Workday Wednesday: J.S. Broida’s Clothing Shop in Parkersburg, WV, 1918

1907 ad for Broida & Adams, owned by Jacob S. Broida and C. H. Adams in Parkersburg, West Virginia, via “Parkersburg, 1907, a souvenir of the city of Parkersburg, etc. by W.M. Barnes Directory Co., via Library of Congress.

Broida Family (Click for Family Tree)

Jacob S. Broida and his wife, Anna M. Broida, were owners or part-owners of a retail store in Parkersburg, West Virginia, for many years. The store sold “dry goods” which, as Wikipedia describes it, were “products such as textiles, ready-to-wearclothing, and sundries.” (Sundries are personal care items, like soap.)

An example of a dry goods store in West Virgina (NOT the Broida store). Preserved Dry Goods Store on Shenandoah Street in the Lower Town of Harper’s Ferry National Park. Photograph by User:MamaGeek-Joy Schoenberger, 2007, via Wikimedia.

Their store evolved to carry just fine women’s clothing, and they later opened a second store in Clarksburg, West Virginia.

Directory listing for J. S. Broida and Broida & Adams Store, via “Parkersburg, 1907, a souvenir of the city of Parkersburg, etc.,” page 82, by W.M. Barnes Directory Co., via Library of Congress.

In November of 1921, Jacob S.Broida arrived in New York City on a buying trip for his store. We found a list of the products carried at the store:

Buyers Arrive in New York City, including J.S. Broida of Parkersburg, WV. New York Tribune, Nov. 25, 1921, page 17, via Chronicling America at the Library of Congress.

[Note: “Pennsylvania” is listed at the end of his entry but unsure what it means.]

Businesses are required to provide a “Biennial Report” to the state in which they are incorporated, so we learned that Jacob’s store was still in Parkersburg in 1922, sold clothing, and employed two men and nineteen women.

J. S. Broida Clothing Store in 1922, State of West Virginia, Department of Labor, Biennial Report, p. 145, via GoogleBooks.

The Broida store was bought out by Stone & Thomas in 1956. For a short while it was called, “Broida’s, Stone & Thomas” and the chain grew to 19 stores. The stores were sold to Elder-Beerman, Peebles, and Belk in the late 1990s.

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

  1. See captions for citations.
  2. “Dry goods” definition and image– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_goods
  3. Stone & Thomas buyout– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_%26_Thomas

 

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Original content copyright 2013-2017 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted. 
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Mystery Monday: Unknown Johns Family in Indiana

Unknown JOHNS in the Raysville-Knightstown Monthly Meeting, Henry County, Indiana, Meeting Minutes, in “Abstracts of the Records of the Society of Friends in Indiana,” volume 7, part 4, page 476.

Roberts Family, Murrell Family (Click for Family Tree)

There are more Johns families found in various volumes of “Abstracts of the Records of the Society of Friends in Indiana,” but they are in areas other than Raysville-Knightstown, where we find some of our know Johns relatives. The above abstract is for unknown persons, but there is a high probability of them being related.

We have found a Riley Matthew Johns (1877-1965), whose wife was Lillie W. Collingwood and at least three sons, including William Glen Johns (1897-1953). Riley’ father was Henry Johns, but the mystery is, which one? If this is the same Riley, he would have only been 13 when he joined the Quakers at Raysville-Knightstown (“rec in mbrp” means “received in membership”) but that is entirely possible.

Please let us know if you have more information about this family.

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

  1. Raysville-Knightstown Monthly Meeting, Henry County, Indiana, Meeting Minutes, in “Abstracts of the Records of the Society of Friends in Indiana,” volume 7, part 4, page 476.
  2. World War II Draft Registration Card for Riley Matthew Johns, via Ancestry.com.
  3. World War I Draft Registration Card for William Glen Johns, via Ancestry.com.

 

 

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Original content copyright 2013-2017 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted. 
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Church Record Sunday: The Johns Family of Indiana

William H. JOHNS and family listed in the Raysville-Knightstown Monthly Meeting Records, Henry County, Indiana, in “Abstracts of the Records of the Society of Friends in Indiana,” Births, Vol. 7, Part 4, page 449.

