Mightier Acorns

The Berlin Family Mystery

July 12, 2024
New questions in an ongoing puzzle
I recently contacted the Allen County Public Library genealogy department with some questions. According to WorldCat, they hold the only copies1 of The Berlin Family, compiled by Reginald L. Berlin and Terry Johnson-Cooney and published by Roy Rushka. There are five volumes, and it looks like my Berlin family is in one of them. They kindly sent me scans of the relevant pages, which answered one question… but raised many, many more.
If you have the Berlin surname (or one of its variations) in your tree, maybe we can shed some light on this puzzle, and find more pieces.
In 2018, I wrote this on my other Mightier Acorns blog:
Spellchecking the John Berlin Mystery
When you sit down to solve a jigsaw puzzle, you have a few advantages working in your favor. Usually, you know that you have all of the pieces in your box. Usually, you have a picture on the box to show you what your solved puzzle should look like. Most importantly, you know that only the pieces that should fit together will fit together.

Solving a family history puzzle is the opposite of all of those things. You probably don’t have all the pieces and you probably never will. The picture on the box may not have been labeled properly, and when you do find clues, they may add up to give you three or four different answers – sometimes, even the right one!

Today, I’m taking a fresh look at the family of Elizabeth Berlin, rebuilding the case I made in a post from 2016.
If you visit those two earlier blogs, you might see some flaws in my work that I missed – so if you’re interested in helping me solve this puzzle, please go take a look at them.
The Pieces
To summarize the puzzle pieces you are about to see today:
- The Callin Family History – a secondary source gives us our starting point with key facts.
- Rosemary’s memories – not solid evidence, but hints about Elizabeth’s heritage.
- William and Elizabeth’s marriage record – confirms the marriage date and names.
- The Wood County History – a secondary source with some information on Elizabeth’s parents.
- The Berlin Family History – another secondary source with important clues.
- The U.S. Federal Census – several primary sources that help tie the story together.
- The Ashland County history – a secondary source that adds more clues, and ties some of the census records into a narrative.
The Callin Family History
According to the 1911 Callin Family History, Elizabeth Berlin is my 3rd-great-grandmother. Here’s what we have to work with from the CFH:
Record of William Callin, 3rd son of John Callin, who was 2nd son of James 1st.
Born May 10, 1813, died Nov. 9, 1881, at Bowling Green, O.

Married to Elizabeth Barlene 1837 who died Nov. 14, 1903, at Bowling Green, O., aged 86 years.
The information in the CFH led us to a marriage record:
Detail from Ohio, County Marriage Records, 1774-1993
Despite the florid handwriting and odd line break, it is easy to see that “Mr. Wm. Cal-lin and Mifs Elizabeth Berlin” were married on the 29th day of Sept. in Richland County, Ohio, in 1836. (I had to crop the part of the image that showed the year, but you can see the full page if you follow this link to Ancestry.)

