Monday Is for Mothers: Rufina Ellen "Fina" Tomlinson (1863 - 1943), Part 1

One Monday last month I posted some photos of this maternal great grandmother but deferred writing a more complete profile to a later date. Today I'll cover roughly the first half of her life, up until she was widowed in 1905.

Born in Washington County, Iowa, during the Civil War, Fina lost her mother very soon after she was born. Her father, George Marion Tomlinson, married a second time in 1866* and by 1870 the family, which now included two more children, had relocated to the Fall River Township in Greenwood County, Kansas.

[Detail from Colton's Kansas. Published By G. W & C. B. Colton & Co. No. 172 William St. New York.

Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

[Year: 1870; Census Place: Fall River, Greenwood, Kansas; Roll: M593_434; Page: 208B; Image: 433; Family History Library Film: 545933. Ancestry.com. 1870 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Original data: 1870 U.S. census, population schedules. NARA microfilm publication M593, 1,761 rolls. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.]

We can track the expanding Tomlinson family through Iowa's 1875 Census and the 1880 U.S. Census.

[Kansas State Historical Society; Topeka, Kansas; 1875 Kansas Territory Census; Roll: ks1875_7; Line: 1. Ancestry.com. Kansas State Census Collection, 1855-1925 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009.]

[Year: 1880; Census Place: Fall River, Greenwood, Kansas; Roll: 382; Family History Film: 1254382; Page: 282B; Enumeration District: 091; Image: 0211. Ancestry.com and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1880 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010. 1880 U.S. Census Index provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Original data: Tenth Census of the United States, 1880. (NARA microfilm publication T9, 1,454 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C.]

By the 1885 Iowa State Census, 22-year-old Fina was a "Milliner & Dressmaker" in Severy, Kansas, although she was still listed as living at home in the same enumeration.

[Courtesy of Olive Slater-Kennedy]

[Kansas State Historical Society; Topeka, Kansas; 1885 Kansas Territory Census;Roll: KS1885_51; Line: 1.Ancestry.com. Kansas State Census Collection, 1855-1925 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009.]

[Map of Greenwood County, Kansas Historical Society]

[Kansas State Historical Society; Topeka, Kansas; 1885 Kansas Territory Census; Roll: KS1885_53; Line: 1. Ancestry.com. Kansas State Census Collection, 1855-1925 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. 1885 Kansas State Census. Microfilm reels K-1 – K-146. Kansas State Historical Society.]

[Fina (standing, center) with her father, step-mother and half-siblings, undated. Courtesy of Olive Slater-Kennedy.]

I don't know how they met, but Fina and Lewis Logan Slater bought their marriage license on December 11, 1885.

["Kansas, County Marriages, 1855-1911," images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1-16091-19039-85?cc=1851040&wc=M6VS-CM9:166157501,166197301 : accessed 21 May 2014),

Greenwood Marriage records, 1882-1887, v. C image 127 of 198.]

[Courtesy of Olive Slater-Kennedy]

By 1893 the couple's four children had been born, all in Twin Groves, Kansas: George Logan "Pete" in 1886; my grandfather Harry Allen years later; Opal May in 1890; and Lewis Cecil in 1893.

[Pete and Harry, Courtesy of Olive Slater-Kennedy]

[Opal and Cecil, Courtesy of Olive Slater-Kennedy]

In the 1895 Iowa State Census, Lewis Logan was practicing law and Fina was still working as a dressmaker in Severy.

[Kansas State Historical Society; Topeka, Kansas; 1895 Kansas Territory Census; Roll: v115_54; Line: 1. Ancestry.com. Kansas State Census Collection, 1855-1925 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009.]

In the 1900 U.S. Census it doesn't appear that Fina was continuing her dressmaking business.

[Year: 1900; Census Place: Twin Groves, Greenwood, Kansas; Roll: 482; Page: 5A; Enumeration District: 0062; FHL microfilm: 1240482. Ancestry.com. 1900 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.

Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1900. T623, 1854 rolls]

The 1905 Iowa State Census is the last record we have of the family before Lewis Logan's death.

After her husband's short illness and death at the age of 49 on July 19, 1905, 42-year-old Fina was left with four young children to raise.

(To be continued.)

*His second bride Amanda Darling happened to be the sister of my great-great grandmother Mercy Ann Darling Webb.


© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Car and Homemade Trailer

The title of this 1936 Farm Security Administration photograph by Dorothea Lange says it all:

Car and homemade trailer on U.S. 101 near King City, California. Man and wife middle-aged, from Wisconsin. "Old Man Depression sent us out on the road ... You don't know anything about how many people are living in trailers till you 'hit' Florida."

