A Cousin Conundrum

 

Following those eighteenth century ancestors can be challenging. The paper trail sometimes leads us capably; other times, the records leave very little for us to go on—if we can find documentation at all. That's why, in researching all the children of my fifth great-grandparents, Adam and Mary Broyles, I opted to try my hand at researching the youngest of their children first. The more recent the documentation which mentioned their names, the more likely I am to find the details I need.

As we noticed yesterday, the youngest son of Adam and Mary Broyles, whom they named Joshua, married a woman for whom no records reveal her maiden name. All that is currently known by Broyles researchers is that her given name was Elizabeth.

Together, Joshua and Elizabeth Broyles had three children: Joel, Larkin, and Ada. Yesterday, using the Germanna Foundation publication The Broyles Family: The First Four Generations, we noted that Joshua's family could be traced from the old Pendleton District of South Carolina to Clay County, Missouri, by about 1830, thanks to records of property sales and census enumerations.

Since I have a secondary research goal of comparing documentation on this extended Broyles family with my DNA matches listed at Ancestry.com's ThruLines program, I peeked ahead to see if I had any DNA matches who share a Broyles connection with me, specifically through the line of Joshua and Elizabeth. Sure enough, there were three of my DNA matches claiming them as ancestors. And each one of these DNA matches descended through Joshua's son Larkin.

I took that as a clue regarding which relative to follow, and got to work on Larkin Broyles. Just like his parents had, Larkin apparently moved far from his home over the course of his lifetime. Born in South Carolina approximately in 1810, by 1830 he was living in Clay County, Missouri, along with the rest of his immediate family. By 1831, he claimed as his bride Melissa Job, another transplant to Missouri claiming the Tennessee roots where Larkin's Broyles predecessors had once lived.

Best I can tell—so far—Larkin and Melissa became the parents of at least nine children, all born in Missouri. Sometime after the 1860 enumeration, though, things began to change for the family. By 1870, Larkin was in Aurora, Oregon, with his son Samuel and Samuel's wife Emily, while Melissa was still in Missouri, living with their son William and his wife Ruth.

While I am still in the process of researching all the children of Larkin and Melissa, it appears that many of them did follow Larkin and Samuel to Oregon. That information will come all in good time, but in the meantime, I've been on the hunt to see which of Larkin's descendants would be the line to follow for my Broyles DNA matches.

I have a certain process I follow while adding the DNA-connected descendants of a Most Recent Common Ancestor. I start with the oldest child, add all the descendants of that child, then move on to the next. In Larkin's case, the oldest child was named Joel—same as Larkin's own older brother. Perhaps I should have taken that as a warning, but I just jumped right in to add information on Joel and his descendants.

While I could see from the 1850 census record of the Larkin Broyles family that Joel was nineteen years of age and born in Missouri, I soon ran into difficulty working on Joel's history. It seemed there were two very similar people with the same details. If I followed one line, that person eventually added a middle initial T, which morphed in later life to become not just a middle name—Thomas—but exchanging places to become the first name. One Joel moved to Oregon—a reasonable expectation, given his parents' history. But there was another Joel who seemed to move from Missouri in the opposite direction. Which one was the right one?

The more I delve into the Broyles line, the more I realize the family liked to recycle names from prior generations. The more I saw that sign, the slower and more carefully I wanted to proceed. After a few generations of name-after descendants, we can create an echo chamber of cousins' names. And that may indeed be the case with this Joel Broyles, son of Larkin. One of those two Joels may be a cousin—but which one is which? Until I find more documentation, I can't be sure.

Of course, when I look at my ThruLines connections for the descendants of Joshua Broyles, guess which line all three of those matches claim? Time to pull out all the documentation I can find and take a close look at all the details. Wouldn't want to take the wrong turn down a different branch of the Broyles family tree.

Better Late Than . . .

 

If you find yourself repeating that little regret, "The hurrier I go, the behinder I get," you may also have adopted another oft-used phrase: "Better late than never." Our rush to get things done—especially more than can be contained in one twenty four hour segment—can run us into problems.

I want to take that concept, "Better late," and turn it into a thought which can work in our favor in researching our family's collateral lines. Right now, I'm stuck trying to piece together the many lines of descent from the Broyles immigrants to the Germanna settlement in colonial Virginia. I'm focusing on my fifth great-grandparents, Adam and Mary Broyles, using as my guide the recently published The Broyles Family: the First Four Generations, written by Cathi Clore Frost.

Fortunately, the children of Adam Broyles were part of that fourth generation researched for the Frost book. Included in the entries for each of that generation are the names of that final generation's children, as well, giving me a jumping off point to continue my own research.

The challenge, though, is that even the fourth generation had children born in the 1770s, requiring access to an entirely different set of records than those we'd normally use to research, say, our own great-grandparents. To help me out with such record challenges—and the inability right now to travel to major research centers in person—I've adopted a different strategy: don't start from the top; begin with the bottom.

In other words, better late than early. We may find more results if we wrestle with the later records now, rather than those earliest documents from the beginning of our national existence.

One of my research goals this month is to see if I can align my Broyles DNA matches with documentation of their ancestors, and add that information to my family tree. It's been somewhat challenging to grapple with details on Adam Broyles' older children. From the listing in Adam's 1782 will, we've already tried working on his daughters "Mille" and Anne, as well as my longstanding work on the descendants of my fourth great-grandfather, Aaron Broyles.

Still, my access to records has been hampered by what is available online. Earlier records are sometimes transcribed but not digitized in their original form. With that dilemma, I thought I'd switch to researching one of Adam Broyles' later children, so this week we'll start working on his youngest son, Joshua.

Joshua Broyles was likely born in Virginia around 1770. While there are many unanswered questions about his life story, his was a life supported by documentation in at least three different states. Besides a mention in his father's will, drawn up in the region which eventually became the state of Tennessee, Joshua and his older brother Aaron jointly had property holdings in South Carolina, warranting several documents tracing those financial transactions. Finally, upon his move to Missouri some time before 1830, Joshua appeared in census records in Clay County. 

Still, there are questions about Joshua Broyles' story. For one thing, although he left documentation noting his wife's given name, Elizabeth, no one to date has been able to find any record providing her maiden name. And concerning the children of Joshua and Elizabeth, both the Arthur Leslie Keith manuscript and the Frost book provide three names, but very little else.

The Keith manuscript notes three descendants: sons Joel and Larkin, and daughter Ada. (See page 52 of the original document, volume 1, or online at FamilySearch.org at page view 55.) Unfortunately, nothing more than his name is provided for firstborn Joel. As for daughter Ada, the only added information was that she was married. There is a paragraph of information on the middle child, Larkin, with a listing of his household members drawn from the 1850 census in Clay County, Missouri. While not much, it's a start.

The Frost publication provides a bit more on daughter Ada, including the names of her two husbands, Joseph Havens and Isaac Lance. The author provides a listing of documents where son Larkin Broyles was mentioned in contemporaneous records, mostly in Missouri, but also in two counties in Oregon, where Larkin and his family eventually settled.

