Your Mother, Her Grandfather

MY GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER HADDIX
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Osborn, Ohio ~ Homestead of my great-great-great grandparents
John P. Haddix (1791 - 1888) & Sarah Elizabeth Cox (1798–1860)
Married March 29, 1817

John & Sarah were the . . .

Parents of Sarah Elizabeth Haddix (1826 - 1861)
married to Charles Gordon Hartman (1824 - 1897) on June 4, 1850

Grandparents of Sarah Elisabeth Hartman (1856 - 1937)
married to James Sankey Lindsey (1846 - 1921) on April 22, 1877

Great-grandparents of Paul Jones Lindsey (1895 - 1983)
married to Mary Rovilla Lindsey (1891 - 1966) on March 20, 1927

Great-great-grandparents of my mother
Mary Elisabeth Lindsey Carriker (1931 - 2020)

In her poetry collection, How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons), Barbara Kingsolver instructs the reader:

How to Have a Child

Begin on the day you decide
you are fit
to carry on.
Begin with a quailing heart
for here you stand
on the fault line.
Begin if you can at the beginning.
Begin with your mother,
with her grandfather,
the ones before him.
Think of their hands, all of them:
firm on the plow, the cradle,
the rifle butt, the razor strop;
trembling on the telegram,
the cheek of a lover,
the fact of a door.
Everything that can wreck a life
has been done before,
done to you even. That's all
inside you now.
Half of it you won't think of.
The rest you wouldn't dream of.
Go on.

Barbara Kingsolver (b 1955)
American novelist, poet, essayist
See also FN, QK, KL

I like Kingsolver's suggestion to "Begin if you can at the beginning." I may never make it back to the earliest branches of the family tree, but in my last two posts -- Missing, Presumed Dead & Missing Ancestors -- I have tried to scrutinize some of the gaps, in search of lost information.

Next, Kingsolver says, "Begin with your mother, with her grandfather." Or, how about her grandmother? My mother was only 6 years old when her paternal Grandmother Sarah Elisabeth "Sallie" Hartman Lindsey died; but my mom remembered Sallie as accurately as a 6 - year - old can and told me everything she could recall over the years. They shared the middle name of Elisabeth -- with an "s" rather than a "z." I always liked the overlapping stories of Sallie's good fortune in having her grandfather, John P. Haddix, on hand when her first child was born; and her father, Charles Gordon Hartman, on hand to deliver her seventh child -- my grandfather (my mother's father).

I have mentioned my mother's Great - grandfather Charles Gordon Hartman (31 July 1824 - 29 December 1897) previously as one of my more mysterious relatives -- the one who disappeared and reappeared. At the time of his marriage to Sarah Elizabeth Haddix (1826 - 1861), she was 24, he was 26, and a lot of things had already happened in their lives.

For one thing, Sarah's name on the wedding certificate reads "Sarah Elizabeth Bacon." I have never heard nor read one bit of family lore to explain her change of name from "Haddix" to "Bacon." I can only guess that Sarah had been married young to a Mr. Bacon and then widowed young, before having any children.

Charles, on the other hand, had definitely been married before -- was, in fact, currently married and the father of two children when he married Sarah in 1850.

With some help from my cousin Liz, the story goes that

Charles Gordon Hartman (1824 - 1897) and Ellen Brewer (1821 - 1880)
were married in 1845, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

and they had 2 children:
Emily Eugenia (aka Aunt Emma; b 1846) and James (b 1847)
Charles, in partnership with another man (name unknown), owned a mill in Lancaster. When the mill burned down, Charles was accused of arson. Was he guilty? No one is sure, but whether or not he was, rather than waiting for a verdict, he took matters into his own hands.

Leaving his family behind, he fled to Ohio, changed his appearance and his occupation, becoming a physician -- notice on his marriage license (above) he signs himself "Dr. Charles G. Hartman." And in the 1880 Census, his profession is listed as "druggist."

In 1850, he and Sarah began their married life in Greene County, Ohio, near her parents; but three years later, when their first child was born, they were homesteading and practicing medicine in Indiana. Sarah had six children in quick succession: John in 1853, Charles in 1854, Franklin in 1855, Sarah Elisabeth [my great - grandmother; named for her mother and grandmother, except with an "s" rather than a "z" in her middle name] in 1856, George in 1858, and Ida Alice in 1859.

Once she had moved West, did Sarah Haddix ever see her parents again? Did they meet her growing family and admire their many grandchildren? In 1860, back in Ohio, Sarah's mother (Sarah Elizabeth Cox) died at age 62. And, very sadly, in 1861, Sarah herself died at the age of 35. I have searched the rural cemeteries of Pulaski County, Indiana, but have never been able to find her grave.

