52 Ancestors: Prompt 4 – A Theory in Progress

I was trying to find something to talk about from my volunteer work or client work related to “A Theory in Progress” but the thing that popped in my head first was my maternal 3x great grandma Susan Huff. I talk a lot about my mother’s line and Susan has always been the last mother I can name as I have not confirmed her mother or father. We had a few clues on where she and Richard lived before moving to Ohio, but nothing concrete.

Susan’s death record had her father as Joseph Huff, but nothing else connected her to her father. I knew she was from Pennsylvania so I looked up Joseph Huff in the census. I was able to find one that lined up more than the others. He lived with his wife Hannah and likely 9 children. There are three daughters who would have been of age of marriage around the time Susan married Richard. The issue is none of them are named Susan. The possible names are Angeline, Emeline, and Catharine. There is a Catharine who had married a Fisher in the county, so that is likely not Susan, but there are records that mix of Catherine and Angeline as marrying the same Fisher, so that adds some confusion. It seems most likely that Emeline is Susan, but that is just a guess.

Susan Huff married Richard Tea on May 10, 1852. We did not know this date or the general location until I ordered Richard’s Civil War records and the pension records. In another spot in the pension it states they were married May 10, 1851 by Richard Linkhorn at Wykstown, PA. The issue with this information is there are no records of a Richard Linkhorn in newspapers or in census records. And to add to the issue, there is no place called Wykstown.

Another section notes they were married in 1852 in Hartleton, PA by justice of the peace, Richard Lincorn. Hartleton is a borough in Union County, PA. This county coincides with the Joseph Huff that is believed to be Susan’s father. On this record it is noted that the family moved to Ohio in 1853 and in the move they lost the marriage record.

In a statement from Susan’s sister Sarah, it notes that Susan and Richard were married in at the home of Eliza Manbeck’s family in a place that was called Centreville in 1904, but went by another name when they married.

I am still trying to figure out this name and if it was even called that for long. But from what we do know, the marriage did take place in Union County. I found online that Centreville was southwest of Penns Creek in Union County, PA. Near Jack’s Mountain.

Update. While in the middle of writing up this blog post I was doing a page by page review of the 1850 Census record there in Hartley Township (which is where Centreville was in). I ran across someone by the name of Richard Lincoln. I went to Newspapers dot com and looked up Richard Lincoln and Justice of the Peace. And there he is listed as the Justice of the Peace for Hartley for 1851. So we know that his name was not Richard Lincorn or Richard Linkhorn. It was Richard Lincoln. Which kind of makes more sense. It should be noted that a man named Joseph Hartley was a witness to the wedding. He happened to be living with Richard Lincoln in 1850.

Susan may be Emeline from Joseph and Hanna/Joanna Huff’s family. If she wasn’t, she may have been living with other family members at the time of the 1850 Census. There is a chance that she was living with an uncle in Hartley Township in 1850. There is a Susan Huff living with Daniel and Sarah Huff. This reason this is a possibility is mostly because the ages of the children in the house are not in order from oldest to youngest. While Susan was supposed to have been slightly older than this girl, there is still a chance it is her. Regardless of whether this is our Susan in the home of Daniel and Sarah, they are likely her aunt and uncle (or some other relation) so if Emeline is our Susan, then there are many reasons she would be married near aunt and uncle instead of at her parents house.

In the pension record Susan is mentioned as being married at the home of the parents of Eliza Manbeck. Eliza is likely a relation to Susan as her maiden name was likely Huff. So possibly she is a daughter of Daniel and Sarah Huff. There is a chance Eliza is listed more than once in the 1850 Census living with two separate families (maybe even a third location which is not far from the other two) and thus why she wasn’t at home with her parents before her marriage. If Susan Huff got married at the home of Eliza Manbeck’s parents, then they were likely Daniel and Sarah Huff, her likely aunt and uncle.

Until we find a record for Susan and Richard marrying, or find some other evidence of Susan actually being Emeline (or one of the other daughters), we cannot fully confirm that we have her parents. It is still highly probable that Emeline is her and the Susan Huff in Hartley Township is her. I will likely need to contact the archives and other repositories in the area to see if any marriage records with the Justice of the Peace still survive.

The Union County Historical Society is likely going to have the most. https://www.unioncopahistory.com/

52 Ancestors: Prompt 3 – What This Story Means to Me

With this prompt I will be talking about the story, as we know it now, of how Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery in Carson, California was formed. This post isn’t about a specific ancestor, but it was what popped in my head first when I saw this prompt.

