The Brosius Family: Margrette’s Second Marriage

(Continued from “The Brosius Family: South Shenango,1862-1863”)

A widow had to wear hideous black dresses without even a touch of braid to enliven them, no flower or ribbon or lace or even jewelry, except onyx mourning brooches or necklaces made from the deceased’s hair. And the black crêpe veil on her bonnet had to reach to her knees, and only after three years of widowhood could it be shortened to shoulder length.

—Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind (pp. 94-5)

While the attitude displayed in the preceding passage represents that of the fictional Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara, who had married for spite and did not feel any real grief for her husband, the description gives a fairly accurate portrayal of what a widow would have worn at that time. The description is a little exaggerated as far as duration is concerned; the knee-length veil could be shortened after a year and a day. The difference, however, may be accounted for in part by Scarlett’s relatively exalted social position, as mourning customs were dictated not in a one-size-fits-all manner, but varied according to status and personal taste. Because death often arrived unexpectedly, the clothing was often purchased ready-made. The full outfit could be afforded only by the wealthy. Poorer women often observed mourning by dying their own dresses black.

Widow’s weeds, as women’s mourning garments were nicknamed, were not—at least originally—intended to be restrictive (and whether they became such depended largely on the personality of the wearer), but rather as a sort of emotional protection. The clothing signaled to the world that a person was in mourning, and that care needed to be used in conversation so that one would not inadvertently stumble upon tender subjects. Moreover, a woman could weep privately behind her veil without the embarrassment of strangers seeing her tears or puffy eyes. And if by chance a widow were to be caught in her grief, the reason for it would be tacitly understood.

As the Civil War progressed, widow’s weeds became a more and more common sight. Margrette Brosius was one among this growing troop of women. Her husband, Adam, had died not in the war, but about a month before it began. Family lore holds that he was kicked by a mule, but that may or may not have been the case, as the Brosius oral history is notoriously inexact. Sometimes it is said that it was his son, John, almost sixty years later, who was kicked by the mule. No matter how it had happened, the bare fact was that Adam Brosius was dead and Margrette would have donned the uniform of a widow.

The children would also have been dressed in mourning. The baby Rebecca, possibly not even born until after the death of her father, would have been spared the heavy black and had instead perhaps some black ribbons tied on her white baby clothes. Mary and John, being older, would probably have worn black, or at least a black armband, for their period of mourning, which would have lasted six months to a year. This, though a long period of time to alter one’s attire by today’s standards, was still shorter than the length of time expected of a widow. This is not to say that, except for Scarlett O’Hara and perhaps a few others, the mourning garb outlasted the actual period of grief. In fact, many women—Queen Victoria is a notable example—chose to take up widow’s weeds for the rest of their lives.

The customary length of time for a widow to remain in mourning was two and a half years. Adam Brosius had died early in March 1861, therefore it was probably late 1863 or early 1864 when Margrette remarried. The war was still in progress, but somehow Margrette met and married a man named John Rodgers. He had been born in Ireland, and was almost precisely three years younger than she. In fact, their birthdays were only a day apart.

On 15 Jan 1865 they were blessed by the birth of their first daughter together. They named her Sarah Elizabeth, and called her by her middle name. Elizabeth Rodgers was born near the close of the Civil War; only a few months later, on 9 Apr 1865, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, signaling the end of the war. A few Confederate armies held out longer—some as late as June—but Lee’s surrender was such a turning point that it has become the accepted practice to date the end of the war by it.

With the end of the war, the thoughts of many Americans returned to an idea expressed over a century earlier by Bishop George Berkeley:

Westward the course of empire takes its way;

The first four acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day;

Time’s noblest offspring is the last.

