Tuesday, December 8, 2009
INTRODUCTION
OK family.... We have a mystery that we all need to get involved in to solve! William Henry Smith is Grandpa Smith's granddad. We have some information on him, but just not enough! I've started this blog, partly for a class assignment, and partly because I am so interested in this family, and I really feel like we have to all put our heads together to figure this out! Grandpa told me that he has been trying to figure out this mystery off and on since he and Grandma joined the church. I think it's about time that we all help him and get this straight! I'm really excited about this so I'm expecting you to all get involved and help us find the things we need! :) Oh and just so you know, I decided to post this so you can read it in order from TOP down. (you know cause sometimes you have to read a blog from bottom to top to get it in order.) And also if you click on the pictures and documents they come up in a new screen bigger so you can read them.
BACKGROUND on BIRTH of WILLIAM HENRY SMITH
William was born in 1873, probably in Virginia. The other possibility is that he was born in Pennsylvania, but Grandpa says that William told him he was born in Virginia. We do NOT know who William's father was. That is the biggest mystery that we need to solve. We THINK his mother was Effie Craver Smith Harkins (more to come on her)... BUT we're still not even positive on that fact. We don't have a birth certificate for William, and most likely, there wasn't one ever created for him.
EFFIE V. CRAVER SMITH HARKINS
Effie was born in 1855. (I got this date from a family group record, and a 1860 census in Elizabeth City, Virginia saying she was 5 years old at the time.) Her mother was Angelina Craver and her father was Fowler R. Smith. She had a brother named Fowler F. Smith and a sister, Anni S. Smith. (again I got this from the family group sheet Grandpa had). In an 1870 census, her and her mother, brother, and sister are found living with a Keen family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There is a two year old Keen named George, (he comes into the story a little later, although I'm not sure how important he is to our story.) In 1873, William was born, Effie would have been 18. Five years later, in 1878, William's brother, Clarence, is born. If Effie is indeed their mother, they would be living with her, but if she is not, we don't know if they were living with Effie by this time or not. Just a year after that Effie marries a Thomas Harkins. Thomas was a soldier in the Civil War and had his leg shot off, so there is a lot of information on him. After he died, Effie applied for a pension. I have a copy of an affidavit stating that Effie and Thomas were married on September 5, 1879 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and swearing that Thomas was the only man Effie was ever married to. Now this is where George Keen comes in again. He a signer on this document, and it says that he is Effie's BROTHER. On Clarence's death certificate his mother is listed as Effie Keen, and they were all living with them in 1860, so I think that Angelina Craver must have remarried to Mr. George Keen (Sr.). Another important person is on this document, Louisa Smith as Effie's SISTER-IN-LAW. She comes into the story in just a second with William.
Monday, December 7, 2009
AFFIDAVIT FOR PENSION
This is the affidavit signed by George Keen and Louisa Smith for a pension for Effie. It states that Effie was only married one time and she was married to Thomas Harkins. The thing I think is most interesting in this is the Louisa Smith. Remember there was another Louisa Smith on a census with William H. Smith in 1880? Is it the same one??
