Lyons and Knapps and Bears

I've been working on Phyllis's family for a while now.  There are Lyons and Lyon.  There are Knapps.  There are ties and cross-ties and shirt-tail relations everywhere, all close by.  Phyllis lived her whole married life not 3 miles from the cemetery where her biological mother's people are buried.  That to me is beyond sad.  It's a tragedy. 

Phyllis's mother's name was Louise Knapp.  Louise's parents lived in Howard City, a few streets away from Jack's Knapp family.  There is no doubt in my mind that the families knew each other.  Phyllis's grandparents, George and Anna May White Knapp, were of a younger generation than Orlando Knapp, Jack's great-grandfather.  George and Anna named all their daughters with names starting with "L".  There was Lila and Lillian and Louella (which was also the name of Bruce's step-grandmother; Louella Jones Knapp) and Louise. 

Anna May was born in Deerfield Township, Mecosta County, Michigan in 1882.  Her father died somewhere around 1885 or so.  Her mother remarried and then died in 1887.  I can't find Anna until 1903 when she marries George Knapp.  I can find her two sisters, though.  Her older sister died in 1899 of Typhoid Fever.  Her younger sister lived with their mother's single brother and their step-grandmother, John and Mary Lyons. 

I went to the Altona Cemetery and found the Lyons, though I did not find a tombstone for Daniel Lyons, brother of Mary J Lyons White, mother of Anna.  It is a large plot and I'm sure he's buried there, but without a headstone, I can't say for sure.  It has crossed my mind to call the Youngman funeral home in Lakeview, just up the road, and see if they have any old records.  They did all the burying for the Lyons family. 

Maybe I will do that...

Josie E Wilder Seeley Casey

 

I have finally been able to find the date of my great-grandmother's sister's death.  Josie Wilder was the older sister of Eva Bell Wilder Lemon.  Eva died in her 30's of burns suffered when the gasoline stove she was cooking breakfast on exploded in 1901.  She had two siblings; Charles Edgar Wilder and Josie E Wilder.  Both her siblings were born in New York before the family migrated to Michigan where Eva was born in 1867, 10 years after her sister Josie.

 

I've been trying to find Josie for many years now.  She just disappeared after the 1880 census.  The only clue I had was in the obituary for her mother, Calista Maria Lewis Wilder, which stated that Josie was in Pittsburg in 1919, the year her mother died.  I couldn't find her in the Pittsburg, PA census for any year.  It turns out that her husband, Lyman Seeley, died in 1890 and she remarried a man named John B. Casey.  I found her while I was researching Josie's father's sister, Mary Wilder Smith.  Mary Wilder, Bernard Wilder's older sister, married William V. Smith and had a daughter, Ada Jane Smith.  Ada Jane Smith married Samuel T. Lyke.   I discovered that Samuel T. Lyke married Josie's daughter, Mabel H Seeley.  I hadn't known that Josie had two daughters, I was only aware of one, Gertrude Seeley.  But when I plugged Mabel's name into the Family Search web site, there she was, the daughter of "Jessie" and Lyman Seeley, born in Macomb County, Michigan.  That means that Samuel was first married to Mable's 2nd cousin.  It gets confusing.  The relation is on Samuel's first wife's side:  his wife's mother was the sister of Mabel's grandfather, Josie's father, Bernard Wilder.

 

How odd to find Josie by accident!  She was living with her daughter, Mabel H Lyke, in the 1930 census.  The little hints on the side of the census record listed Josie Wilder and I eventually put everything together.  What a happy day!  I remember the feeling when I kept stumbling across Josie, thinking, "This can't be right."  But it was. 

 

Now I have documented every member of the Bernard Wilder/Calista Maria Lewis union, the parents of my paternal great-grandmother, Eva Bell Wilder Lemon. 

 

I bet Uncle Dick is shaking his head and saying, "For a Smart Cookie, it sure took you long enough!"

