Some genealogists love to research their birth namesake, or patronymic, family trees as far back as possible. In my case that would be the Reed family. Yet, each generation deeper that we peer into the past doubles the family pool that has passed down to the current generation’s culture, values and traditions, not to mention genetic health, appearance and even personality! For that reason, if I research the four generations previous to my dad’s generation, the Reeds are only one of sixteen families that define who I am. The colored shading at the top of the tree shown below indicates the region where the eight couples that make up my paternal great great great grandparents lived. The ancestors born in Delaware are shown in green, those from the contiguous region of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio and Indiana are colored purple and my Swedish ancestors are pink. And since this tree represents information just for my paternal ancestors, my complete tree including my mom’s ancestors would have sixteen families in the generation born between 1789-1816, my children’s tree would have thirty-two families, my grandchildren’s tree would have sixty-four families… My point is that researching only a person’s patronymic ancestors is only a thin slice of the pie!
The previous posts on this website have each told the stories of one or two ancestral families living in the mid 1800s. They examined how the regions around the world that our ancestors lived in were different for them than they are for us today, what the family occupations were, how they lived, how they died.
When I selected the paternal ancestors to research for this post, I realized that if you separate my dad’s maternal grandmother’s family (those intrepid Swedes that are considered in a previous post: “The Swedish Connection”), his other ancestors have numerous commonalities:
- I have found documentation indicating that they lived in the United States since the nation’s founding, if not before.
- They were content to remain living in relatively local regions and weren’t caught up in the westward cross country migrations commonplace in the 1800s.
- Because they remained east of the Missouri River they were more impacted by the Civil War than our ancestors that pioneered the free land and promises of silver and gold in the Wild West.
- Although my dad’s parents moved to Idaho in 1944 after their farm mortgage was foreclosed, a surprising number of Reed, Warren, Saylor, Dodd, Taylor, Funk, Carey, Keller, Griffin, Wymore and Osborn descendants still call the Midwest and Mid Atlantic regions of the US their home.
If these ancestral family names aren’t familiar to you it’s time to get acquainted! I thought that I would start with my great great great grandparents, Job Reed and Nancy Carey’s, family and let the progenitors cascade out from there. But first a short history to establish the context for these ancestors.
The narrow winding peninsula of Delmarva lies between the Chesapeake and the Delaware river valleys. The peninsula’s name is derived from the three states that claim it; the vast majority of Delaware and the eastern shores of Maryland and Virginia. Near the center of the peninsula, where it bulges out to form the cape at the confluence of the Delaware and the Atlantic is the county of Sussex. The Lenni Lenape tribe flourished for thousands of years on the peninsula before the English and the Dutch began arriving in the early 1600s. The Dutch West India Company established the first permanent colony on the peninsula in 1631 when they purchased land along Delaware Bay from the Lenape. The Dutch and the English continued to battle for control of the area for the next hundred years.
Reed families with English roots start to show up in the area as far back as the early 1700s. The strongest documented tie to our Reed family is with Job Reed, the seventh child of ten children born on June 22, 1806 to Abraham Reed (1755-1838) and Naomi Blocksom (1774-1838) in Broadkiln Hundred, Sussex, Delaware. Hundreds are unincorporated subdivisions of counties, equivalent to townships in some other states, and were once used as a basis for representation in the Delaware General Assembly. Kiln (and later kill) is Dutch for river. The term Hundred is derived from an English tax assessment division of one hundred families. This 1868 map of Broadkiln includes the present day city of Milton and the names of a couple Reed landholders:
Job shows up in the 1827 Sussex County tax list along with Abraham and several of his brothers and appears to be still living at home. Another large family with deep roots in the Broadkiln Hundred is the Wingate and Mary (Reynolds) Carey family. Nancy Carey is the fourth child in the Carey family of five boys and five girls. Since the Reed and Carey family farms were located within ten miles of each other in Broadkiln, and that Job and Nancy were the same age, together with the natural dependencies of farm life, we can certainly assume that Job and Nancy were companions growing up. It must have been a winning formula because on March 1, 1830 my great(x3) grandparents Job Reed and Nancy Carey are married in Broadkiln.
