(File this under “Work In Progress”, as this is my
research journal. A brain dump, if you will.)
So here’s the deal.On my paternal grandmother’s side (Josephine Bodle, or Nanny), my 3rd
great grandfather is David Bodle, born about 1773 in Ireland.Other than he married Mary, last name unsure
at this point, that’s about all I know about him.Honestly, his name is about all I can be sure
of, the rest is conjecture for now.
That’s not the issue here.The issue is that he appears to have a son also named David.And this David may have married a lady called
Mary as well.Her surname is also
uncertain.
I do have a very high degree of confidence of my 2nd
great grandparents, James Roland Bodle and Naomi “Oma” Gunsallus. They are
listed on my great grandfather Jerome Bodle’s death certificate.And I can find them together in the 1860 and
1870 census records. Jerome’s wife, whom
I have written about before, Elizabeth Eve Chapman, had something like 135
living descendants when she died in 1941.Needless to say, this branch of the family tree is better documented
than most.
I found this elder David via a FamilySearch tree.Since this was a tree and not documentation I
was looking at, I understood the risk that this may be the wrong person.For that reason, the David and Mary I did
import are marked as “Unverified” in the tree.I added them simply, so I had a name to research.I have since found many trees from Bodle
cousins that at least have the same names, but maybe not the same person.It was a start.
The biggest problem come from the fact that both “couples”
have the same names.David for the male
and Mary for the female.Two very common
names, and when you toss in the surname of Brown for on of the Mary’s it gets
even crazier.I was finding records attached
to the two David’s with the children on the incorrect generation.Such as my 2x GGF, James Roland Bodle as a
son to younger David.Since this young
David has a birth year of about 1805, and James Roland 1813, it seems rather
unlikely.I doubt that David the younger
sired a child when he was about 7.Not
impossible, but highly improbable.That’s
just one example, there were plenty of others similar.
Here’s the cast of characters, with the FamilySearch ID, and
dates that I have;
David the elder – LVD6-KGV (1773,
Ireland – 1845, Spring, Centre, PA)
Mary Cook? – LRYP-ZFY (1780 - ?)
David the younger – LRYP-89F (1805,
PA - ?)
Mary Brown? – GWSX – FSW(1816. PA – 6 Sep 1880, PA)
This family had Mary Brown as the wife of the elder David
when I imported the tree.I know believe
that Ms. Brown is in fact the wife of the younger David.I’m not saying that this is, indeed, fact.But with the records I have found since the
import, some months ago, but the chances are higher now.
The elder David died about 1845, so census records are very
helpful for him.It wasn’t until the 1850
census that all the names of a household were enumerated. Before that it was
just the head of the house listed.I do
have the younger David in the 1850 and 1860 census.As par for the course, they raise even more
questions.
Let’s start with the 1850 census.The family is in Howard Township, Clinton
County, PA.The family is split across
two pages.Usually not an issue. But
something odd is going on.
1850 U.S. Census for Howard, Clinton, PA. Roll 763, Page 178a
For David, Mary and eldest daughter Margaret, they are
listed as house 91 and family 92 visited.This is the order the enumerator visited the house it rarely corresponds
with the address of the dwelling.
On the next page, the rest of the children are listed, as
house 92 and family 93.
1850 U.S. Census for Howard, Clinton, PA. Roll 763, Page 178b
Two things are odd, other than the house and family numbers.The oldest person in this dwelling is Jane Bodle, age 13!Jane is not listed as being married or having
a job of any kind.Only the box for
having attended school is checked.The
other odd thing is that the children’s surname is spelled Boadle.The enumerator, John Irwin, visited both "houses" on
the same day, 9 August 1850.You would
think that there wasn’t a break in between these two entries.While there aren’t any addresses or house
numbers that I have yet to determine for this family, they had to be close together.Maybe he found the older members in the main
house and the younger children in an out building, or some such thing.
Other oddities with this census is the place of birth for
David, Mary and Margaret, and David’s job.Neither the occupation nor the place of birth boxes has obvious
information.For David’s occupation there
appear to be common ditto marks, and two lines above “Labourer” has been entered for
someone else.Does that mean David was also
a “Labouror”?
