Mightier Acorns

Whether this is your first time here, or you just need a refresher:

I’ve spent some time over the past year or so laying out the stories of the Callin family that allegedly moved from Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in 1810 and 1816, and settled on a farm in Milton Township, which was, at the time, in Richland County, Ohio. I say “allegedly” because the records supporting my version of events are few, and they don’t contain a ton of information, so I’ve had to extrapolate a lot.

But you can catch up on this page for Milton Township, Ohio.

The Older Hugh Who Left

The two brothers, James and John Callin, who settled in Milton Township, had 15 children between them, as far as I can tell. George W. Callin’s Callin Family History (which refers to James as “James 2nd”) names three of James’s six children: Thomas, Alec, and James. Richland County marriage records revealed two more: daughters Elizabeth and Sarah, who married Montgomery brothers.

In 2021, I found some evidence that suggested that James 2nd also had a son named Hugh, who married Lucinda Montgomery and then moved to Louisa County, Iowa. (See “The Iowa Branch of the Callin Family” at the old Blogger site.) I wrote about Hugh, Alec, and James in “Alexander Callin Buys Some Land,” as well.

As far as documentary support for Hugh’s story, I’ve been unable to find more than a reference to Hugh and his family in the Faxon Family History, and the two Hugh Callin listings in the 1830 and 1840 U.S. Census records – the first in Milton Township, the second in Louisa County. For now, I’m holding onto the theory that the Hugh Callins named in these records are a) all the same man, and b) the son of James “2nd” Callin. This Hugh would have been born about 1803 in Pennsylvania, and while his death is not recorded anywhere that I have found, his widow, Lucinda Callan, was listed in the Iowa State Census in 1847, suggesting he died about the same time as his younger brother and his mother.

The Younger Hugh Who Stayed

George Callin’s Callin Family History names all nine children of John Callin. Three of them (Hugh, Sarah, and Elizabeth/Eliza) seem to have grown up in the same house as a first cousin who shared their given name. This raises many questions that I will probably never satisfactorily answer. (Like, “What did the family call them to tell them apart?”)

John’s son, Hugh, was reportedly born in Pennsylvania in 1817. I suspect he was either born a year or two earlier than that, or that he was born in Ohio, after John moved the family in 1816. Either way, Hugh was reared on the farm in Milton Township and married in 1843. His wife’s official name was probably either “Barbara Mathews” or “Matthus,” but George Callin and several official records give her name as “Barbary.”

In 1850, Hugh and Barbary lived in Milton Township, Ashland County, next door to a John Mathews, who I suspect strongly to be Barbary’s father. Hugh’s occupation was recorded as “chair maker,” and his real estate was valued at $1,000, or about $42,000 in today’s money. When Hugh died in 1856, Barbary inherited enough to put their son, Fred, through medical school – and you can read about what happened to Fred and his siblings in The Angry Doctor.

The Younger James Who Stayed

Unlike his older cousin of the same name, this James Callin married Susannah Stout in 1839 and stayed in Richland County, Ohio. Susannah was about ten years older than James, and was in her early thirties when their elder daughter, Mary Ann, was born. Their younger daughter was Sabra Ann, one of two Sabras I recently wrote about in Two Girls Called Sabra Ann.

James and Susannah lived in New London, Huron County, Ohio, for at least ten years, appearing there in the 1850 and 1860 Census records. In 1860, Mary Ann married Elliot Glyde Day, in Huron County. The Day and Callin families must have been close friends, because not only did their daughter marry a Day, but when James died in 1873, he was buried in the Day Cemetery in Huron County.

There is another interesting, if elusive, connection between Day and Callin families, and it involves the fate of that older cousin. James.

This Is Complicated, But…

See if you can follow along:

James 2nd’s son, named James, married Margaret, the youngest daughter of James 2nd’s brother, John. If it helps, here’s a side-by-side list of who’s who:

Margaret’s siblings, James (who married Susannah Stout) and Hugh (who married Barbary Mathews) are listed at the bottom of her sibling list.

James and Margaret were married in Richland County, Ohio, in 1841, and I think his brother, Hugh (husband of Lucinda Montgomery) was already in Iowa by then. My hunch is that marrying first cousins in a small town environment like Milton Township may have been an uncomfortable taboo, which prompted James and Margaret to move to Iowa to be near his brother’s family. They may have gone with Alec and “Aunt Mary” (shown as “Mary 2nd” in the chart on the right).

If you take into account the uncertainty of the dates, it looks like many of the Callin folks who moved to Iowa died within a year of 1845. Aunt Mary (1846), Hugh (abt. 1846), and Margaret’s husband, James (abt. 1844). And if you read “Alexander Callin Buys Some Land,” you know that the Callin Family History claims that after James died, Margaret asked her brother, William, to come to Iowa and return her and her two sons, William and Warren, to Ohio.

The Callin Family History does NOT tell us who raised Warren, but it says this about William: “William Callin was left an orphan in childhood about the age of 3. Was adopted by and raised by a family named Day near New London, O.”

So Margaret’s son, William, would have been James and Susannah’s nephew; and if this is the same Day family, William would have been living with them by 1850, and yet I can’t find a Day family in Huron County with a boy named William (either under “Callin” or “Day”) in the records. I can’t find Warren at all, under any name, in any of the families.

Just to wrap up the story of James and Margaret’s lineage: Warren died fighting in the Civil War, and William was captured and imprisoned in Andersonville. William married Theodoan Johnson, and they had a daughter, Edith May (Callin) Hanley. Edith’s only child was her son, Lyle Elliott Hanley (1902-1935), who did not have any children.

And so, no one surviving today needs to worry about learning that their great-grandparents were first cousins. At least, no descendants of this family.

One Day More

Mary Ann and Elliot Day had three children. Estella Lillian (Day) King (1862-1912) did not have any children, and Clarence C Day (1876-1877) died young. Their youngest son, Thor, also died young, at 24 years of age, leaving behind a young widow and a 2-year-old daughter, Marian Estelle (Day) Fletcher (1902-1953).

Thus, the Callin descendants of James are hiding under other surnames. And as far as Hugh’s descendants, the only male grandson was the surviving son of Dr. Fred, Moreland Guy Callin (1887-1964), who was born in Ohio, but moved his family to Florida.