Notice the CFH says William married Elizabeth Barlene in 1837, and the marriage record says he married Elizabeth Berlin on 29 September 1836. The year is close enough, and the spelling of her surname suggests that a combination of pioneer illiteracy and varied pronunciation could complicate things for us. Those spelling variations might be clues to how the family pronounced their name.
Rosemary’s memories
I recently reposted Silk or Satin, a short record written by Elizabeth’s granddaughter, Rosemary (the youngest daughter of George Callin, the writer of the 1911 Callin Family History) of her memories of Elizabeth after she died in 1903. It doesn’t give us a lot of clues to Elizabeth’s parentage, but it demonstrates that even Rosemary wasn’t sure how to spell Elizabeth’s maiden name. She titled her memoir, “Things I Have Been Told About My Grandmother, Elizabeth Berlien (Barline) Callin.”
Rosemary also comments on Elizabeth learning to read when her sons went off to fight in the Civil War: “This was probably not too hard for her as those “Dotsch” are good at everything anyway.” It would seem that the family was aware of Elizabeth’s German heritage.
The Wood County history
Pages 923 and 924 of the Commemorative Historical and Biographical Record of Wood County, Ohio have a biographical sketch of my great-great-grandfather, John H. Callin, son of William and Elizabeth. The description of William says: “In 1835, he married Elizabeth, daughter of John Barlin, of Ashland…”
Since Ashland County, Ohio, did not exist in 1835, when the Wood County book says William and Elizabeth were married, the book (which was published in 1895 or 1897 depending on which edition you find), probably refers to the counties as they existed in the 1890s. Ashland County was formed in 1846 from parts of Huron, Lorain, Richland, and Wayne Counties. When the Wood County book says “Ashland,” it could mean one of those other counties – most likely Richland, where William and Elizabeth were married.
The Berlin Family history
This is the new information I have acquired from Allen County Public Library. Here is the section showing Elizabeth’s parentage:
detail from page 17 of Vol. IV of The Berlin Family, compiled by Reginald L. Berlin and Terry Johnson-Cooney
The preceding page shows the will of John’s father, named here as “John Michael” – the will of Michael Berlin was recorded in Manheim Township, York County, Pennsylvania. (Take note: York County sits “on the Maryland state line” – this will be relevant later.)
The Berlin Family History also shows that this Berlin family was German in origin. That fits with the various misspellings we see in the records, suggesting that the family spelled the name “Berlin” if they were literate and that they pronounced the name in the German manner – something like “bear-LEAN” – which clerks and census takers did their best to transcribe phonetically.
The U.S. Federal Census
Elizabeth and William are thoroughly documented in the Census; William is listed in 1840 in Milton Township, and Elizabeth and the children are listed with him by name in the subsequent records, 1850-1880. Elizabeth is also listed as living in Middleton, Wood County, with her son, John, in 1900. That record gives her date of birth as Nov 1817, which matches what the Berlin Family history states.
We also have the following records that may give us more information about her parents:
1830: Mannheim Township, York County, PA – John Barling is listed as head of household. His age is given as “40-49” putting his date of birth between 1781 and 1790. His wife would be between “30-39” and their household included one male “10-14” (possibly William), one female “10-14” (Elizabeth, perhaps), and two females “5-9” (could be Catharine and Mehrill).
1840: Mifflin, Richland County, OH – John Barlean is listed as the head of household. Mifflin is located in the southwest corner of Richland County; Milton Township is in the center-north of the county. The Barlean household is enumerated as having one male between ages 50 and 59 (presumably John, putting his birthdate between 1781 and 1790), one female between 50 and 59, and one female between 15 and 19 (possibly Catharine).
Detail from the 1840 U.S. Census for Mifflin, Richland County, Ohio
In 1850 and 1860, people named John and Mary Barlin were listed in Hoaglin, Van Wert County, Ohio; in both records, their household includes a girl named Elizabeth Barlin, born about 1848. It is unclear whether this couple is the same John and Mary Berlin who would be our Elizabeth Berlin’s parents – their birth dates do seem to match what we observed in the other records.