The idea had become known as Manifest Destiny. In other words, “Go west, young man, go West and grow up with the country.” The nation was burgeoning—had already reached the Pacific Ocean—and young people everywhere aspired to be part of the expansion. The Homestead Act promised free, or at least cheap, land; the transcontinental railroad was on its way to completion and already new rail lines were beginning to drape the wilderness like a web. New methods and technologies gave farms a chance to succeed on the Great Plains, a chance once deemed impossible.

The family now headed by John Rodgers in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, was not immune to the excitement. Whether John Rodgers had come to the United States with the intention of eventually going west, or whether he was enticed by railroad advertisements or friends, the opportunities of the west certainly began to catch his attention.

Kansas had achieved statehood shortly before the war, and now that hostilities were at an end, and the violent days of “Bleeding Kansas” were over, this new land must have seemed filled with potential for his growing family. With the addition of a baby they named James (“Jim”) on 15 July 1868 the family had reached seven members.

A move west was no small undertaking, neither logistically nor financially. If he was going to move his family west, John Rodgers would have to come up with a great deal of money to do it. But he saw one fair prospect at hand: the land left behind by his wife Margrette’s first husband, Adam Brosius. There was timber on that land, and timber could raise money. So John Rodgers harvested the timber.

Unfortunately, he must have neglected to discuss this decision with his stepchildren, because Mary, John, and Rebecca Brosius, though all still minors, sued him “for the waste he has committed” (Brosius). The land, they claimed, belonged to them, not to John Rodgers. They evidently came to some sort of agreement with their stepfather, however, because the suit was dropped.

In the meantime, Mary Brosius had reached maturity and had a suitor in a twenty-five-year-old widower named Joseph Patterson Christy, Jr. Pat, as he was called, had recently returned from Wisconsin with his son, Andrew, a toddler. Men were not accustomed to raise children in those days, and a toddler would have been quite a challenge for a suddenly single young man. Therefore, it probably seemed quite natural that Andrew was living at his grandparents’ house rather than with his father.

Perhaps the lawsuit against John Rodgers was dropped in order not to tarnish the joy of Mary Brosius’ upcoming nuptials. Within a month of the filing of the lawsuit, on 19 May 1869, she and Pat were united in marriage. Undoubtedly the rest of the family celebrated her wedding before beginning the journey west. Mary would remain with her new husband in Crawford County, Pennsylvania when John Rodgers and the remainder of his household combined with

All the pulses of the world,

Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,

Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,

Pioneers! O pioneers! (Whitman 198)

 (Continues with “Rodgers-Brosius family in Bourbon county, 1869-1873ish.”)

Citations and Selected Sources:

Berkeley, George. "On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America." 1726. The Home Book of Verse. Ed. Burton Egbert Stevenson. Seventh ed. New York: Henry Holt and, 1945. 2565. Print. 

Brosious, John. The Petition of John Brosious for Guardian. 13 Apr 1869. Petition to the Orphan Court of Crawford County. Office of Clerk of Courts, Meadville, Pennsylvania. Xerox copy sent to the author by Gloria Brosius.

Brosius, Mary. Petition of Mary Brosius for Guardian ad Litem. 13 Apr 1869. Petition to the Orphan Court of Crawford County. Office of Clerk of Courts, Meadville, Pennsylvania. Xerox copy sent to the author by Gloria Brosius.

Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With the Wind. Garden City, New York: International Collectors Library American Headquarters, 1936. 94-5. Print.

Rodgers, Margret Ann. The Petition of Rebecca Brotious for Guardian. 13 Apr 1869. Petition to the Orphan Court of Crawford County. Office of Clerk of Courts, Meadville, Pennsylvania. Xerox copy sent to the author by Gloria Brosius. 

Whitman, Walt. “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” Leaves of Grass. New York: Signet Classic, 1955. 196-199. Print.

Romance in Omaha

Today would have been my grandfather’s 87^th birthday. Would have been. Last month he passed away, and is at long last back with Grandma. One of his all-time favorite stories to tell was the account of how he met Grandma, and it was also one of my favorite stories to hear. This story is doubly appropriate right now, given that yesterday was Valentine’s Day, and this is the tale of a real-life romance.

