Iowa? Who knew?

I know it has been a long time since I last posted here. So, here goes my newest post...

I have been continuing to work on family history, but I had been almost solely working on Paul's line. It has been easier to do & I have a resource to check names against. But recently when I was talking to Roz, I realized that maybe I should look again at my side of the family tree for possible missing relatives. So, I delved back into looking at my dad's side of the family tree. I decided to start with Mary Jane Catherine Arthur because she was one I had left previously because the marriages & kids were confusing. Who was married previously, how many kids did they have & who were the half siblings. But instead of starting with the confusing things, I decided to look at Mary Jane's siblings & parents.

As I researched her siblings, I found some clues to various additional pieces of information about their whole family that I didn't know previously. Just as a reminder: Mary Jane Arthur (my 2nd great grandmother) was born in England in 1836 to Richard Arthur & Jane Wills, then they came to the US around 1839, settling in Jo Daviess County, Illinois, where the remainder of Mary Jane's siblings were born. I have not had time to research all of the siblings yet, I am in the process of that, but just felt inspired to report on what I have discovered so far.

The records I could immediately see on familysearch.com &ancestry.com  had listed that Richard & Jane & probably died in IL sometime around 1859. I have no idea what information that was based on. As I continued to research the family, I followed the records for their son, William Henry Arthur. He moved to Iowa sometime between 1880 (when he was listed as living in IL in the 1880 US Census) & 1885 (when he was listed in the 1885 Iowa State Census, living in Franklin County). When I found him there, I also found that his parents, Richard & Jane were living with him there! So perhaps because Richard & Jane Arthur are common names, it had been difficult to track them to Iowa, until I found their son living there. I then found Richard in the 1895 Census in Iowa also. The next records that I discovered were Richard's & Jane's burial records in Hampton Cemetery in Hampton, Franklin Co, Iowa! Jane died in 1890 (so that's why she wasn't listed in the 1895 Iowa State Census) & Richard died there in 1899 (& that's why he wasn't in the 1900 US Census). Who knew we had relatives that lived in Iowa!

My thoughts then went to Derek who is attending college in Iowa & I wondered how close is he to where they lived? So a quick check on an Iowa map led to this: Franklin County is right above Des Moines, the capital, which is about in the center of the state. Derek is in Sioux City, Iowa, which is right on the Western border of Iowa, next to Nebraska & the corner of South Dakota. So it's not soo close, but still it's closer than most of us have been to where these ancestors lived. (BTW I have never been to or through Iowa personally myself). In further following of William Henry Arthur, I discovered that he & his family moved to Mitchell, South Dakota. I don't know the routes traveled back in that day, but it does appear that the path from Hampton, Iowa to Mitchell, SD might have gone right through Sioux City, Iowa! Anyway, whether or not anyone else finds this interesting, I did!! LOL

Next step is that I searched the web to find out about locating the death records for Richard & Jane Arthur. I found out they were not available online, so I then contacted the Iowa State Library, which has access to death records for the state for that time period. Now I await hearing back from them to see if they were able to locate them. They were pretty confident that they would be able to locate them since I had death dates & burial locations for them both. One of my main objects in wanting to locate them is to see if their parents' names were listed, including maiden names of their mothers. That would help me verify that I have the correct parents listed for them & then the search could continue back to additional ancestors on lines that we may not have had additional information on.

So that's in a nutshell what my most recent family history endeavors on my side of the family have been. There have been additional mysteries encountered & solved, or at least partially so, as I have tried to search out all the members of the Richard & Jane Arthur family, but the above is the information that I thought would be the most relevant & interesting to our living family members!

The Brown Family in Warrenville Cemetery, Warrenville, DuPage, Illinois

One of the discoveries I made in researching the Wright line was that our 2nd great grandmother Laura Eugenia Brown Ludwig was buried in the Warrenville Cemetery, Warrenville, DuPage County, Illinois (Lot 14, Grave D) . Find-a-grave.com was very helpful in finding this discovery. It was linked to ancestry.com, which is how I found it. I began doing more research into Laura's family, her siblings & parents. I discovered that Laura's father, John Mason Brown, was also buried there (Lot 14, Grave H). More research helped me discover that her sister Julia Brown, who died at the young age of 19, was buried in Lot 14, Grave F. Another sister, Mary E. Brown Greene, was buried in Lot 14, Grave E. Laura's mother, Nancy Wescott Brown, apparently got remarried to Byron L. Harlow, after her first husband, John Mason Brown, died. (This was a 2nd marriage for Harlow also.) Once I discovered that, then it was easier to locate Nancy's grave site, also in Lot 14, but Grave G. Byron Harlow was buried in Lot 14, Grave A. His 1st wife, Lucy Millard Harlow, is buried in Lot 14, Grave B Then I discovered that Lot 14, Grave C is Carrie May Greene's grave site, who was about 15 years old when she died (the daughter of Mary E. Brown Greene). So, after a fair amount of research & some detective work, I was able to assemble the following summary:
Lot 14, Grave A: Byron L. Harlow, husband of Lucy Millard, then Nancy Wescott Brown
                          1792-1865
Lot 14, Grave B: Lucy Millard Harlow, 1st wife of Byron Harlow
                          1797-1850
Lot 14, Grave C: Carrie May Greene, daughter of Mary E Brown Greene
                          1862-1877
Lot 14, Grave D: Laura Brown Ludwig, dau. of John M Brown & Nancy Wescott Brown Harlow
                          1827-1889
Lot 14, Grave E: Mary Brown Greene, dau. of John M Brown & Nancy Wescott Brown Harlow
                          1832-1863
Lot 14, Grave F: Julia Brown, dau. of John M Brown & Nancy Wescott Brown Harlow
                          1838-1857
Lot 14, Grave G: Nancy Brown Harlow, wife of John M Brown, 2nd wife of Byron Harlow
                          1800-1881
Lot 14, Grave H: John Mason Brown, 1st husband of Nancy Wescott Brown
                           about 1795-1843

I can't really come up with a reason on how this came to be chronologically, based on who died first & was buried there, but in the end, this whole Lot 14 has family members who are related.

We were able to complete all the temple work for this Brown family except one sealing to parents which has been reserved by one of our family members & should be completed fairly soon :)

Grave A, Byron L. Harlow

Grave C, Carrie May Greene

Grave D, Laura Brown Ludwig

Grave E, Mary E. Brown Greene

Grave F, Julia Brown

Grave H, John M. Brown

First post on Wright-Aiken Family History Blog!

I never thought that anyone would want to read much about what I had to say, but now that I'm doing Family History research, I think that it's important that I have some way to share what I have learned/found/done with other family members who might be interested.

My Family History research started in earnest about 1.5 years ago when Kevin came home with a school assignment from his history class. he was supposed to do some research on the 2 main countries that his ancestors came from. I knew some about my ancestors, but I knew very little about Paul's. Also, I couldn't say what were the main 2 countries they came from. So I researched, made a fan chart, then I researched some more. After 1.5 years of research, I decided that I'd better share some of the knowledge that I have gained during this time.

One of the first things I did was to join ancestry.com because I felt that it was the easiest to navigate & to add records to. So, most of the information I have is stored on my family tree there. I think anyone can look at my tree & see what all information I have attached to it, even without a membership. It's listed as the Georgeann Wright family tree.

I have not yet decided what is the best way to organize my thoughts here or how to best report my most interesting findings, but I'd better just get started!