Every little bit helps to piece together the story of these Broyles descendants. As they moved through the timeline of their lives—and documentation which bears later dates—we find more success in locating the details of this family's story.

That, as it turns out, is just what I need to complete the other research goal lined up for January: to find the right place in my family tree for my Broyles DNA matches showing in my ThruLines readout at Ancestry.com. We'll take a look, tomorrow, at the research boost helping us piece together the family tree descending from Joshua and Elizabeth Broyles. From there, we'll jump over to ThruLines to check out those DNA matches descending from Joshua's line.

Deciphering the Details

It's inevitable, when researching information on family history from past centuries, that we'll encounter terms and descriptions that seem so foreign that they are of no help at all in allowing us to better understand the world in which our ancestors lived. Face it, the world back in 1880 or even 1908 was a vastly different place than the one in which we now live. Activities of daily life became a collection of terms and tasks far different than ones we use today. Sometimes, the difference is so huge, we end up walking away without having the slightest idea about things that, to our ancestors, were so commonplace.

In researching my family's history, that's when I start asking questions.

Reading the reports on the untimely death of John Blain in Paola, Kansas, in 1908 had that same effect on me. Take, for instance, the court description of the main train track curving "round that cobhouse to the eastward." Cobhouse? I had to look that one up. (Apparently, the term either refers to a "flimsy unstable structure" or a small building "constructed of mud, clay, and straw."

Granted, I could have inferred a similar meaning from the context of the article, but I just wanted to know specifically what the term might have meant at the time it was used.

But it was another phrase that really pushed me to look it up instead of settling for an educated guess. Remember the part which mentioned that John Blain, in turning to see who was calling to him, was then "struck by the pilot beam of the engine."

What's a pilot beam?

I realize there are those who are so taken with the history of railroads that their enthusiasm for the subject has led them to either spend thousands of dollars on collectibles or spend countless hours consuming every last detail about the topic. I am not one of those people, so please forgive my ignorance. I had to go look up what a pilot beam might have been.

Going in search of this information was not an easy process, given my complete lack of understanding about locomotives. The handy-dandy drawing of the "Commonwealth Locomotive Pilot Beam with Flexible Buffing Gear" in the 1922 Locomotive Cyclopedia of American Practice, for instance, told me nothing. There was no scale to the drawing, nor any diagram with a red arrow and the directions, "insert pilot beam here."

I need that kind of guidance when attempting to understand my ancestors' world.

Nor did the entry I was directed to in the 1906 Locomotive Dictionary, despite its being billed as "An Illustrated Vocabulary of Terms which Designate American Railroad Locomotives." When I googled the term "pilot beam," I was directed to the page fourteen definition for "bumper beam." As a subheading to that term, the dictionary described pilot beams as "the term applied to the same part [bumper beam] when the locomotive is fitted with a pilot."

Thanks.

Eventually, on page fifty nine, I found an explanation which made a bit more sense—but only after wading through more verbiage. Here's how the book defined "pilot":

An inclined pointed structure of wood or iron bars fastened to the front bumper of a locomotive to remove obstructions from the track.

Oh. And then the dictionary provided the part that translated to our era:

Formerly called cow catcher.

Formerly called cow catcher? I've never heard of a pilot on a locomotive, but at least I've heard of a cow catcher. So the pilot beam must be something which affixed to the cow catcher. Great. So now I can disabuse myself of any visuals of the man being gored to death by a literal beam somehow protruding from the front of a locomotive like a gladiator's spear.

Taking the time to ascertain the exactness of terms we're not currently familiar with can help paint a clearer picture of the specific episodes in our ancestors' lives. While a 1908 term like pilot beam might not be that outdated, the terms of centuries past sometimes yield us curves which we're not sure how to field. Learning how to talk the lingo of our ancestors' contemporaries can sometimes open our eyes to the impact of those everyday realities in the lives of the people we are researching.

Above: Undated photograph of the Missouri Pacific Railway locomotive engine number 152; image number RG005_77_27_0714 courtesy the Missouri State Archives via Wikipedia; in the public domain—with a mighty fine specimen of a pilot included, if I say so myself.





 

How it Happened: Version Two

In trying to piece together a cogent history of the life of the man whose picture I rescued from a local antique store, it turns out that, once again, we find that life stories seem always to include the unexpected. When we started, all we knew was that the subject's name was John Blain, and that he sat for his likeness at a photography studio in the small town of Walnut, Kansas, sometime during the 1880s.

More to the point, once we discovered the tragedy that had befallen this man in the prime of his life, we've been presented with two versions of just what happened to lead to his demise. You already know my bias against trusting, wholesale, contemporary newspaper reports. In John Blain's case, due to the nature of what befell him in 1908, we have the opportunity to examine two different versions of what actually happened.

From a summary of the appeals process, published in volume 184 of The Southwestern Reporter, we learn that John Blain's widow, serving as administratrix of his estate, had filed suit for $10,000 against the Missouri Pacific Railway Company for the death of her husband. While the summary, on page 1142 through 1143, mentioned that the suit was brought according to provisions under Kansas state statutes, the case was actually heard in the state of Missouri. No reason was given for this, though it appeared that, based on Missouri law, the outcome was not to be what the widow might have hoped.

Through the summary, we once again see details we've already learned through the newspaper report we discussed yesterday: that John Blain was a man of forty four years of age, that he was engaged in the lumber and furniture business in Centerville, Kansas, and that he received his fatal injuries in the city of Paola, Kansas.

That's pretty much where the similarities stop. The court cases, presumably extracting their evidence from witnesses on the stand, provided more detail about the incident—but also details that may or may not have lined up exactly with what we've learned from the Wichita newspaper account.

The summary in The Southwestern Reporter first included some background information, setting the scene:

Peoria street, in Paola, runs east and west across the tracks of three railroad systems all parallel and lying within a strip of about 200 feet. About 24 passenger trains on those roads cross that street within that many hours, and many more freights. As those tracks are approached from the east the first is a switch of the defendant [Missouri Pacific] running to an elevator standing just west of Peoria street and just east of the switch. Next comes the main track of defendant. Between it and said switch on the north side of the street is a cobhouse used in connection with the elevator. The main track spoken of above curves round that cobhouse to the eastward. About four blocks north of Peoria street is the defendant's station. The regular passenger train was due there at 11:40 a.m.

Now that the description has set the stage, the narrative went on to introduce the main player, our unfortunate John Blain.

Just at noon Blain was proceeding west on the sidewalk on the south side of that street. When he had crossed the switch track and got within 8 or 10 feet of defendant's main track, had he looked westward, he could have seen a train on that main track a distance of 400 or 500 feet. The regular passenger train south bound left the station just at noon, gave two long and two short whistles when about 400 feet from Peoria street, and continued ringing the engine bell from that point until it crossed the street....

