and 1865, it was unlikely the result of any wartime service unless, perhaps, he was a career soldier, as compiled military service records were not created for “Regulars”. Since I had no information that directly suggested service in the Civil War in any capacity, I decided to table this research angle. Even though this search yielded negative results, it was necessary to document that I did consider military service as a possibility.

What other information could I uncover that might suggest a death date for Charles Carson?

It was November 2002 when I turned to GenForum, my genealogy message board of choice (which has recently transitioned to a read-only archive of former queries and posts). There on the Kansas board I found a query posted mere weeks prior that mentioned both Furman Carson and his father, Charles Carson.¹ I saw other names that I knew from my own research among the list of children, so posted a response.² It was not long before I received a notification that a reader had responded to my query. We compared notes and in short order determined that our 2nd-great-grandfathers were brothers. Some of our family information meshed quite well, but some of it differed. For example, she identified our known common ancestor as Charles C. Carson, and showed his death in 1896, and not “before 1881” as my research indicated. My cousin also had information on the purported maiden surname of his wife Caroline.

How to resolve this conflicting information? With more research, of course! As I would learn, much of this information was provided to her by a third party, without source citations. I began to attempt to verify my new cousin’s alleged facts, but also continued to look for records that would support my hypothesis. I found it difficult to believe that Caroline’s husband Charles simply dropped off the grid between 1860 and 1896. I was aware of other males named Charles Carson living in the greater Trenton area in the mid to late 19th century, so figured the 1896 death date attributed to my Charles really was that of another man. But, I would have to prove this before dismissing it completely.

I next searched the 1880 U.S. census index to learn whether Charles Carson had reunited with his wife and children. He was not living in the household. In fact, Caroline Carson was again identified as a widow.³ I now had three independent sources that either suggested or stated outright that Caroline was widowed, certainly by 1880, but possibly long before that.

The printout of the 1880 census household of widow Caroline Carson

Fast forward a few months to early 2003. The Old Mill Hill Society (OMHS) had a web presence at the time, consisting mostly of transcribed records like city directories and obituary indexes. Included among these records was something called the “Chronological Indexes”, a succinct listing of events in the local newspaper, published on New Year’s Day, which covered events of the prior year. Four Chronological Indexes were then online: 1856, 1857, 1863, and 1870. Like any good genealogist, I worked with what was available and reviewed them all. Imagine my surprise when I read this stark entry for May 1863:

“22. Charles Carson was injured in Hutchinson’s saw mill, and died on the 24th.”⁴

Could this be the first tangible clue that my Charles Carson died 24 May 1863 as a result of injuries sustained in a sawmill accident two days prior? It certainly fit within the timeline that I had already established. I was cautiously optimistic. I needed to learn more about this man and more about the accident that claimed his life. The fact that the entry was included in an annual roundup of news items meant that it was reported on or near the time of the event.

I made a new research plan with this last record in mind. My plan included locating the following items:

The 1863 death record for Charles Carson in Trenton, New Jersey
Any news articles regarding the accident and subsequent death
A probate file in Mercer County, New Jersey for Charles Carson
Hutchinson’s sawmill to learn if it was near the last known residence of the Carson family

Check back for a future installment to see how well I executed my plan.

Notes and sources:

¹ Jean [Owens], “Re: Kansas surnames,” discussion list, 23 Oct 2002, Genealogy.com, GenForum: Kansas Genealogy Forum (http://genforum.genealogy.com/ks/ : accessed 16 Nov 2002), message 12392.

² Dawn Bingaman, “Re: Kansas surnames Carson – Hopkins,” discussion list, 16 Nov 2002, Genealogy.com, GenForum: Kansas Genealogy Forum (http://genforum.genealogy.com/ks/ : accessed 16 Nov 2002), message 12547.

³ “1880 United States Census Household Record,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org: accessed 02 May 2003), entry for Caroline Carson, District 1, Chambersburg, Mercer County, New Jersey, citing National Archives microfilm publication T-9, roll 789, sheet 500A.