New Findings

 

Been a while since I updated this blog.  That's okay, because it's not like anyone other than me actually reads the dang thing.  :) 

 

Anyway.  I was talking about Knapper's mother's birth family.  I was wrong about Robert Wayne Purcell being her father.  I found her real father with all four of Phyllis' siblings living in Kent county, married to a woman named Georgia.  His name was Donald J Purcell.  I believe the "J" stands for "Joseph", but I have no way to know for sure.  I do know that Phyllis' only biological brother was named for both his grandfathers, his name being Edward George Purcell.  The Edward was for his grandfather, Edward Purcell, Donald's father, and the George was for his mother's father, George Knapp.

 

It's nice to have that mystery solved.  It was driving me crazy for a while.

 

I was also able to confirm that Mary Jane Lyons, Phyllis' great grandmother on her mother's side, was the daughter of a man named Michael Lyons, who was born in Ireland.  Her father's side was also from Ireland. 

 

Mary Jane Lyons married Edward White, who was born in England and emigrated to Ontario, Canada.  There are related White and Lyons families in the Mecosta county, Michigan, township living close to them. 

 

It's funny, but the people I want most to find end up being the hardest to find.  I don't know when Mary Jane Lyons White died or where she's buried.  I don't know exactly when Edward White died or where he's buried.  I have been able to find the siblings of these two people and know when and where they died, and even know where they're buried.  It gets frustrating.

 

I'm working now on cleaning up my ancestry.com tree, which is linked to the software on my computer that holds all the information on all these families.  I'd like to upload all the information into my genealogy site. 

 

I think that's going to take a while.

 



Irony, Thy Name Is Genealogy

Or Something

So I'm working on Knapper's mother's biological family.  She was adopted as an infant by the Wheelers of Coral, Montcalm County, Michigan.  Her birth mother was Louise Knapp.  There's a strange coincidence right there.  So his mother was born Phyllis Knapp.  Her birth mother, Louise, had 4 more children with Phyllis's father between 1930 and her death in 1935 at the age of 24 of pneumonia.  The death record I found listed her name as Louise Purcell, but she's buried in a Newaygo County cemetery as Louise Knapp.

I have found in the census records a man of the right age to be the father of her children: Robert Wayne Purcell.  He died in 1937.  I can find no census records of Phyllis' brother and sisters.  I don't know who raised them all after the deaths of their parents.  That's a mystery to which I may never discover the answer.  Sort of like Abner Lemon. 

But I was doing research on Phyllis' mother's side of the family, the Knapps.  Anna May White married George Knapp.  George Knapp's mother was Mary Pamelia Lindsley.  It's her side I'm researching tonight.  Mary Pamelia had a sister named Elsie.  Elsie married a man named Robert Tawney from Newaygo.  His mother was Martha Jane Wright, the sister of Guy Wright, who was the father of Zelma Wright, who was the mother of Jack Hazen Knapp, the husband of Phyllis Knapp Wheeler Knapp.  How odd.  Knapper's family used to go to Wright reunions.  I wonder if Phyllis ever met the Tawneys?

Life is a series of strange coincidences.

Things I Desperately Want

 

1. Access to the CD/DVD of the Richmond Review newspaper in Macomb County, Michigan for 1927 and 1928.  Those have the obituaries of Frank William Lemon, son of the brother of my great-grandfather, and the brother himself, John M Lemon.  I will find a way to read those.

2. Access to the obituary of John Clayton Lemon Jr., the grandson of John M Lemon. 

LEMON, John C; 79; Pontiac MI; Oakland Press; 1997-6-17; themike.  Who is "themike"?  How do I contact him?  Is he related to John Clayton Lemon Jr?

3. Access to the article "The Isaac Lemon Bible" in Oakland County Genealogy group's newsletter, "Acorns to Oaks."  My great-grandfather lived in Oakland County.  His name was Isaac Lemon.

