Riverbend Journal

  1860 Plat Map of Springfield, Mercer, Pennsylvania I recently discovered this plat map dated 1860 of Mercer County, Pennsylvania showing where my 4th and 5th great grandfathers, both named Adam Grim, lived. (Bottom third and left of center next to the color changed notch.) This is significant because both go missing from between 1850 and 1880 leading to a great confusion between armchair genealogists that often combine them into one person. I wrote about this a year and a half ago here. In 1860, my 5th great grandfather Adam Grim Sr. is likely dead but his son was most likely living at the site of his mill along the Indian Run river that is a tributary to the larger Nashannock Creek that you can see more clearly in the above map. Adam A. Grim Jr. though was very much alive as he is living with two different children in the 1880 Census taken a few week apart. Why he never shows up in the 1860 or 1870 Censuses, I can't say for sure. Perhaps because of his itinerant nature, possibly...

  Above is the tombstone for Ann Chicken which I had to probe though the pine needles and other debris to eventually find and unbury. I had known that it was there by previously seeing an online picture that had been taken by someone else and posted on the genealogy website Find-A-Grave. According to the credits, it had been posted on their site in 2016 but judging by the severe deterioration between my photo above taken in 2018, I suspect it had been taken many many years earlier. It says: Ann Wife of Joseph Chicken Was Born Aug 10, 1812 Died (Here is where the tombstone is broken obscuring what had been etched into it) Frances Daughter of J & A Chicken Born Apr 10, 1851 Died Feb 11, 1858 At the time, I didn't know much about Ann and up until recently, still hadn't. But now that it is cooling off a bit and outside work slowing down, I decided to remedy that. I didn't know much about my 4th great grandmother other than her name was Ann and that she died sometime in the ...

Forty-five minutes after being given lengthy instructions on how they were supposed to analyze the case against Lant McComb, the jury came back with their decision which was presented to Judge Trimble by the jury foreman, H.D. Hall. We, the jury, find the defendant GUILTY of murder in the first degree.  The defendant's lawyers immediately filed a motion for a new trial. The court appointed the following Tuesday morning for sentencing and recessed for the evening. On June 13, 1864, court resumed at 8 a.m. with Judge Trimble once again presiding. The Judge directed that prisoner be brought into the court and the Sheriff did so. B.A. (Lant) McComb was directed to stand up and Judge Trimble passed the following sentence upon him: "Benjamin A. McComb, you have been charged by indictment in due form found and presented to this court by a grand jury of the county of Wapello in the State of Iowa, with one of the highest crimes known to the law - the crime of murder. To this indictment...

  I have somewhat tracked down the answers to the questions I posed at the end of my previous post on the orphan William W. Taylor who was adopted by my 3rd great grandparents Stephen B. and Frances M. Hubbard Cogswell from a New York orphan train.  Willie's mother died in 1876 at the age of 31 and I have been unable to turn up anything at all about his father. Willie and his two fellow orphan brothers were put on an orphan train which made it's way west until they were adopted by three farm families who all attended the same small church with the thought that they could visit each other on Sunday. Eventually Willie and younger brother Richard would emigrate to Iowa along with their adoptive families. In another instance of a small world, Willie would apprentice as a leather smith in another 3rd great grandfather John Kuck's leather shop. Dates are a bit iffy on the apprenticeship so by then, it could have been run by John's brother Frederick or even John's son Geor...

  Stephen Bush Cogswell Above is a picture of my 3rd great grandfather Stephen Bush Cogswell. It is the only known picture of him that I possess and is a scan of a newspaper clipping that is pasted in my 2nd great grandmother's memory book that I inherited many years ago. I have written about my photo project of all my 3rd great grandparents on down, and as part of that, I decided to look for a better image and/or simply to source this newspaper clipping. I was successful in sourcing the newspaper clipping which turned out to be the Rockford Register published in Rockford, Floyd county, Iowa on 1 Nov 1906 on page two. Unfortunately, the commercially scanned image on the website is much worse than this scan that I made personally from the clipping my 2nd great grandmother saved. While looking for the picture, I came across a couple articles showing that my 3rd great grandfather Cogswell was involved in the Iowa orphan trains from New York. I have seen a presentation on them several ...

On the third and final day of the trial, things got underway with Morris J. Upright being sworn in. Mr. Upright was a former neighbor of the Harvey family when they had first arrived to Winnebago county in Illinois. Morris testified that he had been a former neighbor, that he had last seen Laura on March 1st of 1860 and that the ambrotype picture shown him looked remarkably like her. After that, he had next seen Laura in her grave at Ottumwa cemetery on April 14, 1860 along with her brother Frank Harvey. Morris testified that he also knew George Lawrence and had last seen him in Rockford on March 16. He was familiar with the horses, harness and bridle of Mr. Lawrence and had even gotten the harness repaired at one point. When shown the vest of Lawrence, Mr. Upright identified it as belong to George due to the unique buttons which had seven stars on each of them and the changeable material it had been made from. Mr. Upright was asked how long he had known Lawrence and testified that Law...

  After putting the canner and supplies for another season, I thought I would share with you a picture of our canning shelves in the storage room of our basement. As you can see, they are pretty well stocked with preserves for the upcoming year(s). For many of the things I preserve enough for multiple years worth of food because we don't always raise them like beans, squash, cucumbers and such. Other things like tomatoes, fruit, and pickled goods, I fill jars as they become available and I have excess to preserve. We do give away a fair amount of our canned goods to family and close friends as gifts so there is enough for them too.  It is a bounty of good eating. It also isn't all of our stash. Upstairs in our walk-in pantry, I have a custom made canning rack that holds around 100 jars. Typically, we store a variety of stuff up on the pantry shelf in no certain order and then replenish it from time to time with stock from the above shelves. Generally as I get a basketful of em...

