mary elizabeth lane larkin - Honeysuckle Farm, LLC

I Love a New Year

Each year I try to close out the old year with a recap of the year’s goals and my progress toward those goals. Then I begin the new year with a new set of goals. The close of 2015 and opening of 2016 was rocky to say the least and the blog was definitely not at the top of the list. But, it’s the weekend and I’m trying (unsuccessfully) to get warm by sitting on the couch under a blanket and in front of the heater. So why not write that post now.
Last year’s goals:
1. To learn more about my great-great-great-grandmother’s family (Mary Elizabeth LANE). (Research goal)
2. To blog consistently using No Story Too Small’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge as an inspiration. I will be doing this alongside my sister-in-law who will be using the same challenge and blogging at Down in the Root Cellar. (Writing goal)
3. To start over in reviewing and organizing my family history utilizing ideas from Thomas MacEntee’s Genealogy Do-Over Challenge. (Organizing goal)
4. To share some of the family history and research with relatives by publishing. To help me with this I’ll be attending Thomas MacEntee’s and Lisa Alzo’s Genealogy Self-Publishing Bootcamp online. (Sharing goal)
5. To attend a conference/workshop/educational event. This year’s choice is Family History Conference of Northwest Arkansas 2015. I’ll be attending with my mom and hopefully my sister-in-law. (Self-Improvement Goal)

Goal #1 (research) Learn more about Mary Elizabeth LANE’s mother.
BIG WIN!! I blogged about the LARKIN-LANE families several times this year and was so fortunate to even get to take two short trips to Ohio to research the families. It seems like each year when I advertise my goals to the universe, somehow those goals come to fruition to some degree. I love that! My very first blog post about Mary Elizabeth LANE LARKIN was posted on 25 April 2012. After that post (and sometime before the next post that included her) I made a second trip to locate the cemetery in which she was buried and the area in which she lived (Camp Bliss Hollow, Barry County, Missouri). I spoke with the woman who owns the property and she did not have any knowledge of a cemetery on or near her property. I went armed with a map of the location. I also had copies of photographs of the probable location of the cemetery thinking it might be possible to visually identify at least the general location of the cemetery. (I was wrong, in case you’re wondering.)

Camp Bliss Hollow map

You can see the photos I took with me here. (McDowell Mill Cemetery dowsing photos and a photo of the Old McDowell Mill.)
The information above was what I took with me on the second trip to McDowell, Barry County, Missouri. I feel I got much closer to the gravesite but was ultimately unsuccessful. I’d like to return and try again some day- maybe when I have time to talk to some local researchers and learn more about the area. You can find the gravesite and mill photos plus a little extra information about the family at this link. I have tried contacting Donna Haddock Cooper who hosts the link and photos but she did not respond. (Just for the record- I never found that rattlesnake again. Thank God!)
On 18 July 2015 I wrote about the LARKIN family. The post included a tiny amount of general information about the LANE family as well as information and history about the area in which they lived in Ohio. I haven’t yet written about what I learned about the LANE family on my 2016 trips to Ohio but I will hopefully write about that soon. But back to the research goal to find the mother of Mary Elizabeth LANE- the answer is Nancy CONKWRIGHT LANE. This information comes from Ancestry.com but I am confident enough in the information to post it here. I am continuing to research the family and, in case you are wondering, her father’s name is James LANE.

Goal #2 (writing): To blog consistently using No Story Too Small’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge as an inspiration.
I’d call this a win, especially compared to the previous two years on the blog. I did great until the last month of school when everything was going haywire at work and I was just hanging in there trying to survive. I recovered a little in June but was never quite able to catch up. In July I became obsessed with learning the true story of Theodore Clay LARKIN and that pretty much completely derailed the process as it took me about 2 months of research to write the blog post. Starting in June through to the end of the year I did quite a bit of traveling when I wasn’t at work. So after the August blog post about Theodore, I only got in two more (long and very involved) blog posts about Nicholas REITER. Nicholas was the subject of my 2012 research goal. Better late than never, right? It just so happened that in 2015 Bart worked a job in Woodward, Woodward County, Oklahoma which provided me opportunities to go down on the weekends to visit him and also get in some very productive research time. See? The universe DOES listen. 🙂 So- I’m calling this win #2 for 2015.

Goal #3 (organizing): To start over in reviewing and organizing my family history utilizing ideas from Thomas MacEntee’s Genealogy Do-Over Challenge.
Yeah…total fail. I am still following this challenge’s Facebook group though and I will eventually get to it. (Because the universe really does listen, right?!)

