Alexander and Hannah White

In the mid-1980s I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Fountain County and meet descendants of my 3g-grandparents Alexander and Hannah White. One (the late Mary Virginia (Grubbs) Switzer)  still had her grandmother's family album. She gave me permission to make copies of a number of the photographs, which I will include in posts here from time to time.

After already many years of genealogical research, it felt almost unreal to be talking with a distant cousin, thumbing through old, old photographs of family members I knew only by name. I had a hard time believing that such things really happened.

The majority of the oldest photographs were unidentified but Mary Virginia told me who she thought each person was based on what she had been told.

According to Mary Virginia's family's tradition, these are photographs of Alexander and Hannah White. Alexander was born on 7 February 1810 in Clermont County, Ohio  to David White, Sr. and Nancy Cummings. He and Hannah J. Wheeler were married in Clermont County on 13 October 1833. They moved to Fountain County, Indiana in late 1836. Hannah J. Wheeler was born in 1808 in Bowdoinham, Lincoln County, Massachusetts (now Maine) to William Wheeler and Margery Thompson. Her grandfather John Wheeler (1755-1844) was a sailor in the Revolutionary War. William and Margery and their family moved to Clermont County, Ohio around 1818.



Alexander White (1810-1887)



Hannah J. (Wheeler) White (1808-1884)

They were probably taken around 1880, and by the studio of Frank Olds in Covington, Indiana. I do not know the current location of the photographs.

If 1880 is the correct date, it could explain the black worn by Hannah White. Her eldest son David Wheeler White had died the previous year. Perhaps she was in mourning.

You'll note I'm being conservative in identifying these photos. If any reader has independent confirmation of their identity, please let me know.

Water

Coincidentally, several of the places my White ancestors lived are associated with water. Ohio Township, Clermont County, Ohio lies on the Ohio River. Wabash Township, Fountain County, Indiana, is bounded on the west by the Wabash River. Shoal Creek Township, Newton County, Missouri, has, well, Shoal Creek running through it. The pattern was broken when my great-grandma and her children moved to Pueblo, Colorado: it sits very close to the front range of the Rockies. However (according to the all-knowing Wikipedia), Pueblo is situated at the confluence of the Arkansas River and Fountain Creek.

It's not surprising that my ancestors settled near major rivers. Rivers gave access to goods and transportation. David White, Sr. may have reached southwestern Ohio in the late 1790s by floating down the Ohio from Pennsylvania on a flatboat. My Baptist ancestors in Indiana likely performed their baptisms in the Wabash, not more than a mile away from their church. Maybe in Missouri they baptized in Shoal Creek.

Civil War soldier or not?

It's a truism that families preserve inaccurate traditions. They may contain an element of truth, sometimes they turn out to be false. One of my father's family traditions was that his great-grandfather David Wheeler White (1834-1879) had been a Union soldier in the American Civil War. There was also a David W. White who served in Company E of the 33rd Indiana Infantry. However, this man survived to receive a pension in 1883, whereas my David died in 1879.

So far I have no evidence that he served on either side. I know that his brother Will (William P. White, 1842-1924) served in Company C of the 116th Indiana Volunteers. Rosters of regiments composed of men from Fountain County, Indiana do not contain a David W. White.

According to the 1860 federal census my ancestor David W. White and his family were living in Vermilion County, Illinois, just across the state border. Just to complicate matters, there was indeed a David W. White from Vermilion County who served in the Union Army, but as far as I can determine this is another man, not my David. This second David W. White lived in Vermilion County after the Civil War, while my ancestor moved to Kansas by 1868.

I have searched Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas rosters for my 2g-grandfather, both Union and Confederate. My 2g-grandmother Hannah White is not enumerated in the 1890 federal census of Civil War veterans and their widows (she died in 1907).

If David W. White did not serve, why not?

According to my great-aunt Anna Mae, David W. and Hannah White moved west on doctor's orders, in order to find a healthier climate for David. No source says it explicitly, but on the surface it sounds like my ancestor suffered from a long-term illness, perhaps tuberculosis. Perhaps that was the cause of his death in 1879 at the age of 44. Perhaps his illness prevented him from serving in the army.  In his 1853 letter to his brother David I mentioned in an earlier post, Alexander White (David W.'s father) makes a passing reference to his son David's illness but doesn't specify what it was.

Another possibility has to do with religion. In her autobiography, David W. White's daughter Abbie Willena Baker (1873-1968) relates that her father belonged to the Brethren church. I haven't yet determined if "Brethren" means the United Brethren in Christ, or if it refers to another group, the so-called Dunkards. There were United Brethren congregations in Fountain County in the nineteenth century, but I haven't yet found out if there were Dunkards. Perhaps David W. White did not serve in the army because of his religious beliefs.

As usual, one question leads to more questions.

Hadley? Adlai?

My grandfather's name was Ray Lester White. But it appears that he was enumerated as "Hadley White" in the 1910 federal census of Newton County, Missouri. Here is a link to the relevant page of the census (unfortunately the film is difficult to read):

http://archive.org/stream/13thcensus1910po802unit

The only other explanation I can think of is that he had a twin named Hadley, and that he himself was not present the day the census enumerator showed up. I doubt that this was the case, as nobody with first-hand knowledge of his immediate family has ever indicated that he was a twin.