With neither a mother nor a maternal grandmother, who was going to look after all these children -- aged 8, 7, 6, 5, 3 and 2? Charles had an idea!

After Sarah's death, he made a trip all the way back to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where Ellen, having never re-married, still lived with Emma (now 15), and James (now 14). Charles surprised her with the news that he was still alive and re-proposed; he suggested that they resume their marriage, and Ellen agreed. She who had been his first wife for five years became his third wife for nearly twenty years. Her two children were reunited with their father, and they all returned with Charles to Francisville, Indiana, where Ellen helped raised Sarah's six motherless children, and stayed with Charles until her death in 1880. Like Sarah Haddix, Ellen was buried in Indiana, but I am not sure exactly where. I know from preserved correspondence that my Great-grandmother Sarah Elisabeth remained close to her step-mother Ellen, her half-sister Emma, and Emma's daughter Eyrie.

Sarah had spent all of her life so far in Winamac, Indiana -- she was born there in 1856, and married there in 1877 to my Great-grandfather James Sankey Lindsey. Her father Charles and step-mother Ellen continued to live nearby and may have been a help to her; but in the Spring of 1880, when Sarah was expecting her first child, Ellen was not well (she died later that year, aged 59). Perhaps due to Ellen's illness -- or other reasons of practicality or longing unknown to us -- Sarah made her way (on her own?) from Winamac, Indiana, to her grandparents' hometown of Osborn, Ohio. This had also been her mother's hometown, but never hers.

According to the 1880 Census, Sarah (age 24) was, at this time, living with her Grandfather John P. Haddix (age 89) in the house shown above. On the back of the picture, my Grandfather Paul Jones Lindsey (Sarah's youngest son, born 1895) has written:

"John Haddix
Osborn, Ohio
He was my mother's mother's father,
my great-grandfather

My sister Mabel was born in the corner room
above the porch where the long dark window is.
P. J. L."
I doubt I will ever know why Sarah (aka Sallie) went to her grandfather at this crucial juncture in her life. Her grandmother (as well as her own mother) had been dead for twenty years, so it was not for maternal support. Certainly, Great-great-great-grandather looks very stately, standing in front of the family's two-storey frame house with white picket fence. Perhaps this familiar spot and this dear grandfather offered Sallie an environment of stability during an otherwise uncertain time. Was her husband James (aka Jimmy) there with her? Who else was there to assist with the labor and delivery and newborn care of tiny Mabel (born May 20, 1880)?

Three years later, Sallie's second child, my Great-Uncle Jim (James Sankey Lindsey, Jr.) was born, also in Ohio. However, Jimmy and Sallie did not stay there, returning instead to Indiana. In 1887 (just a year before the death of Sallie's Grandfather Haddix at age 97), they headed West from Indiana to Illinois and then on to Nebraska, where they stayed for eight years. They were accompanied by her father Charles Gordon Hartman, now a widower, who helped with the delivery and care of the children who were born along the way: Nellie in Illinois; Wayne, Beatrice, and Sam in Nebraska.

Sallie was expecting again when they left Nebraska, and her father Charles famously delivered Paul (my grand-dad) in a covered wagon on the Oklahoma prairie in 1895. Two more sisters were to come after the family settled in Kansas: Virginia in 1897 and Gail in 1899. Sadly, by that time, Charles had returned to Illinois, where he died at age 73 on December 29, 1897 (just 12 days after the birth of Virginia on December 17th). After a lifetime of roaming the country from Pennsylvania to Ohio to Indiana; back to Pennsylvania, back to Indiana, all the way out to Nebraska and back, he now lies buried in Liberty Cemetery, Iroquois, Illinois. Were some of Sallie's siblings there for him? I hope so. Otherwise, it seems a bleak demise, after fifty years of adventure, first begun, to our knowledge, with that mysterious mill fire in Lancaster County -- and who knows what else before that!

Whether the story is lacking in parts, or has been embellished, or has veered at times from accuracy, how would we know for sure? Whatever the truth may be, as Kingsolver says in her poem, "This Is How They Come Back to Us":

" . . . now that my grandfather Henry
is dead. All these parts of his life are
equal now, the end and the beginning."
[See complete poem in comments below.] `

P.S. A brief note of interest
concerning the Old Haddix Road,
named for my ancestors . . .

"Osborn was a town located near the Haddix Road - Ohio 235 intersection at the northern edge of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in what is now the flood-prone basin of the Huffman Dam in the U.S. state of Ohio. . . .

"Many of the original houses of old Osborn still stand in Fairborn, Ohio, in the "Osborn Historic District." On January 1, 1950, Osborn and the neighboring town of Fairfield were merged as Fairborn. The first business to depict the name of the new city was the large vertical sign of the Fairborn Theatre. [It is if unclear if the Haddix house shown above made the move from Osborn to Fairborn.]