I’m 2-1 going into Goal #4 (sharing): To share some of the family history and research with relatives by publishing. To help me with this I’ll be attending Thomas MacEntee’s and Lisa Alzo’s Genealogy Self-Publishing Bootcamp online.
I wasn’t able to get into the online Bootcamp so that failed almost immediately. Once again, I didn’t get anything published in 2015. I’m going to have to work harder on that this year. However, if I count this blog as “publishing”, I at least got that done. So this one is just going to cancel itself out. I didn’t publish in the format or way that I wanted/intended but I did get a lot of the stories out there in a public forum and that’s important.

So we’re still 2-1 going into the final goal (self-improvement): To attend a conference/workshop/educational event. This year’s choice is Family History Conference of Northwest Arkansas 2015. I’ll be attending with my mom and hopefully my sister-in-law.
BIG WIN!! I was able to attend this conference with my mom and had a great time. I went to one workshop where I got a sample of a product called D/2 to clean gravestones. It was fantastic!! See before and after photos below of one of the SEELY gravestones that we cleaned.

Charles Seely's gravestone ~ 'before' photo in May, 2015. — Charles Seely’s gravestone ~ ‘before’ photo in May, 2015.

This was Charles SEELY’s gravestone in May of 2015. (His wife Synthia SEELY’s was even worse!) This is what the stone looked like before we cleaned it with D/2 (above).

Charles Seely's gravestone ~ 'after' photo taken two weeks after the previous photo. — Charles Seely’s gravestone ~ ‘after’ photo taken two weeks after the previous photo.

^^This was Charles SEELY’s stone approximately two weeks after we sprayed it with D/2.

Charles Seely's gravestone in December, 2015 ~ approximately 7 months after the initial cleaning with D/2. — Charles Seely’s gravestone in December, 2015 ~ approximately 7 months after the initial cleaning with D/2.

^^This was Charles SEELY’s stone in December, 2015. Looks great, doesn’t it?! D/2 is biodegradable and is used by monument conservationists. I was introduced to the product by conservationist Rusty Brenner. You can learn more about his business and purchase D/2 from him here.
So I say goodbye to 2015 which happened to be a fabulous genealogy year. And I usher in 2016 which, frankly, hasn’t been a good year so far- but we won’t muck up the blog with all that.

So here is 2016 in 200 words or less. (It’s less- so keep reading.)
Goals:
1. To learn who my great-great-great grandfather Charles SEELY’s parents were. (Research goal)
2. To blog at least once per month. I think that is a much more achievable goal to create as full and complete of a story as possible. My goal is to have more interesting and complete stories versus a quick introduction. Also, to convert some of my blog stories to articles and try to get them published in small local or specialized genealogical or historical publications. (Combined writing and sharing goals)
3. To start over in reviewing and organizing my family history utilizing ideas from Thomas MacEntee’s Genealogy Do-Over Challenge. (Organizing goal- keeping the same goal since I didn’t meet it last year.) You can learn more about the challenge here.
4. To attend a conference/workshop/educational event. This year’s choice is Family History Conference of Northwest Arkansas 2016 (same as last year). It’s a free event with some good workshops. If you’re interested you can find more information here. (Self-Improvement Goal)
So there you go, universe. Let’s make it happen. (Also- a better year than what I’ve had so far would be totally awesome. Thanks.)

~ Lisa at Days of Our Lives

A Larkin, A Wedding, and a Wedding

Toward the end of June I started this blog post. The goal was to do at least one June theme during the month of June. That didn’t work out for me. I’m determined to get it done this weekend and posted. In trying to finish it, the phrase that came to mind was “water, water everywhere, and not a drop to spare” which is actually a mis-remembrance of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink”. There is a lot of information out there in the world but scarcely any to be found about Mary Angeline WEDDING. I’m choosing to go ahead and post what I have and hope for more in the future.

The first week of June’s theme was wedding. I thought about it for several days and felt like I wasn’t coming up with anything except my mind kept coming back to one couple- my fourth great-grandparents, James and Mary Angeline (Mam’s great-great grandmother). Finally it occurred to me why I kept settling on Mary Angeline. Her maiden name was WEDDING! So there you have it. A bonus is that my post will be different than others for this blogging week/theme because others will most likely be writing about wedding ceremonies.

In an older section of my blog, I posted about my 3rd great-grandmother and Mary Angeline’s daughter-in-law, http://happy-girl-24.livejournal.com/13002.html Mary Elizabeth LANE LARKIN (wife of Mary Angeline’s son, Joseph LARKIN). In the newest section of my blog I also posted about Mary Angeline’s mom, http://happy-girl-24.livejournal.com/16338.html Mary McATEE WEDDING.

