Monday, December 31, 2012

Military Monday: Uncle Billy A. Wallen


Happy New Year to all! I am finishing out the year with a couple of photos of my paternal uncle, (my only uncle), Billy Athol Wallen, circa 1955, when he served our country as a Paratrooper in the U.S. Army. Isn't he a handsome fella?

Billy A. Wallen circa 1955 - U.S. Army
Billy A. Wallen -Paratrooper- U.S. Army

Thanks for your service Uncle Bill!


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Saturday, December 29, 2012

Charles Alexander and Josie (Bean) Logsdon


Charles Alexander Logsdon, son of William and Alice (McIlvoy) Logsdon, married Ann Josephine "Josie" Bean on 4 Sep 1878 at St. Charles Church in St. Mary, Marion Co., Kentucky. 

Josie was the daughter of Ignatius Eulogius "Logan" and Margaret (Warren) Bean. Josie was the great granddaughter of Clotilda (Vincent) Bean who I have written about before. 

Charles Alexander and Ann Josephine (Bean) Logsdon circa 1878
Charles and Josie had 8 children before Josie died in 1907; Alice, Herman, Josie, Agnes (Sister Baptista), Charlie, Leslie, Marie, and Lillie. Leslie was my husband's grandfather. Leslie died young, before his children were grown.

Photo courtesy of the descendants of Herman Logsdon, particularly John F. Hagan with whom I have had the pleasure of corresponding.

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Monday, December 17, 2012

Daniel and Lucinda (Tyree) Walling - Beyond 1860



Lucinda Tyree was born in Scott Co., Virginia in 1838. She was the oldest daughter of Jesse and Rosanna (Roberts) Tyree. Her father was the uncle of my maternal 3rd great grandmother, Louisa (Tyree) Wallen. 

Lucinda married Daniel Walling, brother of Louisa's husband Jesse B. Wallen, in Rockcastle Co., Kentucky in 1854. (Wallen and Walling were interchangeable within my early family and I use here the spelling carried on by descendants of these siblings.)

In late 1861, or early 1862, Daniel, Lucinda, and their two sons William and James, left for Indiana along with Daniel's father William II, and his brothers, William III and Isaac, and their families. Eventually, they all came back to Rockcastle Co., Kentucky except for William III and his family.

Daniel and Lucinda had a third son, Daniel W., born shortly after arriving in Indiana. It appears that Daniel Sr. was having an affair with a young woman in Indiana, Nancy McCloud, who gave birth to a son, Connard Walling, in 1871. Daniel and Lucinda then show up in the Rockcastle county tax records in 1872 through 1875. By 1877, Daniel had returned to Indiana to wed Nancy, daughter of George W. and Eunice (Bray) McCloud. By this time young Daniel was about 15 years old and Connard had just turned 6.

In 1880 Lucinda and her two youngest boys turn up in Rawlins Co., Kansas and she is listed as divorced. In undated Rawlins county homestead records she is listed:  Walling, Lucinda - Section NE 20, Twp. 5,  Range 31. In 1885 they are all three listed again in the Rawlins Co., Kansas state census, Jefferson Township. This time, Lucinda is listed as widowed.

Lucinda and Daniel's oldest son, William Jesse, married Kitty Mahala Houston in Rockcastle Co., Kentucky in 1873. Instead of going to Kansas with his mother and siblings, he and Kitty went to Nebraska to live and years later they would move to Wyoming. They had a dozen known children, three born in Kentucky and nine born in Nebraska.

Daniel and Nancy would have a total of 5 children together before Daniel died. His last child was born in 1885 and it is thought that he likely died prior to that birth or shortly after. Death and burial records have not yet been discovered.

Lucinda seems to disappear after that 1885 state census. I have seen a death date and place of 1892 in Kentucky in unsourced research on Ancestry.com, but, as of this date, those researchers seem to be completely unaware of anything about Lucinda or Daniel after 1860; not the move to Indiana, the birth of Daniel W., the out-of-wedlock birth of Connard, the return to Kentucky, nor the split of Lucinda and Daniel or Daniel's return to Indiana and marriage to Nancy. Neither do they know of Lucinda's move with her sons to homestead in Kansas. If they don't know any of these things, where does this death date come from? Ancestry makes it impossible to know who said what first. 

Did Lucinda and her sons construct a sod house like this one?
I wanted to tell Lucinda and Daniel's story just because of how it seems to come to a stop at 1860 everywhere else...just because there was a lot more to their lives, and because pioneer women like Lucinda are fascinating, homesteading on her own with only her two boys...young men at the time. I wish I could know more. Did she and her sons construct a sod house, like so many other homesteaders? Did she, perhaps, remarry, or did she die of hardship and get buried in an unmarked grave? Could she have died in 1892 after moving back home to Kentucky? So many questions I hope to have answered someday!

*Update* Thanks to my distant cousin Nan Harvey, Tyree researcher extraordinaire, I have the source for the 1892 death date for Lucinda Tyree Walling! From "The Tyree Trail With Allied Lines of Adams and Blair" by Ella Rae Wilson Coleman, Gateway Press 1987 " pg. 44: Lucinda Tyree, b. 11 November 1838 in Scott Co., VA., d. 1892, Rockcastle Co., KY, m. in Rockcastle Co., KY on 24 July 1854 David (sic) Wallen.

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Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Wordless Wednesday: Harvey J. Moore and Family



Harvey J. and Florence Polly (Melvin) Moore
and  her daughter Florence Edna
 Kentucky circa 1923

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