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
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:
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":
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
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This Is How They Come Back to Us
ReplyDelete—For A. R. Henry, 1898–1970
I think of my grandfather Henry
with a claw hammer in his hand,
untroubled by the missing tip of
one finger, though it worries me.
I think of him spooning sugar on a
slice of tomato, the white mound
melting clear. Eating it for dessert.
I think of the teeth that are not his
teeth, slid forward into a bear smile
to frighten me, and then his laughter
that takes it all back, tooth and bear.
I think of him asleep in a chair, arms
crossed, as I have seen men in coffins.
I think of him scaling the college steps
to meet my grandmother, unashamed
to take off his hat and show the white
stripe above the burnished brow, the
face of a man who works in the sun.
I think of him young with still-perfect
hands lifting a daughter onto a pony,
teaching this girl to ride bareback over
the Fox Creek hills. She is my mother,
I am not alive, and yet I can see these
things because my grandfather Henry
is dead. All these parts of his life are
equal now, the end and the beginning
~Barbara Kingsolver
My Great-Grandmother’s Plate
ReplyDelete—For Lillie Auxier, 1881–1965
New Year’s morning, standing
at the sink watching new snow drift,
I cosset a hope that this weather might
persist, bundling a household
of family into one more day as mine
before the world calls us out again.
It whitens the woods while I weather
a washing-up from last night’s happy ending:
the grass-stemmed goblets, dorsal spines
of underwater forks, and last, the white
china platter with lattice edges, a gift
to my great-grandmother for her wedding.
I use this plate because I want to know
how it might make me one with her, my hands
slipped into hers like a pair of gloves as I lift
and admire its fragile rim, sharing our standing
as householders, dutiful washers of porcelain.
But instead, a presence from behind me takes
my shoulders, and I feel her dread of a snow
like this for her new husband’s sake,
a man called out to cattle in any weather;
feel her brooding on a shuttered-up morning
for its cost in coal. This delicate wedding
gift might plague her for the note her mother
will be expecting soon, along with other
good news. A washing-up left for the morning
would not have been her liberty. My hands
may reach but cannot share this porcelain gift:
the newest stake of her household,
the oldest one in mine.
~Barbara Kingsolver