My wife had a milestone birthday a few weeks back and to celebrate, we went out to eat at a new(ish) fancy steakhouse that opened up in a new motel in town earlier this spring. It is a chain known for their fancy steaks though neither of us much care for steaks in a restaurant setting. My wife got the chicken and I got the fish, both delicious and both a small fraction of the price of their steaks. We enjoyed the meal tremendously but due to the high price (much much less than had we ordered steaks) we probably won't return anytime soon. However, our server for the night was extremely nice. He perfected the service by making us feel welcome and engaging us in the right amount of conversation without feeling over bearing. Our waters were constantly topped up and he was more than happy to fulfill any requests we had. My wife, near the end of the meal, asked me if he was in the running for "Mom's Tip." I had never heard my wife refer to it as such but instantly that noti...

In the afternoon of Thursday, June 9, 1864, the trial of Lant McComb for the murder of Laura Jane Harvey and George Lawrence, continued on with D. F. Gaylord being recalled to the witness stand. This time the questioning focused on his effort to track down McComb in the days after the murder. Gaylord said he had traveled at first in several directions trying to locate McComb and finally stopped for the night at a house seven miles north of Sigourney. There he learned that a team of horses had passed by some time ago which led him to travel onto South English and from there to Iowa City. It was in Iowa City that Gaylord found the brown and bay horses, harness and both of the bridles. The brown horse was in the possession of the livery man and the bay with a man named Craft. Gaylord continued onto Rockford where he stopped at the Harvey family farm and then returned back to Ottumwa, bringing the bridles with him and handing them over to Judge Aaron Beardslee. Two months had passed by sin...

  After getting the firepit dug out and the misplaced planter box cut up into three raised beds for my wife to move her strawberry plants to a new raised bed location, I ordered four tons of dirt which is a full load and had them dump it on my driveway to one side so I could still sneak around the pile with vehicles. I thought it would take me a few days to move the dirt. Seven days later, I still have a small pile left. If anyone asks, I'm telling them it was my test for a new reality show called the fountain of youth, where I, the star of the show, attempt to ascertain if I still have access to my youth or not. The alternative title is how many ibuprofen do I need to get through the rest of the day. I moved maybe half a ton of the dirt into the three raised beds my wife wants for her strawberry plants, something to distinguish them from the rest of the garden so they don't get trampled on. I then moved another two and three-quarters of a ton to fill in the void where the fire...

A.I. Generated Image "Beyond the Grave" is a book by Condon and Condon that is well recommended among some internet circles that I participate in about the proper way to leave assets to your heirs after your death. I've heard it goes into lots of reasons of why you shouldn't try to control things for lots of years after your death because inevitably something will go wrong. I haven't yet read this book but have it on my soon to read list. Unfortunately for some of my ancestors, this book wasn't around and a real mess was created. I won't attempt to give you a blow by blow because it was two hours of reading a legal document and a very complex case. But the short version is thus: William Barr Sr., brother to my 6th great grandfather Samuel Barr willed his estate to his son, John M. Barr for life. Should John predecease him, then to John M's wife Maria and after her death to all their children. Four years after the death of William Barr Sr., son John M. ...

Thursday morning, 9 June 1864, the trial started up again at eight o'clock with D.F. Gaylord sworn in to testify. As one of the three men on the inquest jury, the Prosecution spent time questioning him about Ms. Harvey's wounds, focusing on the trauma to her head but Gaylord stated that he couldn't describe them in detail. He was asked about her clothing, jewelry and what had been done with her body after the inquest to which he stated that he had no knowledge of what had been done with Ms. Harvey's body.  There was no cross-examination by the Defense so John Potter the hotel owner was sworn in to answer questions about the inquest. Questions were asked to ascertain the identity of Ms. Harvey as the girl who had stayed in his hotel prior to her murder and that she had been in the company of two men, particularly focusing on the colors of the horses and their location in the team. the Prosecution then went on to ask if one of those men was in the courtroom now to which P...

  One of the biggest misgivings about giving up our farm garden was the orchard we had planned. There was one large apple tree and one snag of a peach tree that blew down last summer but still managed to produce a crop, both leftover from the orchard we planted on the day after our wedding with help from attendees. Beyond that, we had around eight other trees that had been planted and were surviving (from the dozen we started with) to form a new orchard.  When we made the decision to give up that garden and concentrate on the one around our house on the outskirts of town and not 40 miles away, we had three apple trees and two tart cherry trees planted. We have gotten some tart cherries over the years but the apples have been sparse and what there were the squirrels got first. So we made the decision to start investing in more fruit trees as they went on sale and were available because sometimes, all that is left when they go on sale are a few trees reminiscent of Charlie Brown...

  Major Edwin Foster Ong Steve Reed over at Shadows and Light solved the case for me. In my last post he linked a photograph of the same man above that was attributed to Burlington, Iowa which is only 30 miles from Wapello, Iowa. But that wasn't the clue that solved it. The clue that Steve gave me was saying that the back of the picture possibly said Major and not Mayor. That letter made all the difference and on my third try to enter the right combination of words to find more information, I hit the jackpot. Edwin was born on 18 May 1857 in Wapello, Iowa to Finley M. and Eliza Jane Christie Ong along with a younger sister Lillie and a younger brother George. That dates my photograph above to sometime in 1901 or early 1902. Despite the Asian looking left eye, he is listed as "white" in all census records along with both of his parents. His father Finley was a tailor before the Civil War but gave that up to "fight" for Company K of the 8th Iowa Calvary. Most of ...