This is where the description seemed incredible, making me wonder why it happened the way it did.

Blain proceeded straight ahead without looking for the approach of any train. He was in about two feet of the defendant's main track when someone called to him. He looked back, and, while doing so, was struck by the pilot beam of the engine and knocked about twenty feet.

Right there, at that point in the narrative, I find so many issues that prompt questions. Why, for instance, did he not look before crossing the tracks? Was he not responsive to all the din around him? Was it precisely for such a reason that his ears became deaf to the very signal that was supposed to warn him away? And why was someone calling to him at such a precarious point? Was it, ironically, to warn him to "Look out"?

As a sad postscript to the blow-by-blow, the case summary added,

For about two years there had been an electric bell at that crossing, but for a great portion of the time it had been out of repair, and was out of repair and not working on the day in question.

Although an oversight such as that, on the part of a defendant, would surely now have played a significant role in determining the outcome of the case, that was not so for Mrs. Blain's appeal. The $10,000 she was seeking—depending on which inflation calculator used, representing in today's economy anywhere from $239,000 to $261,000—was not to be awarded to her. The prime determining factor:

When a person, capable of seeing and hearing, in broad daylight, attempts to cross a railroad track in front of a rapidly moving train, without looking or listening for such train, and is struck by it and injured, his own negligence is the proximate cause of his injury....

Despite conceding, in the court's report, that "it was negligence in the defendant to allow the electric bell to be out of repair," that was not enough of a contributing factor to sway the court's decision. Apparently, the indiscretion of the victim of the injury trumped any negligence on the part of the corporation, according to the laws at that time in the state of Missouri, and the widow's appeal was unsuccessful.

That result, of course, put the mother of four young children in a precarious position of her own.   

Gone a-courtin' in the Show-Me State

Though it's only an hour's drive away in today's travel conditions, I don't suppose I had expected a young man who had just moved from Kentucky to Kansas to slip over the border to yet another state to find his bride. Shows you what a poor guesser I am.

By the time we had found John Blain in the 1880 census, the Kentucky native was only seventeen years of age. Of course, it was a few years after that point—actually, closer to the turn of the century—when he began thinking about finding someone with whom to tie the knot, so perhaps by then, he had already scoped out the possibilities in his newly-adopted state and decided to look elsewhere.

If it weren't for those shaky-leaf hints at Ancestry, I wouldn't have given it a thought to look for marriage records for John Blain in Missouri, but that is apparently where he found the love of his life. She was a gal in her late twenties by the name of Harriet Beeman who caught his eye. Living in yet another of those small, rural towns—Walker, in Vernon County, Missouri—Harriet told John "I do" before the local Justice of the Peace on the twenty third of September in the year 1897.

When we found the newlyweds back in Walnut, Kansas, in the next census—taken nearly three years later in June, 1900—John and Harriet were the proud parents of daughter Emma, who had arrived in the Blain household in August of the previous year. As it turned out, baby Emma was to be the first of four daughters. Following her arrival in 1899, she was joined by sisters Rozella in 1902 and twins Vera and Vida in 1906.

By the time of the twins' arrival, their paternal grandmother had already passed away—a sadness not unknown by many young families, certainly, but unlikely to be the impetus for the next occurrence in the life of the Blain family. With the 1905 Kansas state census, we learn that John and Harriet and their children had moved from their rental home in Walnut to another place in an even smaller community about fifty five miles to the north, known as Centerville.

Perhaps it was on account of his business that John moved his family away from Walnut. The 1905 state census reported his occupation to be "hardware." Whether for business or simply to keep in touch with family back home in Walnut, John found himself traveling by train to span the hour's travel distance between his old hometown and the new community. It was on one such trip that life suddenly changed for the entire family.

Beyond the Aftermath

Out of all the people involved as the tragic scene unfolded at the Spragg household in 1894, the one child who escaped without any injuries was David Spragg's step-daughter, Dora Onstott. At least, as far as we can say, no physical injuries—though who knows what psychological burdens she bore for the rest of her life.

This was the ten year old eye witness whose reports became fodder for the more graphic journalism erupting from the December 11 murder-suicide in the small town of Ridgeway, Missouri. Dora was the child who, lying sick in bed as the episode escalated, realized the best course of action was to escape and run for help.

In the aftermath of the crime, she—along with her brother and a step-sister who were not expected to recover from their injuries—were the only ones to have survived the attack that day. Everyone else in the family was now gone.

A traumatic event as sudden and irrevocable as that could surely trigger serious psychological repercussions—something I wondered about as I reviewed what could be found out about the subsequent life events of the other two surviving children. In the case of Ina and Clint, I was actually surprised to discover that they had, indeed, survived the gruesome affair and lived long lives afterwards.

In Dora's case, however, it was easy to presume she would live long after that point. She was, after all, only ten when the murders occurred. I wanted to see what life held for her after that devastating episode.

Unlike her step-sister Ina, whose grandparents took her into their own household, Dora apparently didn't have any such grandparents to extent the customary kindness expected in that time period. I hadn't been able to find out much about her mother—the former Lucinda Wells—except a possible entry in the 1880 census for a fifteen year old daughter of a widow living in Illinois, the state where Lucinda was born. If that widow was the one who later became Dora's maternal grandmother, perhaps by the time of the 1894 tragedy, she was no longer alive.

With no one in her extended family stepping up to offer a home for the orphan, Dora found herself doing the same as many young people in such circumstances then: find work to support herself. In Dora's case, that was as a servant for a family living not far from her home in Ridgeway.

Not long after that point, though, Dora married George Ashley Herbst, a man just two years older than she and born right in Harrison County. By the time of the 1910 census, the Herbst household grew to include three children: daughter Gladys, followed by two sons, Lloyd and Leo.

By 1920, the family had moved to Des Moines, Iowa—possibly so carpenter George could follow construction work. Within the next ten years, though, things did not go well for Dora. Life introduced some changes by the time of the 1930 census. Dora was then listed as the mother of a three year old son—but also listed as a divorced woman who may have had to depend on the earnings of her twenty year old son Leo to make ends meet. Though her husband remarried before the early 1940s, I find no evidence that she had done so.

The last trace I can find of Dora is that of her headstone. In the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Des Moines, Iowa, under a marker proclaiming simply, "Mother," she is, if never before, now at rest. Who knows what tales she took with her, or whether her children—or her grandchildren—knew of the upheaval in her young life. Sometimes, people back then didn't talk about hardships, let alone tragedies. There's no way to know whether this became part of the "heritage" passed down to the current generation. Sometimes, events like these become enveloped in the silence enshrouded by Time.  

His, Hers and Theirs: The Wife is the Key

In trying to determine the reliability of newspaper accounts of what was labeled "the most horrible butchery which ever stained the history of Northern Missouri," I found the easiest way to sort out the children in David Spragg's household was to focus on researching each of his wives. And yet, that very approach led to some complications.