Under “Place of Birth” is a very odd mark.It looks nothing like the ditto mark on David’s
occupation box. Does it indicate that his (and his wife and eldest child) were
born in Pa?It does look a bit like “Pa”.Or does it mean that it’s the same as the
line above?In that case, the next entry above would be Ireland (same gentleman as marked as “Labourer”).My current working theory is that only the
elder David was born in Ireland.But
again, this is just a theory.I will not
lose any sleep if this theory proves to be wrong.
On the next page, with the rest of the children, Jane is
marked as being born in Pennsylvania.The state is spelled out, not abbreviated.And that odd mark follows down the page for
the rest of her siblings.But if this
mark is meant as a ditto mark, then why the common ditto mark in David’s
occupation box?
The 1860 census is a bit better except for one thing; there
isn’t any “place of birth” entered for anyone in the family!There aren’t any marks at all in the boxes.This enumerator does use the standard ditto
mark elsewhere, but not all the time.
1860 U.S. Census for Beech Creek, Clinton, PA. Page 47
At least David is listed as a “Day Laborer” here, so the
occupation in 1850 is probably correct.Also notice the “American” spelling of labor versus the “British”
spelling, labour in the previous record.
Census records are notorious for being inconsistent.For example, in this 1860 census;
Where is Mary Ann in the 1850 census?She should have been around 16 years old?
George is gone in 1860.Would have been around 19, so might have
moved out.
David is gone in 1860 as well.Would have been around 13, so a little early
to be on his own. Or is this the senior
and junior I found?
In the 1870 census I find Mary Bodle, age 54 (YOB ~1816,
which is what I have), an invalid in the home of Thomas & Mary Long.This is the home of her daughter Mary Ann and
her husband and 2 houses away is Mary Ann’s sister Letty and her family.
And that’s where I am right now.This is not marked as finished, or verified,
or complete in any way, shape, or form.Here
is the tree as it stands starting with the elder David down through the young
David, and my line to show the relationships.
Sometimes you have to step away from the one thing in your
research that consumes you.The consuming
task for me is to find the next male Campbell in my direct line.For those of you that have read the genealogy
posts on my Random Ramblins’ blog, you know the problems I’ve had with that
task.
So, I put that aside for a bit and went looking for
something minor.Namely, my paternal
grandfather’s middle name.It should be
obvious that this is a trivial matter.Every record I have for him shows his name as Herbert J. Campbell.This includes the church register for his
marriage, his WWI draft registration card, another church record that I believe
show his adult baptism in 1905, and his death certificate.Not a single record that I can find has his
middle name.I strongly suspect that it's James, simply because his paternal grandfather was named
James.
The Church Register For Herbert's Joining The Methodist Church
Herbert's Draft Card
The Church Register For Herbert And Josie's Marriage
Herbert's Death Certificate
Taking a look at the records I did have made me realize that
I was missing something crucial.It was
possible that they used an older way of getting married, and didn’t get a
license from the county, but instead had a marriage bann, that was doubtful to
me.Mostly due to the fact that they
were both members of Methodist churches.Banns were not that common by 1909, and from what I’ve gathered, rare in
the Methodist faith.So I figured there
should be at least a marriage license application out there somewhere in
Pennsylvania.And that’s where the fun
began.
If you take a look at the church record for the marriage
(top photo above), you see something a bit odd. The groom lists his residence
as Howard Township, which is in Centre County.The bride lists her residence as Flemington in Clinton County.Nothing all that surprising, as the two towns
are only 22 miles or so apart.But what
you can’t see on the image, but is part of the record on Ancestry, is that it
was recorded as taking place in the High Street Methodist Church in
Williamsport, and that’s in Lycoming County.So which county do I look in first?
As most of my Campbell line centers around Centre County, I
started there.
No luck.But the
volunteer from the society that answered my question pointed me to Lycoming County
as the next step.Not liking to hang out
on Facebook all that much anymore, I sent an email to the Lycoming Genealogy
Society.While they didn’t have access
to do the lookup I wanted, they did give me the phone number for the folks at
the courthouse that could.
I called the courthouse and the wonderful lady I spoke with
took my number and said she would see if she could find anything and call me
back.And the next morning she called with
the news that there were no records for this marriage in Lycoming County.That left just one more place to check.