I am working with Aisha Woods, the founder of the Margie L Woods Foundation, to build the history of Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery. We have seen evidence in newspaper clippings about who was connected to the cemetery in the early days. Names like J.W. Poulson, who was noted as owning the land at some point before 1930 (likely even earlier); Robert Calver R.C. Mason – a realtor; Pierre Ellis Myers, a realtor who worked closely with the community to build the cemetery for the local people especially. There are also names like Irene Givens, who was one of the first African American women to run a cemetery.

A lot of the history in the newspapers related to the cemetery early days have been scant. I was able to narrow down some search queries on Newspapers.com and finally find the first results related to those who wanted to start the cemetery. The locals and the county Board of Supervisors had at first rejected the permit for the cemetery. We still haven’t found out how they eventually got it approved. There is a chance that the reason it got approved is because the realtors appealed to the community. We know that Pierre E Myers went to many churches and attending many events to build up interest in the cemetery.

The final details about who had owned the land and who organized to bring the cemetery to reality have not been fully discovered. But from the details we have so far, it seems like it took a community wide effort. Pierre E. Myers practically going door to door. Attending events and ensuring that this endeavor would be community focused. It became the communities cemetery, not just some a long term investment for the original planners.

Regardless of whether the original developers had altruistic beliefs about forming this cemetery or not, what the story of Lincoln shows me that it takes the community to make something happen. One individual cannot make something a reality. Especially when it comes to something that benefits the whole community. The leaders in the community came together and backed the cemetery and members in the community trusted that the investment they made for their and their family’s resting place. It was the community that made Lincoln a reality.

Lincoln has gone through a lot over the years with several scandals. The most recent scandal was the owner of the cemetery abandoning it in 2023. And just like community members at the founding coming together to found the cemetery, it has taken community members like Aisha Woods, Valerie Holyfield, Felicia Jones, and so many others to come together and bring the cemetery back to life. It takes community to bring important things to life, or back to life in the case of Lincoln.

52 Ancestors: Prompt 2 – Lucius Lehman – A Record That Adds Color

Continuing on with 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (though I think I’m just going to call this 52 prompts at this point. lol ), and the second is ‘A Record That Adds Color”. Again I am going to share some research I’ve done for other projects instead of my own ancestors. This post is on a man who went by a few different names over the years, which adds to why I chose to write about him. He was definitely a colorful person.

Lucius Lehman was born March 10, 1863, likely in Jamaica (or the West Indies as it was called in those days). His birth location is based on several earlier records connected to him, including his naturalization records. His arrival date to the United States was supposedly sometime around 1886. His Declaration of Intention to become a US Citizen was filed in 1899 notes his country of birth and his arrival date of October 1886. The only issue with this date is he was in Los Angeles in December of 1886 when he married Ann Smith. While he could have quickly left New York City and gone to Los Angeles, it is more likely he arrived sometime before the Fall of 1886. The 1910 Census gives his arrival date at 1880 and the 1920 Census gives it as 1882.

Lucius made some bad choices over the years. Attempted murder, assault of a child, theft, murder. So my writing a blog post about him is not to extol him as some great person. I am just telling a story about a life that was very colorful. The first records of him were related to attempted murder of his wife and assault of his step daughter. He was sentence to 12 or 14 years in a state prison, but was released after about nine years, for good behavior.

Lucius married Mattie Clark in December 1897. About 6 months later he was arrested for stealing two bags containing valuable papers from James Robinson. Robinson put an ad in the paper offering a reward. Lucius returned some of the papers to a lawyer who brought them to the newspaper and requested the reward. The police were called and Lucius was told to find the rest. He said he found the items in some ravines adjoining Westlake Park. After helping the police for a few weeks in finding items, the police arrested him.

He was brought before Judge Owens and represented himself in the case. He cross examined witnesses at great length. The newspaper articles note this: “Lenan is not a full-blood negro. he says his grandfather was an Englishman, and that he was educated for diplomatic service in London. He professes to speak thirteen languages proficiently and is a master of several systems of shorthand reporting, besides a system of his own invention. He is 37 years old, and served several years in the British navy on the Camperdown and other first-class warships prior to coming to Los Angeles.”₃ It was found during this case that his marriage to his first wife was not finalized by legal divorce, so a bigamy charge was laid upon him.

More details in the newspaper articles around this case show him saying he was in the country “in obedience to a commission received from the Cuban insurgent authorities, and that proper inquiries at the offices of the Cuban junta in New York City will establish his identity”₄. It is said in another article that he worked under General Garcia in Cuba and was wounded at the battle of El Caney.

The bigamy case was thrown out, likely because the first wife had filed for divorce, but did not have the funds to complete the divorce. And in the case against him for burglary, he was acquitted, mostly for lack of evidence that he actually stole the items.

Mattie and Lucius had a bit of a rocky marriage, but while they were still together they had two daughters. Anita was born in 1899 and Marion was born in 1903. In 1903 Lucius became a citizen of the United States.

