Surname Saturday: Heritage Pie Updated

Last October, I modified the idea of creating a heritage pie chart of great-great-grandparents and posted my pies with hubby's great-grandparents and my grandparents.

Today I have enough information to post a chart with the birth place of all 16 of hubby's great-great-grands (above). Except for 4 people, all of hubby's great-grandparents were born in the US (mainly Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, Ohio). However, not all of the great-great-great-grands were US-born.

Here's what I know or suspect about where the families of each of hubby's great-great-grandparents were from originally:

Ireland: John Shehen and wife Mary (maiden UNK)--have evidence
England: John Slatter Sr. and wife Sarah (maiden UNK)--have evidence of English birth, but this family might have long-ago Irish roots
England: Ancestors of Isaiah Wood Sr.--have evidence
England: Ancestors of Harriet Taber--have evidence
England: Ancestors of Sarah Denning--need evidence
England: Ancestors of Lucy E. Bentley--need evidence
Huguenots (possibly France): Ancestors of Henry E. Demarest--need evidence
Huguenots (possibly France): Ancestors of Catherine Nitchie--need evidence
Scots-Irish: Ancestors of Benjamin McClure--have evidence
No. Ireland: Ancestors of Brice S. Larimer--have evidence
Germany: Ancestors of Jacob S. Steiner--have a clue (a letter from a descendant)
Switzerland: Ancestors of Joseph W. Rinehart--have a clue (a family story)
???: Ancestors of Elizabeth (maiden UNK) Steiner
???: Ancestors of Margaret Shank, who married Joseph W. Rinehart

Friday's Faces from the Past: Uncle Benny McClure Saves a Coon

Benjamin McClure (1812-1896), hubby's great-great-grandpa, was a pioneer settler in Wabash, Indiana, but what was he really like?

The woodcut at left is from The Wabash Times, 21 December 1893, which ran a story on p. 3 titled "A Biographical Sketch: One of the Sturdy Old Settlers--Uncle Benjamin McClure, a Man Well Known to All the Older Inhabitants of Wabash County--an Octogenarian." The same newspaper used this woodcut when it ran McClure's obit in 1896. And I'm using this woodcut as the profile photo for my Benjamin McClure Facebook page, my social media experiment in genealogy.

(Mrs. Sarah Denning McClure, hubby's great-great-grandma, died in 1888. Widower Benjamin soon sold the family farm and lived with his children for the next 8 years.)

Hubby used the microfilm reader in the Wabash Carnegie Public Library (which has lots of useful genealogical resources) last month to look for McClure's name in local newspapers. He found a story in the Wabash Plain Dealer one week after McClure's death that gave us new insight into this pioneer man's strong religious feelings. Here's the story in its entirety:

Uncle Benny and the Coon

How the Late Mr. McClure Balked a Party of Hunters

Jehu Straughn, the genial pioneer resident of this county, tells an anecdote of the late Benjamin McClure, which shows how thoroughly loyal Mr. McClure was to his Christian faith.

Many years ago when the country was new and Mr. McClure lived on the farm just west of the city, an industrious, contented husbandman, rugged in constitution and strong in religious convictions, there was a coon hunt by persons living in the vicinity of Mr. McClure's farm.

The coon was started, and ran toward the home of Mr. McClure, ascending a tree in the door-yard of that gentleman. It wanted only a few minutes to midnight when the animal ran up the tree and it was after twelve when the hungers located him. It would have been an easy matter to shoot the creature, and some members of the party were determined to do so, but Mr. McClure, who regarded the Sabbath day as sacred, lifted his hand warningly and said: "Boys, you can't shoot that coon until Monday. This is Sunday and the day shall be kept holy. If the coon is in the tree tomorrow night at this time, get him if you can, but he shall not be killed before that."

The hunters expostulated, but to no purpose, and the dawn found the coon still in the tree. During the day the hunters dropped in and begged to be allowed to fire at the coon, but Uncle Benny turned them all away with the remark: "No man shall ever say that he heard the crack of a rifle on my farm on the Sabbath day, if I can prevent it. Come tomorrow and if the coon is there, he's yours."

But Sunday evening the coon ran down the tree and escaped and Mr. McClure was roundly censured, but he was true to his convictions and not an iota did the lavish criticisms cause him to yield from the position he had taken.

Military Monday: Elihu Served 6 Days in the Revolutionary War

Elihu Wood Sr., hubby's 3rd great-granddaddy, is the only one of his ancestors officially recognized as having fought in the Revolutionary War.