The bondsman for Job and Nancy was Jeremiah Fowler, Job’s cousin and his aunt Lidda (Reed) and John Fowler’s son. A marriage bond was common in colonial America as a type of surety bond guaranteeing that the couple met the legal requirements for marriage. Since Jeremiah was a relative he would be recognized as someone able to make this guaranty. From a genealogical standpoint, these bonds provide valuable documentation of our ancestral past.
Job and Nancy’s family in Broadkiln grew with daughter Elizabeth on June 19, 1831, James Sydney (my great great grandfather) and his twin Hettie Jane on March 22, 1833. The family suffered the death of Hettie before she reached the age of two from unknown causes.
Around 1836 Job and Nancy along with their two children and Nancy’s parents and siblings decide to move almost 600 miles west to Bowling Green, Ohio, about thirty miles south of Toledo and the banks of Lake Erie. The family continues to grow with a second son, William, born on April 6, 1836 and a second daughter Nancy on March 15, 1838.
Even though moving to Ohio, despite strong family roots in Delaware, seems puzzling, it doesn’t match the confusing events of the next few years. In 1838 both of Job’s parents die in Delaware at the age of 64, possibly from cholera, yellow fever, smallpox or any number of the common diseases that took their toll on the elderly during the 1800s. That year Job returns to Broadkiln alone, perhaps to help sort out his parents’ estate which would be distributed to Job and his siblings. Surprisingly, there is no record that Job ever returns to his wife Nancy and their four children in Ohio. In January of 1843 at the age of 36 Nancy is married for a second time, with no record of divorce from Job, to David Harriman, aged 50. This is also Harriman’s second marriage, whose first wife died in 1841 at the age of 43 leaving David with eight children aging from one to twenty one. David and Nancy continue to grow this blended family of fourteen with two more children, Winget in 1843 (a month after their marriage) and Jesse in 1846.
Meanwhile, back in Broadkiln, Job has moved in with his two youngest unmarried sisters Lydia and Nancy. Job remains in Sussex County until his death in 1870 at the age of 64 and is buried in the Reed Family Cemetery at the western edge of Broadkiln Hundred next to present day Redden State Forest.
Job and Nancy’s second child, James (my great great grandfather), shows up on the Bowling Green, Ohio 1850 US Federal Census at age 17 living with his mother Nancy, his new stepfather David and a mix of step and biological siblings in his new blended family. Perhaps as a reaction to this new family life, in August of 1851 at the age of 18 James marries Sarah Ann Dodd, age 17. Whether due to the stress of abandonment or the hardships of the times, my great great great grandmother Nancy passes in October of 1852 at the age of 46.
James Reed’s marriage with Sarah Dodd is where we enter the confusing part of this story mentioned above. When we review Sarah’s ancestry we find that she is born in Broadkiln, the daughter of John Dodd and Susan Carey. But wait, James was also born in Broadkiln and his mother is Nancy Carey, how many Carey families are there in Broadkiln? Are James and Sarah first cousins? Unfortunately, the documentation from when James and Sarah were born in the 1830s is scarce and although you can find numerous genealogical trees showing their mothers with the same parents, Wingate and Mary (Reynolds) Carey, I haven’t been able to find any source information documenting their relationship as siblings. James and Sarah’s marriage would certainly have benefited from having a bondsman to attest that the couple met the legal requirements for marriage, such as the bond shown above for James’ parents. What we do have is the August 23, 1851 entry in the Marion County, Ohio marriage record books:
This next tree is an expansion of the Delaware ancestors shaded green in the tree above. This expanded tree shows the ancestor siblings which provide clues as to family life and the birth order of the ancestor. Here then, is the family tree information that includes this new marriage of great great grandparents James Reed (1833-1912) and Sarah Ann Dodd (1834-1913):
Notice that the tree should have four sets of grandparents at the top! Wingate Carey and Mary Reynolds’ daughters Nancy and Susan are mothers of both James and Sarah (Dodd) Reed. Nancy Carey had five children with Job Reed, three girls and two boys. Hetty was my great great grandfather, James’, twin but died before her first birthday.
