Two books to read and no time to do it!

I am still processing, reading, and organizing all the information that I gathered in Indiana last month. It is going to be a while before I can do any posts with significant information in them about what I discovered.  However, there were a couple things I found and I wanted to highlight them, mostly because they are so awesome.

While in Vincennes at the McGrady Brockman House I found and replicated the typed notes of my 2^nd great aunt Eliza Jane Combs Emmons Kinman.  On the front cover was a very nice memorial to the woman who put it together.  Since she is still living, and it gives her lineage I do not feel comfortable placing it here on line.  The compiler, Jean, is of my father’s generation and is the granddaughter of Eliza’s next oldest brother George Washington Combs.

This book is the typed record of all her research notes and diaries.  Jean does not state how she came to possess this information or where the originals were located at the time of transcription.  I would give anything to see the originals as I am already finding transcription mistakes like reversing of numbers when typed or hitting the 9 and not the 8 in the years.  You know, people weren't born 100 years after they died type of things.

Spanning the years 1966 to 1980 these not only gave me the opportunity to read along with how and when she made discoveries but also what was going on in the community and her family.  It was a little shocking at times to run across names of members of my family, but I knew that was to be expected.  After all, she was my great grandfather’s baby sister.  To keep all the information organized and flowing I purchased a notebook that I placed inside the three ring binder the photocopies are in.  I write facts, addresses (there are tons of correspondence notes), draw trees, and make comments about what I want to do to prove if the statement was true or not.

On a separate trip to the Carnegie Public Library in Washington, Indiana I made the amazing discovery of a family book that took one of my female brick wall lines back another four generations.  My 2^nd great grandmother was Rose Ann Brothers.  From records I have found I knew her parents were Jerome Brothers and Elizabeth Minerva Cissell.  That is all I knew.  I didn’t even know very much about her parents, it was a big wall.

Sitting on the shelf in the complied family history section of the genealogy library I discovered a binder about Cornelius Brothers and his descendants. I am sure you can imagine my excitement, and my father’s amused grinning, as I squealed and clapped my hands together.  It was an amazing, well researched, footnoted, and cited collection of information on this family. Of course at this rate my colonial Maryland ancestors are quickly outnumbering all the other colonial ancestors I have.

I have only skimmed it and it is next on the list of things to read after Eliza’s notes.  Fingers crossed I get to it by next spring since until then I am swamped with the BU course.  However, I did glean the following things:

•  Jerome Brothers was the son of Samuel S. Brothers and Catherine Gates.  Samuel was born about 1797 in Kentucky and Catherine about 1793 in Maryland.  They had 8 children from 1816-1834 and died in Indiana. 
• Samuel was the son of Jeremiah Brothers and Elizabeth Henry (widow of Basil Booth). Jeremiah was born in St. Mary’s County, Maryland in the 1770s.  They only had one child, Samuel Brothers.
• Jeremiah was the son of Cornelius Brothers and Elizabeth Thompson.  He is the earliest known ancestor for this line according to this report and was born in St. Mary’s County, Maryland in the 1740s.  They had seven children and died in Washington County, Kentucky.

As you can see, these two tomes of knowledge will have me busy for a long while.  It is going to be so much fun!

Post at Family Tree Firsts

My next post for Family Tree Firsts is up over at Family Tree University.  It is a follow up on Harry/Henry and what he did after the war.  As always I hope you enjoy it.

Many of you may be curious about how his wife finally find out that her husband was living under an assumed name.  Especially since I wrote that she did not find out for well over two decades.  I always find reading statements very interesting, and thought you might too as fellow researchers.  Below are a few excerpts from depositions that tell the story of how the truth was finally known.

Before we begin, there are two societies mentioned in the depositions that I had never heard of.  They are the Epworth League and Young Peoples Society of Christian Endeavor.  Doing a quick search on it I discovered that they were both groups for young Christians to help them with ministries and service through their faith to the community.  The Epworth League, through the Methodist Church, is still active today.