The article I referred to yesterday—that explicit eye-witness report from the Kansas City Times—had said the murderer's wife was named Louisa. Because some of the victims named in the report—her children—had had a different surname, we can surmise that Louisa was the widow of someone named Onstatt.

That, at least, is the conclusion we can draw by the information provided in the newspaper report of the crime. It didn't take long to discover how incorrect that was.

For starters, the unfortunate second wife of the murderous David Spragg was not named Louisa, but Lucinda. And her former married name was likely spelled Onstott, not Onstatt. A minor detail, admittedly, especially during an era in which spelling didn't hold so much importance, but helpful to us as we attempt to reconstruct each family tree.

It didn't help that the Find A Grave entry for David Spragg, while listing several other relationships, did not include a mention of his second wife, at all—only his first wife, who predeceased his rampage by almost exactly three years. Searching Find A Grave's cemetery listing for the Ridgeway cemetery where David was buried brought up only three other Spragg burials: David's first wife and that of his brother—the merchant and newspaper editor we've already mentioned—and his brother's wife. No sign of Louisa.

There are many more ways to discover the details we are seeking, however. One way was to attempt finding Louisa's first husband, Mr. Onstatt. That, however, brought up no results with that spelling. Turning to Ancestry.com in hopes that the one child who had, for sure, survived the melee might be found in subsequent records, I gambled on the newspaper error of eyewitness Dora's surname and searched for Dora Onstatt, rather than Dora Spragg. I estimated her date of birth, based on those same fallible reporters' articles, and came up with a young woman in the 1900 census.

Her name was Dora Onstott. By then sixteen, she was still in Harrison County, Missouri, working as a servant in the home of Charles and Ida Fordyce. One additional clue—that Dora had been born in Illinois—sent me to records in that other state which might reveal a marriage between an Onstott and someone named Louisa.

Well, not quite. It turned out her name wasn't Louisa, after all; it was Lucinda. And on November 3, 1881, in Clay County, Illinois, she had married someone named John J. Onstott.

Sure enough, when I returned to the Ridgeway cemetery to see if there were any Onstotts, that minute revision in the spelling yielded one result: the memorial for John Onstott, who died there in 1892—just over two years prior to the tragedy which took his wife's life.

There was another Spragg wife in that same cemetery, of course: the first wife of David Spragg. Though Orpha Spragg had died in 1891, her children had remained in the Spragg household until the moment at which their father had erupted into his murderous rampage. Documentation from back in Pennsylvania, home state for the couple, showed that David had married Orpha B. Rush on January 22, 1887, in Greene County. They had moved to Harrison County, Missouri, sometime before the birth of their oldest child in 1888.

Having seen, within that one newspaper account, the child who was said to be Dora Spragg turn into Dora Onstott, and the murdered mother turn out to be not Louisa but Lucinda, I wondered what became of the children. Given the record of reporting errors in this case, it was not beyond possibility that some who were thought to have been doomed might actually have survived. One clue already evident in the memorials at Find A Grave gave credence to that theory. The handy device at Ancestry for linking individuals to their parents for later documents such as Social Security applications provided more clues as I put each child's name through the search engine paces at Ancestry. Despite the somber assessment in the Saint Louis Republic that the children "were cared for but...cannot recover," it turned out that there were survivors in the aftermath, after all.    

Deconstructing the Narrative

In the aftermath of a crime, it is no surprise to discover that newspaper reports may have included errors. In the case of a crime so horrific as the one which unfolded at the Spragg farm just outside Ridgeway, Missouri, the rush to report may well have amplified the problem.

For those called in to help as David Spragg went on his rampage in mid-December, 1894, eventually the facts got sorted out. The coroner performed his examination and held an inquest. True to form, the journalists who were all in a rush to get the scoop on December 11—a bloody one, I might add—were mostly silent in the aftermath.

For those of us trying to reconstruct just what happened—not from a forensic, or even from a journalistic, point of view, but from a genealogical standpoint—carefully reviewing each line of the various versions of the Spragg murders eventually pointed to one fact: there were errors in the story.

Since the whole reason I stumbled upon this story was in my pursuit of family history, I find myself having to go back, again and again, to sort out just who had died, and who was only supposed to be mortally wounded.

Initially, one newspaper had carried a version of the story which seemed to keep track of each of the members of the ill-fated family: the Kansas City Times. I started using that to try to build a family tree. We'll begin with that, today, as well, but will have to continue in the next few days with further examination.

Perhaps the reason why the jumble of family names—and fates—seemed so confusing was that there was one other detail in this story, though one which didn't seem to play any part in David Spragg's sudden insanity. That detail was regarding the blended family residing in the Spragg household. Apparently, David Spragg had lost his wife a few years earlier, and, now having remarried, had an infant in common with this second wife, as well as his children from the previous marriage and his second wife's children from her deceased first husband.

Not that this was an unusual occurrence, back in that time period. For our case, though, it introduced a second surname into the narrative, as well as the possibility of mis-identification of parentage for each of the children. Yes, I realize that, in a matter of moments, they all lay dead at the hand of the man (be)heading their household, but remember, I'm solely thinking genealogically, here. I want to be able to correctly identify which child belonged to which parent.

The report in the Kansas City Times was valuable for another reason: it included the eyewitness report of the one family member who had managed to escape: a child whom the newspaper identified as Dora Spragg. Though the Times report was not the one picked up by most wire services across the land, the few papers which did carry it provided a raw snapshot of what unfolded on that bloody afternoon.

It also provided a seemingly straightforward listing of the characters involved in this tragedy. These were laid out in the opening paragraph of the Times report:

In the sitting room of a little farmhouse about ten miles northeast of this place, upon pine boards placed on chairs, lie the dead bodies of David Spragg, Louisa Spragg, his wife, Caleb Spragg and an infant, their children. The head of each is almost severed from the body. The carpet is blood-soaked and the walls besmeared.

These were not the only ones in the Spragg household that day, of course, so despite having that convenient catalog at the very start, this lack of a full census of family members required wading through more gore to isolate the rest of the details I was seeking.

Continuing with their December 12, 1894, report, the Times list provided more specifics of the family members, including their relationships:

All this is the result of David Spragg's frenzy of yesterday. Until that time the family consisted of David Spragg, his wife Louisa, Dora Onstatt, aged 10 years, Clint Onstatt, aged 8 years; Ina Onstatt, aged 6 years, all children of Mrs. Spragg by a former husband; Caleb Spragg, aged 5 years, a child by David Spragg's first wife, and the infant son.

A list like this seems complete enough to go by. After all, what else could we use to double check that report? There no longer remains any 1890 census; none of the children were alive at the time of the 1880 census. And they certainly wouldn't remain long enough to make the 1900 census—at least not in reportable conditions.