Within nine years of James and Sarah’s Ohio wedding their family shows up on the 1860 Federal Census with four children; John aged 7, Nancy aged 5, William, my great grandfather aged 3 and Susan aged 1. They also have managed to own their farm valued at $900 and personal property valued at $400.
James and his three year younger brother, William, both enlisted with the Union army infantry before the first national conscription act of 1863 and fought in the Civil War. William was 25 years old and single when he enlisted in October of 1861 and had the grave misfortune of being captured by the Confederacy in September of 1863 and was held in the notorious POW camp in Andersonville, Georgia. Of the 45,000 Union soldiers imprisoned at Andersonville, nearly 13,000 died of diarrhea, dysentery, scurvy and hospital gangrene. Andersonville is currently a National Historic Site. William was held until the war ended in April of 1865, he married Martha Stultz in September of that same year after returning to his home in Marion County, Ohio.
It’s interesting to note that William needed to get his first cousin, James M Dutton, to confirm that Martha had her parent’s permission to marry since she was not yet eighteen. Dutton is Sarah (Carey) Dutton’s son. Sarah, Nancy (Carey) Reed and Susan (Carey) Dodd are all sisters.
James enlisted in August of 1862 at the age of 29 with four young children at home, including my five year old great grandfather William, named after James’ brother and sure to cause confusion in sorting out the William’s in this post. James, fortunately for his growing family, received a disability discharge within five months of his enlistment. James and Sarah had three more children after James returned from the war.
In 1864 James and Sarah’s family moved to Keokuk County, Iowa, about 500 miles west of Marion, Ohio. Two of James’ sisters, Elizabeth and Nancy had already moved to Keokuk, Iowa after Nancy’s marriage in 1856 and must have heard good reports of the farming in the area. James and Sarah had two more children, Frank and James Jr, after their move to Iowa for a total of five boys and two girls. Within a year after James and Sarah’s move, his brother William R and Martha’s family followed them to Iowa where they raised a family of twelve children.
James was born in 1833 and his wife Sarah was born one year later in 1834. They both lived to the age of 79, James dying in 1912 and Sarah one year later in 1913. We can get a sense of their lives from their obituaries published in the Orleans Chronical, the Harlan County, Nebraska newspaper. It’s interesting that there’s no mention of James’ military service in his obituary. I haven’t found any mention of Civil War military service in family obituaries unless they died during the war or were an officer.
At some point after James and Sarah’s move to Keokuk, Iowa in 1864, their son, William, my great grandfather, became acquainted with Mary Ann “Anna” Saylor, born in November of 1854 in Keokuk, the daughter of Godfrey and Prudence (Taylor) Saylor. Below is an 1887 plat map showing land owners in Warren, Iowa. The red property outlines indicate that Godfrey Saylor and James Reed were practically next door neighbors in Warren Township of Keokuk County. Iowa.
The young couple were both from farming families and the acquaintance apparently blossomed because on January 16, 1876 William, age 18, and Anna, age 21, were married. The previous family tree represents the Reed/Carey/Dodd ancestors, primarily from Delaware. My great grandmother Anna Saylor, William Reed’s wife, is represented in the families that share the characteristic of remaining, for the most part, in the Midwest/Mid Atlantic region throughout the 1800s. Here’s their family tree:
Although I don’t have any photographs of James and Sarah (Dodd) Reed, my Reed/Dodd great great grandparents, I have found a photograph of my Saylor/Taylor great great grandparents:
This photo was taken three years before Godfrey died at the age of 82. Prudence lived another ten years.
Anna Saylor was the second of four children born to Godfrey Saylor and Prudence Taylor on November 3, 1854 in Keokuk, Iowa. Anna Saylor’s father, Godfrey Saylor, was the fortunate child of William and Catherine (Keller) Saylor. William Saylor had eight children with Catherine but at the time of his death in 1862 William had outlived his wife by twenty-two years and Godfrey was the only living male child. In the tradition of the times Godfrey became the primary beneficiary of his father’s will. Godfrey was 41 and Anna was 8 when Anna’s grandfather William Saylor died in 1862. This most likely meant Anna had a fairly comfortable childhood for the times. Here’s William’s will from 1863:
Anna’s maternal grandparents, and Prudence Taylor’s parents, were Abner and Mary Jane (Wymore) Taylor. Prudence, born in 1830 in Montgomery, Indiana, was the oldest of twelve children born to Abner and Mary Jane. Both Abner and Mary Jane’s families can trace their ancestors back to colonial America’s past. Abner Taylor’s ancestors came from England to Philadelphia around the time of the First Continental Congress. Mary Jane Wymore’s ancestors were in Virginia during the American Revolutionary War.