Grandpa’s real name was Francis Albert Hoyt, Jr., but he always went by “Jack.” Grandma was born Rose Stroesser, but she had the nickname of “Frenchie.” Both had served the U.S. Navy during WWII, but that is not how they met. Rose had been stationed most of the time in Washington, D.C. , whereas Jack served aboard the U.S.S. Moffett and saw quite a bit of action in the Mediterranean. When the war was over, he became restless, never content to stay home.

He lived in Council Bluffs, Iowa, just across the river from Omaha, Nebraska. He spent a great deal of time in Omaha, as it was the larger city. There was a dance hall on 19^th and Dodge Street called the Music Box. Many local big bands passed through there, including Lawrence Welk in his early days. The Music Box was more than just a dance hall; above the dance floor was a mezzanine containing a lounge, and on the third floor was a bowling alley.

Jack occasionally worked at the Music Box as a bouncer. The dance floor was for all ages, but the lounge was only for those 21 or older. Perhaps he helped to enforce the age restriction. He has also mentioned that there were rules against letting go of your partner’s hand, and he would remind the jitterbuggers to hang on. One evening, as Jack was in the bar (whether he was bouncer or patron that night, he has never mentioned), a lovely young woman and a group of her friends passed through on their way to the bowling alley. 

Rose and a date (not Jack) in the lounge at the Music Box, 19 Jan 1947

“Who is that woman?” Jack asked the bartender.

“That’s Frenchie Stroesser,” the bartender replied. “Stay away from her. She’s out of your league.” (Or words to that effect.)

Jack remained nonplussed. “Joe,” he said, “I’ll have you know I’m going to marry that woman.”

The bartender bet him a fifth of bourbon that he wouldn’t. But of course, Jack won the bet. And whenever he told this story he would always add, “I never got the bourbon, though.” But that didn’t matter to him because he did get the girl.

Quite often Jack would end the story there, but my favorite part was in a postscript. There were several things he had to do before marrying Rose. He had to ask her father for her hand, and he had to convert to Catholicism. But also, most delightfully to my ears, he had to persuade her to marry him.

Jack had been born 15 Feb 1925, but Rose had been born 5 May 1924. Although their ages were close, the fact remained that Rose was older. Her brothers and sisters teased her about “robbing the cradle,” and she was self-conscious about it. But Jack found the perfect way around their nine month age difference:

God made a man for every woman, he told her. However, there was a slight error when He created Rose—there was no man for her! So He immediately got to work. Nine months later along came Jack. This clever anecdote did the trick. Jack Hoyt and Rose Stroesser were married on 25 June 1949.

Wedding portrait of Jack and Rose Hoyt

The Brosius Family: South Shenango, 1862-1863

(Continued from “The Brosius Family: South Shenango, 1861.”)

The petition of John McGranahan Administrator of the Estate of Adam Brocas late of said County deceased, respectfully represents… That the personal Estate of said decedent is insufficient to pay his debts and that it is requisite to sell a portion of his real Estate for the payment thereof…

—Petition of Administrator to sell land, 10 Apr 1862

The Civil War had been raging for a year, already a much longer and deadlier war then either side had expected, but in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, life went on much as usual. Perhaps the newspapers were read more assiduously, and perhaps some of the neighbors had enlisted and were off fighting the war or had already been killed, but still all the ordinary chores must be attended to and debts must be paid.

The widow Margrette Brosius was presumably living with her three children on the family farm in South Shenango Township. The two older children, Mary and John—ages 13-14 and 10-11 respectively—were old enough to help out around the house and on the farm, but the youngest, Rebecca, was now only about a year old. Upon the death of her husband, Adam, Margrette had been left not only the three children, but also debts amounting to over $950. It need hardly be said that this was an enormous sum for the year 1862. Adam’s “personal assetts” were able to cover a part of the debt, but the family was still left with a balance of $585.27. There seemed to be but one solution: sell some of the real estate.