1870: Vermillion, Ashland County, Ohio – 83-year-old John Barlean and his wife, Mary A (age 79), are listed in the Young household. The head of that household is Catherine Young, 50 years old, and born in Pennsylvania – a match to the Catherine named in The Berlin Family.
Detail from the 1870 U.S. Census for Vermillion, Ashland County, Ohio
The Ashland County History
Catherine’s eldest son, Samuel, is featured in a biographical sketch in A. J. Baughman’s History of Ashland County, Ohio, published in 1909, which says (emphases are mine):
He is a son of Michael and Katharine (Berlean) Young, both of whom were natives of Pennsylvania as were the paternal grandparents, Mathias and Mary Young. … The maternal grandparents of our subject were John and Mary Ann Berlean, who were likewise born in the Keystone state and died in Ashland county. …John Berlean served his country in the war of 1812 and was at Baltimore during the hostilities there. The Berlean homestead, upon which the mother of our subject was born, was situated in Pennsylvania on the Maryland state line.
…Michael Young …accompanied his parents on their removal to Mifflin township about 1829 and Katherine Berlean arrived about a year later [apparently after the 1830 census]. They were married here and became residents of Mifflin township, taking up their abode on a farm within its borders immediately after their marriage and remaining there until called to their final rest.
So, despite the 1850 and 1860 census records posing some problems, I think it’s safe to say we have successfully tied Elizabeth Berlin to the right parents, and to her sister, Catherine (Berlin) Young. We still don’t know for certain when John and Mary died, but this collection of evidence suggests they died between 1870 and 1880 in Ashland County, Ohio.
Questions
Who is that other John Berlin?
A lot of researchers who have this family in their online trees attach an extensive pension record for another John Berlin who fought in the War of 1812. If you have access to Fold3.com, you should be able to view it here. It gives a lot of information that doesn’t match our family; this John Berlin married his first wife, Anna Coy, who died about 1829, then married his second wife, Catherine Landis (or Landes) in about 1831 in Columbiana County, Ohio. Notably, this family also lived in Van Wert County, Ohio, in the 1850s, which overlaps with the 1850 and 1860 records we discussed above. So, John and Catherine Berlin would have lived in Van Wert County at about the same time John and Mary Barlin appeared in Hoaglin. However, I have not yet found John and Catherine in the census for Van Wert County. This is why I’m reluctant to include the records for John and Mary in my timeline.
This other John Berlin (Catherine’s husband) is the one who died in Stark County, Ohio, in 1874; so if you see his FindAGrave memorial attached to our John Berlin, that is a mistake. We have not yet found a record, but our evidence says John and Mary Berlin died after 1870 in Ashland County.
What do we know about our John Berlin’s service in the War of 1812?
Short answer: very little. There are records of men named John Berlin in the muster rolls of two other Pennsylvania companies, but all I have found is their names. One is a private listed in “Hill’s Regiment” (no further information) and the other is a private in Findlay’s Battalion, Pennsylvania Vols. Those muster rolls have no dates, no personal info – and no obvious clues. (I’ve looked in Ancestry, Fold3, and Googled extensively, but I’m sure there are sources I haven’t found, yet.)
What we know is that there are at least three different men named John Berlin who served in that war – and the one from our Berlin Family history does not match what we know about the man who married Catherine Landis. We also don’t know which of these other two men was the son of Jacob Berlin and Eva Carbaugh described in the Westmoreland County history (which I discussed in the 2018 “Spellchecking the John Berlin Mystery” post).
Who was Maria Schierly?
There is no clear evidence that tells us when Maria Schierly married John Berlin and no clear information about her birth or death. Other researchers have attached German birth records to her, and while I can’t rule out that possibility, the evidence suggests she was born in Pennsylvania. Of course, the records I discuss here assume that she is the same “Mary Barlin” we see in the Census records and histories of Wood and Ashland counties. She might not be.
She is most likely the mother of the four children named in The Berlin Family, but until we find more evidence, that’s all I can say.
For now. Let’s see what another year of research brings.
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1
To clarify: ACPL has the only library copies I’ve been able to locate. My 3rd cousin, John Callin, has a copy of the volume with Elizabeth’s family, but I haven’t been able to get a full copy of the five-volume set for myself.
Family Reunion: Ballard

July 10, 2024

Going four generations back to find another line

This surname can be found among my wife’s Sixteen great-great-grandparents. We have to go that far back to find our first Ballard, the paternal grandmother of my wife’s paternal grandmother, June (Shuffler) McCullough:

Virginia “Virgie” Ballard – 01 Feb 1889 – 04 Nov 1977

The paternal ancestry of June (Shuffler) McCullough

You might remember Virgie from The Ballad of Mrs. Steele a few weeks ago. She was the titular Mrs. Steele. Her parents were Isaac Emmerson Ballard (1859 – 1923) and Mary Ann Rupe (1867 – 1946). Her father was a former drayman who later became a railroad man, working as a brakeman on the trains that passed through Pacific Junction. Sometime after 1900, though, Virgie’s parents divorced, and in 1904, Isaac married a girl from Saint Joseph who was nearly half his age and moved with her to Oakland, California. It seems likely that Isaac was not at Frank and Virgie’s wedding in 1907.

Isaac E Ballard had five daughters with his first wife and a daughter and a son with his second wife, Edna May Purvis (1879–1972). His son, Ellis Emmett Ballard (1912–1987), had seven children – Virgie probably never knew these half-nephews and half-nieces, but they would be the only Ballard cousins to the four Shuffler boys.

