Tombstone Tuesday: A Final Detail Confirmed!

SARAH TYREE WALLEN

August 25, 1842 - February 15, 1912

Sarah was the sister of my paternal third great grandmother Louisa Tyree Wallen, or "Grandma Wallen" as my great grandfather called her throughout his diary. Back in 2003 my distant cousin Connie sent me copies of notes her grandmother had made...snippets of things that old Grandma Wallen had told her. In those notes Grandma said her sister Sarah had also married a Wallen and had gone to Arkansas to live. Every other detail in those notes has since panned out, except that one...it had to be a mistake!

I didn't think much about it. I knew Sarah had married a Wallen, a distant cousin to my Wallens, and I had already traced her up to 1880...but she lived in Howell Co., Missouri, not Arkansas. Howell Co. is near the border of Missouri and Arkansas so I figured Grandma had just made a small error. James Wallen, Sarah's husband, died in 1867 in Missouri and I suppose when I could not find Sarah in the 1900 census I just assumed she had died there too and I didn't look further for at least 6 or 7 years.

Last week I decided I wanted to renew my efforts on Grandma's siblings and since I hadn't any closure on Sarah, I zoomed in on her.  I did a broad search of the 1900 census for her son Elisha with whom she had been living in 1880. Right away I found the family of Elisha...in Grant Co., Arkansas! And low and behold, Sarah was living with them! When I did more searches on cemetery listings in Grant Co. I quickly found Elisha, his wife Lina, and an infant daughter buried there in the Sheridan Cemetery. They were spelling their name Wallin in the census so that is the spelling I used in the search of the cemeteries. When I didn't find Sarah with them I changed the spelling to Wallen and searched again. There was only one Wallen listed and it was Sarah! (The members of this family were all buried together so I have no idea why the spelling on her tombstone was different.) With this information I did a search on FindAGrave.com and quickly found her memorial and tombstone photo and have used that photo here with the permission of the F.A.G. photo volunteer.

From the birth places of several of Elisha's children it is obvious Sarah had been living in Arkansas for quite some time, long enough to have written many letters to her sister Louisa in Texas. No wonder Grandma Wallen told everyone her sister lived in Arkansas! This may seem like a small detail but it was very exciting to me. It means that every item in those notes has now panned out. Small confirmations to family stories are really rewarding.

Interested persons can find out more on this subject at my companion blog "Genealojournal" by clicking on "Tyree" in the labels.

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