Kate: "DNA Don't Lie"

The Sisters decided to try the DNA spit test on Ancestry.com.  LA sent in a sample and after waiting several weeks the results are in. Search Sisters have cousins: More than a thousand matches. Good God, Can this be right? Where to start? 

Step 1. OK...Take a deep breath.
Step 2. Survey your 308 "high confidence" cousin matches.
Step 3. Snoop through their family trees searching for surname match ups. 
Step 4. Decide which ones might help you solve a mystery in your own tree.
Step 5. Send a message to the match. Stella writes a note that goes something like this:

Allisonwells291: It looks like my sister and I have a really close DNA match with you. After looking at your tree I think it must be in your James Felix Evans 1813 NC and our William Evans 1815 NC. It seems possible that they may be brothers.  

Step 6. Wait. Wonder. Will they write back? Will they be smart? Or nuts? 
Yahoo! we have a reply:

Renegade6008 Greetings cousin. That's entirely possible. Who is your sister? I noticed we have similar names for children of James and your William (William, Josephine, Catherine, Jane) and in Mississippi and Arkansas at the same times. Where did you get the mother's name of Mary Catherine McMasters? I have no idea who James' parents were, only that he was born in NC (don't know the county) in 1813 (census records). Do you also have a DNA match to MechelleMcConnell? She is my 2nd cousin on the Evans line. My name is Jeannie and I'm happy you contacted me.  Jan 11, 2015 9:50 PM GMT

Double yahoo!! This gal is informed and knows how to sling information. The back and fourth is fast and furious for the next couple of days. Some highlights:

Renegade6008 Stella, I've started to return your message about three times today and kept getting interrupted. I'm putting your group in my tree with asterisks on Mary Catherine McMasters to indicate to me it's not confirmed but highly suspected. As they say, DNA don't lie. We are connected and that seems the likely spot since, though not verified, it's also not ruled out. I asked you if you also DNA match my 2nd cousin, MechelleMcconnell. Jeannie

allisonwells291 Hi Jeannie, Yes we have a strong 5-8 cousin match with MechelleMcconnell and our user name (stella's and linda's) is allisonwells291.Best, Stella,  Jan 13, 2015 12:20 AM GMT

 Renegade6008 Stella, well, there you have it. It's an Evans match, as that is how I match Mechelle and our match is not far back She and I share the same great grandfather, Henry Evans (grandson of James Felix Evans). I believe she should be at the same generation level from you as I am, which is 4th cousins of yours and Linda's. Jeannie 

The Search Sisters are kind of stunned. Not only do we  have a solid confirming link to our past backed up by DNA evidence, but equally amazing,  we have a connection with one smart cousin who is happy to share. We can help each other. 
Isn't that what family is for?

Kate has Kin: The Evans Sisters

Amy  was called "Babe" being the youngest of the Evans girls. 

Come to think of it, we knew Kate had sisters. Aunt Babe and Aunt Jane or Janie as our dad used to refer to them. 

Babe was an artist. I spent a lot of childhood hours sitting on a hard sofa bored out of mind staring at a desolate desert landscape painted by Aunt Babe. The story was that she painted it when she lived in New Mexico. Or was it Arizona? I was too young to know the difference… I wasn't too young to know that the deer in the painting only had three legs. This lonesome animal was drinking from a creek at the bottom of an arroyo and it was definitely missing some parts. Babe was no Georgia Okeefe. 

Still Lewis had some fond memories of Babe and Jane and told some funny stories about these two ecce

ntric old gals.  Babe and Jane were the sisters that stepped up and took in the kids after Kate died. Solid sisters.

Then Stella found Julia Josephine Evans Miller on Ancestry.  Here's how she tells it:

After digging around for several months we eventually turned up their oldest sister, Julia Josephine Evans. Lucky for us that Julia's hometown in Bradley County Arkansas seems to have been the hub for their aunties Sara Ward Evans Ritchey b1818, Miss and Julia Caroline Evans Reeves b1821 NC. It is these two generations of Evans women in Bradley County Arkansas who led us to Mary Catherine McMasters b1779 who is Kate's grandmother.   

Julia Josephine Evans Milller

Frosting on the discovery was that Julia Josephine came with photos and documentation. 

Kate had more sisters than we knew. Maybe even some brothers..
The Evans tree is starting to get some solid branches.

The Life of Kate: Mary Catherine Evans Allison

So in about 18 months of searching this is what we know of the life of Kate: 

Mary Catherine Evans Allison timeline

Born 1856 most likely in Arkansas 

1860 Age 4 living with parents and 4 brothers and sisters: Julia 10, Benjamin 8, William 6, Mary 4, Thea 2.  in Moss, Columbia, Arkansas.  Palestine Post Office. 