After William and Anna (Saylor) Reed’s marriage in 1876 the young couple had ten children while living on the farm in Keokuk, Iowa. Sadly, three of their children died in Iowa before the family moved to Harlan County, Nebraska in the fall of 1892. While in Nebraska William and Anna had two more sons, Lloyd in 1894 and my grandfather, Robert Edward, in October of 1895. In the spring of 1907 the family moved a final time to Jewell County, Kansas.
William purchased an 80 acre farm with an existing house and barn in Richland, Jewell County, Kansas from Peter Tanner. This plat map indicates William’s farm outlined in red. Also shown are the Dahl and Ahrens family farms whose children married three of William’s daughters; Sadie, Daisy and Maisie. At the top of the township Lavada (Saylor) Caskey’s farm is shown. Lavada was Anna Saylor’s younger sister.
Here’s a photo on the farm of my grandfather Robert, age 23, with his dad (my great grandfather), William, age 61, and his close brother Lloyd, age 24. Lucille, age 4, is Robert’s niece, his sister Maisie and her husband Ralph Ahrens’ oldest daughter. Robert is wearing his WWI army uniform.
In this Sinclair township plat map, which is the township next (to the east) of Richland, the farms owned by the Warren families are shown outlined in red.
My grandmother, Edith Viola Warren, was born in Jewell County Kansas on September 3, 1901, the youngest of Thomas and Hannah (Johnson) Warren’s four children. Edith was five years old when William and Mary Ann Reed’s family moved onto the neighboring White Rock farm. The new neighbors had a son six years older than Edith, my grandfather Robert, was the youngest of William and Mary Ann (Saylor) Reed’s twelve children. Twelve years later, Robert and Edith are married on September 7, 1918.
Three months later Robert is on a steamship headed for France to report for WWI active duty. Robert is so recently wed that he lists his mother, Anna, as his nearest relative.
With the marriage of Edith Warren to Robert Reed our ancestor through lines that we’ll review in this post have effectively doubled with the addition of Edith’s parents, Thomas and Hannah (Johnson) Warren. Since we’ve already taken a deep dive into Hannah’s exciting 80 day transatlantic immigrant voyage from Sweden, undertaken when she was one year old, in a previous post called “The Swedish Connection” we’ll focus on the Warren family. Here’s a quick review of Edith’s family tree:
The paternal ancestral homes for Edith’s Warren families is solidly in that Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio and Indiana contiguous area discussed in the first tree indicating region of birth. The earliest of Edith’s Warren ancestors that we’ll explore were born in the early 1800s, Valentine and Nancy (Griffin) Warren.
On August 28, 1834 in Athens, Ohio, farming community families celebrated the wedding of my great great great grandparents, Valentine Warren and Nancy Griffin, who were blessed over the course of twenty two fertile years with twelve children. This portrait was taken towards the end of their family years:
The oldest of Valentine and Nancy’s twelve children was my great great grandfather, David Mann Warren born August 24, 1835. At the age of 24 David married 16 year old Esther Funk in Monroe, Iowa. Esther was born on January 6, 1843 in Fountain County, Indiana and at the age of 13 she moved with her family to Iowa. Less than two years after their marriage, David enlisted as a Corporal in the Union Army and spent a year fighting in the Civil War.
Thomas Warren was the second of eleven children born to David and Esther (Funk) Warren on June 19, 1862 in Monroe, Iowa. At the age of 22 Thomas married 16 year old Hannah Johnson in Union, Iowa, not far from where his parents were married 26 years earlier. Hannah emigrated from Sweden on a sailing vessel as a one year old, a story told in the post “The Swedish Connection”. Here’s Thomas and Hannah’s family photo from 1915:
For additional information on the Warren family and Hannah’s Swedish ancestral stories please see “The Swedish Connection” post!