Carr Family

 The Carr family is one of my older lines in my family tree thanks in large part to a book on the Carr family that one can find and read in various places over the internet. According to it, four Carr brothers came over in the early 1600's, landing in Plymouth, Massachusetts and the rest, as you might say, is history. Unfortunately, I have not documented anything in the book so the earliest Carr ancestor I can verify is Benjamin Carr. He was born in Maryland shortly after the start of the Revolutionary War and ended up in Indiana by his death 75 years later. His will is preserved online in which he lists his very large family in detail, including my 4th great grandfather Balis (seen above) who received a $400 inheritance. Benjamin evidently wasn't literate as his will is signed with an 'X' but he was to be the last illiterate person in that line of my family tree.

Balis would spend the first 35 years of his life around home where he married wife Sarah Jones whom gave birth to all eight of their children. Two years after the birth of their youngest, the family showed up in eastern, Iowa near the "New Virginia" settlement and my Smith family. Balis' mom had died a couple years before the birth of Balis' last child but his father Benjamin was still alive and would be for another 5 to 7 years depending on dates. So I suspect the reason for his departure from the rest of his family was like so many before him. Too little land back home to support such a large family and the availability of lots of cheap lands opening up in the west, in this case Iowa.

On a side note to this history, my 4th great grandmother Sarah Jones, wife of Balis Carr, is a dead end branch on my family tree. Since their marriage occurred in 1840, I don't have a record that records the names of her parents and like many of my dead end branches, there are a number of Jones families in the area that could fit the bill. It will probably take a trip out there and a deep dive into the Jones family history to ever figure out which ones are my 5th great grandparents, a task that will have to wait for another day(s).

Balis Carr picked up his old profession of farming and became quite successful at it here in Iowa at least according to Census records. Their kids would all grow up and live full lives as far as I can tell. But again for reasons, I had never found out, after the last of his kids had left the family home and Balis was beyond the age of 61, he and wife Sarah packed up and moved to a small town in west central Iowa where they spent their last remaining years and are both buried there in a cemetery I have yet to visit.

If I understand the above correctly, the article above sounds as if Balis was unable to pay the notes he used to obtain the some land and essentially defaulted on them. But according to the census record of 1860, he still has a real estate value of $5000 and personal property value of $800. The 1870 census has the real estate value dropping down to $3500 but the personal property value increasing to $1800. So I am left to the conclusion that whatever happened as a result of defaulting on the above loans, he still owned and kept some land for another 20+ years. 

Clementine Carr

Above is the oldest daughter of Balis and my third great grandmother Clementine Carr, the story of which I mentioned in a previous recent post. She would marry Abraham Smith, my third great grandfather and part of the circular loop I have in my family tree, also mentioned in a previous recent post. For years I also didn't have a picture of Abraham until I was checking out a biography of him in a county history book and happened to slip to the page preceding his biography and see that there was a picture of him. I have always thought he looked a bit ornery in this one and only picture I have of him. The biography of him lists Abraham as being "public-spirited and enterprising", perhaps a more polite way of saying ornery. Whatever you called it, he held lots of public offices over the years and was listed as being in high regard upon his death at the early age of 61. 

Wife Clementine lived an even shorter life dying at the age of 32 after only having two children, one of them being my 2nd great grandfather Frank Smith. Abraham would remarry after Clementine to a Canadian by the name of Amanda Jordan who would bear four more children, three of which survived to adulthood. Abraham was buried with his second wife Amanda in the old Smith cemetery which I have visited and paid my respect too. I probably was close enough to pay my respects to Clementine too though I never could identify her gravestone. While all the Smith family had nice granite tombstones, there were a handful of marble tombstones which were all but unreadable by the time I was there.