[The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. (1936 Feb.). Car and homemade trailer on U.S. 101 near King City, California.

Retrieved from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/02f9f0a0-c5da-012f-f460-58d385a7bc34]

Check out the photos in the Tin Can Tourism section at Florida Memory* to see what he was talking about.

*The website of the State Library and Archives of Florida


© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Fantastic Find: How to Print Scanned Out-Of-Copyright Books from Google

I have a brick wall in Fairfield County, Ohio, and while I don't find mention of my ancestors' names I want to get a good background feel for the area.  I can obviously read this online at Google Books or download to Kindle, but what if I want a paper copy of this work?  I have even more options than I realized.

Hat tip to Diane Boumenot (One Rhode Island Family) for her detailed post "Printing a Book from Google Books." While I knew I could buy copies from Amazon, I totally overlooked the "On Demand Books" option under the "Get this book in print" dropdown menu.

The prices are comparable to copies found on Amazon.

Here is the Espresso Book Machine at work:

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Family Friday: Grove/Graves

Although the borders of this photograph have been trimmed, the note on the back has survived so we know that the woman is my maternal third great aunt Rebecca Groves (1847-1881) together with her husband George Bedford Graves (1843-1914)* and the couple's only child William O. Graves (1867-?).**

[Courtesy of Olive Slater-Kennedy]

Rebecca was one of the six daughters of Leah (Bixler) and Frederick Grove; her older sister was my great great grandmother Delilah Grove.

Seven years after Rebecca's death, George married a young woman named Jane Baya (who was about the age of his oldest son) with whom he had seven more children.

Jacob W. Miller (1841-1907) had a photography studio in Anamosa, Iowa, for many years.***

*George's occupation is listed in the 1880 U.S. Census as "Saloon Keeper."
**I've not been able to trace William with any certainty past the 1870 U.S. Census.
***The number 253 is a reference number we used to identify the images while scanning the photographs.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Where Were My Ancestors About 1796? Abraham Bradley's Map of the United States: Part 2

This is a continuation of my post earlier this week using Abraham Bradley's postal map of 1796.  This is just an exercise to get a handle on where all of my American ancestors were during the Federalist Era.  I can already see the fatal flaw of adding ancestors by going up and down my tree as opposed to grouping by location--for instance, I actually have a lot of people who were in the western Pennsylvania area, but there will be separate maps for the family groups in this iteration because they are on different branches of my tree.  I will put together a more concise version at a later date.

In Bertie County, North Carolina, possibly in the Salmon Creek area, John H Hardy, 23, was married to his first wife, Jamima Wilson, and they had a toddler Etheldred.  Jamima would die in the next year.  John's mother Sarah Sowell, 63, had been widowed 3 years before when her husband William Hardy died, and she would be listed in the 1800 Federal Census as head of household in Bertie County, North Carolina.   John's future second wife, Elizabeth Ward, 21, daughter of Thomas Ward (who had died the year before at about age 60) and Pheraby Sowell, about 47.  John Hardy and Elizabeth Ward were distant cousins--their mothers were both descendants of Richard Sowell (born c. 1659).

John Chappell, 33, had moved to Georgia probably in the mid to late 1780's from Sussex County, Virginia, likely with his parents, Revolutionary veteran John C Chappell, 58, and Nancy "Nannie" Harrison, 55.  Like Jesse Warren Sr he was in the area that would become Hancock County, Georgia. John and his wife, Sarah "Sallie" P Heath, 25, had several small children by the time the map was made.  Sallie was the daughter of Valley Forge veteran Abraham Heath, 56, and Winnifred "Winny" (??), 50, who had moved from Surry County, Virginia to Burke/Warren County, Georgia 10 years earlier.
Josiah Freeman, 33, was likely in Oglethorpe County, Georgia with his first wife, Susannah Hawkins, and at least 5 small children.  He had likely moved to Georgia sometime between 1786 and 1790.  He was originally from Virginia, possibly Sussex or Surry counties.  His parents William Freeman, 58, and Sarah Williams(??), about 56, were in Surry County, North Carolina, and may have originally been from Surry County, Virginia.  All these Surry counties!!  It gets confusing.  Elizabeth Jordan, Josiah's second wife, was only about 9 in 1796.  I have not yet figured out who Elizabeth's parents were.  Elizabeth was born in either Georgia or possibly South Carolina.
Richard Turner, 17, had been born in Cascade, Pittsylvania, Virginia, and had moved with his family to Wilkes County, Georgia (part of which became Lincoln County) when he was about 5.  His parents, Shadrack Turner and Margaret Hill, were both about 45.  Mary Henderson, 15, would marry Richard about 3 years later in Wilkes or Lincoln County.  She had Virginia as place of birth on the 1850 and 1860 Censuses, but I have not yet been able to determine who her parents were, although there were numerous Henderson families in Elbert County (neighbor county to both Wilkes and Lincoln) at the time she would have married Richard.