Isaac’s parents were Isaac D Ballard (1817–1891) and Mary Ann Keith (1822–1894). They were married on 4 May 1841 in Vermillion County, Indiana, and they had ten children – of whom, Isaac E. was the second youngest. Their family moved from Indiana to Iowa in about 1845, and that is where the children were raised.

Isaac D Ballard’s father may have been a man named Simeon Ballard who appears in the 1840 Census in Vermillion County, Indiana, but I need to do more research to support that hint. Since Isaac D was born in Clinton County, Ohio, in 1817, it seems likely his parents came from elsewhere – but that is true of everyone, isn’t it?

As for Virgie Ballard’s four sisters, only one of them seems to have left children behind. Bessie Ballard married Daniel Aalberg and they had five: three daughters and two sons, Dan Jr. and Hobart. So if there are any Aalberg cousins out there, be sure to drop us a comment!

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Method v. Madness

June 28, 2024

I am an ongoing study in contradictions
My third child struggled through elementary school. He had a lot of difficulty dealing with the daily onslaught of confusing social interactions with teachers and other students. He would get overwhelmed and angry, then shut down, verbally. He wouldn’t speak, but he found ways to show us how angry he was.
Over time, we learned that several of his behaviors pointed to Autism spectrum disorder. Getting to that point and learning coping strategies took a monumental effort – most of which fell on my wife, because he would listen to her more than anyone else. But, those are all stories for another day.
Since his 5th grade year1 our family has spent a lot of time learning about “the ‘tism” and learning to see traits and behaviors associated with ASD in ourselves and our family. One key thing that everyone should know about ASD is that the person who gets the diagnosis may feel isolated and “weird” – but my son has learned that he is not all that different from the rest of us.
Some of the signs of ASD, such as obsessive behaviors, “stimming,” and repetition of sound patterns or vocalizations (a very mild form of echolalia) are things that I’ve experienced my whole life without knowing they had anything to do with each other. I have never been evaluated for ASD, so I may or may not fall on the spectrum – but if we think about ASD as a collection of inherited traits with variations in intensity, it’s easy to see how passing some of my traits to my children led to at least one of them falling on the spectrum.
When humans think about a “disorder” it usually has negative baggage. However, the echolalia has played a huge role in my development as a musician, and my obsessive behaviors have driven most of my family history work.
This leads me to my point today: obsession can take two forms – one orderly and methodical, and the other quite chaotic.
A person bringing order to chaos – image generated by Google Gemini
Form One: A Whole Lotta Structure
Part of my lifelong fascination with family trees comes from the neat, orderly vision of an expanding ancestry. You can see evidence of my love of structure in the WikiTree profiles I’ve built over the years. Start with my Grandpa Bob’s profile and marvel at the tantalizing neatness of the tree that displays if you hit the green “Ancestors” button.
Whenever I’m “working up” a tree, it is easy to see where the gaps are, where I should go next, and how far I have to go to “complete” a particular tree. (Not that anyone’s tree is ever “complete.”)
There is a different type of orderliness when I work “down” a tree. If you look at the profile of John Callin and click on the green “Descendants” button, there is a definite structure there, but it is less predictable, and you can’t tell how complete it is. Still, there is a visual indication when someone who should have children present does not yet have a set of profiles attached – and building those can follow a methodical and orderly process.
Form Two: Rabbit Holes
One of the dangers of any research project is the tantalizing lure of a rabbit hole.
Many of the essays you read on this blog only exist because I was trying to work on something else and noticed that something was missing or didn’t add up. All of the best advice for tracing your family will tell you that sometimes you have to go out of your way to research in-laws or siblings to find the information you need for your main focus – but sometimes when you do that, you get pulled into an interesting, if unrelated, side project.
Chasing leads and pulling threads to make sense of what the records tell me – or to figure out what they are hiding – takes up most of my time. I may aspire to take an orderly and methodical approach, but the rabbit holes are where I experience the most joy.
The Tension
There are a lot of excellent resources out there for you to learn how to be more orderly and disciplined in your approach to research. I follow several people here on Substack who give me good advice, and I try to apply their suggestions and methods. Those suggestions can help you plan where to look for information and guide your overall strategy for building the family history you want to build. If you follow their advice, you will have a solid battle plan.
Making a good plan is a good coping strategy – and at the end of the day, we all try to build coping strategies that capitalize on our strengths and minimize our weaknesses, whether we do that consciously or not. The most successful plans for me tend to be the ones that use my curiosity to overwhelm my tendency to procrastinate.
image generated by Google Gemini
But as someone wisely said, “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” At least, in this case, the enemy is cute and interesting.
So, what strategies work best for you? (I plan to drop some links to fellow Substackers in the comments if you don’t!)
1
In Maryland, 5th grade is the last year of elementary school, followed by three years of middle school, and a four-year high school. 5th-graders are typically 10 or 11 years old.
Family Reunion: May