The simplest explanation of the 1910 census entry is that the infant boy not yet one year old who was enumerated in April 1910 is indeed my grandfather, and that at some point before 1920 his name was changed to Ray. I have no idea why that should have happened, and what the family significance of the name Hadley (Adlai?) could have been.

My great-grandfather was born in 1861 in Abingdon, Knox County, Illinois. Was there some connection with the Stevenson family of Illinois? Adlai Stevenson I (1835-1914) would have been a contemporary of my 2g grandfather (born 1834).

Justice of the Peace

My 4g-grandfather, David White, Sr., was a justice of the peace of Ohio Township, Clermont County, Ohio, from 1815 to 1838. By virtue of his office, his name appears on many of the early marriage licenses of Clermont County. I have more questions than answers about what it meant to be a justice of the peace at that time. He performed marriages; did couples come to his home for the solemnization of their vows? What were the qualifications to serve as a justice of the peace? So far I haven't found any literature that deals with this specific question. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the early Ohio state code.

An 1880 history of Clermont County says about David, Sr. that "he served as justice of the peace of Ohio township from 1815 to 1838, and finally declined any further re-elections. His magistrate's commissions, signed by Governors Thomas Worthington, Ethan Allen Brown, Allen Trimble, Jeremiah Morrow, Duncan McArthur, and Robert Lucas, are still preserved as heirlooms by his son David" (J.L. Rockey, History of Clermont County, Ohio, 1795-1880, Philadelphia: Louis Everts, 1880, p. 428).

I discovered this reference in 1981, and let out a whoop of joy when I read it for the first time! Fortunately, there weren't many people on that floor of the library at the time. ;-) For years I wondered if the magistrate's commissions still existed but I was unable to locate any descendants in the vicinity of Clermont County. Twenty-five years later I chanced upon a direct descendant whose son had inherited from her father a mysterious black box containing old documents. She and her son agreed to meet me when I went to Ohio to visit my sister.

We met on a cold, rainy February day at a Denny's in Columbus, a convenient halfway point between their home and my sister's. We picked out the largest banquette there and began to unearth treasures. One of these treasures was this:



This was only one of several magistrate's commissions, land documents, and other papers of David White, Sr. and his son David White, Jr. In addition to legal documents, there was some personal correspondence, including an 1853 letter written by my 3g-grandfather Alexander White (who had moved to western Indiana some sixteen years earlier) to his brother David in Clermont County. Two years later I was fortunate enough to be able to return to Ohio and spend an afternoon scanning these documents. They will be appearing in future posts.

I am continually astounded at what seems to me the near-miraculous survival of family documents such as the one above. The descendants who now own these materials knew that they had to do with the history of their family, but they did not precisely know what they had. They kept them out of a sense that they were somehow important. Thanks to them, my children will have a better sense of their family's history than I had when I was growing up. How long will the instinct my distant cousins had to preserve the remnants of the past continue in our throw-away culture?

Grandma White and the old man

One more for today: my grandmother Lois Anna (Krall) White (1920-2002) and my father.



The inscription notes that my dad was 2-1/2 months old at the time; the photo was taken in mid-August 1938. My grandmother was 18. I don't know precisely where the photo was taken; it is most likely somewhere in Pueblo although I don't recognize the house.  My grandma was born in Pueblo, Colorado, the oldest child of John Krall (1896-1935) and Marie Mocilnikar (1899-1988). Her grandfather Joseph Krall (1869-1933) emigrated to the United States from the village of Rapljevo in what was then the province of Carinthia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her mother's parents, Anton Mocilnikar and Marija Rogel, had also emigrated from what is now Slovenia; I'll write more in another post about my Slovenian ancestors. My father told me that his great-grandfather Mocilnikar, who was born in Kamnik, Slovenia, once said to him that one reason he chose to settle in Pueblo was that the mountains there reminded him of the Julian Alps of his home.

Grandpa White and the old man

Over the summer I had the chance to go through the old photo album my late father inherited when his father died in 1977. I'll be posting photos from it as I have the chance.

The quality of the photos isn't outstanding, unfortunately. These are photos of photos, as I didn't have access to a scanner. I hope someday to scan them.

This first photo is of my grandfather Ray L. White (1909-1977) and my father E. Bruce White (1938-2000).

You can see from the inscription that my dad was one year old at the time. This would place the photo between June 1939 and June 1940, in Pueblo, Colorado. My grandfather looks like he's dressed for his job at the CF&I steel mill. I'm not certain of the location of the photo; it could be the back yard of their house at 1233 Berkley in Pueblo. Grandpa White was born in Newton County, Missouri, the youngest son of Erasmus P. White (1861-1915) and Mary Frances Thomas (1877-1948). Once when I asked him where he was born, Grandpa replied with his usual grin, "Jop-lin, Missouri!" His grandparents had settled outside Saginaw, Missouri in 1870; at some point my great-grandparents moved to Tipton Forge, before finally settling in Neosho after my great-grandfather's death. I haven't yet precisely established when the entire family moved to Pueblo. It was sometime after 1920, when the family is listed in the federal census of Newton County as residing in Neosho.