Samuel Downing was born in Maryland. The family soon moved west. At the age of 18 he served with the Ohio Militia in the War of 1812. In 1818 he married Margaret Matthews in Pike County, Ohio. After her death he married her widowed sister Mary Matthews Day. Margaret and Mary were daughters of John Matthews, said to be a surveyor. The name of their mother is unknown. The only surviving Matthews child in 1880, William, said on the census…
On this date 128 years ago in a farmhouse three miles northwest of Mt. Pulaski in Logan County, Illinois, Eliza Harding Downing gave birth to her second son, Ellis. The couple already had an 18 month old. When Ellis was two he got another brother. This picture was taken when he was about 4, just before his maternal grandparents, their other daughter and three sons, none of whom were married at the time, moved to Iowa. His father’s father had…
The Lake Fork Predestinarian Baptists, formed in 1827, the first known organized religious group in Logan County, began to splinter and by 1860 members were leaving although a new church was built in 1868 and services were held until 1894. The Restoration Movement also known as the Disciples of Christ and generally know as the Christian Church took hold in the county and appears to have been the impetus for the movement away from the Baptists. There was a Buckles…
Recently I had a discussion with a relative – our mothers were cousins – about some family members. I knew they married but lost track after that. She remarked it was because I moved away. I have heard a version of that before. But you know, if your ancestors hadn’t “moved away” you’d still be living in a cave in eastern Europe or wherever they currently think we came from. Our mutual ancestors come from people who “moved away” for…
When I began entering my genealogy into PAF in the 1980s I pretty much stopped at my grandparents. Yes, my aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings, are there but not all the children of my grandparents’ cousins. Certainly not their children. Maybe not my cousin’s children. Vaguely there were concerns about privacy but also I wasn’t thinking about contemporaries. I was entering ancestors. With DNA there is the suggestion you need six generations of complete information. I’m doing ok –…