June 26, 2024

Going four generations back to find another line

This surname can be found among my Sixteen great-great-grandparents. We have to go that far back to find the first May:

Mary Frances May – 30 Oct 1858 – 19 Mar 1882

Mary (May) Reynolds was the maternal grandmother of my maternal grandfather, Russ Clark. Her parents were John Shaw May (1824–1895) and Frances Mary West (1825–1871). You may recall that John S. May and his father-in-law, Thomas West, were on opposite sides of the Civil War – I told their story in a guest post on Projectkin: Dangerous Times in Kentucky.

Russ Clark’s mother, Mary Ann “Viceroy” Reynolds, and her ancestors

Mary married the Reverend James Thomas Reynolds (1852 – 1911) – also see the Reynolds family post here:

The most fascinating thing to me about these families is the way they intermarried – the West, May, Reynolds, Clark, Arthur, and Smith families, in particular – and resided in the same three- or four-county area for several generations. Ashland in Boyd County, Kentucky, seems to be the place where most of them made their homes, but they can be found in Greenup County, Kentucky, and in Ironton and Lawrence, Ohio, or the area around Huntington, West Virginia. Spreading the records across multiple states and county courthouses means that if I don’t find information about a particular family in one place, I need to check three or four others before ruling anything out.

I have been able to find a conclusive document that says John S. May’s parents were Patrick Curtis May (1792–1870) and Catharine Spence (1804–1870) – but they probably were. I am still working on tracking down documents about his siblings. I was interested to learn that his two younger brothers, Joseph Spence May (1826-1890) and Henry Clay May (1828-1878) fought for the Union Army in Ohio units during the Civil War.

One of John’s sisters, America Ann May (1839-1926), stood out for having an unusual name. She married Evan H. Day (b. 1839) in 1861, and later became the second wife of Henry Clay Prater (1836–1920) of Lewis County, Kentucky. I contacted fellow Substacker, Alicia Prater, to see if there is a connection there to her Kentucky Paters, and while she does have a Henry Clay May (1860-1948) in her tree, it isn’t clear if he is part of the same May family.

For now, though, I have to resign myself to the fact that there were more people than records back then and keep digging. If you happen to have ancestors from this area or recognize any of these names, please let me know!

And, of course, subscribe to see any progress I make.
Faces of Nancy

June 21, 2024

Originally Published on 2/26/2015

I found it difficult to compose a story about Grandma Nancy. She was probably the most present of my grandparents but I haven’t quite isolated a narrative thread for her, yet. This is the patchwork story I chose to tell a decade ago, in actual snapshots. (Lightly edited to update links and references.)

Today’s feature is all about one special person – my grandmother, Nancy Witter Callin.

Grandma was born and raised in Glendale, Arizona, and spent most of her life there and in the neighboring town of Peoria. She was an art teacher, traveler, souvenir collector, and notorious pack rat, so she left a lot of photographs and other visual artifacts behind to document her life. Most of the family photos I have are here because of her.

The Witter family, c.1931; Glendale, Arizona

Here she is in a rare snapshot of her whole family – her daddy, Dick Witter, her momma, Hannah Merle Huff (who preferred to go by “Merle”), and her brother, Richard (usually referred to as Dick Jr.). I call this portrait rare because Merle did not seem to be as fond of getting her picture taken as she was of having pictures of her kids. Her family, the Huffs, was fond of keeping and sending photos to each other, so I imagine she was motivated to continue that tradition.