Roberts Family, Murrell Family (Click for Family Tree)

Last week we posted about a surprising find- that Matthias/Matthew Johns was buried in a Friends (Quaker) cemetery in Wilkinson, Hancock County, Indiana. It made us wonder who else in the family had become Quakers, with a special interest in Matthew’s father, Henry Honts, who is our direct ancestor.

Even though Quakers kept very good records, they have not all survived, or they may be in library collections that are only accessible in person. Apparently, as the number of Quakers decreased after the Civil War, and the population continued to move west, Monthly Meetings (MM) got smaller and were combined with others in the area.  Wilkinson MM seems to be one of these, so records are a bit more challenging to find. We finally did find some with the Johns name, attached to the Raysville-Knightstown MM.

The names shown above, however, were not familiar, as the Johns family has not been a research focus except for Henry Honts, who changed the family name to Johns. so some collateral research was in order, to find out who these folks were, and how they were related. It made sense to start with Matthew’s family, but he did not have a son named William H. Johns. So research on his sons was next, and amazingly, Henry Johns (1844-1895), the first son, was the connection. (Of course, I had started with the youngest son instead…)

Henry Johns married Sarah J. Coon/Kuhn (1849-1903) and of the seven children found in that family, William H. Johns was the second-born, on 1 July 1869 in Wilkinson, Hancock County, Indiana. He was found in the 1870 and 1880 US Federal Censuses there with his parents and siblings. Some Ancestry.com trees state he married first Mary J. Henshaw in 1891 (Marriage Book 3, page 522 in Hancock Co., IN), then Florence Walker (Marriage Book C8, page 406) in 1892; getting copies of these marriage licenses could be a next step. The marriage we do have more sources for is to Bertha Corbin, as shown above. The 1900 US Federal Census has them listed together with their 3 year old daughter Mamie Esther Johns, and states they have been married for 3 years, thus married about 1897. It also states this was his second marriage.

In 1900 William H. was working as an engineer in a sawmill, and he had been employed all of the previous 12 months. They rented their home. Ten years later, William H. was listed as a machinist, and Bertha was working as a washerwoman. Their daughter Mamie Esther was listed with them, but no daughter named Martha Carol Johns- perhaps she died young?

By 1920, William and Bertha owned their home, mortgage-free, and he was working still as a machinist. Their daughter M. Esther was living with them, along with her husband, Walter Winn, and their daughter, Martha V. Winn. Walter was also a machinist, and worked at a “bottle house.”

Bertha passed away on 30 Aug 1925, and William was listed as widowed and a laborer in the “thresherman” industry in the 1930 census. He had not worked the previous day, however, and was listed on the unemployed schedule. He was 61. In 1940, he was still living on his own at age 71, and was not employed.

William died 11 May 1953 in Wilkinson, where he is also buried, alongside his wife Bertha in McCray Cemetery. The plaque in the cemetery states that a Baptist Church was first built on that spot, then later First Christian Church. It thus appears this is not a Friends cemetery, so had William abandoned the Quaker faith, had his children, or was it just more convenient to be buried with family nearby?

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

  1. How are we related? If you are a descendant of Edith (Roberts) [McMurray] Luck, her great-grandparents were Mary M. Honts and Wiley A. Murrell. Mary’s father was Henry Honts, who changed his name to Johns when he left his first wife and Mary in Virginia and moved to Tennessee. Matthew Johns was the son of Henry and his second wife, Elizabeth (Firestone) [Lampert] Johns, so Mary’s half-brother.
  2. “Abstracts of the Records of the Society of Friends in Indiana,” Births, Vol. 7, Part 4, available from FamilySearch– https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE190486
  3. Johns family members buried in McCray Cemetery, Wilkinson, Hancock County, Indiana– https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/85847/memorial-search?firstName=&lastName=Johns&page=2#sr-28834638
  4. McCray Cemetery History- see plaque in images– https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/85847/mccray-cemetery
  5. See also cemetery image for “The Elopement Girl” and the beginnings of the cemetery- so sad.