The administrator for Adam’s estate, a man by the name of John McGranahan, petitioned the Orphan Court of Crawford County for permission to do just that. The request was granted, and the following month he sold forty acres of the Brosius land to a David K. Wier for $700, more than enough to pay off the debts Adam had left behind. It appears that for now Margrette and her children were more or less comfortably situated; they were able to settle their debts and still had over sixty acres, including “thirty-five acres improved” on which stood a house, barn, and orchard.

However, the nation was still in the midst of the Civil War, and no one could feel completely at ease. The famous Confederate general Robert E. Lee was achieving victory after victory, pushing his troops ever northward. By June of 1863, they had reached the state of Pennsylvania. Although their particular position was about two hundred miles away, it surely felt to close for comfort to the people of South Shenango. If the Confederate forces were to continue their advance, fighting could soon be on their very doorsteps.

(Continues with “The Brosius Family: Margrette’s Second Marriage.”)

Citations:

Kitchen, Cyrus, recorder. Deed. 19 May 1862. Deed from Adam Brocius’s Administrator to David K. Wier. Office of the Recorder of Deeds, Meadville, Pennsylvania. Xerox copy sent to the author by Gloria Brosius.

McGranahan, John. Adam Brocus Dec. Petition of Administrator to Sell Land. 10 Apr 1862. Petition to the Orphan Court of Crawford County. Office of Clerk of Courts, Meadville, Pennsylvania. Xerox copy sent to the author by Gloria Brosius.

The Brosius Family: South Shenango, 1861

Library of Congress [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Capitol building was a sight, looking strangely like a three-tiered wedding cake with an oil well in the place that should be occupied by figures of the bride and groom. The explanation for this unusual sight was mundane enough: the domed roof was in the process of replacement. Over 25,000 people, many of them strangers to the city, milled in the sun-warmed streets, but their interest did not lie in the reconstruction of a dome. They were engrossed in the events unfolding at the foot of the edifice.

A tall, homely man, seeming even taller in his high top hat, stood up after an introduction and approached the podium. There was a moment of uncertainty as he searched for a place to set his hat. The atmosphere was turbulent. Opinions regarding this man varied, and there was no doubt but that this crowd was about to witness history. Whether the history they were to witness was to be an inauguration or an assassination remained a question.

“…I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement,” said Abraham Lincoln. Clearly in his inaugural address he was going to discuss the divisive issues of slavery and the southern secession. He had not yet been sworn in, but his administration was already plagued with difficulties: two months before, partly in response to his election, seven of the southernmost slave states had already seceded from the Union, and four others were poised to follow suit. Moreover, when the newly created Confederate government insisted that the government of the United States hand over some of their Federal forts, they were refused. The South responded by seizing the forts. Tensions were high, and it was readily apparent that the country was on the verge of war.

Although the thoughts of many citizens revolved around the secessionists and the probability of war, one household in northwestern Pennsylvania was distracted by another, more immediate distress. Only three days before Lincoln’s inauguration, that is, on 1 March 1861, death had claimed Adam Brosius. Adam had been the head of the Brosius household which resided on 100 or so acres in the township of South Shenango in Crawford County. His young widow, Margrette, only 27 years of age, and possibly still pregnant with their daughter Rebecca, was left alone to raise three children.

The family had been started early; Adam had been only 31 or 32 at the time of his death, yet his oldest child, a girl named Mary, was already 12 or 13 years old. John S., the second child, was 9 or 10. The relative ages of Mary and her mother Margrette, as well as the large age gap between John and Rebecca, suggest the possibility that Margrette may have been Adam’s second wife and Mary and John’s stepmother. At this point no evidence has been found to either support or disprove this hypothesis, and it bears only academic relevance to our present narrative, so we will set the question aside for later research.