Beginning with the testimony of his wife, Nancy, the story unfolds on how she discovered the truth.  On June 24, 1918 she told the special examiner:

I never knew that Harry M. Coad was not his correct name until we had been married 26 years, I think about 26 years.  There was an Epworth League convention at Marshall, this Co. and I saw in the program the name of Edward Altemus as a delegate.  I had heard my husband mention that he had a sister who had married a man named Altemus.  I thought this Edward Altemus might be related to my husband so I wrote to him and through that correspondence learned that Edward Altemus’s mother was in fact the sister of my husband and also that my husband was not named Harry M. Coad, but Henry Clay Thompson.  At first my husband denied that his correct name was Henry Clay Thompson, then a nephew named Frank Maple wrote he was coming to visit us and then my husband confessed he had deceived me as to his name; that his correct name was Henry Clay Thompson.

Lucky for me, and my husband’s family, they were able to collect depositions from his two nephews, Frank and Edward.  Edward’s testimony dated May 31, 1918 was a genealogical treasure trove.  It listed married names of his aunts as well as names of all the cousins he knew, and last known residences around the country of the family.  Until he had correspondence from Nancy, Edward had not seen or heard from his uncle since he was a small child.  Edward stated in his deposition:

I was State Secretary of the Young Peoples Society of Christian Endeavor and was living in St. Louis.  I received a letter, in which inquiries were made about my family, this letter came from either the daughter or wife of my uncle Henry Clay Thompson.  She had seen my name in a paper and saw my photograph in a paper and that was why she wrote me.  This letter said uncle Henry Clay was living.  I was then living in St. Louis.  I answered the letter and uncle Henry’s daughter, don’t recall her name, came to St. Louis to see us and later on uncle Henry came.  That was somewhere around twenty years ago. 

Frank Maple, whom I also quoted in the Family Tree article, has a very animated and descriptive telling of the discovery in his deposition taken on February 13, 1918.  He tells the special examiner:

About 26 years ago a convention of the Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor was held at Marshall, Saline County, MO., and Mr. Edward Altemus of St. Louis, MO., my first cousin, was the States Secretary.  A short time later a letter was received to Altemus from a Mrs. H. M. Coad, of Saline Co., MO.  In a writeup of the Convention in a Marshall paper she had noted the name of Edward Altemus, Secretary, and she then recalled that her husband had once upon a time told her he had a sister, Harriet Frances, who married a man by the name of Altemus and naturally her curiosity was aroused and she ventured a letter of inquiry.  Several letters passed back and forth until it finally became a matter of conviction with Mrs. H. M. Coad that the wife of Mr. Altemus, Sr., was her husband’s own sister.  Harriet Frances Altemus, my mother’s sister, finally wrote Mrs. Coad as follows in substance – I remember this as the final message that settled the matter – “Your husband is my brother and his name is not Coad, but Henry Clay Thompson.”  … I know Mrs. Coad told me that the night before my arrival on the visit to their Home that she and the rest of the family has confronted the husband and father again with these evidence and implored him to make a full breast before his young nephew arrived and this save all of them an embarrassment.  This he did.  She his wife, said that he covered up his eyes and said that he had married her under his brother-in-law’s name, Coad, and not under his right name, and that his correct name was Henry Clay Thompson, that he assumed the name Coad sometime after the close of the Civil war.

Call it genealogical serendipity if you will, but if it was not for curiosity, tenacity, and a little luck on the part of Nancy we may never have known the whole story of Harry/Henry.  Thanks to her efforts in connecting him his family it made it a little easier for him to prove who he was later when applying for pension.  As well as letting his mother see him one last time before her death.