As serendipitous as it may seem to stumble upon this handy newspaper listing of the family, don't let that fool you into accepting it as reported. As it turns out, the more I tried to double check the list, the less confident I felt in the news story. Note, for instance, how little Dora—the one providing the eyewitness report of the scene—was called Dora Spragg in one paragraph, and yet her name was given as Dora Onstatt just a bit later. Of course, reading reports, from publication to publication, of how the crime itself unfolded, I realize the rush to report in the heat of the moment may have contributed to an escalating error rate, not just in the deeds but in the names, too.

Though we often place great confidence in the documents which supposedly verify our genealogical conclusion, from the number of times in which those items have proven to be error-prone, it warns us to always—always—double check and even triple check the details. In the absence of those source documents, even as complete a listing as this newspaper report provided cannot tempt us away from our resolve to seek the actual circumstances. While I'm glad to have found this helpful listing in the Times report, it can serve only as a guide to lead me to more accurate information, as we'll see in the next few days.

A "Charming Family"

Why is it that, despite the unfolding of a horrific event, journalists can still paint the perpetrators with the most rose-colored word pictures?

It was after the tragedy which had occurred at the home of "wealthy farmer" David Spragg that reporters from newspapers throughout the midwest descended upon the obscure region where the Spragg family had lived in Missouri. Indeed, in addition to the reports generated by those journalists on the scene, several newspapers picked up the story across the nation—from as far east as New York to San Francisco and Los Angeles on the west coast.

Although not withholding any of the bloody details, the newspapers nevertheless equally packed their narrative with flattering descriptors. While being characterized as insane, David Spragg was also portrayed as a man whom, no doubt, neighbors and townspeople were more likely to recognize.

The Saint Louis Republic called him "an honest and industrious farmer, well-to-do and greatly respected by his neighbors." As a father, he was portrayed as "always indulgent and provident."

Still, such kind euphemisms did not mitigate the fact that, on the afternoon of December 12, 1894, David G. Spragg—a father who, only moments before, had been holding his baby boy and playing with him—"patted the baby gently on the face" and then, suddenly, escalated into what one newspaper dubbed "the most horrible butchery which ever stained the history of Northern Missouri."

Nor did it help to know that the man had had a terrible headache earlier that day. Or that neighbors reflected later, after coming upon the gruesome scene at the Spragg farmhouse, that he had been ill for some time.

Though the event itself erupted on Tuesday, December 11, 1894, by the weekend, the story had gained national coverage. Many of those news reports can still be accessed by searches on such services as NewspaperArchive.com, which retrieved twenty eight stories (likewise for the collection at GenealogyBank), or by accessing National Endowment for the Humanities' Chronicling America site, where a search for David Spragg yielded thirty three results.

With as much care as reporters had taken to present Spragg in favorable terms, they heaped devastation upon the man as well. Carrying out his act with "unconceivable ferocity," David Spragg was said to have been "enraged by the demon of insanity" and engaged in his destruction with the frenzy of "a human monster."

The "demented man"—as the newspaper back in Warren, Pennsylvania, where his brother once served as editor, dubbed him—had been complaining "all morning long" of "an aching head." The closest neighbor, who lived nearly a mile away, had been sent to summon a doctor from town, but before any help arrived, something must have snapped in David Spragg's mind and his behavior changed radically.

He had been noted to have been "never quarrelsome...not an intemperate man...never known to abuse his family." After the brutal devastation he brought upon his family that day in December, he turned upon himself. Inside the house and out of view of the assembled neighbors trying to stop him, two shots signaled the end of the carnage.

Someone had wired for the coroner "and other officers," who came and took charge of the remains. That night, at the conclusion of the inquest, the coroner's determination was that no motive could be found for the murders other than that the man "suddenly became insane."

When I learn of such appalling instances in current events, it sometimes turns out that there was, indeed, some organic cause for such a sudden change in personality and behavior. Of course, back in the 1890s, there may not have been the ability or even the custom to pursue such possibilities. No mention was made of an autopsy in the news reports about David Spragg, for instance. Diagnostic abilities would have been limited, even if one had been performed. No doubt, the people of the town of Ridgeway would have been disturbed to learn of such a tragedy, but would also have had no way to be assured that such devastation was not the result of evil intent, or that it was unlikely to ever happen again without that same underlying cause—whatever it might have been.

Sometimes, when I run across such stories in my pursuit of family history, it causes me to wonder whatever became of those left behind, afterwards. In this case, it was hard to even determine if anyone was left behind. The last line of one newspaper article, having detailed every minute aspect of the crimes, closed its report with the mention of the "two" children who had escaped with their lives: "The two stepchildren who were still alive were cared for, but cannot recover" from their injuries. It was hard, though, in taking in all the various reports, to determine how many had died—and just who they were.

Even seeking their burial records proved fruitless—but enlightening as to just what the aftermath of the tragedy had meant to those in Ridgeway. The only burial record I could locate on Find A Grave, for instance, was that of David Spragg, himself—complete with a copy of one newspaper account of the carnage plastered alongside his memorial.

My question, of course, was: did any family members survive this ordeal? If so, what burden did they carry with them for the rest of their lives? It turns out, thanks both to search capabilities and newspaper repositories online, that there were enough clues tucked between the lines of all those reports and records to find out more about the children.

 

Same Life, Different Towns

There are some times when I more sorely miss the 1890 census, and searching for what became of two of Caleb Spragg's sons is one of those times. Caleb, as we saw yesterday, was a descendant of the well-known Spragg family of Greene County, Pennsylvania—but also a descendant, on his maternal side, of the same William Gordon who was the forebear of my mother-in-law.

Sometime between that 1880 census and the tragedy which struck the family in 1894, Caleb's sons Francis and David chose to move from the place their family had called home for generations. This was not a small move, but one which took them, their wives and children halfway across the continent.

While it might seem reasonable for a farmer such as David Spragg to choose to move for the opportunity to acquire better land, the move didn't make as much sense for his brother Francis. Seven years David's senior, Francis Spragg had chosen a different path for earning his living. Though not much can be found on Francis Spragg—or F. M. Spragg as he sometimes represented himself—there have been a few mentions of him in the capacity of editor. In that era of the late 1800s through the early part of the 1900s, that position of editor—at least for small town newspapers—often included the role of proprietor, as well.

Before leaving Pennsylvania, Francis Spragg apparently was, indeed, just that: editor and proprietor of The Democrat, a small town newspaper in Pennsylvania. Judging from the timeline inferred from his 1900 census entry at his new home in Harrison County, he and his wife Jane had likely arrived in Missouri sometime after the birth of his second son, Lloyd, in 1887, but before the arrival of his only daughter, Frances, in 1890.

It is unclear whether his younger brother had traveled west with him, followed soon afterward—or perhaps had ventured out on his own before Francis ever thought to do so, himself. David Spragg was still in Pennsylvania in 1887, at least according to his marriage license, for that was when he took as his bride the twenty two year old Orpha B. Rush.