Whether mother or stepmother, Margrette was faced with the daunting task of running a farm and being what would now be called a single mother of three—and this just as the country was beginning its descent into the longest and the bloodiest war it had yet experienced. Just over a month after her husband’s death, the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter.

(Continues with “The Brosius Family: South Shenango, 1862-1863.”)

Citation:

“President Abraham Lincoln’s First Inauguration.” The Civil War. Son of the South. Web. Accessed 7 Feb 2012.

Halloween

Ahh, Halloween. All Hallow’s Eve. Celebrated down through the centuries even to today. But how was it celebrated by our ancestors? I can’t speak for everyone’s family, but I did take a look through my great-aunt Elsie’s memoirs this evening to see what she says about how the Underwood family celebrated Halloween in the early part of the twentieth century.

Elsie didn’t focus much attention on the holiday in her manuscript, but she did mention it twice. You will notice that I include a paragraph or two before each anecdote; I do that for context. After all, this blog is primarily for historical and genealogical material, and the introductory paragraphs reveal a slice of life in a day gone by.

The first of Elsie’s allusions to Halloween remind us that “trick-or-treat” once was more focused on the “trick” than it now is.

We didn’t have a bathroom in our house. Just a out house or (privy) as they were called. This was a small shed like type building, located a short distance from the house. Inside was a long seat across the back with holes small medium, and large, with covers, when not in use you put the cover on. Lye was used to keep it clean and odorless.

At night we would carry a lantern to see our way. One of the older ones would walk out with us, and stand out side and wait for us.

           

On Hallowe’en the big boys in the neighborhood, would like to tip one of these over, hoping someone was inside. They never got ours, maybe because we had a fence all the way round our place. The fence had barbed wire on top of the mesh fence, hard to climb.

 (Now that is a Halloween trick I am glad to live without.)

The second reference Elsie makes to Halloween regards an actual incident. This episode reminds us of the dangers of a former day, when jack-o-lanterns were invariably lit with real flames.

These tent houses were made from the large gunny sacks, our feed for our cattle and pigs and chickens, came in these large sacks.

Dad let us play with these sacks. So Walter and Bill made us a tent house, one for each of us. These were cool in the summertime, Idaho summers are real hot.

           

Walter cut out dishes, knives and forks and spoons. Out of tin sheeting Dad had.

On one Halloween we had our jack o lanterns on our (box probably a apple box) table. Right close to the opening of our tents. Our dad was on the school board, we were having a program that night. Our teacher was over to our house, she wanted Dad and Mom to drive her on an errand, they were gone a short time, when they came back my teacher asked me to turn around. I turned, all the back of my dress was burned. But how? The only fire I was around was our jack o lanterns. We had lit our lanterns to show the teacher, when she got back. The wind must have blown my dress against the lit pumkin, as I was closing the door of my tent house. I must have sat doun real fast to have put the fire out. I always believed I had a guarding angel. Of course I had to wear my school dress to the program that night.

 I hope you have enjoyed this little trip through holidays past. Happy Halloween!

Citations:

Crocker, Elsie. unpublished typescript.

Mrs. TUFTY and the Shaniko album

For many years, throughout my Dad’s childhood and continuing into my own, my grandmother’s next-door neighbor was a kind old woman named Mrs. Tufty. There had, of course, once been a Mr. Tufty as well, whom Dad could remember, but he had died long before I was born. I can still remember Mrs. Tufty in a vague sort of way. I was very young when she died, but she is cemented into my memory as the person from whom I got my first guitar (a small, child-sized model). I also remember Grandma and Mrs. Tufty occasionally chatting over the fence.

Mrs. Tufty had no children, and no living family that we knew of. Therefore, when she died, her belongings scattered. Somehow, through the intermediary of my grandmother, her old family photo album descended to my parents. I have always been fascinated by the album. It is not in the best of condition, and few of the photos are marked with names, but it has always seemed to me a treasure.

