Marriage Certificate of Samuel Beerbower and Irene Peters, 18 Jan 1867, Bucyrus, Ohio. Posted with kind permission of the Marion County Historical Society. (Click to enlarge.)
Beerbower Family(Click for Family Tree)
Samuel Taylor Beerbower (1842-1902) was the son of Eleazer John Beerbower and Matilda Louise McKelvey. His bride, Irene Lewella Peters (1846-1924) was the daughter of Nathan Peters and his second wife, Mary Cady Russell.
Marriage record for Samuel T. Beerbower and Irene L. Peters, married January 18th, 1867, in the Samuel T. Beerbower Family Bible. Posted with kind permission of the Marion County Historical Society (MCHS), Marion, Ohio. (Click to enlarge.)
Both Samuel and Irene were Marion natives, so it is curious that they were married in Bucyrus, Ohio. Bucyrus is a bit less than 20 miles north of Marion, but is in another county (Crawford), and the county seat. We are not aware of any family living in Bucyrus. Maybe they could get a license there more quickly, or they eloped?
Notes, Sources, and References:
1) Marriage certificate and Samuel T. Beerbower bible posted with the kind permission of the Marion County Historical Society (MCHS), Marion, Ohio.
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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.Descendants and researchers MAY download images and posts to share with their families, and use the information on their family trees or in family history books with a small number of reprints. Please make sure to credit and cite the information properly.Please contact us if you have any questions about copyright of our blog material.
Ollie McKelvy of Canal Winchester visiting cousins in Marion, Ohio. Marion Daily Star [Marion, Ohio], 04 September 1880, page 81. Posted with kind permission for non-profit use only.Beerbower Family(Click for Family Tree)
Transportation is the lifeblood of a nation, especially a young nation such as the United States in the early to mid 1800s. Ways to move people, products, and farm produce (both the vegetarian-type as well as the carnivore-preferred) were necessary for cities and towns to develop, and migration to proceed westward. Commerce was imperative to provide markets to farmers and manufacturers, and to make the US a world trading partner.
When the Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the country overnight, the heavily forested or wide-plained US with its vast distances presented logistic problems for trade and moving people. Our rich waterways had long provided a fairly easy road to markets and new places, but were limiting when an overland portage was required to move a product between two rivers or lake systems. “The Canal Era” began great private and public work projects in 1791, and linked the large expanses of our young country.
By 1830, the US had over 1,000 miles of canals.
By 1840, 3,326 miles of canals had been built at a cost of over $125 million, and the completed miles of the new railroads was about the same.
Canals allowed the cost of transportation to drop from about ten cents per ton mile to less than one cent, thus increasing profits as well as opening new, more distant markets for producers and manufacturers.
Canal Winchester was a city that developed along the 308-mile-long Ohio and Erie Canal. Completed in 1834, this canal finished the privately financed inland waterway that included the Erie Canal, and stretched from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River; it essentially linked New York City to New Orleans by water. This opened up settlement in northern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and our McKelvey ancestors were a part of this great era.
In 1828, the Ohio & Erie Canal was planned to go right through the wheat field of Reuben Dove in Fairfield County, Ohio. Although he planned to sue the state, he was instead encouraged to lay out a town as being a more profitable venture, and that he did. He called it Canal Winchester, and we know that at least one McKelvey family lived there in 1880.
The area only had a stagecoach run in the early 1800s; when the first canal boat floated through in 1831, it changed the area completely. The Ohio & Erie Canal brought work: on the canal itself, like barge operators and mates; and work alongside, such as hotels and restaurants, warehouses, and markets. Farmers could increase the size of their fields as they now had a way to transport excess grain, and agriculture thus became big business in the area, changed from mainly subsistence when there was no practical way to get grain to market. The railroad came through in 1869, making the canal less efficient due to the speed and capacity of trains, but the city continued to prosper as it moved with the times.
By 1850, railroads had surpassed the number of miles of canalways, with 2.5 times as many miles.
By 1860, railroads had about eight times the miles of canals, and The Canal Era became The Railroad Era.
Maps are important resources in family history research, and a source we often forget to use to help find clues.