⁴ Franklin S. Mills, “Index to the Year 1863.” Daily True American (Trenton, New Jersey), 1 Jan 1864, transcription, Old Mill Hill Society website (http://oldmillhillsociety.org/research/chronoindex/Index1863.htm : accessed 11 Jun 2003). This website was located using the Wayback Machine and can be viewed today at this link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030310174958/http://oldmillhillsociety.org/research/chronoindex/Index1863.htm.
Sharp-eyed readers will also note there was another Carson entry among the news items. See 9 May 1863: “Mary Ann, wife of David C. Carson, died in the 33d year of her age.”

From Deed to Plat Map, Part 2

Posted on July 26, 2015 by Dawn Bingaman

Creating a Plat Map from a Metes and Bounds Land Description: A New Jersey Example. Part 2 demonstrates the platting of a parcel using a free online tool

In part one of this two-part post, I created a call list, a stripped down extract of the lines in the 1847 deed that includes the compass points and distance. Armed with this information, I can begin drawing my land plat.

Although I own a copy of Deed Mapper by DirectLine Software, it was installed on my old desktop computer in another room in the home. I vaguely recalled that I had not yet installed the newer version, and didn’t know where the media was to install it on my laptop. So I decided to do an online search for other platting options. That is when I discovered Deed Platter. I am not sure how I overlooked this tool previously – it appears that it was released in 2004.

Deed Platter is a free utility available at the GenealogyTools.net website

Here is a portion of the Hammell to Carson deed with the first two line calls indicated.

Line call 1 reads: “…South twenty degrees East twenty nine chains and eighty three links…”
Line call 2 reads: “…South fifty four degrees and a half west ten chains and ten links…”

This information is highlighted in my line call worksheet, created in Microsoft Excel.

The highlighted information from my call worksheet is shown in the Deed Platter form. The direction column in my worksheet needs to be broken down into three parts in order to be input into the form: direction, degrees and bearing.

Deed Platter shows the distance in poles by default. By using the drop down arrow, you can choose from a variety of distance measures, including rods, perches, arpents and Spanish varas. Fill in the bottom portion of the form to have that information included in your map (i.e. grantor, grantee, township, county, state and deed citation information).

This is what the first two calls look like platted using the Deed Platter software.

This plat map is far from complete but I wanted to demonstrate the process and not just the end result. Continuing working through the line calls, I end up with a Deed Platter table that looks like this:

When I finished recording all the line calls from my worksheet into the Deed Platter table, I clicked the Plat Deed button to get a final plat map of the 1847 land purchased by Daniel Carson in East Windsor Twp., Mercer Co., New Jersey.

There is an additional table of information that can only be seen once the deed is platted that allows you to include markers and neighbors. I was unable to find a way to get that information to then be displayed on my map, though.

Markers and neighbors input into the table below the map are not displayed on the map itself. Click on image to enlarge.

Deed Platter is a great, free utility to plat a single parcel of land, but it is not without its shortcomings. Output capabilities appear to be limited to Save or Print, but may depend on which browser is used. With the Google Chrome browser, I was finally able to Print to a PDF file.

The real value in land platting is to place that land parcel somewhere on the globe, and to plat the entire neighborhood (some of whom may be kin), neither of which can be done with this software. I did not see any option to export my plat map for use in another mapping program.

Seeing the land platted definitely helps visualize a complex land description that otherwise just seems like an abstract concept. The Deed Platter software will certainly help you do that.

In summary, successful land platting is comprised of four steps, demonstrated in my two-part post.

1. Acquire a copy of the complete deed whenever possible
2. Transcribe the deed, making a full and complete copy
3. Extract the land description into a separate document that can be marked up
4. Plat the deed using platting software or by hand using paper, pencil and a protractor

If you think you’d rather tackle mapping manually, I can recommend several offline resources: Land & Property Research in the United States by E. Wade Hone (chapter 7) or How to Plot Land Surveys by Neal Otto Hively.

Ancestor Roundup

Reining in my American Ancestors