4.To read the will of Abner Lemon.  There was a probate notice in the Mount Clemons Monitor dated 28 Sep 1900. 

5. To find death records for Isaac M and Ann Elizabeth Tiffin Lemon, who supposedly died in Goderich, Huron County, Ontario, Canada in 1873 and 1871, respectively.  I cannot find them in any Goderich Cemetery, or any York, Ontario, Canada cemetery, where they were married.

Doesn't seem like much to want, but it is. 

Jennie B Lemon

 

Had a major breakthrough this morning.  First, let me just say that I LOVE  www.familysearch.org.  They rock.  They are not without mistakes or problems, but they still rock.  This morning I plugged in "Lemon" and "Michigan" and found the marriage record of Jennie B Lemon.  There was not a lot of information other than she was born in Canada in 1865 (which was wrong), and that Isaac Lemon (my great-grandfather) and Francis Kinney were witnesses to her wedding to Almon B. Carter in Romeo, Macomb County, Michigan in 1886.  That was exciting enough, but then I couldn't find her in the census after 1900.  I found Almon, but he was with another wife.  In Chesaning, Michigan.  What??  Then I found records that showed Jennie died in Chesaning in 1902.  That was REALLY exciting because I could find her death certificate online.  Which I did.

Almon Carter gave the information for her death certificate.  He stated her father was "Isic", which the people at the Library of Michigan deciphered as "Ira" and her mother was "Marie Tiffin".  Yes, I was very excited.  I still am.  Jennie died of tuberulosis of the lungs and bowels and "paralysis of the heart."  She had had no children.  That was the saddest part for me.  How wonderful it would have been if I'd been able to find more "cousins." 

My great-grandfather and his wife, Isaac B and Eva B Wilder Lemon, named their youngest daughter Jennie V Lemon.  She also died young, before even having married, though she was of age to.  I believe they named her for Isaac's sister, Jennie B.

The Lemmon Tree...Again

 

I started this tree because down in Macomb County, a Lemmon female married a Ruby male.  Interesting, I thought.  I wonder if they're related to me and mine?  The Lemmons are, specifically, Orra Lemmon, daughter of Isaac Lemmon and Melvina Green.  Isaac and Melvina were from New York and moved to Michigan sometime before 1850, where they appear for the first time in Macomb County Census records.  They appear to originate in Lyons, Wayne County, New York, or at least, that's where I found Isaac Lemmon Sr. 

The most interesting thing about this Isaac Lemmon family is they have a son named John B Lemmon, born in 1848 and census records have him being born in Michigan.  Abner Lemon (remember Abner, the brother to my 2nd great-grandfather?), who died in 1900, had the information on his death certificate related to place of birth and parents, given by John B Lemon.  John B knew Abner's father was Baltis (and spelled it exactly that way, which is the way Baltis's mother intended it, as he is named after her brother, Baltis Titman.), though he didn't know Abner's mother's name was Mary Mendenhall, which is ironic.  Abner was a family name for Mary Mendenhall.  The children born to Baltis and Mary all had family names from both sides: Lemons and Mendenhalls.

So my spidey-senses tingle and I'm sure these Lemmons are related to my Lemons from Pennsylvania and Canada. 

The Rubys interesect this family, as I said, through Orra Lemmon, daughter of Isaac and Melvina, sister of John B.  She married Charles H Ruby, son of Thomas Ruby, who was the son of Elisha Ruby and Lucy Clark.  Elisha and Lucy came to Macomb County by way of New York also.  What's interesting here is that the brother of my great-grandfather's wife, Eva Belle Wilder Lemon (wife of Isaac, father of Russell Tiffen, father of my father, Russell Raymond Lemon) married a woman named Mary Jane Clark in Macomb County.  Her parents were Andrew and Eunice Cory Clark, and they are the right ages to be related to Lucy Clark.  Were Andrew Clark and Lucy Clark Ruby related?