Mary Angeline Wedding

Mary Angeline was born in 1819 in Maryland to John and Mary M. (McATEE) WEDDING. She was likely born in Waldorf, Charles County, Maryland, as that is where her family lived before her birth. In 1820 (right after Mary Angeline was born) the family moved to Frederick County, Maryland. They stayed there through at least 1824. I am uncertain exactly when they moved to Ohio, but in 1830 they were censused in Mill Creek, Hamilton County, Ohio. From there, they moved to Clermont County, Ohio (about 1832). During this time, Mary Angeline’s mom, Mary M., had other children. I believe Mary Angeline had 9 siblings and there are 4 or 5 more who were possibly her siblings as well. In order of birth the children were: Ralph, John Wesley, Thomas Lawson, Rebecca Ann, Matilda Ann, Mary Angeline, James William, Elizabeth Jane, George Washington, and Nackey Ellen. The four who MAY be siblings are: Charles, David, Frank, and at least one other child who has not been identified by name.

Mary Angeline, my 4^th great-grandmother, married James H. LARKIN on 23 June 1839.

James and Mary Angeline (Wedding) Larkin marriage record.

This is the best photo I have of their marriage record. Thanks to my sister-in-law, Becky, for finding the image. (You should visit Becky’s blog at Down in the Root Cellar).
The LARKIN family was considered to be of good moral character. The WEDDING and LARKIN families were among the early settlers of Clermont County, Ohio and were very prominent. The LARKINs were considered very influential in the county, especially in the areas of religion and politics. They were largely instrumental in the growth and development of Washington and Franklin Townships. The family was Irish through the WEDDING line. The first LARKIN immigrant in our family emigrated to America in the early part of the 18^th century and settled in the Maryland Colony. Subsequent generations (including my ancestor, John) moved from Maryland to Kentucky briefly and then settled in Ohio in the very early 1800’s. In Clermont County, the LARKINs became bankers (at least one was a very notable and influential banker), justices of the peace, mayors, associate judges, and postmasters, among other occupations. This influence would serve various family members well throughout several generations (this will be a topic for a future blog post). Mary Angeline’s son, Joseph (my ancestor), married a LANE. The LANEs were early settlers in the area as well. (Information found at Hathitrust and Rootsweb.)

James and Mary Angeline LARKIN had seven children together: Anna Augusta, Joseph L. (my ancestor), Benjamin F., Theodore Clay (who went by “Clay” and will be featured in a blog post soon), Mary M., Leo J., and Laura A. James died the year after Laura was born. Mary Angeline outlived her husband by 31 years and did not marry again. She lived long enough to see the births of at least 25 of her grandchildren. She also lived through the loss of at least 3 of those grandchildren (2 of Anna’s and Abner’s children and 1 of Clay’s and Martha’s. Laura and her husband Walter were expecting a child when Mary passed away.

Because of society’s views about women during Mary Angeline’s lifetime, it’s difficult to learn about female ancestors. The best that I can do when telling her story is to research the people with whom she was connected, research the social history of that time and place, and research the history of people connected to that locale and time for general tidbits about their lives. I wasn’t able to come up with much more than general events that happened during her lifetime that may have had some affect on her life.

I’ve already told a little of the history of Port Tobacco, Maryland when I told Mary McATEE WEDDING’s story in the link above. So I’ll begin with Clermont County, Ohio. Clermont means “clear mountains and hills” which describes Clermont County as it was when French explorers first laid eyes on the area. (Information found at Clermont County, Ohio, Government website.) About 20 years before the WEDDING family moved to the area, Clermont County was the site of the Battle of Grassy Run that occurred in 1792 between pioneer Simon Kenton and Native American warrior, Tecumseh, on April 10, 1792. Clermont County was inhabited by quite a few Native American tribes up until about 1811- just a little more than a decade before the Wedding family moved into the area. You can read about the Battle of Grassy Run here. Ulysses S. Grant was born in Clermont County about the time the Wedding family moved there.

The early settlers of the area who were from Maryland and Kentucky (as the LARKINs and WEDDINGs were) were staunchly anti-slavery. The Underground Railroad was very active during the time the WEDDING and LARKIN families lived there. I found this picture to be very interesting. It is called the Freedom Stairway and leads up from the river to an Underground Railroad Conductor’s home.

Photo can be found at Ohio Memory and also at Ohio History Central.