"The old Osborn cemetery lies within the boundary of Wright-Patterson, near the north end of the main flight line, which used to be part of the town. During the building of the longer runway to accommodate the large B-36 Bombers in the 1940s, the old streets of Osborn were still visible on the ground near the airstrip." [near Dayton]
**************

On November 1, 1830, John Haddix purchased
"160 acres and 72/100s of an acre"
In Montgomery, Ohio [near Cincinnati]
From the U. S. General Land Office
Under President Andrew Jackson
By 1850, Haddix and family were living in the Dayton area, and there is no further mention (in Census information or family history) of the Cincinnati area property.

Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, September 14th
Between now and then, read

THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
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my running list of recent reading
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Missing Ancestors

THE BRIGHT EDGES OF THE WORLD
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Pioneers of the West, 1934
Helen Lundeberg, 1908 – 1999

********************

Beautiful surroundings . . . those light-hearted mornings of the desert, for that wind that made one a boy again. He had noticed that this peculiar quality in the air of new countries vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests. Parts of Texas and Kansas that he had first known as open range had since been made into rich farming districts, and the air had quite lost that lightness, that dry aromatic odour. . . . one could breathe that only on the bright edges of the world, on the great grass plains or the sage-brush desert."

from Death Comes for the Archbishop
Book IX, Ch. 3, pp 272-73
by Willa Cather

Cather's characters stand in awe of the stunning landscape; their courage is astounding, and the distance they cover -- without aid of plane, train or automobile -- nearly unfathomable. First of all, Father Jean Marie Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant travel halfway around the world, from Rome to Ohio, then from Ohio to New Mexico; and finally, a solitary round trip for Latour from Santa Fe to Mexico City:

"One afternoon in the autumn of 1851 a solitary horseman, followed by a pack-mule, was pushing through an arid stretch of country somewhere in central New Mexico. He had lost his way, and was trying to get back to the trail, with only his compass and his sense of direction for guides. . . . On a long caravan trip acros Texas this man had had some experience of thirst . . . But he had not suffered then as he did now." (17 - 18)

"The traveller was Jean Marie Latour . . . No one in Cincinnati could tell him how to get to New Mexico — no one had ever been there. Since young Father Latour's arrival in America, a railroad had been built through from New York to Cincinnati; but there it ended. New Mexico lay in the middle of a dark continent. The Ohio merchants knew of two routes only. One was the Santa Fé trail from St. Louis . . . [the other was] to go down the [Mississippi] river to New Orleans, thence by boat to Galveston, across Texas to San Antonio, and to wind up into New Mexico along the Rio Grande valley. This he had done, but with what misadventures! (20 - 21)

"So, having travelled for nearly a year to reach Santa Fé, Father Latour left it after a few weeks [on Diocesan buiness], and set off alone on horseback to ride down into Old Mexico and back, a journey of full three thousand miles.

"He had been warned that there were many trails leading off the Rio Grande road, and that a stranger might easily mistake his way. For the first few days he had been cautious and watchful. Then he must have grown careless and turned into some purely local trail. When he realized that he was astray, his canteen was already empty and his horses seemed too exhausted to retrace their steps. He had persevered in this sandy track, which grew ever fainter, reasoning that it must lead somewhere." (23)

Reading of Latour's predicament, and the vast distance that he had undertaken to travel alone, I was reminded of my distant first cousin, thrice removed, Joseph Blair Lindsey, who traveled from Ohio to Oklahoma in 1876, then on to Texas in 1881.

The Samuel Lindsey Homestead in Ohio.

Joseph Blair Lindsey was Samuel's grandson,
as was my great-grandfather James Sankey Lindsey.
Joseph's father John and James' father Robert
(my great-great-grandfather) were brothers.

Did my great - grandfather James Sankey Lindsey know his first cousin Joseph Blair Lindsey? I don't know. Did my Grandpa Paul J. Lindsey (my mother's father) know this story about his father's cousin? I don't know. I only learned of it a few years ago, long after my grandfather's death (1983). He told me many family stories but never this one. How I wish he were here now to impart his knowledge and wisdom concerning Joseph's fateful journey. What I have learned from various scraps of paper is this:

Joseph Blair Lindsey
~ 28 November 1852 - 3 December 1881 ~
from Antrim, Ohio
son of John Work Lindsey and Margaret Blair
grandson of Samuel Lindsey (my great-great-great grandfather)

brother of Mary Martha, Samuel Elmore, William Martin,
Robert Luther, James Henry, John Work, Adela Jane, Margaret Ellen

Taught Indian School, 1876 - 1881
Tishomingo, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma)
Murdered abut 250 miles from Laredo, Texas, while
Traveling Alone

Anecdotal history, recorded by one of Joe's nephews: "When Uncle Joe was a young man he taught himself to play orchestra instruments, organized the young men of the town (Craig and Billy Knouff, Trimble and several others), he wrote the score for each instrument. After he went to Indian Territory, he sent a parlor organ home, and wrote that to the sister who played the best he would give the organ when he got home -- but he never came back.