Most of my family are familiar with Harper Lee’s classic To Kill a Mockingbird, and when we look at pictures of Nancy as a little girl with her big brother Richard, we see a real-life Scout and Jem Finch. I don’t think Nancy was ever quite the tomboy that Scout was, but I’m willing to bet that growing up on a dairy farm in Depression-era Arizona gave her plenty of opportunity to get a little dirty from time to time.

(Check out tomorrow’s Famous Playmates for a look at what young Nancy was like, and how she got on with one of her most famous neighbors!)

Dick Sr. with Dick Jr and Nancy c. 1936

Scout Finch wasn’t the only literary comparison we made to young Nancy. I remember the first time I saw this portrait of her as a young girl thinking that it looked like my cover of The Diary of Anne Frank:1

Nancy as a young teenager

In high school, Nancy’s best friend was Bobbe Harris, and it seems they did just about everything together. Here we see them visiting Nancy’s grandmother, Rosa Murray Huff. (Rosa and I share a birthday – only separated by 111 years!)

I don’t recall any specific details, but I always thought that Nancy inherited her passion for traveling the country from her Huff grandparents. The Huffs were the adventurous early settlers from Kansas, as you might recall from an earlier post.

Nancy (right) and her best friend Bobbe visiting Grandma Rosa Murray Huff, c. 1940

There isn’t much story behind many of these portraits. They are just the faces of people I knew – but they imply stories.

I have Grandpa Bob with his rakish Casablanca hat…and Grandma Nancy clutching her hands tightly.

Bob and Nancy – 1942 newlyweds

…and the Witter family relaxing on the couch – possibly in the late-1940s.

The Witters at home – Dick Sr., Nancy, Merle, and Dick Jr.

Only Grandpa Dick seems close to smiling here – even the dog looks resigned. Perhaps a later decade with fancy haircuts will improve the mood? Here are Grandma Nancy and Grandpa Bob with my mom and dad (and Aunt Vicki peeking out in the middle).

Nancy, Bob, Vicki, and my parents, Ted and Barbara

There are numerous copies of annual school photos from Nancy’s long career as an art teacher with the Glendale Union School District. This one is the lady I remember most strongly – another school photo, probably from the early to mid-1980s.

Mrs. Callin – Glendale Union School District

This is the Grandma who babysat my sister and me on occasional Friday nights, letting us watch The Dukes of Hazzard and play with her art supplies. This is the Grandma who let us come swim in her pool all summer long, and who fed us iced oatmeal cookies (Grandma’s brand, naturally) before bed.

This is also the Grandma who collected owls, loved art by DeGrazia and kept two cages full of finches in her dining room. I can still smell the soaps in her bathroom and feel the transition from her 65-degree house to the 100+ degree patio on the way to her swimming pool.

As I edited this for re-publishing, I was struck by the fact that Grandma rarely smiled in her photos. I don’t think she liked her smile – and that last school portrait shows what I remember as her happy face. The downturned smile of someone resisting the urge to let go.

She may have resisted smiling, but she never held back on affection. She made sure we knew she loved us fiercely.

1

I don’t remember who first made the comparison of Grandma’s photo to Anne Frank, but it was probably Grandma. As a result, when I read that book, it felt like it was happening to my family. Not just because of her resemblance, but because of the empathy she had for the suffering of others.
Quick WikiTree Trickery

