As I am currently up against a brick wall with tracing our Ancestor James Wilson Sr. any further back (as documented here in this blog), I have decided to start a new series of blog posts documenting my research from the beginning of my genealogical journey through my male Wilson lineage. This beginning is the end of the line, roughly, at least from my viewpoint. Although there are many other Y-chromosome lines that derive from James Wilson Sr., the line associated with James Allison Wilson of Kansas (who as you will shortly see plays a large role in my research) has dwindled to a single thread, completely dependent on my only son to continue. My only male Wilson 1st cousin has no biological children and my grandfather, son of James Allison Wilson, was an only child.
My name, James Allison Wilson Jr., was derived from my father, who in turn was named after his grandfather, the aforementioned James Allison Wilson who was born in 1864 in Kansas, where he lived his entire life, dying in Toronto, Kansas in 1933. My Allison middle name was the source of much consternation on my part due to it being perceived as a girl’s name by my less than mature classmates in elementary and junior high school. I was partly responsible for compounding my own misery by thinking it was a good idea to announce that I was actually James Allison Wilson the III – which resulted in a nickname from one of the other clever boys: Jeeves Alleycat Wilbutt the Turd. Fortunately, he was much smaller than me so that when he decided to escalate his combination of bullying and teasing to a physical level, he received the worst of the deal and to this day is more than polite to me!
I supposed I should be grateful to my parents in this regard since my two grandfathers were named Marion Alfred and Percy Dwight, either of which would have probably caused even more embarrassment to me during those tender years. But as I grew older, understanding the origins of my middle name became more important to me. My father had no idea how his grandfather came to be tagged with this moniker, and he had gotten little information about the name or the family from his fairly tight-lipped parents. Our best guess was that it was a surname that had arisen somewhere in the family line.
My dad had attempted a few times to document the family tree farther back, especially after my mother died in 2012, but he never had really identified the parentage of James Allison the 1st. I still don’t recall what prompted me to type “James Allison Wilson & Kansas” into my Google search bar one day, nor why I expected to get a meaningful answer. Nonetheless, one of the first search results (and the only accurate one) came up like this (which I have copied verbatim):
JAMES WILSON, farmer, P. O. Ottumwa, was born in Kentucky, in 1829, and at four years of age his parents moved to Illinois, and lived there about thirty years, and came to Kansas in 1859, and located in California Township, Coffey County, and has lived there since, excepting one year that he lived in Iowa, and has been engaged in farming and chair and wheelwrighting. Mr. Wilson was married in Vigo County, Ind., in 1849, to Miss Nancy C. Wurton, who was born in Indiana. They have nine children — Thomas J., John A., James A., Joanna, Mary M. J., Sarah T. E., Nancy J., Harriet A. and Anna.
So, right there, from William G. Cutler’s History of the State of Kansas, first published in 1883, was my very own great-grandfather (James A. in the list of children) as well as his father and mother and siblings! We already knew that Wilson family came from Kentucky and Virginia before that (through one of the few tidbits my grandfather had shared) but this was truly earth-shattering information.
Of course, one of the many links I received in my search results led me to the website Ancestry.com. Although my dad wasn’t initially convinced that this was his family, he soon turned over his Ancestry tree to me and let me have at it.
And thus began my now 5+ year journey through the annals of family history (and that of many states and counties), which at times preoccupies much of my time and at others is left hanging as I pursue other interests. However, there is still nothing like the thrill I experience when I find another obscure fact or relative connection, or can document and track a family migration that was heretofore unknown to any documented tree.
Oh yes, the reference to Nancy C. Wurton in the quote above is incorrect – her maiden name was actually Newton.
With this critical information, I could now forge ahead in looking at census and other records on Ancestry.com. I quickly learned that census lists in 1850 and beyond contained names and ages of all members of the household, not just that of the head of household as in 1840 and prior censuses. This becomes very helpful in verifying the correct household when you know the names of spouses and children, or even just an estimate of the ages of the children (since often nicknames or odd spellings are used). I could also use Ancestry to look up James’ and Nancy’s marriage record, which was fortunately readily available, especially since I already knew the county they were married in. It was initially puzzling that they were married in Indiana since the biography stated the family first moved to Illinois and lived there before James came to Kansas. But looking at a map, it was easy to see why that was – Vigo County was right next to the Illinois border, so I guessed that James living across the border in Illinois might have met Nancy at some church or other function, or perhaps their families were otherwise acquainted living such a short distance from each other.
The marriage record also established Nancy’s true last name – it was clearly Newton in both the original handwritten record as well as various transcriptions.
This was also verified by a quick census record search for Newton in this part of Indiana – interestingly, the first record to come up for 1850 was actually in Edgar County, Illinois, directly across the border from Vigo County, Indiana. There I found Thomas Newton, wife Margaret and 3 children under 21 living right next door to James and Nancy Wilson and their 2-year old daughter Joanna. Other good pieces of information from this census record were the birthplaces of Thomas Newton (Kentucky), Margaret Newton (Green County, Kentucky) and Nancy Newton Wilson (Hendricks County, Indiana). This became useful in identifying the right Thomas Newton in earlier Indiana censuses as there are no other household names listed. Also of note was young Joanna’s birthplace of Edgar County, Illinois, so apparently James and Nancy (and presumably Thomas and Margaret Newton) moved there soon after their marriage if they weren’t already there.
It was about at this point in my research that my father gave me two very important albums – one was an old photo album that my grandmother Wilson made, which included several very old tintypes as well as names. The other was an “autograph” album that belonged to James Allison, which was apparently a result of a practice of the late 1800’s to have friends and relatives write and sign a little note when they came visiting. Much valuable information would be gleaned about this later as I delved into James Allison’s (then known as Allie) life and family. Back to the photo album – one page had three envelopes with tintypes, in order from top left marked: “Mr. and Mrs. James Wilson taken 1875”, below it one marked “their son – James Wilson father of James Allison” and next to that “James Allison Wilson 1875 – age 9 father of Marion Alfred”. While that seemed to be quite useful information in that it indicated that James Allison’s grandfather was also named James, something didn’t seem right.
The picture on the left is supposedly the grandparents, and on the right that of Allie’s father. On the back of each is marked in pencil “Mr. and Mrs. Jim Wilson taken 1875” and “Jim Wilson?”. Assuming Allie’s father James was born in 1829, his parents would likely have been born probably around 1810 at the latest, thus making them 65-70 (it actually turns out they were about 5 years older than that). Somehow the people in the photo didn’t look quite that old to me. The man identified as Allie’s father did look to be about 45, however, or perhaps a bit older. Plus, if all these pictures had been taken about the same time, it seems likely there were taken in the same place; but there are no census records of a James Wilson in Coffey County, KS in the 1870’s or 80’s that could have been Allie’s grandparents. Despite later discovering that Allie’s grandfather was named Thomas, and not James, the actual people in the photo and the date remain somewhat of a mystery. The markings on the back may not be correct since we don’t who made them and when – the handwriting could very well be that of my grandmother in which case she might have just copied the same incorrect names.
More to come in future posts as I trace back to more generations…