The Freedom Stairway is located in Brown County, Ohio where the LARKIN family lived for a very short time around 1849-1850. Felicity, Ohio (where the family spent the most time) was very close to the Brown County line so it’s possible the family didn’t move very far at all when they moved from Clermont to Brown County and then back to Clermont County again.

Daniel Boone went on hunting and warfare expeditions into Clermont County. George Washington once owned land in the county. John Hunt Morgan and his Confederate raiders invaded the county in 1863 when Mary Angeline’s son, Joseph L. (my ancestor) was about 21 years old. The following year Joseph enlisted and went to war for the Yankees. Mary Angeline saw her sons Joseph and Theodore go to war. I have been unable to track her son Leo so I am uncertain what happened to him after 1860. Her son Benjamin would have been too young to go to war during the Civil War and I have been unable to track him after 1880. I have not found any evidence that her sons-in-law Abner (Anna Augusta’s husband) or Walter (Laura’s husband) went to war.

Another famous person with ties to Ohio is John Chapman, a.k.a Johnny Appleseed. I was able to find the map below in an old news article and from the looks of it, it appears that Johnny Appleseed did make one trip through southern Ohio and was possibly in the area of the LARKIN and WEDDING families.

I found this map at Newspapers.com (the Mansfield News-Journal, Vol. 57, No. 203, Mansfield, OH, 25 September 1941, Page 1, “Route Johnny Appleseed Followed to West”). I cropped and enlarged it with the Paint program on my computer. The footprints show the paths Johnny Appleseed traveled. You can go here to learn more about Johnny Appleseed. Johnny Appleseed was in the southern part of Ohio near around 1844, just a year before his death. At that time, Mary Angeline had two children and another who was born in 1844. Our ancestor Joseph would have been about 2 years old at the time.
The temperance movement as well as the suffragist movement both occurred during Mary Angeline’s lifetime and both groups were present in Ohio.

This was a Women’s Temperance Crusade in Waynesville, Ohio, about 1873-1874. Photo found at Ohio History Central.

This was a postcard found at Ohio History Central. The Ohio Woman Suffrage Association was one of the women’s suffragist groups in Ohio. The women’s suffrage movement gained strength in Ohio after the civil war.
The LARKIN and WEDDING families were present during a time when a lot of history was being made in Ohio. One day I hope to find more information about Mary Angeline. It would be great to know how, or even if, these movements or events affected her life. It would be nice to be able to confirm Mary Angeline’s and James’ deaths and burials in Ohio. In the meantime, I leave you with a poem from a poet who came from Clermont County, Ohio during the time that the LARKINs and WEDDINGs lived there.

Drift Away
by Abbie C. McKeever

Drift away, oh clouds of amber.
Crimson-lined in billowy mass;
Drift away, in silent footsteps:
I shall watch you as you pass.
I shall watch you- yes, and love you-
For the beauty that you gave:
Beauty dying in the twilight,
Like the lilies on his grave.

Drift away to unknown heavens,
Crimson clouds along the west;
But remember that you are bearing
In your downy amber breast,
Hopes that whisper softly to him
Of a love that never dies-
Love that tires of waiting lonely
Ere the call to other skies.

Drift away, oh, clouds of sunset,
Purple with the later light;
See! The stars are all about you-
Diamond eyes of early night.
Drift away; but while you are passing
Bear this message up to him.
That the earthly skies that fold me
Soon shall part and let me in.

Please visit: Down in the Root Cellar, Theology for Mom, and Recipes from Lena.

Until next time,
Lisa @ Days of Our Lives blog

Where did this blog go?!