"He taught in Tishomingo College (where William "Afalfa Bill" Murray may have gone to college at the time). He published the first newspaper in that part of the Southwest. Driving a team he started farther south for his health, gave a stranger a ride, and was murdered by him as he sat at breakfast. The diary he kept described the man, who was soon apprehended and hung. Uncle Will [his brother, born 25 May 1855] went down there and remained in the West for some time.

"Mother [Mary Martha Lindsey, b 4 March 1848] mourned bitterly for her young brother, lamenting the manner of his death. One evening as she walked in the orchard weeping, she said he seemed to speak to her, out of the peaceful dusk, and say he was happy."

Chickasaw Nation Capitol Building
Tishomingo, Oklahoma
Completed in November 1898

The oldest view I could find of the streets of Tishomingo,
approximately 20 years after Joseph lived there.

I keep going back to that fateful last line on Joseph's index card in the family record:
"Traveling Alone"
Sadly, so little information. What were the health issues that impelled Joseph to depart from Tishomingo, where he seemed to be thriving? What cure was he seeking farther south? Did William have his brother buried in Texas or Oklahoma, or bring his remains back to Ohio? [No luck so far on find - a - grave.] So on goes the saga -- begun in my previous post "Missing, Presumed Dead" -- of loved ones lost without a trace, disappeared, presumed taken -- or worse, known dead.

The irrefutable knowledge of death may be the worst; however, it provides closure, whereas some life - endings remain forever unknowable, especially when "traveling alone." Or -- in the case of one of my 3rd great - grandfathers on my father's side -- with a 12 - year - old son. In 1879, Frank (born in 1830 or '31) went on the road with his son Robert (born in 1867).

Though no tombstone has been photographed, Ancestry.com indicates that Byrd Franklin "Frank" Brumfield, Jr. died in 1886 and was buried in Bucklin, Missouri; but my Uncle Gene Carriker (my dad's brother) tells it a different way. According to Gene, 1886 is most likely the date -- 7 years after their disappearance -- that Frank and Robert were declared "missing, presumed dead" by the authorities in Bucklin, Misouri:

"Rather sad story about Frank Brumfield, and also a huge ancestor puzzle. According to the family lore, he took his 12 - year - old son, Robert Lee Brumfield, and traveled from the Bucklin, Missouri, area to Arkansas sometime in the year 1879 to look for land to buy on which to settle. I wonder what the urge was to move to Arkansas? Was it just another example of the "gypsy syndrome" that seemed to affect so many of our ancestors? Did they keep right on going to South America, never to return?

"Sometime during the trip, they seem to have both died under unknown circumstances, for they never made it back home to Bucklin, Missouri. Their death location and burial site remain unknown. Inquiries to the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Little Rock for death certificates or notices came up empty.

"A couple of guesses can be made as to their deaths. One piece of unsubstantiated family lore is that they died of cholera from drinking bad water on their trip. Another one -- pure speculation: if they were indeed looking for land to buy, they may have been carrying a rather large sum of cash; it's conceivable that if this became known, they were murdered for their money."

The family could verify their departure, but never knew why they failed to return. No one was able to go and bear witness to their demise or demand justice on their behalf, as Joseph Blair Lindsey's brother William did. Much like Willa Cather's characters, Father Jean Marie Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant (in real life: Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Joseph Projectus Machebeuf), my Cousin Joseph, my Great-great-great Grandfather Frank and young Uncle Robert Brumfield set out from apparently stable homesteads in pursuit of "the bright edges of the world." In the end, untimely though it was, did they feel they came close to their vision? Did they seize the day? Carpe! If only it was not too late to hear the stories of their quest and learn the end.

Yet again more mysterious is my missing 5th great-grandfather Jacob Miller who totally left without saying farewell. A little is known: he was born perhaps mid - 1700s, took a bride -- first name unknown -- with the last name of Huber and begat Abraham (b late 1700s?), who begat Jacob (b 1811), who begat Henry (b 1834), who begat Anna Mary (b 1862), who begat Rovilla (b 1891), who begat Mary Beth (b 1931), who begat Kitti (b 1957). Much is unknown: we have no account of his departure or whereabouts, no return, no date of birth, no date of death. The written record simply states: "Disapppeared around 1800."

And then there's Great-great-grandfather Charles Gordon Hartman who suddenly disappeared in 1850 and amazingly reappeared ten years later, with six new children in tow, ready to resume his prior life with his prior wife. More on this mystery next time . . .

Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, August 28th
Between now and then, read

THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com