Great Resource: Maps of Morrow County, Ohio

This is just a clip of the Chester map from 1857.  Visit their website to see much more!

The Morrow County Engineer website includes several links to county and township maps.  The section titled "Misc Maps" is especially interesting since it includes the 1857 atlas maps, which it says were taken from actual surveys. Eight other Morrow County atlas maps are also included, dating from1871 to 1989.  The map is in a pdf file and is very, very slow to load, so I'm not including that specific link here.  Visit the 'Misc Maps' link and select the atlas map of your choice.

My SHAW and MILLER lines were in Chester, Knox County from the early 1800s.  Morrow County was created in 1847 and Chester was one of the areas reassigned.  Robert Shaw and Sarah Miller were in Missouri for the 1840 & 1850 censuses, but I can't find them in 1860…I wonder if they went back to Ohio?  This 1857 maps show that there were still Miller's in town.  Adjacent names are familiar, too.

I found this resource from a footnote in an article in the Ohio Genealogical Society's Ohio Genealogy News, Fall 2014 (45:3, p.21) by Corinne Bertin Konecny.  My membership in OGS has paid for itself many times over through all I've learn through its publications.

Headstones: John D. & Isabella Richardson

One of the very special treats during my trip to Missouri last June was Cousin Donald taking us to see the headstones of John D. Richardson and Isabella Shaw, our great-great-grandparents.  This photo shows the whole plot with a glimpse of the intersection where the stones are located.  The map excerpt is a portion of Morgan County. Cousin Donald made the red annotations and gave me this copy.  (The red rectangle gives the general location of the land where I took the 2 photos of John Richardson's land and shared in an earlier post.)  The red circle shows the location of the plot where these headstones are.  Comparing the map to the photo, you can actually pinpoint the location given the roads!  That's handy because there are no signs.

As I remember Cousin Donald  telling me....  Many years ago, after he had found these stones and was photographing them, an "oldtimer" stopped to see who Donald was and what he was doing there.  Donald told of his family relationship and that Donald had even grown-up nearby.  The oldtimer hesitated for a few moments and then proceeded to tell Donald that the graves were not actually here: the gravesites had been "down by the creek!" The oldtimer and another neighbor had moved the headstones because pigs were constantly wallowing in the mud along the creek and repeatedly knocking over the stones.  Tired of uprighting them and fearing the stones would eventually break, the men had moved the headstones up to this location many years earlier.

Even with two men helping me, it was still hard to get good photos with all the vegetation around the stones.  The stone of the left commemorates both John and Isabella.


The center stone commemorates only Isabella.  We suspect that it was the stone made at her death.  The deterioration is evident; parts of the stone are very hard to read.  But is possible to see that it does name her as Isabella Shaw, wife of John D. Richardson.

The third stone in the grouping commemorates John's second wife, Nancy Jane Krues.  She is something of a mystery to me. Some people, including Donald, even have her name as Nancy Jane Bowles.  Clearly, I need to do more research!  Overall, I haven't done much research on other spouses of people from whom I descend.  But recently it has occurred to me that I cherish all my great-greats and I should also cherish those whom they married, whether I descend from them or not.

Sadly, there is a small, hidden stone between the two women's stones for 'Infant Richardson.'  We cannot make out the second line at all and have no idea who it represents.  And, knowing that the stones have been moved, the placement is not even a guarantee that the infant belonged to any of these Richardson's.  It bothers me a great deal to have unidentified children.

Going back to the first photo of the whole plot, the closest marker is for Margaret Beaman, wife of N. Beaman.  I don't know how she fits with the Richardson's. Given that the marker is apparently from about the same time as that of John's and Nancy's, and that it ended up here, I'm assuming there is some connection.  I guess that's more research to do!

Isn't that what always happens?  I find something wonderful, but now I have more questions and more to research...!

First Friday Folder: Lt. Nicholas Shaw & Ruth Beal

Lt. Nicholas SHAW and Ruth BEAL are two of my 6th-great-grandparents.  I selected this folder because, after my Unexpected Gift from a Great Blogger post last month, I played around a bit more in one of Bill West's blogs and Findagrave, which led me to another printout from Findagrave on Ruth (Beal) Shaw to file and no folder in which to place it! 

The Couple
Nicholas Shaw was born 28 January 1712/1713 in Abington, Plymouth, Massachusetts and died there 7 June 1780.  Ruth Beal was born about 1717 and died 15 December 1808 in Abington.  They were married 6 February 1735 also in Abington.  According to the page at Findagrave, she is buried at the Mount Vernon Cemetery in Abington. Her Findagrave page give a date and inscription, but no photo.  I wonder if Nicholas is also buried there?

The Folder
Ah, great news: this folder is in wonderful shape!  Of course, it's brand new today and only has two things in it ....