1870 Age 14 or 16 living with parents and 6 brothers and sisters in Wood Co, TX w/Quitman Post Office. JJ 18, BF 16, Wm 14, Cathrine 13, FJ 17, FM 9, Amy 5

 1880 Age 24 living with husband John R Allison and Annie B age 2 in Precinct 5, Wood Co, Texas. No marriage record yet found. 

1882 Age 26 son Harry Craig born 

1884 Age 28 son Samuel Evans 

1887 Age 31 son Ralph Stannard 

1891 Age 35 daughter  Katie W born

          1892 at about age 36 Kate dies.

          1900 her four youngest kids are living in Wise Texas with Kate's Sisters Amy and Jane.                                 

We think we found her siblings.  We still don't know where she was buried. Or why she died at such a young age. We do know that her sisters Babe and Jane took her younger children to live with them in Wise County Texas where Amy was a photographer.   Why, is a mystery. We check records. The big question is who were Kate's parents.  Where were they from?

So many Evans..... so little time. But this is the way of family finding. Close the door on one mystery and a door to another opens up.  

The Search Sisters could get discouraged, but they are not. A secret weapon has been dropped in their lap. A DNA match.  NEW COUSINS!  A pair of close cousins are also looking for Evans. They have info. We have info. The Search Sisters: Evans Team just doubled it size. 
There is power in numbers.  

Hopes are high. 

Women, Cattle and Kids

Our one and only picture of Mary Catherine Evans Allison. 

Women, cattle and kids.  All invisible on the United States Census previous to 1850. It makes searching for the grandmothers, aunts and the cousins  a crazy making process.  Nameless, they are all reduced to a maddening tic in a box.  Americans of this era valued and noted their property on the census but not their girls. After 1850 everyone in a household gets a name.  Rejoice that we now live in a world where girls are worth some ink.

Mary Catherine Evans Allison was born around 1856. Our dad never met his Grandmother who lived in Hawkins, Texas nor his Grand dad John R. Allison.  He knew her last name. He met her sisters Amy "Babe" Evans and Jane Evans. He knew Mary Catherine was called Kate.  

Precious  few flimsy facts on which to begin our recovery of the life of Kate. The Search Sisters roll up their sleeves and begin the hunt.  So far we have recovered all her sisters and brothers…. we think. We have documented them on Ancestry.com: Mary Catherine Evans - Overview - Ancestry.com

John R Allison: A Portrait from Scraps of Facts

Many many months of searching turned up  lots of separate facts about John R. Connecting the facts gives us a suprisingly detailed portrait of our Great Grandfather, despit starting with almost no first hand knowledge.

John R Allison 1845-1894 grew up in Greencastle Pennsylvania. This town began at a crossroads marked by Allison's Tavern. In the last part of the 1700's John R's great grandfather William Allison offered food and drink here to stock herders and businessmen traveling south  to the Potomac or heading north from Baltimore to Pittsburg.  John R's great uncle Colonel John Allison inherited 300 acres from his father and helped to establish the borough of Greencastle in 1782, It is here in 1850 that we find the first official record of six year old John R living with his mother Sarah and his older sister Mary.  Of their father, Samuel, we know very little. It seems he died when John R was a babe in arms. John R and his sisters were Allisons living in a town full of Allisons, Craigs and McClanahans. Their great grandfathers James McClanahan and William Allison married sisters from the Craig family who were also influential in the community.

What happened to John R’s family next is unclear and by 1860, at age 16, John R was a clerk living with the family of George Ziegler. Ziegler owned and operated the mercantile on Greencastle Square from 1833 well into the 1890’s. His apprentice clerking skills would follow John R in later life. Documents from the Franklin County Orphan Court show that his uncle, James C. McClanahan, became John R Allison's guardian in 1862. John R’s mother, Sarah, may have moved north with daughter Mary to settle in Chambersburg. 

What is clear is that these were tumultuous times.  Greencastle, barely north of the Mason-Dixon line, was a stop on the Underground Railroad. The first Union soldier to be killed on Union soil died on June 22, 1863, just outside the town’s limits. Chambersburg was held for ransom by the confederates and suffered a brutal burning that left 2,000 citizens homeless. General Jubal Early who ordered the torching was later pursued for war crimes and fled to Cuba after the war.

Lincoln called for volunteers to fight in the Civil war in 1861. John R answered the call by joining the Union army that year. His military records are confusing. In 1885 John R’s widow applied for a pension listing his service as the 55th Pennsylvania Infantry, the 22nd Pennsylvania Cavalry and as Sergeant Major in the Third Pennsylvania Provisional Calvary. Was John R a deserter? Was he missing in action? Did deserters qualify for pensions?  Did he find his way to Texas during this time?  All questions still to be answered.

After the war John R Allison returned to Greencastle boarding with the Frush family in 1870.  The head of household, Morgan Frush, was a carpenter. Perhaps John R learned the trade during these years swapping skills with books for wood handling skills.