I posted a grand total of ONE time last year and that was my New Year’s resolution post. *Wow* Last year was crazy but I probably could have done better than one post. Although to give myself some credit- I’ve had 3 different jobs in the last 2 years in addition to some other much-less-than-desirable life events- just the way life happened. I’m in a more steady job and one I love now so maybe in 2015 I can get it together in regard to my blog. I had quite the scare this morning because when I tried to log on to my blog it said this account had been deleted and purged. *YIKES!* I was just on it a couple days ago. I was panicked. I finally went into my email to see if they had sent me an email about it and I missed it. Nope. No email like that but I found one that said I had logged on from a new device in 2013 so I ran with it and clicked “change my password”. Well, Livejournal let me change my password and here I am- into my account and with all my previous posts in place. Whew! That’s great news since one of my goals this year is to join my sister-in-law in blogging our respective genealogies. You can find my sister-in-law’s blog at Down in the Root Cellar.
In review, last year’s resolutions were:
Um…yeah. Apparently they didn’t make it all the way to the blog. 2013 goals also didn’t make it to the blog. Things may be worse than I thought here. As I recall, my 2014 target ancestor was Minerva Underwood (under “research goal”). I *think* my writing goal remained the same which was to blog consistently (obviously a major fail on my part). I have no idea if I retained the goal of organizing my genealogy. If I did, rest assured that was also a fail. In regard to the sharing goal, I did share information but still have not gotten around to publishing which is what I would ultimately like to do.
I fashioned my goal-setting from Amy Coffin’s We Tree blog goals for 2012 with a nod to her thoughts on goals. I did add two goal categories to hers- a sharing goal (added previously and continuing) and a self-improvement goal (new for this year).
So…drum roll please…my new 2015 goals include:
1. To learn more about my great-great-great-grandmother’s family (Mary Elizabeth LANE). (Research goal)
2. To blog consistently using No Story Too Small’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge as an inspiration. I will be doing this alongside my sister-in-law who will be using the same challenge and blogging at Down in the Root Cellar. (Writing goal)
3. To start over in reviewing and organizing my family history utilizing ideas from Thomas MacEntee’s Genealogy Do-Over Challenge. (Organizing goal)
4. To share some of the family history and research with relatives by publishing. To help me with this I’ll be attending Thomas MacEntee’s and Lisa Alzo’s Genealogy Self-Publishing Bootcamp online. (Sharing goal)
5. To attend a conference/workshop/educational event. This year’s choice is Family History Conference of Northwest Arkansas 2015. I’ll be attending with my mom and hopefully my sister-in-law. (Self-Improvement Goal)
This is an incredibly ambitious goal for someone who only made one blog post last year and hasn’t been able to get resolutions on the blog for 2 years but like Amy Coffin said- goals should be a little bit scary (and also planned out). I’m optimistic that things have settled down enough in my life that this year I can get back into it. Plus, I have a more structured plan to carry it out. I’m so looking forward to 2015. I’m grateful to God for getting me through the last couple of years and I know things are going to look up in the coming year. HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL! Please post your goals if you’ve made them!

Mary Elizabeth LANE LARKIN 1853-1899 OH>MO

Mary Elizabeth LANE was my 3rd great grandmother through my paternal grandmother’s line. The information I have about Mary is that she was born on 3 October 1853 in Ohio. In about 1867 or 1868 she married my 3rd great grandfather, Joseph L. LARKIN. Together they had 10 children. She died 3 June 1899 in McDowell, Barry, Missouri, USA. She attended the Christian Church in McDowell, Barry, Missouri, USA. Until a couple of days ago the only information I had about her burial was that she was buried overlooking the Old Mill in McDowell. My husband and I have been to McDowell and managed to find someone who gave us good enough directions that we were able to find the Old Mill. We were unable to find Mary’s gravesite- or anyone else’s- in that area.
This week, I was fortunate enough to get to spend one day at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. There I found an obituary for Mary which provided a little more information about her burial. The obituary reads as follows:
Died June 3, Mary E., wife of Joseph Larkin, age 46 years, 8 months, 6 days. Died at her home on Camp Bliss Hollow. Buried in graveyard near the McDowell Mills. Married at age 15 in Ohio to Joseph Larkin who, with 10 children, survive her.
(Information taken from Southwest Missouri Newspaper Abstracts, Vol. 18; specifically, the Cass Republican newspaper.)
The information gleaned from the obituary lets me know that she was married in 1868, not 1867. It gives me the location of her residence at the time of her death and tells me that she passed away there. It also tells me that there is a graveyard in the area of the Mill as opposed to a single grave or two which was what had previously been conveyed to me.
My research plan for Mary includes a second trip to McDowell, Barry, Missouri, USA. The information I gleaned from the obituary, along with other information I have found on the internet in regard to possible gravesites located in the Mill area, will be useful in making another attempt at locating the graveyard. I hope to also locate Camp Bliss Hollow. One of the things I was not able to do on the last trip was to locate the old Christian Church that Mary attended when she lived in McDowell. I would like to try finding the church again as well. Additionally, I hope to make at least one more trip to the FHL while I’m in Utah to locate as much additional information as I can about Mary and Joseph.
The only thing I hope I don’t find again when I return to McDowell is that coiled up rattlesnake I almost stepped on! Good thing it was too cold for him to move or I would have been bitten!

Tag: mary elizabeth lane larkin

I Love a New Year

A Larkin, A Wedding, and a Wedding

Where did this blog go?!

Mary Elizabeth LANE LARKIN 1853-1899 OH>MO