The Plan
I shouldn't do any more on this couple until I finished tying up loose ends in my research on the paternity of Norton Bates. I'm confident that I have the right parents (as shown here), but I need to finish resolving some mild contradictions and I need to formally write-up my theory and conclusions.  Then, I can work back couple by couple in more detail and with a clean conscience.

Line of Descent
I have started printing the line of descent for each of my direct-line couple folders as I use the folders.  With my new printer/scanner, I was able to make this image of the chart and, then, insert it here!  I have impressed myself!


Conclusions
I had hoped that my First Friday Folder reviews would always result in saving lots of room in the file cabinet by my finding and removing unnecessary duplicates and other unneeded goodies.  Unfortunately, this week resulted only in adding material to the drawer.  But, I guess better organization is a higher goal anyway.... 

I would probably have more time for my serious research if I were able to quit reading other blogs and quit "playing" in the places they lead me and stay focused on a current targeted problem/topic/couple....  But, where's the great fun in that?!

First Friday Folder: John Richardson & Isabella Shaw

I've been wondering if this monthly post is worth my time since it is often totally NOT what I'm really working on at the time.  I've even been thinking about dropping the project.  But, recently, Randy Seaver posted about checking his files, and I am now reassured and re-motivated!

This month I picked great-great-grandparents John D. RICHARDSON and  Isabella SHAW because I have to start getting ready for my next big genealogy trip: Hubby and I are going all the way to Morgan County, Missouri to the Richardson Family reunion hosted by Cousin Donald in June!  This is the first First Friday Folder I've done from my Hegwer line.

Third-cousin Donald found me online a few years ago through some comments I'd left at ancestry.com.  We've communicated quite a bit including several long phone calls.  Donald has very graciously offered to show us historic Richardson family sights!  He said there won't be too much genealogy at the reunion itself, but I assured him that I will be very happy to finally meet him in person, see the area, and feel the Missouri earth between my toes!

The Couple
I've written about John D. a bit before and there's even a photo of him here.  The eighth child of Amos Richardson and Elizabeth Hicks/Hix, John D. was born in 1829 in Cooper County, Missouri, just before that area became Morgan County.  Isabella, born in 1828 in Ohio (probably Knox County in an area that later became Morrow County), was the fifth child of Robert Shaw and Sarah Miller.

They married in Morgan County in 1849 and had 7 children before Isabella died in 1877.  John remarried 1880 to Mary Jane Krues.  John D. died in 1908, just shy of 80, and having outlived both wives and two of his children.

The Folder
This folder is about 1/2 inch thick, mostly because of all the census printout for all the kids.  Its organization is in pretty good shape: just 2 pages to reposition.  I did a little census work on son John Franklin Richardson, and then printed a new family group sheet.  I have full, well sourced data on all the kids except for daughter Anna Bell Richardson who married Wallace Mattox/Maddox in 1885.  I don't know what happened to either of them, but she apparently died before 1908 without heirs.

I reviewed my copy (courtesy of Cousin Donald) of John D's 1908 obituary.  While it has many errors in info of his early life, it does give details of his last few years which would have been more likely to be accurate anyway.  I reviewed a photocopy of a 1908 probate document [1], which names youngest son Amos as administrator and names the heirs: the five surviving children and two sons of deceased son James.

Something New to Try
Last weekend, I attended a full day seminar at the local genealogy association.  Lisa Louise Cooke was a wonderful presenter and covered all sorts of tips for Google stuff in genealogy.  I used her directions for using Google Earth with the Bureau of Land Management's General Federal Land Records website and EarthPoint  to get a view of where one of John D.'s original land patents would appear.

The orange line towards the top of this snip is the north side of 43N Township in Morgan County, Missouri.  The purple square is Sec 5.  Both of those came up on Google Earth after following Lisa's directions.  I added the yellow rectangle (again, following her directions) to show John's W1/2NW1/4, about 40 acres, issued in 1853.  I can't wait to try this on other ancestral patents!!

The Plan
I don't think that I need a plan per se for this couple right now.  Info and sources are pretty solid.  I think this review helped with a little tidying up and as a chance to try a new skill with Google Earth.  I think I achieved my main goal of reviewing all info before moving to John D.'s parents next month.

Conclusions

• It's mandatory to review all the data I have on one generation before I tackle earlier generations.  I want all my Richardson data to be as clear as possible in my head for the trip in June!
• Local societies have lots to offer and this seminar was especially useful.  And, as soon as Ms. Cooke started the Google Earth portion of her presentation, I knew I could use that info right away for illustrating John D.'s land patents here. 
• I'm so excited about this trip! I just hope I have time to be fully prepared....

Sources

[1] Morgan County, Missouri, Probate Court.  Will Record, Vol. 3, 1892-1919.  FHL # 983,550; p. 96.

Full Disclosure

I am not employed by nor do I receive any special consideration from any of the entities named above.  Lisa Louise Cooke follows this blog, we share middle names, I subscribe to her podcast, and I bought her new book package with the very nice seminar discount available to everyone who was there.