By the arrival of their firstborn, Ina Lee, in July 1888, David Spragg and his family were already in Harrison County, Missouri. David and Orpha settled on a farm just outside the small town of Ridgeway, a town of scarcely three hundred people founded only eight years prior and named for an official of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad—perhaps in hopes of currying favor.

Whether David's brother Francis had originally come to Harrison County with the intention of staying in the newspaper business, by the time of the 1900 census, he was listed as a merchant operating a dry goods store in Ridgeway. However, a later account in the History of Harrison County, Missouri, revealed that he and one of his sons—perhaps attorney Earle Gordon Spragg—did eventually purchase the Ridgeway Journal in October of 1909, retaining ownership for the next four years.

While it is not clear how close the two families remained, over the years since their move from Pennsylvania—David outside city limits, working his farm while brother Francis attended to business at his shop—with one irrevocable act in 1894, it became evident that something had befallen Francis' younger brother so quickly that help could not even be gotten for him in time.  

A "Most Substantial" Citizen

Perhaps a lifelong residence in the same small town—a town, incidentally, full of aunts, uncles and cousins of many degrees of relationship—can bestow upon one the air of importance. Or perhaps, it is just within the covers of those 1880s volumes of local history that people achieved that appearance. No matter what the cause, the family of David and Nancy Gordon Spragg seemed to be one of significance in their small home town of Waynesburg, Pennsylvania.

By the time David Spragg had married William Gordon's daughter Nancy in 1826, the town was barely more than three hundred people in population. Even by the time of his death in 1877, the place contained barely twelve hundred people. So perhaps when the Samuel Bates History of Greene County, Pennsylvania called one of David and Nancy's sons "one of Greene County's most substantial citizens," it might be expected that the term was a bit of editorial hyperbole.

Still, that oldest son of David and Nancy—Caleb A. Spragg—was a successful farmer. Noted parenthetically in his father's biographical sketch in the Bates History was one particular assessment of Caleb:

In connection with the raising of stock and the management of his farm of 125 acres, upon which he has bestowed much care and attention, Mr. Spragg has filled various offices in his township, and served as a member of the school board two terms.

David Spragg had named his firstborn son after his own father, a man who had moved his family to Greene County from Trenton, New Jersey. Doubtless, this move had also been one of several family members, as the Spragg surname was big enough in the county to merit a small post office with that very name. Variations on the name Spraggstown often showed up on birth records of descendants of this extended family for generations in Greene County.

The younger Caleb, born in Greene County in 1829, married early and, like his father, had five children of his own—at least by his first marriage. His bride was the former Sarah Johnson, who gave him four sons and one daughter before passing away at the age of fifty one. At her death, Sarah's youngest child—the lone daughter—was barely eighteen, herself, but already married to a Spragg cousin. By that point, Caleb's oldest son, Sylvanus, was a doctor and about to propose marriage, himself.

Of the other three sons, one—William—had become proprietor of Waynesburg's marble works. Another, said to have been a newspaper editor, eventually left home to take a position in far-away Missouri—perhaps following that family penchant for wanderlust we had seen in his maternal grandfather and the Gordon men before him. The other son, a farmer, decided to follow his brother to Missouri, perhaps in hopes of better land.

While the Spragg name in Waynesburg was customarily appended to that phrase, "a prominent Greene County family," a move to Missouri would not bring with it any guarantee of such recognition. That, however, is the move which will capture our attention as we shift our focus to what becomes of the next generation of the Spragg and Gordon descendants from Waynesburg.

Above: 1876 photograph of Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, courtesy Greene County Historical Society, via Greene Connections Item #GCHS-AN027-0001-0000.

Couldn't Have Found This Without Some Help

The one clear line I have, delineating a dividing point before which Captain John Whistler couldn't have married the widow Elizabeth Howard Ijams, comes with a date concerning John Whistler's first wife. As we saw yesterday, some time during John's return trek northward from Newport Barracks to Fort Wayne, he received word that Anna Whistler had died, back at the Kentucky post, on April 25, 1814.

Where John Whistler was, when he emerged from mourning the loss of his wife to decide upon marrying Elizabeth Ijams, I still can't tell. Was it while he was still at Fort Wayne? Could he have returned to Newport Barracks to reclaim family property? Or had his wife died while in transit to her former home at Fort Wayne?

Complicating matters are the conflicting dates given for Whistler's various assignments while in the military. After his honorable discharge in 1815, one other note in Heitman's Register gives us some bearings as to Whistler's whereabouts: on March 5, 1817, he was again appointed to the position of military storekeeper, but this time not at Newport Barracks. This time, he was stationed at Fort Belle Fontaine, the post on the Mississippi River near Saint Louis—the very place where John Jackson was now stationed.

Try as I might, I had not been able to find any record of Elizabeth's second marriage to the Captain—not any more than I had been able to locate records for her daughter Sarah's marriage to John Jackson.

After reviewing my old notes from the first time I had tackled this problem—remember, I had started this project nearly three years ago, just before some major family upheavals—I rediscovered a few things. First, that the wonderful resource of Cheryl Whistler Garrison's online notes came to us, thanks to the research prowess of Intense Guy, who sent me the link back in December of 2012.

I've certainly used that online material several times—truth be told, coveting Cheryl's possession of that letter from a descendant of Nancy Jackson, the daughter of John and Sarah Howard Jackson, which Cheryl had mentioned in her notes. The other day I finally realized, despite the most recent update to Cheryl's notes being back in 2006, that she had included contact information.

I emailed her, hoping that address was still valid. And held my breath.

In the meantime, in reviewing all those old notes and posts, I also came across a comment sent in 2014 from someone identified only as "Sunderland-Ijams Researcher," providing a totally unexpected location for the Whistler-Ijams marriage. Whoever that kind soul is, I'd love to express my gratitude for the help. I would never have suspected that marriage had occurred back in Ohio, but according to that comment, two resources claimed that was so.

The only drawback: Elizabeth's surname was spelled "Yuas."

Think I should buy it?

According to records digitized at FamilySearch, John Whistler and Elizabeth Howard Ijams were married on March 12, 1817 in Fairfield County, Ohio. Elizabeth's name in the margin looks a little bit more like Ijams than it does in the official entry itself, but hers was a surname for which there were historically many name variations, anyhow.

The trip back from Saint Louis , as described in newspaper and book entries published long since the time of its occurrence in the early 1800s, had left me confused about the true date and location of each couple's marriage—both that of widow Elizabeth and Captain Whistler, and her daughter Sarah and John Jackson. Despite all the help I had received back in 2012, it had not yet painted the full picture for me. After all, those articles identified Jackson's bride as only "an Ijams, a sister of..." and not much more. How could I rely on information like that to lead me to the correct dates and places for each of the two marriages?

That's what made it so helpful to hear from another researcher. Someone like Cheryl—with that letter she received which I so wanted to read in its entirety—could perhaps fill in the blanks in my many questions about the various Ijams marriages.

Above: From the Fairfield County, Ohio, Marriage Records, the entry showing the union of John "Whisler" and Elizabeth "Yuas" on the 12th day of March, 1817; image courtesy FamilySearch.org.