The Clinton County Register & Recorder office is
amazing.I called and spoke with
Jennifer.The county has all the records
indexed and searchable.She was able to
find the record for me in less than a minute. Then she had to pull the microfiche and email
me a copy.Total time, about 30
minutes.Total answers, none…
Marriage License Application
As you can see, the image is very difficult to read.But you can make out that once again, he only
uses that middle initial.Maybe his
middle name isn’t James.Or maybe his
grandfather wasn’t a very nice guy, and he didn’t want to be associated with
that name.I know that I really, really,
don’t like my middle name, and only use the initial when required.But since Herbert uses it everywhere, I doubt
that is stood for something odd or unusual that he didn’t like.Of course times were very different then, and
a bit more formal than we are today.
It would seem that they were married in the Flemington Methodist
Episcopal Church (now Flemington UMC) by Rev. George M. Frownfelter.
I also had one other small item I was hoping this record
would help with, Herbert’s mother’s given name.Her death certificate shows her as Eleanor Adeline, and her headstone reads
Eleanor, but the death certificates I have for her three children all have her
as Adaline. It seems that she went by
her middle name after her marriage.I
was wondering which name would be listed on Herbert’s marriage license.But I can’t make it out.So, we’ll add that to the “not important, let
it ride” pile.
But I’m not giving up on the “J”.But it will not be at the forefront of my
research.It’ll be one of those things
that will show up when I’m not looking for it.
(nowhere near a thousand words if you don’t label it
properly)
I took a break from doing a very needy job of trying to
organize my genealogy data files today.These files are in desperate need of some type of organization, but I don’t
think I’m the one to come up with a good scheme to do the job.I’m trying out two pieces of software, Evidentia
and Clooz to help, but the struggle is real.
I decided to look at some pictures that my paternal
grandmother, Nanny who you’ve met before here on the blog, had glued into a repurposed
wallpaper sample book.And I do mean she
glued them in.Most of the time I can
just cut the photo out and keep it on the backing from the album.Not always but I think I’ve only had to sacrifice
two or three pictures to save one I felt was of more value.I hope that doesn’t come back to bite me.
But here’s what I want to address today.No, I’m not going to get into the correct or
incorrect ways to mount and preserve your heirlooms.Nanny did it the way she could, and I’m not
going to say it was right or wrong.I
think she did this over many years starting in the 1960’s or maybe even earlier.I only know I got it when she died.
The Wallpaper Sample Book
And pictures just glued right in!
Nanny wrote directly on many of the pictures.While this makes it easy to identify many of
the subjects of the photos, she wasn’t always clear.Here’s what I mean.Look at the two photos below.
Both are of the same gentleman, her husband Herbert J.
Campbell.One is clearly labeled “Herbert
Campbell” with the year 1905, but one is labeled as “Dad at 22” with the year,
1908.If I didn’t have the picture with
Herbert’s name I would not know just whose dad he was.I’ve used the versions I colorized at
MyHeritage here, but I have the faded originals as well.
Now look at these two.
The first is taken from a postcard that is signed by Herbert
and addressed to Nanny.It is also
labeled “dad” with 1905 as the year. The other is undated, but again labeled "dad". Remember the
other picture (with the trombone) is also labeled “dad”.These gentlemen do not look like the same
person to me.Then we can confuse the
issue even further.On another page of
Nanny’s album, the “dad” from the postcard picture has been cut out and pasted separately
back into the album.
As you can see in Nanny’s shaky handwriting it says “Dad Don
Mother” next to it.The only one I can claim
to know by name here is Don, my father, Herbert and Nanny’s only child.
If you take that part of the page from the album together,
it just may make more sense.Maybe.Possibly.Probably not.Why?Because in the photo at the bottom, is, I
believe Nanny’s mother.So, which mother
is she listing?To make it even worse,
my father never called his mother anything other than “mother”.I don’t remember ever hearing him call her
mom, or momma anything like that.He
even called my mom mother, which she hated!
At the top is a picture of my dad, Don, and his mother, Nanny. In the middle is the main problematic picture
of “dad” cut from the postcard.Using this rather convoluted
logic, this should be my grandfather, Herbert.
We'll address the bottom photo shortly.
However, the postcard picture (the four gentlemen) is dated
1905, the same year as the picture labeled “Herbert” with him standing on the
staircase. These two men do not look like the same person to me.The man in the postcard looks much older to
my eyes.And if you compare it to the picture
of Herbert dated 1908 (with the trombone), they don’t look anything alike.Here’s another picture of “Dad at 21”. Herbert was born in 1884, so he would have
turned 21 in 1905. Sigh…
Could this be Jerome Bodle, Nanny’s dad?Let’s look; here is the only photo I can say
with any degree of certainty is him.Luckily Nanny labeled it “Dad Bodle”.Jerome was born in 1857, so that would date this picture to
1878 or so.The clothes don’t look
right to me for that time frame.