Lucius was living in Riverside County by 1910. And it was there that he got into an argument with Theodore Lashley in Winchester. The argument ended in Lucius shotting Theodore. Theodore died the following day. Lucius was charged with murder and was convicted of the crime. He was sentenced to life in prison. He would be sent to San Quinten up in Marin county, which is on the bay just above San Francisco.

While in prison Lucius would become the prison store clerk. He also would later be considered a sort of mullah (teacher) for the religion of Islam and had influenced many people to accept the faith while in prison. There are no records that show he practiced the religion, but with the number of stories told and the research of people like Dr Patrick D Bowen, he made an impact on many people during his time at San Quinten. And Dr Bowen shows evidence that his impact even reached the one day founder of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad, who is said to have done time at the prison.

Lucius did not spend the rest of his life in prison. He was paroled on August 7, 1924. I have not found him in the 1930 Census, possibly he had only just gotten back to Los Angeles County by the time of the 1930 Census. He died on February 11, 1937. Interestingly, he was at the National Military Home in Los Angeles when he died. How and why he ended up there is a mystery and likely will require digging through any existing records from the National Military Home. His birth place is noted as Kartoon, South Africa. But possibly it was meant to be Khartoum, which is a city in modern day Sudan, as there is no city similar to that name in South Africa. Even till the end this man was a mystery. He was buried at Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery in Carson, California.

Something interesting to note about his children. His daughter Marion married actor Edgar Hughes “Blue” Washington. Their son Kenny Washington went on to be the first African American to sign with the National Football League in the modern era.

Many of the records mentioned in this blog post can be found on Lucius’s FamilySearch profile. https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/sources/G7Y2-63M
Dr. Bowen’s article on Lucius Lehman ‘The Colored Genius’: Lucius Lehman and the Californian Roots of Modern African-American Islam. https://www.academia.edu/3731536/_The_Colored_Genius_Lucius_Lehman_and_the_Californian_Roots_of_Modern_African_American_Islam
Remarkable Prisoner, The Los Angeles Times, Sat, Jul 2, 1898, page 5, column 3. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times-lenan-charismatic/172535688/
Lenan Feels Hurt, Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, Fri, Aug 12, 1898, Page 1, 3rd column. https://www.newspapers.com/article/los-angeles-evening-post-record-lenan-fe/172535944/

52 Ancestors: Prompt 1 – Aberdeen Butler – An Ancestor I Admire

I’ve decided to do Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. A lot of prompts this year seem to bring to mind things that come to mind from the research I have done. And seeing as I mostly do research on other people’s ancestors I plan to focus most of my posts on other people’s ancestors.

Aberdeen Butler was a man who was born about 1820-1825 in Georgia. His mother’s name was Amy. He had at least two siblings, Prince, and Venus. The family was enslaved in Florida by several families both in Georgia and Florida, largely by William B Nuttall (1802-1836) and his wife Mary Savage’s second husband George Noble Jones (1811-1876). But enough about them.

The Butler family lived on El Destino Plantation in Jefferson County, Florida. It is/was southeast Capitola, Florida, near the end of the Hall Branch stream, which is likely a branch of the Saint Marks River basin (the main house was located at about this location 30.432300814492574, -84.06455189709206).

Aberdeen worked in the mill on the plantation. We know this because of the extensive plantation records that George Nobel Jones kept. These records are on FamilySearch and on the Florida Memory website run by the archives of the state of Florida In this record we see a moment in Aberdeen’s life that makes me admire him.

A few women on the plantation had left and were found in Tallahassee. One of those women was Venus, Aberdeen’s sister. It is not fully clear from the records exactly why the women left, but it was likely because of abuse from the overseer. The overseer had found the women and when they were brought back to the plantation he said he went to put them in the plantation prison. And that’s when he said Aberdeen took an axe and was going to go after him, but a driver named Prince stopped him. The overseer and a neighbor both wrote to Jones telling him their side of things. Aberdeen was not seriously punished for this. The reason we know this is because he went on to live till the 1910s.

Aberdeen married Martha Evans had several children. They were: Whatley 1851, Mina 1852, Mary 1853, Ben 1858, Daphne 1860, Stephen 1862, and Venus 1864. While Aberdeen never, that we know of, owned his own home, he worked hard on the farm he rented and raised all of his children to adulthood. His wife Martha died some time between 1880 and before the 1900 Census date. Aberdeen lived a long life. He likely died between 1910 and before the 1920 Census. He would have been close to 90 years old when he died.

His life was filled with hardship. He even risked his life to try to protect his family. He survived and his family thrived even among the circumstances that the post Reconstruction South brought. I admire him because regardless of his circumstances he was willing to risk it all to save a loved one. May we all have that courage in the face of whatever is placed against us in this world.