Remembering My Mission

It is all very well and good to discover the context in which my husband's fourth great grandfather served during and after the War of 1812. Uncovering the history of the several captains under whom he served certainly illuminated my understanding of the times and places of his service. But that was not my original intention when I first launched into that study.

What I really was seeking was an explanation of just how John Jay Jackson, who ended his tour of duty in a fort near Saint Louis, had met up with the woman who was to become his bride. That woman happened to have recently lost her father, and with her widowed mother, somehow—incredibly, in my mind—had journeyed through the wilderness from her home in central Ohio to the fort where she eventually met John Jackson.

What would have possessed two women to make such a journey during those times? After all, this wasn't a story of two friends deciding to take a flight across country for a resort vacation together. Such a journey in the early 1800s—especially after a war—was bound to be a risky venture.

As it turns out, though, I've partly become a captive of my own assumptions, for believe it or not, even in those western outposts and traveling along with expeditions pressing further into the unexplored territories west of the Mississippi, women were part of the company.

I got my first glimpses of reports faulting my assumption while searching for further biographies on Jackson's many captains. The first hint—and one example of how the women were right there, alongside the men during those pioneer days—was found in the narrative mentioning the massacre in Indiana territory and Captain John Morris' tragic loss. The "Pigeon Roost Settlement" included not only women along with the men, but several children, as well. It wasn't just soldiers and adventurers who headed west in those early days. It was families.

But Sarah Howard Ijams was not traveling to Saint Louis with her entire family. After all, she had just lost her father. This would not be an instance to compare with her situation.

A 2001 book published by the Montana Historical Society, Wheel Boats on the Missouri, which we had reviewed while checking into details on Charles Pentland, gave a few more clues about women out west, including these orders from Brigadier General Henry Atkinson (on page 71):

The company women left behind by the companies forming the brigade, are to be quartered in the Fort and protected by the commandant of the Post, in their allowances and priviledges [sic] agreeably to Army regulations, and that no mistake may arise in the absence of the Company Officers they will respectively make out monthly returns for their company women entitled to rations, and deposit them with the Ass. Commy of Subsce who will issue upon them respectively.

A footnote followed up with the explanation at the bottom of the page:

The order refers to the laundresses who lived at the fort. Many of them were wives of enlisted men.

Another clue about the presence of women in these unexpected circumstances came from an online reprint of Sally A. Johnson's "Cantonment Missouri, 1819-1820," originally appearing in the June, 1956, edition of Nebraska History. Page 125 mentioned the weather diaries kept by the two surgeons of the Rifle Regiment and the Sixth Infantry, explaining the need to be aware of the extreme cold temperatures of the winter months.

It was essential in such weather that the rooms, occupied not only by the soldiers but also by their women and children, be heated.

The Johnson report explained that, in the course of service at that outpost of the Yellowstone Expedition, "whiskey was a regular portion of the rations issued to the U.S. soldier." Apparently, that largesse extended to those working alongside the company, as well, for

On February 15, 1820, Sarah Fox, a washerwoman of Light Company B, was tried before a regimental court martial. She was charged with "throwing and depositing in front of the Quarters of Light Company A 6th Infantry, and within the limits of its own police, a quantity of foul and dirty water on or about the 14th..." The prisoner, pleading guilty, was sentenced to a stoppage of her whiskey rations for ten days, which rations were then appropriated for the use of the company to which she belonged. She was also ordered to be present when her sentence was read at the first Regimental Parade.

Readers may be relieved to note that, according to the footnote on page 128 of Johnson's report,

In consideration of her former correct conduct and general good character, the part of her sentence as regarded her appearance before a Regimental Parade was remitted.

So, what does this mean? That women were present at these military outposts on the edge of the wilderness? Does this mean that Sarah Howard Ijams and her widowed mother were so destitute after William Ijams' passing, that they sold themselves down river as laundresses at the fort in Saint Louis?

That may not be so far-fetched a conclusion as it seems at face value. According to the website of the historical re-enactment group of the Regiment of U.S. Riflemen, not only women but even children could be "officially attached" to the army, drawing pay and rations—although as we've already seen, they were

officially part of the military unit and as such subject to military rules and discipline.

 
First lesson learned in all this, for me at least, is to never rely solely upon my assumptions that the way things are now is the same as they've always been. A follow-up corollary is to use the same skills developed over years of historical and genealogical research to provide a self-serve primer on the fuller context of the time period, its customs and norms, no matter what new realms I'm entering.

Face it: I delved into this puzzle about John Jackson and how he met his wife, knowing very little about the military and almost nothing about the War of 1812—other than that a coalition of very generous groups and individuals were committed to making a digitized version of the pension papers freely available to all. By harnessing the power of the Internet, I'm now starting to have the slightest inkling of what might well have happened to connect two individuals from nearly-opposite sides of a fledgling country.

Even so, something more seems to be missing from this story. I still haven't found the answer to my question... 
   

Above: Crossing the River Platte, 1871 oil on canvas by Thomas Worthington Whittredge; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Creative Spelling, Part III

...in which we almost neglect to include mention of a key player, for lack of the correct spelling of his surname...

If you have been counting, as I rattle off the captains listed on John Jay Jackson's War of 1812 pension papers, you may have noticed someone had been left out of the tally. If so, I heartily congratulate you on your keen powers of observation. 

As it turns out, by some sleight of hand, I had inserted the name of the officer whose signature actually appeared on Jackson's discharge papers—Charles Pentland—because his name kept appearing in tandem with that of Captain Magee. Perhaps that had thrown off the count.

However, there was another reason for the count being off: I was rescued, just in the nick of time, from having to leave off yet another captain from this exploration of ancestral military duties. If it hadn't been for my penchant for getting lost in dictionaries and other volumes of the like, I wouldn't even have found Captain William Le Dufphey's entry.

So it is that, encouraged by that spelling conquest, I returned to the ever-helpful Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army to see if the one missing Captain from John Jackson's list could be recaptured.

The captain I was missing was surnamed "McGonigle." I honestly had hated to concede being unable to locate that name. I was pretty confident there was another way to spell that name—mainly because McGonagle is a surname that figures prominently in my husband's own paternal family line. If it hadn't been for the McGonagles of Perry County, Ohio, my Chicago-born father-in-law likely wouldn't have met his future bride. I thought it was a snap that the reason I couldn't find any War of 1812 officers by the name McGonigle was because it was really supposed to be spelled McGonagle.

How wrong I was.

Struggling through the discovery, the other day, that "Duffy" should really have been spelled Dufphey—and really, how was I to know?—gave me the courage to face the possibility that Captain McGonigle's absence from Heitman's Register might be owing to a higher intelligence than I ever hoped to attain. At least, a higher creativity at spelling.