Nanny seems to have pasted a cut out of her mother on this
photo labeled "Dad Bodle".I wonder why she
didn’t label this with “mother”?Oh,
that’s because she labeled this one that way.
I had to zoom way in on that picture to make sure it wasn’t
a picture of Nanny.She and her mom must
have looked a lot alike.And if you look
at the bottom photo in that long one, you can see its Nanny’s mother, Elizabeth
Eve Chapman Bodle.I don’t think the man
in the photo with her is Jerome. I think
it looks like they’re in a car and Jerome died in 1923. I doubt that cars
were that readily available in rural Clinton County, PA back then.And if one of their children brought the car to
show off, Jerome probably didn’t have the skills to drive it and make everyone
laugh like they are in the photo. I guess it could be nervous laughter. There is that.
It could be a child's car, after all when Elizabeth passed away in
1941 at the age of 81 she had 135 living descendants!
Now, where does that leave me?Basically, still trying to figure out just
who “dad” was in these pictures.Take a
look at them and let me know what you think.Which photos match Herbert on the stairs or with the trombone?
Personally, I think that the older gentleman in the postcard
is not Herbert, and I’m not sure about the guy in the hunting photo.But hunting guy has a better chance of being Herbert
than the postcard guy.But I’m not sure.
I’m gonna need a double single malt after all this!
(You may want to read the original post on this
subject.It’s over on my Random Ramblins’
blog.I posted it before I started this
blog).
As a youngster I was quite shy.I had a grand total of one date while I was
in high school.In fact, you couldn’t
really call it a date.A girl that I had
known since I was 5 was a member of the homecoming court during our senior year
and her boyfriend had to have an emergency appendectomy two days before the
homecoming dance.I think his appendix
had ruptured, but I don’t really recall.Her hall locker was close to mine and I heard her tell one of her girlfriends
that now she had no one to go with and didn’t want to go alone.She needed someone to escort her to the
homecoming court presentation.I
gallantly offered my services, and she accepted.So not really a date, more of a stand
in.
I really haven’t improved in being able to start a
conversation or just be natural with folks I don’t know. I suck at small talk and
unless I’m in a situation, such as a job, I will not start a conversation with
people I don’t know.
All that to say that I went out of my way to contact a DNA
match out of the blue back in July of this year.Email conversations, to me at least, are
easier to handle since I’m not face-to-face.A person can choose not to reply to a message, and it doesn’t seem to
bother me. And when it comes to contacting
a person on the various genealogy sites, more often than not I don’t get a
reply.So, it isn’t really
rejection.More like apathy on the other
person.I choose to contact this
particular person because she had taken the time to upload her DNA results to multiple
repositories, as I have, and we appeared to be a close match.As a bonus, she matched folks that I knew
were on my paternal side. And I’m struggling mightily with my Campbell
research. Lo and behold – she answered.Once, I assured her that I was NOT a stalker,
we have been in steady email contact ever since.
The key to this whole adventure was in one of her early emails; “I do know that on my
dad’s mother’s side, I believe that my Great Grandmother was a Campbell.”Not much to go on, but I saw that glimmer of
hope.Her family had a story of a
Campbell in the tree.That was all I
needed.
I built a quick test tree in my software of choice, FamilyTree Maker, with just the basics from her public family tree.Going no father back than her grandparents.The I let the interwebs do its thing.FamilySearch (FS) is very nice FREE website
that has searchable records just like the paid sites.They also have family trees that are searchable.And just like any user contributed family
tree, their trees can be full of errors.I found a match via FS that listed what I hoped was her family.If it was the correct family, and if I could
verify the information, then just as her family history claimed, her great
grandmother (her father’s mother’s mother) would be Catherine Campbell.
My DNA match (I’ll just call her cousin – it’s a bit more
personal), so my cousin, knew that the family we were looking at lived in
Centre County. Pennsylvania.Same as
mine.This match at FS showed them in
Centre County as well.Hmmm… This looks
interesting.My great grandfather,
Samuel W. Campbell, lived in Centre County, and had a sister Catherine, whose
age was right for a match.