Ten years later John R is married and a citizen of Wood County Texas, 1200 miles distant from his northern birthplace. The 1880 census tells us he lived with wife, Mary Catherine Evans and baby Annie B. Allison. We have no clue where and how the couple met. John was now in the timber business running a sawmill in the town of Hawkins.   More Allison kids were born:  Harry Craig 1882, Samuel Evans 1884, Ralph Stannard 1887 and Katie W 1891. We have one precious photograph of their brood. His kids are a handsome lot. 

The remaining years are series of documented facts, but we have little in the way of stories and few photos. We speculate that Mary Catherine died in childbirth in 1891 leaving baby Katie and the rest of the children motherless. Because the census of 1890 was destroyed we have nothing to indicate whether these five children are living their widowed father. That John R’s health is not good is evidenced by his application for a Civil War pension in 1885 as an “invalid”. Perhaps this is why, in 1892, he became Postmaster of the town of Hawkins, Texas.

Despite invalid status, it’s surprising to find that by fall of 1893 he had taken a new wife, 18 year old Conie Shamburger. Little more than one year later John R. died on December 10, 1894 in Hawkins, Texas at the age of 49.  According to the record of his military enlistment dated August 15, 1861 John R stood five feet four inches tall, had sandy hair, grey eyes and was of dark complexion.

We believe he is buried in  the Ray Cemetery, Hawkins , Texas.  

Finding John R.10. Match the Facts

Genealogy is essentially a game of matching the facts.

Many times  LA sat down with her parents Lewis and Marie Allison and tried to shake loose a little more family information out of them.  Linda  recorded the names of all the aunts, and uncles that came to mind.  How many cousins? Which mother? What second husband? Where was that?  The notes looked like this. 

There were multiple attempts at making family trees over the years.  The results were disjointed, sketchy, messy. LA's habit of "never throwing anything away" as Stella put it, paid off. Years later she took out the pile of page and discovered a notation on one of those pages she had forgotten she had ever written. She was shocked to see "John Allison, two sisters, penn."

Linda's tree sketch from a family conversation in 1990s.. 

A fact match to the Biographical Annuals of Franklin County. Louisa and Mary Allison.

Whoops go up across a stretch of San Francisco Bay in two separate counties.  The Search Sisters are on the phone to each other and are dancing around their living rooms.  The facts match! This FEELS right. Confidence is high.  After more than a century of being lost we think we have found our John R Allison's family.

Finding John R: 9. Check the Books

The message board has spoken. Three facts stand out; Sarah Allison/mother, Mary Allison/ sister and John R. Allison/brother living together in Greencastle, Franklin County, Pennsylvania mid 1800. Now we have a set of names, a definite time period, a state, a county. Our hope now is that a more targeted search will turn up the Allison clan of our origins.

And it does.
 We discover the antique world of genealogical books, chock full of facts, people, geographies about many counties in America. The Biographical Annals of Franklin County Pennsylvania is such a book. The publishers at the Genealogical Publishing of Chicago "feel that they are meeting what is now recognized as a necessity in every intelligent community...Sketches, Items of historical interest, family genealogies...beyond the bios of public men... preserved for the thoughtful reader...."


How there could ever be enough audience in a single county of Pennsylvania to support such a publishing endeavor in is a puzzle. However, we are glad they did because on page 143 we find EXACTLY the reference we were hoping for:




"5. Samuel (Allison) married Sarah Gurley and they had issue: John R, Mary and Louisa."

Source:
https://archive.org/details/biographicalanna01seil
Biographical annals of Franklin county, Pennsylvania : containing genealogical records of representative families, including many of the early settlers, and biographical sketches of prominent citizens

Finding John R: 8. Encounters with Angels

On the SAME day the message goes up we get a reply!  

It is an astonishing reply with at least 16 items about John R. Allison.  This is a huge chuck of genealogical facts delivered by an expert researcher.  This person checked cemetery and civil war records, census pages,  the National Archive.

       

We are flabbergasted at the volume of the information. In fact, we discount a lot of it because, well, we are not far enough along in our search to verify that most every item in this astonishing pile of info will turn out to be true. This message tells us: 

John R, mother named Sarah
John R. sister named Mary
John R, married twice, first to Catherine Evans , then to a young woman, Conie Shamberger
John R civil war pensioner.…. maybe he wasn't a deserter.

Who was that masked man (or woman), who swooped in and delivered this huge pile of information?   We don't know. We only know PaSain by his/her Ancestry.com user name. We do know this person is one of those we call the genealogical angels.  The Search Sisters are reminded of a delightful truth about genealogy. There is a huge community of people out their who are willing to spend a lot of time helping others... for nothing in return.  PaSain, is one of those people. Angels is what Stella and I call them.  We are intensely, eternally grateful for the gift of their interventions.

Source: 
http://boards.ancestry.com/localities.northam.usa.states.texas.unknown/17036.1/mb.ashx




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