June 19, 2024

Building profiles as part of my process
If you are a regular reader, you may have seen that I include links to WikiTree profiles for ancestors or cousins mentioned in my essays. I do this because I have found that people have difficulty viewing my Ancestry files without an Ancestry account.1 I also want other researchers to benefit from my work, and to be able to edit and fix any mistakes I might have made.
Researching on Ancestry and then building a profile on WikiTree also helps me generate essays and stories for my newsletter – sometimes in ways that aren’t obvious. Here are some basic tips for working with WikiTree.
Your Research
If you want to dive into WikiTree, think of it as an outgrowth of the research you’re doing anyway, using whatever tools and services you prefer. Once you’ve found enough information about a particular person to put into a biography, you can write the narrative – and you will need to include source citations.
How good your WikiTree contributions are depends entirely on how good your sources are – so as you’re deciding what needs to go into a person’s biography, focus on the evidence. If you have unsourced stories or “tales told by grandma,” that’s fine to include – just make sure it is clear in the narrative or source citations which parts of the biography are supported by evidence, and which are memories.
If you’re new to WikiTree, you will probably start building profiles with yourself. You can (and probably should) make your profile private – getting your account set up is a whole other topic, but you should be contacted by a WikiTree mentor who can help you get started if you have any questions. My profile, Callin-50, is set just one level below “Public” – so anyone can view the biography I have written and my family tree (living people on my tree who have higher privacy settings are obscured).
You can use your own profile to experiment and learn the tricks of editing a wiki page – since you marked yourself as “Private” no one else will be able to see it if you make mistakes. Once you’re comfortable with editing, you can build profiles for your relatives or, hopefully, connect to existing profiles for your relatives.
If your parents are living, you’ll want to discuss with them how they would like their profiles to be handled; my mom signed up so she could control hers, but dad (who doesn’t like dealing with computer technology) left his for me and mom to manage. Be mindful of putting information about living people on any internet platform.
A New Profile
Hopefully, you will find existing profiles made by other contributors and you can connect your tree to theirs. But you may need to create new profiles, first.
Usually, you will start the new profile process from an existing profile:
Click on “father?” “mother?” “spouse?” or “children?” links to add their profiles.
If you need to start a new person from scratch, you can do that from the “Add” pulldown menu at the top/right of the page:
Click “New Person” to create a free-standing, unconnected profile.
A Solid Biography
When you create a new profile, WikiTree will have you fill out a Basic Data form before sending you to the edit page for the Biography section. The Biography is where you will have a chance to do your free-form writing.
WikiTree’s basic data entry form.
As I said, you should have already done your research, and you should have sources to support the facts you include in the Biography. WikiTree doesn’t care how you format your source citations – MLA, AMA, etc. – as long as you put them between the “ref” tags (the <ref> at the beginning of your citation and the </ref> at the end).
Some people are most comfortable composing in the WikiTree form; I am one of those people who likes to compose my text in Notepad first, then paste it into WikiTree. Here is an example of one of my ancestor profiles, my “code” on the right, and the “live” page on the left. I drew a yellow circle around the text of my first source citation, then drew lines to show how it renders on the final page:
Side-by-side view of a Biography page and the wiki markup code.
If you skim through that example, you can also see how I used links to existing profiles for spouses and children, and how some of the formatting works (bold, italics, and the like). The goal of source citations is that a reader should be able to find your source for themselves – if you can link to the source in your citation, that is great, but even just giving the reader the name of the database you used can be enough.
You will probably be surprised by how many existing profiles are already there. And don’t feel bad if you discover after creating a new profile that somebody already made one – that’s what the Merge function is for. (Though, again, they have helpful posts for that on WikiTree.)
Conclusion
WikiTree.com boasts on its front page that “Our community is now 1,107,821 members strong” and they take a bit of criticism for that claim in places like Reddit’s r/Genealogy thread, where you can find skeptical arguments that say the number is inflated or that (crucially) there is no way to know how many of those users are active. The lion’s share of criticism comes from people who have had a negative interaction with another WikiTree user or who found “incorrect information” on the site and decided to leave rather than try to fix it.
I usually find criticism of user-editable content sites (including my time on Wikipedia) to consist of about 5% valid criticism of the tool or site itself, and about 95% criticism of other people which, frankly, is a different problem the site shouldn’t be held accountable for.
But if you are doing your research and building thorough, well-documented profiles, you’re going a long way to address the 5% of valid criticism. Just be open to outside editors, make sure your sources support your claims, and don’t be shy about asking questions.
If you’re already comfortable with building personal profiles, maybe look at what you can do with Free Space pages:
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1
I am frequently reminded that anyone with a free Ancestry account should be able to see my public trees, but then I have to remind the reminding people that not everyone wants to create a whole account just to look at my research. Even that free account is a barrier and a limitation to freely sharing my work.
Theoretical: James Callin's Military Career

June 14, 2024

Teasing meaning from the absence of evidence (part 3)

Previously, in Still Finding James Callin, we looked at the Revolutionary War muster rolls, examining whatever they could tell us about him, and we talked about how they loosely support the statements made in George W. Callin’s 1911 Callin Family History.