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Original content copyright 2013-2017 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted. 
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Tuesday’s Tip: Researching Matthew Johns and his Second Wife

Sugar Grove Conservative Friends Meeting House, built 1870 in Hendricks Co., Indiana, with an openable partition between male and female sections. Image by Jonathunder, via Wikipedia, GFDL 1.2. (This is not where the Johns family worshipped- just an example of what a friends meeting House looked like.)

Murrell Family, Roberts Family (Click for Family Tree)

Tuesday’s Tip: Research organizations to which your ancestor belonged, whether religious, fraternal, military veteran, club, or ?? They may provide answers to questions that will help flesh out your family history.

Finding out that the funeral service of Matthew Johns took place at the Friends Church in Wilkinson, Indiana, was quite a surprise- we had no idea he belonged to the Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers. The fact that he had a second wife was a surprise as well. We do have other Quaker ancestors, such as Lewis Walker of Chester, Pennsylvania, so learning a bit more about Quakerism seemed in order, and might help us to learn more details about this family’s life.

One of our research goals is to learn the name of Matthew’s second wife, and another is to learn the date of their marriage. We started with the hypothesis that the date was after Matthew’s first wife, Ellen (Maggard) Johns passed away in 1886. A search in Indiana marriage records, however, came up empty.

Our additional research into the Quakers in Indiana gave a clue as to a possible reason for us being unable to find a marriage record. The Indiana Historical Society has a wonderful website that includes an “Introduction to the Quaker Records Project.” This document should be required reading for anyone researching Quakers.

The Intro explains that Quakers (AKA “Friends”) did not believe in being married by a “hireling priest” or a civil servant- Friends married themselves. They also monitored themselves to ensure proper behavior. One of the Quaker church gatherings was called a “Monthly Meeting” (MM), and at that meeting, the couple would announce their intention to marry- similar to the marriage banns required by the Catholic church and other religions. After the intention was announced, the MM would appoint a committee to investigate and make sure the bride and groom were both “clear of engagements,” i.e., not married or promised to another. If the individuals were, indeed, free of others per the committee’s report at the next MM, the couple would be declared “at liberty to accomplish the marriage.” Of course, a committee would be appointed to attend the marriage to ensure that “good order was preserved.” Sometimes a special meeting was called to include the marriage, and in earliest Quaker marriages, the ceremony would take place at the next midweek worship meeting. After the mid-1800s, which was when Matthew would have married a second time, the marriage took place on First-day. (First-day was Sunday, and meetings occurred on this day. The Quakers used a “plain calendar” which used numbers for days of the week and the months- they did not want to use names derived from pagan deities, like Saturday, named after Saturn, an ancient Roman god of time, agriculture, plenty, or January, named after the Roman god Janus, the god of beginnings and endings, passages and duality, etc.)

Detailed records were kept of the business of the Monthly Meeting, so if they survive for the Wilkinson Church, we should be able to learn the name of Matthew’s second wife, when they married, and even her parent’s names and residences of all involved.

Understanding the process of marriage within a religion is always insightful, but why does this have importance in our research? The Indiana History website tells us:

“The laws of Indiana, until the 1920s, exempted Friends from the legal requirement to obtain a civil marriage license. Thus marriages performed under the care of a monthly meeting will not be found in courthouse records.”

Looking at the historical timeline of an organization and their rules/dogma may give us more clues to help our research:

“Disownment for marrying a non-Friend or for marrying by civil ceremony had been abandoned by the 1860s. The member concerned had only to indicate that he wished to retain his membership. By the 1880s the whole matter was ignored. Some Friends churches had paid preachers, and the marriage form was soon fashioned after other Protestant ceremonies.”

So yes, we will still look further for this marriage information within civil records, since they likely married in the mid-1880s. But we now know that we may only find the information within the records of a Monthly Meeting, especially if this more-rural church maintained a more traditional point of view.

Knowing this information, we have another clue into Matthew’s life: his second wife may have been Quaker, since we have not yet found a marriage record, but his first wife may not have been when they married, since we do have a record of their marriage. Of course, this is hypothesis, and more research into the Quaker records of this area may give us the answers we desire.