I was right. Giving myself free rein to explore the Register—it is, after all, a type of dictionary—I finally found my man. Entered under the spelling McGunnegle, there he was: Pennsylvanian James McGunnegle, rising through the ranks of the United States Army as early as January, 1812. As First Lieutenant and paymaster, he was transferred to the Regiment of Riflemen on May 17, 1815, and attained the rank of captain in July, 1818.

With a little Google reconnaissance work, I found a few other mentions of Captain McGunnegle, who seemed now very much not invisible, thanks to having secured the actual spelling of his name. He had been mentioned in some court proceedings regarding his decisions while serving as quartermaster. His name came up in a case argued before the Missouri Supreme Court, in regard to some property he had once acquired. I even found a reference to someone bearing his name in an unusual Who's Who type collection listing the women of Pittsburgh. While this capricious entry likely does not refer to the James McGonnegle we are interested in (more likely, one of his nephews), it's worth a brief detour through the pages of The Social Mirror: A Character Sketch of the Women of Pittsburg and Vicinity, anyhow.

Mrs. Maria McGunnegle, wife of the late James McGunnegle, lives in Allegheny, and is a descendant of one of the oldest families of the county.

As had some of the other military officers stationed at the outpost in the early years of Saint Louis, Captain McGunnegle likely saw opportunity headed his way and jumped at the chance to capitalize on it. Mentioned in a biographical sketch of his nephew, it was quite obvious he was in the right place at the right time. His nephew, George Kennedy McGunnegle, was also born in Pennsylvania,

and in 1821, he went to St. Louis, Mo., where he was engaged as clerk for his uncle, Capt. James McGunnegle, of the United States Army, then Quartermaster of that military district.

Whatever dreams the captain may have entertained, along with his successful nephew, for future endeavors in that land of opportunity, however, were short-lived. Not long after attaining the rank of Captain, while still in the service, James McGunnegle died on 27 August, 1822. While I can find his name, thanks to Google, in all sorts of books about obscure court cases and land transactions dating back to that decade, I have yet to find any statement giving mention of his passing while still in the service of the United States Army. 
   

Above: "The Falls of Saint Anthony," oil on canvas, circa 1880, by Albert Bierstadt, German-born landscape painter of the American West; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Those Others Among Whom We Circulate

One name, among those officers under whom John Jay Jackson served during and following the War of 1812, has provided me more resources than that of the others. That name was Charles Pentland.

Though he wasn't a captain to whom John Jackson reported, Charles Pentland's name was the one appearing on Jackson's near-destroyed discharge papers—in particular, the one to which the note was affixed in his pension file,

Hold this discharge up to the light and the genuine Signature of S. C. Pentland will be seen.

Pentland, serving as ensign in the 4th Rifles at about the time John Jackson enlisted in the army in 1814, was a Pennsylvania-born military man who rose in the ranks to first lieutenant at about the time John Jackson was eventually discharged from his post near Saint Louis in 1818.

Though he was present in the same company in which Jackson served for, likely, most of his service in the rifle regiment, that is not the main reason for my focus on him, today. Pentland's value—at least to our exploration of a fuller picture of the context in which Jackson served—was in his diligent journaling of the various military expeditions in which he was involved.

In tracing the whereabouts of Pentland—and thus, likely, of my husband's fourth great grandfather—his was the name most likely to come up in searches for the names of all Jackson's military leaders. More than Morris, more than "Birdsell," more than "Duffy" and more than McGonigle, with the exception of Captain Magee, the name I encountered the most in my searches was that of Pentland.

There is good reason for this. In all the far-ranging expeditions in which Pentland was involved—from Pittsburgh to Saint Louis to the outer reaches of the Missouri and associated rivers, in territory later to become the states of Nebraska and the Dakotas—he kept a journal.

His observations were perpetuated by means of copybooks, many of which in annotated form have found their way into the collections of various university archives. March of the Pittsburgh Blues Copybook now is a part of the holdings at the University of Pittsburgh, where it provides an excerpt from the Pentland journals detailing the length and destination of the unit's daily marches, brief accounts of battles and number of casualties incurred in the year beginning September 10, 1812.

Another resource extracted a brief schedule from Pentland's journal of that same year, giving an overview of the year's activities during the war. 

Of course, that was before John Jackson's enlistment in the 4th Regiment of Riflemen, so it doesn't provide information pertinent to his own history. But it does give an idea of the daily routine Jackson was about to enter, as his service likely involved the same types of establishment or repair of forts along the tributaries of the upper Mississippi River.

Immediately after his discharge, Jackson's regiment continued that type of work in its assignment to establish a string of army fortifications along the Missouri River in such forays as the Yellowstone Expedition. Among other contemporaneous records, the orderly books of the Rifle Regiment provide excerpts of the events in the construction of Cantonment Missouri, the first of the projected outposts.

Likewise, the names of Jackson's former superiors Pentland and Magee once again began appearing in tandem in reports of expeditions contained in the journals of other military men. Often, I would find entries on their names inserted as footnotes in transcriptions of those journals. Those footnotes, in turn, invariably were lifted from Heitman's Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army.

Though again not directly involving John Jackson, these descriptions of the territory covered and the forts established during the expeditions were likely similar to the assignments in which Jackson engaged during his own tour of duty.

Two additional names often cropped up in addition to those of Magee and Pentland in such reports: that of Stephen Harriman Long and Stephen Watts Kearny. The Kearny journal has since been published, as well as reports of Long's expedition, in various excerpts.

In the fourth quarterly of the 1919 Nebraska History and Record of Pioneer Days, an article on "Three Military Heroes of Nebraska" explained the mission of one such expedition:

On the second of July, 1820, an exploring party started from Cantonment Missouri...to discover a route across country between that post and Fort Snelling.... The expedition proper comprised Captain Matthew J. Magee and First Lieutenant Charles Pentland of the Rifle Regiment....

The author of the article, Albert Watkins, explained that Captain Stephen Kearny accompanied the expedition but was not a part of it, noting

Probably because Captain Kearny kept a journal of the expedition, it has often been said that he led it.

The author also went on to surmise on the real goal of such army expeditions:

The fact that the route approximately paralleled the subsequent lines of railroads from Omaha to Saint Paul at no great distance from them, and that the captain pronounced the region through which it ran as incapable "of supporting more than a thinly scattered population," impeached his judgment, putting him in the same class with Major Long, who proved himself a false prophet in the same way and year.

Though Major Long had once dismissed the area of his exploration as the "Great Desert," and the originating Yellowstone Expedition—at least in a biographical sketch on its commander, Henry Atkinson—was intended by the government to be a warning to British traders and Indians in the upper Missouri country, records generated by these and related expeditions serve as the few windows allowing us to look upon the military service of our ancestors during those early American decades for which military documentation was not as readily available.

Above: Map of North America detailing the approximate area of the 1803-1804 Louisiana Purchase west of the Mississippi River, prepared for the American edition of Pinkerton's Atlas, published in Philadelphia in 1818 by Thomas Dobson & Company; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.