Home: The Late 19th Century Version

When the topic for this edition of the carnival of genealogy was announced, I pondered which ancestors and which hometowns I would be discussing. I finally decided to focus on the Stephen Taylor and Abraham L. Lantz families and their town of Oak Grove, McLean County, Illinois.

Stephen Taylor married Betsey Dearborn in March 1837 in Morgan County, Ohio. It is believed that the two of them went to Illinois that very year. Several McLean County histories mention this arrival date although I can only document that he was there before the 1840 census was taken and that he purchased land there in November 1836. The family lived very near the Woodford County border.

Abraham Lantz (who was not yet a teenager) is believed to have moved to McLean County about 1851 with his father. Abraham was born in the failed Amish settlement in Knox County, Ohio. He later lived in Holmes County, Ohio before moving to Illinois. After his parents and other family members moved to Howard County, Indiana, Abraham remained in Oak Grove where his uncle Jonathan and distant cousin Simeon Lantz also resided. He served as postmaster from 1869-1874. He owned a store for most of the years he was in Oak Grove. Oak Grove moved a short distance to what is the present town of Carlock in 1888. Abraham remained there a few more years before removing to Monroe County, Mississippi in 1896. There are a number of good maps of Oak Grove and Carlock available which show the home and businesses of Abraham. Most of these maps are copyrighted so I cannot use them here. I will, however, show some photos that I have in my personal collection relating to Oak Grove and Carlock. The color photos were taken when I stopped in Carlock on my way to the National Genealogical Society Conference in Chicago in 2006.

This was the Lantz home in Illinois.

Welcome to Carlock. Population 500.

The public library. It was closed for a very long lunch break while I was in town.

The Christian Church where Abraham & Laura attended. He had been Amish before his marriage. She had been Methodist, so they compromised.

The Denman Cemetery where many members of the Taylor family are buried.

Marker for Stephen Taylor's son Isaac who died during the Civil War of illness.

National Library Week Tribute #7: The Historical Society Library

I know all of you have been wondering which library I would choose for my 7th. The truth is that there are just too many libraries out there. I hated to name one historical society library without mentioning them all because they are such great depositories of regional information. I'm going to name a few examples here, but all historical society libraries are included in this seventh tribute.



First of all, I want to mention the Itawamba Historical Society's Library in Mantachie, Mississippi. They are located in the Poteet History Center. If you are researching ancestors in Itawamba County, their library is a "must visit." They have a tremendous collection of family histories from the area. You can purchase back issues of Itawamba Settlers to complete your collection. They also have an ongoing book sale there. You can browse and find a few titles of interest for your personal library.



Another society's library I want to mention is McLean County (Illinois) Historical Society. They have microfilms of many of the older courthouse records there which you can photocopy much more cheaply than you can at the nearby courthouse. I found city directories that were extremely helpful to me which covered even small towns like Carlock where my ancestors lived. I was only able to be there for a short time, but the staff was most helpful to me during my brief visit. (I'd spent too much time tromping about the cemetery earlier! You know how that goes with genealogists.)



Then there is the "ultimate" historical society--the New England Historic Genealogical Society. I'm looking forward to another visit there this summer. The photo below was made after FGS conference in 2006. They have all kinds of wonderful resources there! You can't ignore them if you have New England ancestry. The society is located in the Back Bay area on the very trendy Newbury Street. It's not far from the Boston Public Garden and Boston Common. You can even do lunch "where everybody knows your name" or at many other great restaurants in the area. This library is also within walking distance of another great library, the Boston Public Library. Well, I must go and prepare for my visit to the NEHGS Library!

Pullman, Illinois

The premiere issue of Code4Lib Journal has an article about a project analyzing the demographics of Pullman, Illinois over a forty year period. The article is entitled "Connecting the Real to the Representational: Historical Demographic Data in the Town of Pullman, 1880-1940." It's really interesting to see how the database was put together.

Filling in the Missing Gaps

Tonight I decided to begin the process of reviewing some of my data on lines going to New England to fill in any missing holes. I discovered that while I had most of the censuses for Stephen Taylor (1814-1881) and his wife Betsey Dearborn (1818-1899) that I was missing the 1840 one, at least out of my database. It is probably sitting in a file in a drawer that I haven't sorted through yet! However, I decided to make a quick check and discovered that while the couple had wed in Morgan County, Ohio on 8 Mar 1837 that they had already moved to McLean County, Illinois by the time of the 1840 census. Stephen is head of a household of three. One male, age 20-30 (obviously Stephen); one female, age 20-30 (obviously Betsey); and one male under 5 (Isaac, their son who was born in 1839 and who died in Memphis during the Civil War). It is interesting to note that Stephen's brothers Daniel and Sylvanus are both on this page as is Elisha Dixon who married a sister of Betsey. I also noted some of the Carlocks for whom the town of Carlock was later named on the page as well as the Denmans, namesakes of the Denman Cemetery where some of the Taylor family is buried.

UPDATE (9/21): I realize that I should specify that Elisha was not married to Betsey's sister in this census. She was married to her first husband Otis Lawrence at the time of the 1850 census. The marriage to Dixon took place in 1864.

Sources: Marriages in Morgan County, Ohio. Vol. A. April 1, 1819-February 4, 1841. s.l.: Morgan County Historical Society, 1983.

1840 U.S. census, McLean County, Illinois, p. 282, line 25, Stephen Taylor; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com/; accessed 18 September 2007); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm M704, roll 65.

Related to President Zachary Taylor or Not?

There are a lot of family legends that have been handed down over the years through many of our lines. When I was growing up, I'd always heard that we were related to President Zachary Taylor through my great grandmother Laura Lucy Taylor Lantz. I must confess that when I first began to try to research the family history that I didn't quite know what I did now so my methodology was quite poor. "I knew" we were related to the President because I'd always heard it was so. [There was no concrete evidence--just the family tradition. I never for a moment doubted that we were related.] I was absolutely delighted to discover that Zachary's genealogy had been done so I began looking at the various compiled genealogies of the president. I never could figure out how Laura could possibly fit in. I decided someone must have left off a line on the tree or something. I filed it away to explore some other day.

I had developed more genealogy prowess and discrimination by the time I revisited this line. My first break on the line came through a query I placed online. I don't remember at this point if I had already discovered that Laura's father was Stephen Taylor of McLean County, Illinois at that point or not, but the gentleman who answered my query was able to tell me about Stephen and his brothers. As I began to explore Laura's immediate family, I discovered that one of Laura's brothers was named Zachary Taylor. So - we were related to Zachary Taylor, but it wasn't President Zachary Taylor.

Now . . . there is also a mystery regarding Stephen Taylor's father Stephen Taylor. This southeastern Ohio resident is said to have died in Detroit in 1814 during the War of 1812. I've found nothing to support this claim YET. (I haven't even found him on a list of troups.) There is a letter that was written by a lady in a historical society in that area to a relative from an earlier generation who was researching this. She claims that there was also a creek named after him in southeastern Ohio. I really need to take the time to work on that part of the legend because I'd certainly love to locate the creek. It's just been lower priority for me. I need to do further research on this line, but I need to make a trip to a repository with better southeastern Ohio records to do so. The counties of Washington, Athens, and Morgan are the ones that seem to bear the most significance for the family. They were in Ohio County, Virginia (now West Virginia) prior to this.