For over twenty years my parents have planned to donate it to the museum in the city of Shaniko, where Mrs. Tufty had lived as a child, but they have never quite gotten around to it. This summer, the opportunity presented itself: I was to join my parents on a vacation in central Oregon, and during that time we would make a day trip to Shaniko and some of the other ghost towns in its neighborhood. While there, the presentation could take place.

Shaniko is today, as hinted above, essentially a ghost town, with a current population of about 25. Although nowadays it relishes its status as a ghost town, employing it as a gimmick for tourists, in its heyday it was the transportation hub of a vigorous wool industry, and frequently called the “Wool Capital of the World.”

Mrs. Tufty had lived in Shaniko during its boom, and we figured that the town’s museum would be interested in an album from that time period.

A day or two before we planned to make the trip to Shaniko, an interesting thought occurred to us: we didn’t know Mrs. Tufty’s maiden name. What were we going to tell the folks at the museum?

So it was off to the library to see what I could find.

First, however, I gathered the little information I had to begin with. Questioning Dad, I learned that her first name had been Ethel. Then I asked her husband’s name. “Mr. Tufty,” was my Dad’s laconic reply. So all I had to work with was that her name had been Ethel TUFTY; she had lived on 68^th Street in Portland, Oregon for many years; she had lived as a child in Shaniko, Oregon; she had been married; and she had died when I was very young, but old enough to remember.

Once at the library, I began my research at Ancestry, typing her name into the search field and specifying that she died in Oregon. Within a few moments, I satisfied myself between the Social Security Death Index and the Oregon Death Index that Ethel Mar TUFTY (The “Mar” is probably an abbreviation for Mary or Marie) was born on 25 May 1896 in Ohio and died 26 Jan 1985 in Portland, Oregon. A few more clicks, and I discovered that her husband’s name had been Charles. He had been born in Aug 1894 and died 15 Mar 1967 in Portland. I found them living in Tonasket, Okanogan, Washington in 1930, and listed in a 1938 directory at 6615 SE Sherrett Rd. in Portland, Oregon.

I searched for a marriage record, but found none. Oregon’s marriage records are not online; one must travel to the state archives in Salem during business hours to find them. I had hoped (having found them located in Washington in 1930) that perhaps they had been married in Washington state, whose archives are online, but found nothing there either. This was getting me no closer to discovering Mrs. TUFTY’s maiden name, so I tried another tack.

My library has a subscription to the wonderful collection of historical newspapers at GenealogyBank, part of NewsBank, so I typed her name as the search term and limited my search to Oregon and Washington. After wading through a few completely irrelevant results (“Ethel” and “Tufty” being found on the same page, but not necessarily within the same article), I hit the jackpot.

It was on page 22 of the 17 Jan 1952 edition of the Oregonian. An obituary of someone named Clarence A. MERCHANT, and listed among his relations was his daughter, “Mrs. Ethel TUFTY.” I was reasonably certain from my earlier research at Ancestry that there were no other Ethel TUFTYs on the west coast, so this answered the question of her maiden name. She must have been born Ethel MERCHANT.

However, it also gave me a surprise. Clarence MERCHANT had two grandchildren. Mrs. TUFTY had never had any children of her own, but according to this she must have had nieces or nephews! These would be the more proper recipients of the family album.

After a look at the rest of the results and a few quick searches for “Clarence MERCHANT,” “Gertrude MERCHANT,” and “Lee MERCHANT,” which yielded no additional information, I went back to Ancestry to see what I could find with the new family members.

I quickly found the entire family in the 1910 census living in Shaniko. Here I learned their approximate years of birth and probable birthplaces. (I say probable because census records cannot always be relied upon for accurate information.) I also learned that Clarence, the father, worked as Watchman at “Round House,” probably referring to part of the railroad.