WILLIAM HENRY SMITH- CHILDHOOD
OK, here it goes. The first time William shows up on a census is in 1880. Not only does he show up, but he shows up TWICE, on two different census's. This is where it starts to get sticky. The second record we will discuss could be a different William H. Smith, but I'm inclined to believe that it's the same person. In June of 1880, William is shown on a census in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with Thomas (40) and Effie Harkins (the census says 28, but according to my calculations with her birth date, she would only be 25 right?), and his brother, Clarence Smith. The census says William is 8 at the time and lists him as a stepson to Harkins. Clarence is listed as a female, and a step daughter. So maybe he really is a she?? They were all living with a man named William Baker (age 60). The second census (MONTH??) a William H. Smith shows up in Frederick County, Virginia, which is less than 200 miles from Bucks County. The Census shows a William H. Smith (33) as Head, Louisa J Smith (28) as wife, and William H. Smith (7) as a son along with a couple of other children. William's son, Ernest, wrote that his father (William) told him that he was bound out on a farm in Virginia, near Richmond. (Frederick County is about 100 miles away from Richmond). So maybe this was the time he was bound out, but Ernest also says that he talked about Baron Hill farm and people named Oberly, so maybe not. Maybe the man is Effie's brother, but we do not have any record of a William as a brother to Effie. The other sticky thing is that there is a baptismal record (I'm not sure where it came from??), but it has a William Henry Smith born in December of 1872, with a William and Annie Smith as the parents. Anni Smith is the name of Effie's sister (on the 1870 census and a family group record). NOW, this probably is not the same person, but I'm not discarding it as a possibility quite yet. AND I have a paper that I think grandpa wrote about this family that states that on Clarence's wedding certificate, he lists his father as William Smith. It just seems like all these things are more than just coincidences. The 1890 census' were all burned in a fire, which is really too bad, because that would be another great piece to our puzzle, but the next census record we have of him is in 1900. By this time he is married to Florence Anna Davies.
WILLIAM HENRY and FLORENCE A. SMITH- FAMILY
We have an application for a marriage license from the orphans court of Philadelphia County and an affidavit in William's handwriting stating that he and Florence A. Davies were married on July 8, 1896 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I don't have a lot of information on Florence, but we do know she was born in England in 184, came to the United States in 1885 or 1887, and was naturalized in 1896. In December of 1896, their first son, Frederick John Smith, was born in Pennsylvania. This is Grandpa's father. They were still in Philadelphia when their second boy, Ernest Henry was born. By the 1900 census, the family had moved to Camden County, New Jersey. William and Florence spent the remainder of their lives in New Jersey. Florence died in 1948, and William passed away 10 years later in 1958. They both were buried in Cape May, New Jersey.
MARRIAGE DOCUMENT
The family group record that I received from my dad says that William and Florence were born in June, but this document shows that it was actually July.... Probably not that important to be a month off, but for what it's worth...
FREDERICK JOHN SMITH
Frederick is my great grandfather. He was married in New Jersey to Winfred Coleman Norton. and died in Galloway, New Jersey in 1970. This whole mystery with William has taken so much of my time and attention that I haven't researched a whole lot about Frederick. I think it would be neat if some of you could post a memory you have with either Frederick or Winfred.
ERNEST HENRY SMITH
Ernest was Grandpa's uncle. He wrote a couple of letters to Grandpa, and from the few things he wrote, he seemed like a very nice man. In 1968 he wrote a letter to Grandpa saying that he and his wife "like church, good music, travel, dancing too". He served in the National Guard from 1917-1919 which was during WWI. In 1921 he married his first wife, Ethel Champion, and had three other wifes after her death. Ernest died in 1984 in New Jersey.
So there is a short synopsis of the life of William Henry Smith and his family. I would LOVE to get some additional insight or comments on any of these posts. My class is just about over, but I am still going to try and find some time to research more about all of this. I talked to Grandpa today and he said that he just wanted ONE thing, just ONE name- William's father. I don't know if it is possible to come up with the correct answers without a little divine intervention, so I think it might be about time to take the matter up with the Lord. I really feel like there are some people waiting on the other side for us to step it up and get this figured out so that we can do their work for them.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
SOURCES
There are a lot of sources and places you can go to find this information. If you are really interested in getting involved, I would talk to Danelle, Grandpa, or Patti and Charlie. They are where I got my information from. Also, there is a plethora of websites out there that have TONS of information. I got all of the census's I have from Ancestry.com- which is a subscription website, but you can get it for free at the BYU library, or the Family History Library at BYU. Grandpa has already done a TON of really good research, but I still think there are a few things out there that could be the missing link to our mystery. Let me know if you have any questions about what I have written, and also, if you know I have made a mistake somewhere PLEASE let me know so that it can be corrected!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
