My Most Wanted Ancestors

SOLVED! Alexander Anderson: Born, Dronley, Scotland, 18 January 1853. According to census records, he came to the US in 1880 (but according to his obituary, in 1877), settling near Schuyler, Colfax Co., Nebraska; his elder brother, David Ewart Anderson, again, according to census answers, had already been in America since 1871. Alexander died in Burwell, Nebraska in 1900, only two weeks before his wife, leaving six young orphans. David's obituary tells most of what I know about this family. They had left a brother and a sister, Jessie (a common name in the family), in Scotland.

SOLVED! Alexander's father-in-law, Henry J. Coffin, is another mystery. More an artist than a cabinetmaker (apparently his profession); I once saw a table that he'd carved with portraits of himself and his wife in the guise of mediaeval monarchs at the top of each leg. He was born in 1830, somewhere in Maine, but lived most of his later life in Jamaica Plain or West Roxbury, in Boston. The 1873-4 directory for those cities lists him as running an eponymous furniture business and living on Cedar Avenue, near Chestnut, Jamaica Plain. Shortly thereafter, he went west and the 1880 census shows him as a farmer, near Schuyler, Nebraska. He must have been unwell in the early '80s, as, by 1885, his wife is listed as the operator of the farm. He died in 1894 in Burwell, Nebraska.

Henry's mother-in-law, in turn, is of unknown origin. Mary Hearsey was born on 10 December, 1800, probably near Boston. She married Ephraim Merriam on 23 December, 1821 and died, at Boston, 10 November 1841. The Boston city directories from the 1820s have a Samuel Hearsey living next door to Ephraim in 'Theatre Alley,' both carpenters, so presumably this was Mary's father or other close relative. I have a locket of her hair inscribed with the above dates. One of her daughters, at least, was taken in by Joseph and Margaret Whall.

Regarding the Coffin/Merriam/Hearsey/Whall families, I have a box of letters written at the time of Alexander Anderson and his wife, Margaret Josephine Coffin's death in 1900. They are mostly from West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, Waltham and Lexington and bear a large collection of names, mostly of the given variety: Jaine, Alvina, Gussie, 'Aunt Rose' Brown, Sarah Seabury, Grace, Marian, James, Bert, Edward, James Albert Barker (Jr. & Sr.), Elmer, Sue, Annie, and 'Aunt Carrie.' Piecing the relationships together from one letter to the next is a real puzzle, but might ultimately provide some clues.

Another couple that perplexes me is Mr. & Mrs. Henry Conrad Bean (no doubt an Anglicised spelling). The information on him is best viewed at http://www.rootsweb.com/~neresour/OLLibrary/Comp_NE/cmp0136.htm (then scroll down to Henry C. Bean). He was, for some time, a professional soldier, and the lump you see on the right side of his nose is reported to be a bullet that was never removed (I find this unlikely)! His wife, Mary Ann Leavy, was born at Ardee, County Louth, Ireland on 26 June 1843 (though the 1900 census gives 1844). She came to New York 'as a young woman,' (according to the above-cited census, in 1861) to live with relatives. She later married Henry at West Point. As a child I had a small basket she'd woven as a girl in Ireland; it was destroyed (a lesson never to give children priceless heirlooms).

Also born in Ireland was Sarah Rice. She was born 28 November 1822, but I don't know exactly where. She must have emigrated fairly early, as she married Thomas Jefferson Chaffin in 1840 at Ross County, Ohio. Other Rices of similar background moved from Highland County, Ohio to Story County, Iowa at about the same time, so I would assume they are from the same family and Sarah (or 'Sally') probably had lived in Highland Co. instead of Ross.

SOLVED! Sarah's mother-in-law was Isabella 'Phebe' McCoy or McKoy, who was born in Virginia on 28 February 1783 and married Solomon Chalfin in Berkeley County (West) Virginia on 21 November 1803. I have no idea what her antecedents were. This couple were illiterate and many spellings of their names, presumably written by third parties, exist. For instance, 'Chalfin' shows a midpoint between the original 'Chalfant' and current 'Chaffin' (a Norman name, from 'Chauvin,' we have no right to; ours is a Celtic place name, though the family itself may be Norman--it's one of those linguistic rules where a less common name metamorphoses into a more common one).

I know that the ancestors of John Lemmons (1789-1828) and his wife Elizabeth Morgan (1788-?) of Montgomery County, Virginia, have eluded a lot of Internet and 'real world' researchers, so I'm not hopeful they will ever be found. My family have a very old and firmly held tradition that this line was somehow connected with Revolutionary War general Daniel Morgan, but his genealogy itself seems to be in dispute. Incidentally, I have seen about 20 spellings of the given name of their daughter, Licette (pronounced Lie-SEHT-a). I take this to be the proper spelling and pronunciation because that is the way her granddaughter, who knew the original, spelt and pronounced it as her own middle name.

SOLVED! (Well, Sarah is still a mystery.) Also looking for the ancestry of Daniel (1779-1849) and Sarah Kimball (1781-?), born in Canada and Maine, respectively, and buried in McHenry County, Illinois. They were the parents of Levi Kimball.

Then, of course, there are the mysterious Phillip and Anne Snook of Stillwater, Sussex County, New Jersey, parents of Charity Ann Snook (1768-1827). Another pair that no one seems to know much about.

Let's see, who else? The Wolfkill family of Franklin County, Pennsylvania and the various Uriah Cottle descendents come to mind as having a lot of gaps. Hey, does anyone know for what crime Uriah was transported? I hope it was something really juicy, but suspect it was another of those dreary, 'I stole because I was starving to death' stories.

These will do for now, though I'll add some others when I get time. If you have an info on any of these, please email me at melmoth@scc.net!