*Image Library of Congress: Study of a mule team and wagon, with driver
*Images of Depositions loacted in pension file of Harry M Coad / Henry C Thompson, NARA

Harry Coad Pension Letter May 1916

Letter to the Bureau of Pensions from Harry Coad
Located at the National Archives, Washington, DC
Harry Coad / Henry Thompson Pension File

Grand Pass MO

May 31, 1916
Bureau of Pensions.
Washington DC

Gentleman:

Yours of May 25 at hand and I will say, I lost my discharge, and do not know where any of my comrades are, but can give you names of half the company I was in if that will do any good.  Was born August 31, 1840, Springfield, Sangamon Co., Ill but I know of no way to prove it as my father, mother, sisters, and brothers are all dead except my youngest brother, and first now I don’t know if address, but will make an effort to get it if it is necessary.

Lived in St. Louis, during the summers of 1850-1868.  My father’s name was Geo. Washington Thompson.  My mother’s name was, Sarah D. Thomspon, (nee McChesney).  My Sisters, Margaret, Harriett, and Elisabeth were alive in June 1850 1860.

Resptbly,

Harry M Coad alias
Henry Clay Thompson

*Note: in his later depositions he states he can no longer write, nor sign is name.  It is my feeling (as the handwritting does not change in all the letters) that this is his daughter Ida, whom lived close by, writing his letter for him.

New Post at Family Tree

My latest post if up over at Family Tree Firsts.  Bring a box of Kleenex if you are a crier.

I have read this file twice now, and will probably go through it one more time.  Every time I read through a page something new jumps out at me.  I am sure that I will never truly know all the secrets that lie within its pages.  By the way, I have nicknamed this ancestor Harry/Henry.  That way I, and everyone else, will know who I am talking about.

The image shown here is the reason I stood up in the archives and squealed.  It is an enlarged paper copy, taken in 1919, of the tin type that Harry/Henry sent to the government with his pension request.  That rare find of a picture in a NARA file! 

The name of the Mississippi River boat, Adelia,  intrigued me and I wondered if I could find anything else out about it.  A Google search lead me to a book that had an appendix that listed all the steamboats from 1823-1863.  First name in it was the Adelia.  (Old Times on the Upper Mississippi: Recollections of a Steamboat Pilot From 1854-1863.  by George Byron Merrick U of Minnesota Press, Sep 4, 2001 ).  From it I learned the ship was built at California, Pennsylvania in 1853, had a stern wheel, and weighed 127 tons.  In fact, the Google search turned up quite a few accounts of large on board parties, goods carried, and even a couple law-suits that happened well after the time Harry/Henry stopped working on the boat.

I will be posting more soon about what happened to him during and after the Civil War.  Keep your eyes out for it.

New post at Family Tree Firsts

My next post is up over at Family Tree Firsts.  I have to admit, my husband had told me the story of how there was a possible connection between their family and Buffalo Bill Cody since we met.  No one was sure how exactly, but it was a family legend none the less.  Thanks to the published genealogies from the Cody society, I know how they are possibly connected now.

Harry Coad / Henry Thompson has been an enigma ever since I found him.  One those nagging puzzles that you just can't stop thinking about.  It has become almost an obsession to be able to figure out who he is.  I have been desperately trying to piece together his life before the Civil War.

Several family trees over an Ancestry have listed George and Sarah Thompson as his parents.  Unfortunately I have not been able to get any of them to write me back about why they think this.  All I know about him (mostly from census and death records) is the following:

Harry M Coad
Born:  31 Aug 1840 Springfield, Illinois (one census lists Virginia)
Died:  15 June 1920 Grand Pass, Missouri
Married: Nancy Ann Cody, 12 May 1867 in Kansas

I did find a Henry C Thompson on the 1850 Census in Oquawka, Illinois with parents GW and Sarah Thompson.  They were born in Virginia and Kentucky respectively.  When I discovered the 1890 Veterans Census, I secretly hoped I would learn more.  Below is what I got:

Harry M Coad
Miami Township, Marshall, Saline, Missouri.
Private

So the quest to discover him continues...

*Image by liberalmind1012