What Am I Working On Wednesday?

Borrowing this blog post title from National Archives site.

Researching today, and past two days, transportation in Appalachia Kentucky in the 1880s.  Should finish this up today.

When an ancestor moves a significant distance, as my great grandfather John Dean did in 1885, it's natural to wonder how that ancestor got there.  Remember, no automobiles.  The choices:

• Horse and wagon  
• Horseback.
• Train, steam engine
• River, flat boats, barges, steamboats

The 1870's initiated a new era in Kentucky's transportation history. Closer markets, cheaper goods, and expanded shopping facilities combined to produce the "Age of Railroading." Between 1870 and 1900 railway mileage tripled. The Louisville & Nashville, Mobile & Ohio, Illinois Central, Cincinnati-Southern, Chesapeake & Ohio and Norfolk & Western plus a host of intrastate lines vied with each other in various regions of the state... No state highway system existed in Kentucky, and the counties had the responsibility for highway construction and maintenance. These roads, many of which were toll pikes, were so poor that residents traveled them only as a last resort; the era of better highways in Kentucky awaited the coming of the automobile.  

The railroad greatly altered the lifestyles of all but the most isolated Kentuckians by stimulating the industrial development of the state.~ http://www.ket.org/kentuckystory/program8.htm

I'm thinking the combination of riverboat and train, including a little walking in between, is how a lot of the people traveled in the 1880s.

John, age 20, was traveling from Orangeburg, Kentucky, the last home he lived in with his parents, to Casey County, Kentucky, 134 miles south.

What did he do there?  He married his first wife.

Fifteen years later, he married my Great Grandmother Nellie.  My Grandfather Frank was three years old by the time John got the divorce from Delila, his first wife.

And so started the life of my rogue Grandfather Frank Dean.

What I'm wondering today is, when John traveled to Casey County in 1885, did he ask to borrow the family horse and buggy from his father Elisha?

From River Town to Appalachia and Back

Covered Bridge in Fleming County
Courtesy of http://kentuckywritersblock.blogspot.com

1880 Fleming County  

Elisha and Betsey have moved again, to Fleming County, the small town of Muses Mill, once again in Appalachia. As before, I still assume this move was because of the opportunity for better land.  

http://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Fleming_County,_Kentucky

Mason County, where they'd moved from, though only one county away, isn't considered part of Appalachia, while Morgan and Fleming Counties both are.  I think I can safely say my Dean family was Appalachian, coming from Rockingham, Virginia, Wilkes County, North Carolina, and Eastern Tennessee and Kentucky.  During all of these moves, they would have traveled by horse and covered wagon, or ox or mule and wagon, transporting what meager possessions they were able to take with them.    

On the Muses Mill farm, John, now 18, is helping his father tend the fields.  His sister, Mary, is age 20 and still living at home.  Older brother James, 27, is now head of his own household, living either next-door or in a different dwelling on the same farm, with his wife Sarah and their two-year-old son, Elisha, most certainly named after his grandfather.

Not surprisingly, one of the Martin families lives next door to the Deans in Muses Mill.   B. William Martin, age 45, wife Jane, 38, and children, Rebecca, Nancy, and Mary.  I am obsessed with finding the Martin - Dean connection.  I know there's one there, and I'm betting it's Elisha's mother, Elizabeth. 

An additional family member, Leander Dean, is living with Elisha and Betsey now and is listed as their “son.” However, I found him on the 1850 Census for Maury County, Tennessee when he was two months old, living with his parents, Josiah and Siann Dean. I know this is the same Leander because Josiah and Siann are living next door to “Green” Dean, good old Greenberry who we've come across earlier.  

Both Green and Josiah were born in Maury County, and I'm wondering if Elisha was born there as well.  Are they brothers?  If they are, then Leander is Elisha's nephew, and I can see where he might be staying there in Muses Mill, maybe helping to work the farm.  I believe they are all related.

20 Years Later: Back in Mason County

Most of Kentucky's 1890 census records were destroyed in a fire, so I was unable to track the location of Elisha and Betsey and their family during this time.  At least for now.

Elisha is now 75 years old and widowed, though I don't know when Betsey died, and he lives back in Mason County, Magisterial District Eight, which is Orangeburg, again.  He's living with son, James, and daughter-in-law Sarah, or "Sadie, and they now have two more children, Sudie, age 12, and David, age 5. Elisha, who would now be 22, is not present in the home. I found him in 1910 in Chicago with his wife Agnes and three children, Daisy, Beatrice, and Violette.  He moved from Illinois to Madison, Indiana, later, where he died on September 18, 1958.

Elisha Edward Dean, Chicago, Illinois

1879 Kentucky -1958 Indiana

My 1st Cousin, Twice Removed

Also missing from the family now is John, my great grandfather, who I found moved to Cincinnati about this same time.  He probably wasn't cut out to be a farmer.

After 1900, there are no records for the senior Elisha, including death information. I assume he and Betsey are laid to rest in Orangeburg, or somewhere else in Mason County. 

Over the last year, I've met online some of the descendants of the grandson Elisha (pictured above), and we compare notes to try to climb farther up the family tree. 

I’ve also communicated with some Martins and Jenkins “cousins,” trying to solve some of the mysteries.

I see a Volume 2 possibly in my future. 

For now, though,  I’m ready to publish what I have managed to excavate out of a very large genealogical mountain.