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

  1. Introduction to the Quaker Records Project– http://www.indianahistory.org/our-services/books-publications/magazines/online-connections/quaker-records/introquakerrecords.pdf
  2.  Image from Wikipedia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SugarGroveFriendsDivision.jpg 
  3. GFDL 1.2 for image– https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:GNU_Free_Documentation_License,_version_1.2
  4. FamilySearch Wiki articles on Quakers– https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Society_of_Friends_(Quakers)_in_the_United_States   and https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/U.S._Quaker_Research_(Society_of_Friends)
  5. Wilkinson Meetings are listed under the Knightstown meeting (formerly Raysville), located in Henry County, Indiana– https://quakermeetings.com/Plone/meeting_view?anID=514 and the Shirley meeting, located in Hancock County, Indiana– https://quakermeetings.com/Plone/meeting_view?anID=815. Unfortunately none of the links worked for websites with the records.

 

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We would love to read your thoughts and comments about this post (see form below), and thank you for your time! All comments are moderated, however, due to the high intelligence and persistence of spammers/hackers who really should be putting their smarts to use for the public good instead of spamming our little blog.
 

Original content copyright 2013-2017 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted. 
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Sunday’s Obituary: Matthew Johns (1817-1899)

Matthew JOHNS, obituary. Indianapolis Journal, March 5, 1899, part 1, page 7, column 5, via ChroniclingAmerica.LOC.gov.

ROBERTS Family, HONTS Family (Click for Family Tree)

 

If you are a descendant of Edith (ROBERTS) [McMURRAY] LUCK, or of Mary Magdalene “Polly” HONTS or her father, Henry HONTS/JOHNS, then you are related to Matthew. Matthew was the half-brother of Mary, who was the great-grandmother of Edith on the side of her father, George A. ROBERTS.

Matthew was the second known child of Henry Honts/Johns and his mistress, Elizabeth FIRESTONE LAMPERT. Henry and Elizabeth did eventually marry and have more children, but theirs is another story that is soon to come on this blog. In the meantime, we know that Matthew lived a good, respectable life as a blacksmith and farmer, and raised 10 children with his wife Elizabeth MAGGART/MAGGARD.

The obituary tells us a few things we did not know. Only one son and four daughters survived him- just half of his children. Additionally, we did not know of a second marriage- the obituary states his second wife survived him. We do know that first wife Elizabeth died in 1886, so a second marriage is very possible, however we have not found a record of that marriage or her name. The name of his second wife would have been listed on the 1890 US Federal Census, but that did not survive for us to view today. There are a number of women with the surname Johns listed in Hancock County, Indiana, in the 1900 US Federal Census, and at least 1 is listed as a widow, but that research is for another cousin who is more closely related to complete.

One very interesting part of the obituary is that his memorial service was held at the Friends Church in Wilkinson, Indiana. That tells us that Matthew had become a Quaker. Was that something that happened after he married his second wife, or was Elizabeth also a Quaker and they practiced the faith throughout their married life? Or had Matthew become a Quaker on his own as an adult, or possibly as a child? We have seen nothing about Matthew’s parents being Quakers, but that would be very interesting, due to their past “indiscretions” and flaunting of society’s morals. The Quakers were forgiving people, however, so it might be possible.

This obituary provides us with one more avenue of research, important since Matthew’s father, Henry Honts/Johns, is one of our direct ancestors. The Quakers kept very good records and although there is no longer a Friends church in Wilkinson, there are two Friends churches within about 10 miles today, and they may have the records of Matthew’s family. One more item for the To-Do List now…

 

More to come on the Honts/Johns family…

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

  1. Matthew JOHNS, obituary. Indianapolis Journal, March 5, 1899, part 1, page 7, column 5, via ChroniclingAmerica.LOC.gov.

 

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We would love to read your thoughts and comments about this post (see form below), and thank you for your time! All comments are moderated, however, due to the high intelligence and persistence of spammers/hackers who really should be putting their smarts to use for the public good instead of spamming our little blog.
 

Original content copyright 2013-2017 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted. 
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