Mightier Acorns

One of the challenges of genealogy can be sorting through the biographies of people with similar names. The two girls at the heart of today’s story shared a name that stands out for its uniqueness among a parade of Elizabeths, Marys, and Catherines. As it happens, the girls were 1st cousins, born within a few years of each other.

But telling you who they were depends on sorting out who their relatives were, and that might be a challenge.

So Many Namesakes

My 3rd-great grandfather was William H Callin (1813-1881), the sixth of nine children born to John and Elizabeth Callin in Milton Township, Ohio. The farm these nine children grew up on was established by their uncle, James Callin.

According to the Callin Family History, those brothers, James and John, were the sons of James Callin, who we believe was a soldier in the American Revolution. Both brothers named sons James and John, of course, and William named two of his sons James and John.

But we don’t have to keep track of all of them; we only need to know that among all of these namesakes, William had two brothers: George Callin (1804-1879) and James Callin (1817-1873).

Older brother George had two sons, who he named after his father and his brother. (John C. Callin (1830-1905) and William H Callin (1834-1919), if you need to keep score.) George also had four daughters:

• Minerva (Callin) Smith Robinson Daggett (1834-1895)
• Sabra Ann Callin (1837-1849)
• Lovina (Callin) Rickey (1839-1877)
• Amelia A (Callin) Horton (1849-1899)

Younger brother James only had two children, Mary Ann (born 1838) and Sabra Ann (born 1841).

Remembering through Mothers

George married Mary Ann “Polly” Lewis about 1829, and from what their descendants were told, George and Polly were both stern Presbyterians. This sternness was accompanied by strict discipline and sobriety, and the names they chose for their daughters suggests some familiarity with Greek legends (Minerva) as well as a departure from the usual names favored by other branches of the family.

Records don’t tell us much about Polly at all, and nothing about her personality. But we have an interesting echo that was handed down to us through William’s granddaughter, Rosemary. William married Elizabeth Berlin, and they named one of their sons (can you guess?) George. He was the George Callin who published the Callin Family History, and had a daughter (Rosemary) later in life, with his second wife. Rosemary related several memories about her grandmother Elizabeth. In one section, Rosemary was sharing amusing things that Elizabeth had said to her son George over the years, including this:

Another day she said to him. “The woman next door (mother) is going to have a baby (me).” After I came she said; “I guess you better call her “Melia”. (Sure glad they didn’t.)

I noticed that George and Polly Callin had their daughter, Amelia, in 1849, when George and William lived on neighboring farms in Huron County, so Elizabeth would have known Polly at that time, and seems to have had the notion that Amelia would be a good name for her new granddaughter.

Sabra Ann and Sabra Ann

So George and Polly named their second daughter “Sabra Ann” – and again, we don’t know a lot about her.

But George’s younger brother, James, married Susannah Stout in 1839, and they also lived in Huron County, not far from George and William. I suspect their families were close, since they named their first daughter “Mary Ann,” apparently in honor of Polly. And they named their second daughter “Sabra Ann,” apparently in honor of their niece, who would have been about four years old at the time.

I have to stress again that we don’t know very much about these people. We can speculate, but that only gets you so far. My speculation is that the older Sabra Ann may not have been very healthy. She died in 1849 at age 12, and is buried next to George and Mary A. Callin in Riverside Cemetery, Monroeville, Huron County, Ohio. Her headstone reads “Sabry A.”

Sabry died just a month before Amelia was born.

Her cousin Sabra survived, but records show that she was blind. She was a pupil at Ohio Institute for the Blind in Columbus, Franklin, Ohio in 1870. She lived with her widowed mother in Rochester in 1880, and after Susannah died, Sabra went to live with her sister in New London.

Sabra died on 1 Dec 1902 at the age of 61. While we don’t have much information to tell us what her life was like, I see glimmers and suggestions in between the cold facts that make it possible to believe that the family cared deeply for each other. They certainly tried to take care of each other. And we have one grainy photo that is simply labeled “Sabra Callin,” suggesting there is more to her story than what we have.

Perhaps one day, we might find something that tells us more. Until then, we’ll have to be satisfied with glimmers and speculate on the inner workings of the minds that gave us such whimsical names.