William Porter was born in May 1796 in Sheffield, Caledonia, Vermont, to Benjamin Porter, 24, and Lydia Wilcox, 21.  It is not clear why they were there, as they had married in Surry, Cheshire, New Hampshire the year before, and were back there by the 1800 federal census.  Benjamin's widowed mother Esther Carpenter, 57, allegedly didn't die until 1827 in Lyme, Grafton, NH, but apparently didn't head a household in the censuses and probably lived with one of her adult children.  Lydia's parents, physician Obediah Willcox, 72, and Sarah Talcott, 61, were likely living in Surry, Cheshire, New Hampshire.
Joshua Shepard, 43, and Lucia "Lucy" Farnsworth, 34, were living in Alstead, Cheshire, New Hampshire.  Joshua's parents, Jonathan Shepard, 87, and Love Palmer, 79, had divorced 32 years earlier (about 1764), and had both subsequently remarried.  Love had married a Mr. Heard or Herrick (date unknown), and she died 23 July 1796 in Alstead, Cheshire, New Hampshire.  Jonathan had married Mary Underwood in 1765 and lived in Windsor, Windsor, Vermont, where he died 2 years after this map was made (26 March 1798).  Lucy's parents, Thomas Farnsworth, 65, and Elizabeth Davis, 68, also lived in Alstead (they had moved there sometime between 1776 and 1790).








© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Fantastic Find: The Arabia Steamboat Museum

If I'm ever in Kansas City, I'll be sure to visit the Arabia Steamboat Museum which houses what it calls "largest single collection of pre-Civil War artifacts in the world" which were salvaged from a steamboat which sank on September 5, 1856.*  The level of preservation of some of the goods that were on board when the Arabia sank is amazing so if you want to get an idea of what your mid-19th century ancestors might have found in their local store this is the place to go.

[The Arabia Steamboat Museum - A Historic Kansas City Attraction]

[All photographs above from the Arabia Steamboat Museum]

Keys, hinges, shoes, buttons, hats, pistols, saddles and thousands of mundane objects are represented in the collection but Wedgwood China and imported French perfume (still retaining a pleasant odor) were among the fancier articles on the Arabia. And some of the bottled food is still edible.

You can read a 2013 Wall Street Journal article about the Arabia here.


*Apparently the only casualty was a mule whose skeleton is on display in the museum.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Hat Tip: The Legal Genealogist Says "Read the Directions"

The Legal Genealogist's Judy G. Russell recently encouraged her readers to read the directions (.PDF) that the Federal census enumerators had to read, so I did.  Actually, I've looked at them before, but I always see something new that I hadn't noticed before whenever I review them.

This time I realized the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules included a column to indicate slaves who had escaped within the year!  How could I have missed that? It's not like these are complicated forms.

But it is very satisfying to see the evidence that some were escaping.  I'm over here cheering them on.

And this lead me to discover that this affected some of my own ancestors. A close look at this 1860 US slave schedule in Georgia shows that my ancestress Mary (Henderson) Turner had lost her one slave (a 48 year old mulatto woman) and son Shadrack Turner had lost a total of 18.  Other neighbors were having the same problem.  That is something I didn't realize I was seeing before.

This is exciting, because I do know that Mary got 3 slaves from her husband in his will in 1851 in Newton County, Georgia:

""I give unto my beloved wife Mary Turner, during her natural life or widowhood Charles a negro man, Viney a negro woman and Mourning a negro woman."**"

So I'm not certain, but the runaway woman may have possibly been named Viney or Mourning.  I tried looking through the Georgia Historic Newspapers: Milledgeville database to see if the Turners advertised for these lost slaves, but that site is running really slowly and I will have to follow up on this lead later.


So it really does pay to read the instructions.  Even, maybe especially, if you have been working with these records for a while.  It is easy to get lazy and complacent.




**"Georgia, Probate Records, 1742-1990," images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1942-30463-13550-21?cc=1999178&wc=9SBS-YW5:267728901,267884801 : accessed 30 March 2015), Newton - Wills 1823-1871 vol 1-2 - image 167 of 350; county probate courthouses, Georgia.


© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.