Research Notes:
You can find all research notes on Aberdeen here at his WikiTree profile. Special thanks to those who improved the bio and added sources. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Butler-25971

Finding Mistakes In Your Research

I was chatting with a client about the research I am doing and she mentioned an aunt that was not listed in what I have found so far. I was confused and wondered if it was a bonus aunt like a lot of families have. Nope. Not just a bonus aunt. Definitely her great grandparents biological child. I had worked on that line months ago and got complacent with my research notes. The aunt that I had missed was added to the research notes properly and I began to find more information about her.

This is definitely a reminder to always make sure when making your research notes you note exactly what you see in the document and don’t base it off of transcription done by other people if you can help it. Write out all that you see and compile the information separately.

One way to compare census records over time. These are especially helpful with pre-1850 Census records, but they can also be helpful with census after that as well. There are several spreadsheets that people have made to compare census records. One that I have recently found was shared by Dawn Bingaman over at Ancestor Roundup.

In this document you can list each census record by year and compare ages and other details that might be unclear otherwise. I likely would have seen my error above if I had been using a document like this. It is especially helpful for families with a large amount of children.

Dawn’s document can be found at her blog post here: https://ancestorroundup.com/census-comparison-worksheet-revisited/

It is ok to make mistakes when doing research. The important thing is finding ways to ensure you don’t make the same mistake in the future. And it is great that other researchers have already created tools to make our research easier.

Distant Ancestor

Old black and white copy of a portrait of Lewis Latham. He has piercing eyes, a large nose, a high forehead, and a large beard.

Above is a copy of a portrait of Lewis Latham. He was my 12 times Great Grandfather (14 generations from me). He was a Sergeant Falconer under King Charles I of the United Kingdom. Lewis was born in about 1584 and died a little before May 15, 1655.
His daughter Franches Latham (my 11 times great grandmother) is known as “the Mother of Governors”. She is the ancestor to at least ten governors, three deputy/lieutenant governors, and is related by marriage to an an additional six governors and one deputy governor. Frances was baptized in England on February 15, 1609/1610 (so was probably born a few days before the 15th). She died in September of 1677 in Newport, Rhode Island.
Genealogy research is easier in some parts of Europe compared to other parts. This is one of only a few of my family lines that goes this far back. If Lewis’s daughter hadn’t had so many notable descendants in North America I have a feeling I never would have learned his name, let alone seen a portrait of him.
I am at least thankful that I don’t have any ancestors with the surname Smith. It is one of the most common surnames in English and is also common in a few other languages in Europe. One of my favorite surnames in my tree is Shingledecker.
Which surnames are the most common in your country? Which surnames sound the most interesting, unique, or funny to you, no matter the language?

How I started. How it’s going.

Recently Paul Chiddicks over on bluesky (@chiddickstree) asked how we all got started on our genealogy journey. History has always been a topic that interested me even when I was a small child. I grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Along the shores of the Grand River, just south of the city, are Native American burial mounds (known as the Norton Mounds). There had actually been some in the main part of the city at one point. They were removed, but years later the city decided to recreate them as a memorial to the history. I saw the recreations at some point in my childhood and wanted to learn more. I remember taking out books on Native American history.

In high school I was appointed to the Grand Rapids Historical Commission as a student commissioner. While a student commissioner I was involved in several history events in the city, but most importantly was mentored by Dr. Gordon OIson, city historian, and Jo Ellyn Clarey, another historian. With the help of Jo Ellen I organized a history speaker series during Women’s History Month in my high school that was well attended. I started out a history major in university. It was in my first year of college that I started doing genealogy research on my family. Those early years in online genealogy research were so different than they are today. There were no online repositories like there are today. It was all based on what you could find from other researchers who had done research in archives.

Life took me in another direction for awhile, but after a few journeys around the world I found my way back to genealogy and family history. That was in 2011, not long after my mom died. I got pretty deep in my own family tree, but then realized that I wanted to help others find their ancestors. I’ve volunteered with WikiTree, created a One Place Study on the neighborhood that I grew up in back in Grand Rapids, finding my first paid history research work. I especially like building out people’s Mothers Lines because history has forgotten our mothers so often. My favorite thing I’ve done so far is build out family trees for friends and acquaintances who didn’t know their family history because of the Holocaust and the Transatlantic Slave Trade and it’s aftermath.

The year is almost over, but it’s been an ok year with progress that I’ve made in my research. For 2025 I will be working on spending more time doing my research and not get distracted. My history project plate is completely full, but when I get some of my friends research projects done and the information sent to them then I can start adding more projects, paid ones especially. Consistency will be the word for 2025 (starting now, though 🙂 ).

(Follow me on bluesky at @free2l and my podcast at @theirvoicespod)