I wanted to see if I could find out more about their time in Shaniko, so I googled “MERCHANT family Shaniko.” I found a posted page of Polks Wasco Co. 1910 Directory, which listed Clarence O. MERCHANT as a watchman for the Columbia Southern Ry. Co. and Lee MERCHANT as a “clk” (clerk) in the Eastern Oregon Banking Co.

All this had taken about half an hour, and, as I was at the library, I wanted to free up the computer for someone else’s use as well as look at some of their books. Being in central Oregon, the library had several local history books on Shaniko. The most promising looked to be Shaniko People by Helen Guyton Rees. Fortunately it had an index. Clarence and Lee MERCHANT were both listed, giving the same information the directory had given, with the additional information the Lee was Clarence’s son.

My time at the library ended, and when I shared what I had found with my parents we all agreed that it would be better to find the children of Lee MERCHANT and give the album to them (or their descendents), and make our journey to Shaniko as strictly a pleasure trip.

We thoroughly enjoyed our day of ghost towning as well as the rest of vacation, and once back at home I began the search for the children of Lee MERCHANT. However, it has turned out that they were both daughters, and I have thus far been unable to discover their married names. The search goes on, slowly.

“Old Ben Wade”

For years I have been unable to trace the WADE branch of my family farther back than my great-great-great-grandfather Joseph WADE, who, according to census records, was born c. 1797 in Ohio. The earliest record I have of him is the 1850 census, where he is found in Bond County, Illinois. I have been unable to trace him prior to that because he is not located in the same area, and prior to 1850 only the heads of household are named in the census. Joseph WADE is a common name, and trying to locate the correct one has been time-consuming guesswork.

This morning, I was not even attempting the chore. I had located his son Joseph S. WADE’s obituary in the Sedan Lance and was reading it. Joseph S. WADE was the brother of my great-great-grandfather Allen C. WADE, and it was with some interest that I read the history of his movements.

Suddenly, the following paragraph arrested my attention:

Joseph S. Wade was always a good citizen. He deceived nobody. He was a direct descendent of the Wade family of Ohio of which “Old Ben Wade” was the acknowledged head, and he had many of the characteristics of his great uncle.

Who could “Old Ben Wade” have been? Surely the quotation marks surrounding the name implied that he was a prominent person, whom the readers of the newspaper would likely recognize. I googled the name.

“Old Ben Wade” was a nickname for the senator Benjamin Franklin WADE, a radical Republican who supported women’s suffrage and equality for African-Americans. My heart swelled with pride. Then I learned that after Abraham Lincoln’s death, when Andrew Johnson became President, Ben WADE was next in line for the Presidency!

The lack of a hyphen in “great uncle” as well as the birth dates of both men lead me to believe that the author of the obituary meant “his uncle who is great” rather than “his grandfather’s brother.” Therefore, if the obituary is correct, Ben WADE must have been the brother of Joseph WADE, my great-great-great grandfather.

As my research on Joseph WADE before 1850 has hitherto been unproductive, I will now try working from Ben WADE down: finding out the names of his siblings and what information is known about them. Although I very much want to be related to him, I will have to be extremely careful to weigh the information accurately and not force it to fit.

Update: A couple hours’ search on the genealogy of “Old Ben Wade” quickly proved that he could have been neither the uncle nor the great-uncle of Joseph S. Wade.

Sources:

Brockett, L.P., M.D. "Benjamin Franklin Wade, Late Vice-President of the United States." Men of Our Day; or Biographical Sketches of Patriots, Orators, Statesmen, Generals, Reformers, Financiers and Merchants, Now on the State of Action: Including Those Who in Military, Political, Business and Social Life, Are the Prominent Leaders of the Time in This Country. Philadelphia: Ziegler and McCurdy, 1872. All Biographies. Web. 1 Oct. 2011.

“Joseph S. Wade Dead.” Sedan Lance 8 Jan 1904: 5. America’s GenealogyBank. News Bank Inc. Web. 20 Sept 2011.