According to George W. Callin’s 1911 book, The Callin Family History, Sarah Callin (1801-1872) was born when her family still lived in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. Her father was “John Callin, 2nd son of James 1st, [who] emigrated with his family from Westmoreland Co., Penn., to Ashland County in 1816 and settled on 60 acres of his brother James’ farm who gave him a life lease of it.”
Sources disagree on her date of birth, but if it was in 1801, she would have been 15 when her family moved west to Ohio, and 22 when she married John Scott. All George knew about their family was summed up in one line:
“Sarah, born 1808, married John Scott, moved to Ills. About 1840.”
Like we saw with the Callin families who moved to Iowa, George Callin did not know what happened to his aunt Sarah after 1840, and he was born 6 years after the Scotts left Ohio. But that is just the beginning of their story.
The Scott Family in Illinois
Joseph Scott was born in Pennsylvania in 1765. He may be the Joseph Scott who appeared in Washington, Pennsylvania, on the 1790 U.S. Census, but according to other researchers, he moved with his wife, Elizabeth Mary (1778-1848), to Ohio where all of his children were born. His oldest child, John Scott, was born in Richland County, Ohio, on 6 October 1798.
John Scott married Sarah Callen in Richland County on 18 January 1823. John and Sarah had their first three children there in Richland county before they left Milton Township about 1836. John and Sarah’s fourth child, Rebecca, was born while they were in Michigan, putting them in that state in 1837. And soon after that, they settled in an unincorporated area called Harrison, near Rockford, Illinois, in Winnebago County.
Sarah and John lived out their lives in Harrison, and died just a few weeks apart from each other; he died on 20 January 1872, and she died on 6 February 1872. They are buried in North Burritt Cemetery.
Scott Descendants
John and Sarah had five children who survived to adulthood: George Scott, James Scott, Rebecca (Scott) Sharp, Cyrus H Scott and Lucina (Scott) Dobson.
George Scott (1827-1905) was about ten years old when his family left Richland County, Ohio, so he likely had childhood memories of his Callin cousins from Milton Township. He and his wife, Lucetta Beach, had two sons and three daughters. Their grandchildren mostly remained in Winnebago County, though their sons both moved away later in their lives (to North Dakota and to San Diego, California). Their daughters married men named Knight, Johnson, and Wicks,
James Scott (1832-1916) married Charlotte Brown about 1856, and raised a son and two daughters in Winnebago County. Their son, Christopher Columbus Scott, left no children behind, but their daughters did. Their older daughter, Mary (Scott) Taylor had one child; a granddaughter, Charlotte “Lottie” Taylor, who married Walter Scott Wicks, a grandson of George Scott and Lucetta Beach. Their younger daughter, Ina Belle, had seven children with her first husband, Bert Deuel.
Rebecca Scott (1837-1928) was probably born in Michigan, before the Scotts settled in Winnebago County. She married Edward Robert Sharp (1835-1887) in 1856, and they gave Sarah and John six Sharp grandchildren. Of their two daughters, only the younger one, Donna A (Sharp) Randerson (1865-1940), had children: three sons.
Cyrus H Scott (1843-1931) had four children with his first wife, Mary Wishop (1844-1902). Their daughter never had children, and their youngest son died at age 20, having never married. Cyrus had a daughter with his second wife, Ida May (West) McDonald (1864-1928). That daughter, Laura, married a man named Malcolm Ferns, but their daughter died in infancy in 1929, and Laura divorced Malcolm in 1932, and doesn’t appear in the records after that.
Lucina Scott (1847-1910) married Joseph Dobson (1838-1928) and also had six children. Their grandchildren included 25 Dobsons, 10 Riels, and 5 Homans.
Dozens of Cousins
I did my best to document the Scott descendants in The Callin Family History, and if any of their hundreds of living descendants are interested in representing that family on WikiTree, I would be delighted to help. If the price tag on that 800-page tome is too hefty, there is a lot of information on my old Blogger site. (That link should give you a good start!)
I’m still amazed that it was possible to find this branch of the family based on the very thin clues George W. offered in the original Callin Family History — a feat made possible because someone added John and Sarah’s grave markers to Find A Grave:
From there, armed with their Richland County, Ohio, marriage record, I was able to pull together census records and kept digging until I found the 1916 death record for James Scott that gave his mother’s maiden name as “Sarah Callion” – which is probably as conclusive as things are going to get for this connection!
So the lesson is, run down every lead. You never know how far you’ll have to go to find what you’re looking for.
Say hello, cousin!