According to the 1896 multivolume publication Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, Elihu--a resident of Bristol County, MA--responded to an alarm in Rhode Island by joining Captain Henry Jenne's company in Colonel Hathaway's 2d Bristol Regiment on August 2, 1780. Elihu was mustered out on August 8, 1780. Grand total of Revolutionary War service: 6 days.

During the War of 1812, his son, Elihu Wood Jr., was in Lt. Col. B. Lincoln's regiment, serving from June 30, 1814 to July 10, 1814 in New Bedford and Fairhaven, MA. His military service totaled 10 days.

Two other ancestors saw service during the War of 1812:

• Daniel Denning was a private in Capt. John Hayslip's Ohio Militia from September to November, 1814.
• Isaac M. Larimer was a Sgt and Ensign in Capt. George Sanderson's company in Ohio, serving from April, 1812 to April, 1813. 

At least four ancestors fought for the Union side during the Civil War:

• Benjamin Franklin Steiner was a private in 10th Company L, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, enlisting in 1862.
• His younger brother, Samuel D. Steiner, served in Company C, 180th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, in 1864-5.
• Hugh Rinehart was a private in Company I, 15th Ohio Infantry, in 1861.
• Train C. McClure served the longest of hubby's ancestors. He enlisted as a private in the 89th Regiment of the Indiana Infantry in August, 1862, and didn't leave the Army until July, 1865.

Surname Saturday: Denning (Lesson: Rule Names OUT)

One goal of the recent Midwest/FGS trip was to trace the family of Benjamin McClure's wife, Sarah D. McClure. Was her maiden name Deming or Denning? I've seen it both ways in various places.

Sitting in the ACPL and reading histories of Adams County, OH, where they met and married, I saw NO mention of any Deming family. But there was one prominent Denning family, that of Job Denning. So now I ruled Deming out and concentrated on Denning, at least for investigative purposes.

The first thing I did was plug "Job Denning" into Ancestry as Sarah's father. That turned up a green hint leaf with family trees to check out. It also led me to a Find-a-grave site, right place and right time. Now I had a death year (1836) and an approximate birth year (1775) to check, as well.

Also, I used my trusty search engine to find hits for "Job Denning" "Adams County Ohio" and found more than one solid reference to Job and Sarah. Above, the clipping of Job Denning listed as an associate judge in Adams county, OH, in 1820 (thank you, Google Books). Earlier, he was a court "cryer" [sic] and a constable. He successfully applied for a tavern license in 1797. On and on, his story unfolded from a bit of Internet searching. Quite a busy man, was this pioneer ancestor Job Denning.

Now comes the hard part: Checking everything and connecting Sarah Denning McClure to Job Denning through some real evidence. Stay tuned!

Genealogy by the States: The Hoosiers in Our Family Tree, Including a Man Named Train

This week's Genealogy by the States topic is Indiana, the Hoosier state (aka the Crossroads of America).

At the top of the list of Hoosiers in hubby's family tree: 2nd great-grandparents Benjamin McClure and his wife Sarah Deming (or Denning) McClure, an early settler in the Wabash county area.

Wabash had a number of McClure families, and of course Benjamin is NOT the most celebrated or documented, although he did pitch in to build the community in several ways. (The most famous McClure in Wabash is Samuel McClure, considered the first permanent white settler in the county.)

Benjamin and Sarah's first children were born in Ohio, where the couple was married; their children born in Indiana include:

• Martha Jane McClure, who married William Buck Cloud
• Train C. McClure, who married Gulia Swain (and, after Gulia's death, remarried to Rebecca E. Abbott) - Isn't "Train" an interesting first name? His occupation was "oil mill operator" according to the 1880 census. He served in the Civil War, too.
• Elizabeth D. McClure (who married John W. Austin)
• Addison D. McClure (who died of an accidental gunshot wound at age 18)
• William Madison McClure (hubby's great-grandpa, who married Margaret Jane Larimer)
• John N. McClure
• Amanda "Callie" Caroline McClure (I don't know much about her--yet)

Another of hubby's ancestors lived in Indiana: His uncle John Andrew Wood, who married Rita Goodin on April 7, 1951 in Crown Point, Indiana and was an area supervisor for du Pont in East Chicago, Indiana for many years. Although family legend has it that John was mostly estranged from his three brothers (Wally, Ed, and Ted Wood), I know from Ed's diary that John and his wife Rita were in touch with Ed from time to time and they even visited each other once in a great while. How the "estrangement" story got started, I don't know...

As usual, thanks to Jim Sanders for this week's genealogy blogging prompt.

A special thank you to Harold of Midwestern Microhistory blog, who just posted news of thousands more Indiana marriage records being available at Family Search (click here). If you're researching Indiana ancestors, check out Harold's blog.