From the newspaper article above, we know that:
Miss Ollie McKelvey lived in Canal Winchester, Fairfield &
Franklin Counties, Ohio in 1880.
Researching the above Canal Winchester, Ohio on maps and checking how far it was to Marion, Ohio, where cousin Sam lived, I realized that Canal Winchester was also close to Pickerington, Fairfield County, Ohio. That place was somewhere some ancestors had lived, I remembered, and sure enough, looking at family group records showed me that Matilda and Eleazer Beerbower most probably lived in Pinkerington, as their infant twin sons are buried there. Son Polaski only lived ten days, and Caspar just short of nine months when he died, so likely the family lived there or nearby during the year 1840. (Matilda was just 17 when the twins were born on 1 April 1840.) Embalming was not prevalent until the Civil War, so they probably would not have traveled far for burial, and may have been living in the area. It is easy to imagine that, even if they had moved away, in their grief they wanted the twin boys to be together in eternity. Their son Samuel T. Beerbower (the above host to Ollie) was born 10 November 1842 in Fairfield County, and their next child likely was as well: George Beerbower, born 10 August 1844 (in Marion, Ohio per my records, but now that is questionable). George died just three days later, and was also buried in Dovel Memorial Cemetery with his infant brothers.
Canal Winchester, Ohio, is located southeast of Columbus, Ohio; Marion, where Ollie was visiting, was due north of Columbus. There are about 60 miles between the two cities, but train service abounded in Ohio in those years, so the trip may not have been too taxing. Since Ollie apparently traveled alone, that is another indicator of the ease and safety of the trip.
Samuel T. Beerbower’s biography in the History of Marion County, Ohio, 1883, notes that his family moved to Delaware County, Ohio in 1849, and from there to Marion, Ohio in 1850, then finally to Indianapolis, Indiana in 1867. It was thus a short window of time (~1839-~1849 possibly?) that the McKelvey-Beerbower family resided in Canal Winchester/Fairfield County, Ohio, but apparently other family lived there, and stayed, as Ollie McKelvey did. Further research in that locality may provide more of the story of the McElvey family.
Notes, Sources, and References:
1) An excellent set of pictures of the Ohio and Erie canal-
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Original content copyright 2013-2015 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.Descendants and researchers MAY download images and posts to share with their families, and use the information on their family trees or in family history books with a small number of reprints. Please make sure to credit and cite the information properly.Please contact us if you have any questions about copyright of our blog material.
Ollie Beerbower and Caspar Beerbower, children of Samuel and Jane Huggins Beerbower. Courtesy of Marion County [Ohio] Historical Society. c mid 1860s? (Click to enlarge.) Beerbower Family-
Mary Emma Beerbower and Olive Beerbower were not siblings, but instead, children of two siblings, our direct ancestor Eleazer John “E. J.” Beerbower (1815-1882) and his brother, Samuel Beerbower (1824-1890); this made them cousins.
Olive Beerbower was the daughter of Samuel Beerbower (1824-1890) and Nance “Jane” Huggins Beerbower (1834-1930- she was 96 when she died!). Born on 13 March 1855 in Prospect, Marion County, Ohio, Olive was the first of three children born to Samuel and his wife.
Olive probably helped out at home when her brother, Caspar Samuel Beerbower, pictured above, was born four years later, in 1859.
“Ollie” as she was affectionately known, grew up in Marion, Ohio with her brother. They lived next to her uncle E. J. and his family, and she would have played with her cousins, particularly Mary Emma Beerbower, who was just 3 years older, but who only had brothers. Ollie’s father was a marble cutter, and they likely were fairly comfortable, as the 1860 census notes that he owned $1500 in real estate and had $850 in personal value. Her uncle E. J. was also a highly skilled craftsman, as he was a buggy upholsterer. Neither family was rich, but they probably had enough to get by.
Mary “Emma” Beerbower and her brother John Eleazer Beerbower, children of Eleazer John Beerbower and Matilda Louise McKelvey Beerbower, c late 1860s? Courtesy of Marion County [Ohio] Historical Society. (Click to enlarge.)Mary Emma Beerbower, or “Emma” as she was called (Germans often used their middle name on a daily basis, rather than their first Christian name), was the daughter of Eleazer John Beerbower and Matilda Louise McKelvey Beerbower. She was the eighth of nine children, born 10 March 1852 in Marion. Her brother John E. Beerbower, above, was the baby of the family.