Problem was, by my records, this Catherine was married to a
McKinley, not a Heverly.So, something
was off.Looking back over the sources
for this Catherine, I noticed that the death certificate I had assigned to her
listed different parents.Obviously,
this was a problem.As I mentioned in
the post linked at the top, I found that the Catherine Campbell that married into
the McKinley family was not my 2x great aunt.That meant I could set out to prove, or disapprove, that “my” Catherine
Campbell was my cousin’s great grandmother.The biggest issue turned out to be her name.I found a marriage record for the correct
gentleman, but the brides name was Kate Campbell.Naturally, no information on her parents was
on the record.It’s usually not that
easy!But Kate is a known sobriquet for
Catherine, so I didn’t discard it.
Marriage license for James Heverly and Kate Campbell
I
also found the death certificate for my cousin’s great aunt that lists
Catherine Campbell as the mother, and the correct great grandfather.It was looking better, but not
confirmed.
Janette Heverly Tyson's death certificate showing Catherine Campbell as mother.
My cousin and I continued to research this couple, but we
didn’t find a whole lot more for documentation.The just by chance, she sent me a picture of the great aunt we had the
death certificate for, with my cousin’s dad and his sister.The family story was that the picture was
taken on Pike street in Milesburg, PA.That made bells go off in my head, but I couldn’t remember why Pike
street sounded familiar.
That was back in August of this year.Fast forward to early this week.While researching my last post, it came to me
why Pike street was so familiar.My
great grandfather (Samuel W.) and his family are also listed as living on Pike
street in the 1910 and 1920 census records.And both families can be found in the 1890 “Centre Lines” publication,
in Milesburg Borough, that publication does not give any addresses or other
means of locating the families within the township.The 1900 census doesn’t have any street names
listed either, but both families are listed as in Boggs Township.So, we can definitely say they were
neighbors.
I fired off an email to the wonderful folks at the Pennsylvania
Room of the Centre County Library.The
amazing team has answered several questions for me, so I thought they would
know of any online resources to see historical maps of Centre County.I was hoping that I could at least find the
basic area that I was researching. I was
just lucky enough to catch Erin Hicks, one of the assistants in the PA Room, just
before she closed up shop for the weekend.She sent me a link to the “Digital Map Drawer” on the Penn State
website. I think I found more than a simple
map of the county.
Below is a cut out of the Atlas of Centre County Pennsylvania:
From Actual Surveys.This is the lower
left corner of the survey for Milesburg, so, the south west corner of the
map.In the 1870 census, the Heverly
family is listed in Boggs Township, Milesburg Borough, while my Campbell family
is in Snyder Township, Blair County.According
to an 1870 map of Pennsylvania, the two townships were not that far apart.But what I found that just about blew my
mind, is well, shown here.
Nichols, Beach and A. Pomeroy, & Co. Atlas of Centre County, Pennsylvania: From Actual Surveys. Philadelphia: A. Pomeroy & Co., 1874. "Atlas of Centre County, Pennsylvania: from actual surveys".<https://collection1.libraries.psu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/maps1/id/25509> (14 Nov 2020).
The street is Turnpike, on the west side of the street is a
home for J. Everly and almost right across the street is a home for W.
Campbell.Everly shows up quite often in
place of Heverly in many records.“W” is
my great grandfather’s middle initial. It’s quite possible that by 1910
Turnpike had been shortened to just Pike street.Also shown on the map, is Curtis & Linn.It’s the property just south of W. Campbell’s
property and, my great grandfather, Samuel W.’s obituary mentioned that he had been
employed there.Could this just be where
my cousin and mine families meet and married?Not complete proof, but add in the census records, the death
certificates, the marriage license, and DNA matches to this cousin and another
cousin of hers, I have to say that I’m about 99% sure.
The Campbell house in Milesburg, PA, on Pike Street.
As
the tree diagram shows, coming from my 2x great grandparents, James
And Ann Elizabeth (McCauley) Campbell, my line goes through their son,
Samuel W. and Eleanor (Taylor) Campbell, and the two cousins I match
through their daughter, Catherine and James Heverly.
SVG Family Tree TreeCampbell-Bodle
But I will ask again; if any more experienced genealogy
folks think my logic is in error, please let me know.I am anything but an expert when it comes to interpreting
records.Plus, there is a good bit of
bias on my side to make this match.Fresh and unbiased eyes are always welcome.My tree on Ancestry is public, so feel free
to look it over and leave comments.You
do need an account on Ancestry, but the do have free limited access accounts.My profile is brucelcampbell.