The early 1860s were an unsettling time for both families, as it was for the whole nation as southern states seceded and war broke out to preserve the Union. Emma’s brother and Ollie’s cousin, Samuel T. Beerbower, decided to enlist for a term of 3 years in the Union Army beginning October 23, 1861; he was just 19, and 10 years older than Emma. The Underground Railroad operated through Ohio, and much of the state had northern sympathies. The family would have closely followed the news of battles and Samuel’s unit, hoping to not hear the bad news so dreaded by families who have members serving their country.
The terror of the War of the Rebellion really came home to Ohio in July of 1863, when Morgan’s Confederates entered southern Ohio as part of their 46-day, 1,000 mile raid through Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. Thankfully the Raiders did not get as far north as Marion, but they were close enough, and people were afraid they might get that far. Although captured in Ohio (but they escaped), the Confederate Raiders successfully diverted Union troops from southern campaigns, and definitely did strike fear into the population as part of the psychological warfare of the time. Ollie was just eight, Emma eleven- it must have been very frightening to children, especially with so many young men away fighting, and not there to protect their families.
Even more frightening was what happened next, just four months after the Raiders hit Ohio- Samuel T., who had fought in many of the War’s battles, was wounded on November 25, 1863. He was charging up the mountain bravely at Mission Ridge, Georgia, when a ball went through him near his shoulder blade and spine, lacking an inch or so of paralyzing him from his chest down for life. He spent three months recuperating in military hospitals, until his arm was more usable, and then requested a discharge home to more fully recover. It was granted, and he mustered out March 23, 1864. It must have been quite a homecoming!
Emma’s brother Stephen Russell Beerbower, age 19, enlisted just six weeks after his brother Samuel T. came home. Emma was probably heartbroken, but grateful that her two little brothers were too young to enlist.
And then Ollie’s nine-year-old world really fell apart- her father, Samuel Beerbower, enlisted in the Union Army on the same day, in the same unit as Stephen: May 2, 1864, Co. B, 136th Ohio.
The mix of emotions must have been so difficult for the two girls- pride in their family serving the Union (and going to get those Rebs who hurt their Samuel!), fear for the safety of their loved ones, especially after seeing Samuel’s injury, and that hole in their heart as the 136th Ohio marched off to war.
Why would they enlist- especially Samuel, at age 39, and a husband and father?
As the war continued and more soldiers were needed, conscription was begun in 1863 for men between 20 and 45 years old. Samuel was thus eligible- maybe he enlisted, knowing that he might be drafted, or perhaps he felt he needed to help the Union finally win the war. All the men in his unit were mustered in on that same date, with those in higher positions knowing the Union was preparing to launch a massive campaign on many fronts to try to finally end the war.
Samuel and Stephen had 100-day enlistments, and those units generally did guard duty at facilities and strategic places, such as Washington, D.C., freeing up the trained troops for actual fighting elsewhere. It wasn’t quite as dangerous as being in the field, though at times it could be a dangerous, possibly even lethal, situation.
It was probably a very long 100 days for the whole family, including Ollie and Emma.
To be continued…
Notes, Sources, and References:
1) 1860 US Federal Census for Samuel Beerbower: Year: 1860; Census Place: Marion, Marion, Ohio; Roll: M653_1006; Page: 326; Image: 123; Family History Library Film: 805006. Ancestry.com. 1860 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.
4) Wilson Peters, who would later become Samuel T. Beerbower’s brother-in-law, was in the 136th Ohio as well. There are other familiar last names on the roster as well, which shows that the company was tight-knit, and all from the same area.
Please contact us if you would like higher resolution images. Click to enlarge images.
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 2013-2015 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.Descendants and researchers MAY download images and posts to share with their families, and use the information on their family trees or in family history books with a small number of reprints. Please make sure to credit and cite the information properly.Please contact us if you have any questions about copyright of our blog material.