James, last noted in the 4th Virginia Regiment rolls as “supposed to be with Genl. Scott,” is effectively missing from the records where we would expect to find him after December 1779. Today’s post is meant to provide some historical context and explain why I think the James Callin listed in a 1794 Kentucky Militia record might be the same James Callin we saw in the Revolutionary War.

Thanks again to my cousin, Joan (Callin) Foster, who dug up a lot of these records. If you happen to study this period and have any comments, they would be most welcome.

And if you want to follow future updates, be sure to subscribe!

Private Callin and General Scott

Referring to the 1777-1779 4th Virginia muster rolls, we can state with high confidence that James Callin served under General Charles Scott during the Battle of Germantown and was present during the winter encampment at Valley Forge. After the Battle of Monmouth, on 14 August 1778, Scott was given command of a new light infantry corps organized by Washington, and he also served as Washington’s chief of intelligence.

There is no reason to believe that James was part of Scott’s light infantry or intelligence operation. His muster records include September 1778 notations that suggest that James was injured or sick. The muster roll for September 1778 is dated 5 October and names his location as “Hosp. Robinson’s house” – most likely referring to the home of loyalist Beverley Robinson, which had been confiscated by the Continental Army and was used by both General Benedict Arnold and George Washington.

Col. Beverley Robinson’s house in the Hudson Highlands, from Wikipedia

We discussed before that the rolls show James Callin on furlough from December 1778 through March 1779, and that may have been when he was married. Coincidentally, Gen. Scott was furloughed in November 1778, until Gen. Washington sent him a letter in March 1779 that ordered him to recruit volunteers in Virginia and join Washington at Middlebrook on 1 May 1779.

The muster roll for March 1779 places the 4th VA in Middlebrook, and the payroll for that month shows James as “On furlough Va.” instead of simply “on furlough” as he had been listed for the preceding months. In May and June, his records state that he went on furlough on 15 April, and beginning in July, the rolls indicate that he is supposed to be with Gen. Scott in Virginia. This suggests to me that James Callin was among the Virginians Scott recruited to his new units during this time frame.

Several conflicting orders were issued during the fall of 1779, as reports that reached Gen. Washington about British plans led him to shift troops to South Carolina. Gen. Scott forwarded most of the men he had been recruiting to join Benjamin Lincoln’s force near Charleston.

James Callin’s last appearances in the 4th VA rolls suggest he remained with Gen. Scott in Virginia until at least November 1779. After 9 December 1779, there are no more records that name him. Congress and Washington decided to send the entire line of Virginia Continental regiments (almost 2,500 men) to join Lincoln’s army that December.1 We can only guess whether James was among them.

The Siege of Charleston

Scott arrived in Charleston on 30 March 1780, as British General Clinton laid siege to the city. The Virginian reinforcements arrived on 7 April. All were captured when the city surrendered on May 12, 1780, and Scott was held as a prisoner of war at Haddrell’s Point near Charleston.

Assuming James Callin was among the 750 common soldiers who had made the 4-month, 800-mile march from Morristown, New Jersey, to Charleston, he may have been among those captured. He would probably have been considered a Continental soldier at that point.2

While militia troops were released on parole (promise not to take up arms again unless exchanged), the 2500 Continental soldiers from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia were marched into the American barracks as prisoners of war. They were allowed to walk about town, however, and about 500 of the American POWs escaped. The British were so offended by this perceived breach of the terms of capitulation that in September they transferred many of the prisoners into the holds of six prison ships in Charleston Harbor – the Esk, Fidelity, King George, Success-Increase, Concord, and Two Sisters. Joining them were Maryland and Delaware Continentals captured at the Battle of Camden on 16 August 1780.3

If James was one of the 2500 soldiers captured as a prisoner of war, there is a 20% chance he was one of the 500 who escaped. The remaining prisoners were sent to the prison ships in September 1780 – which is also the month in which James Callin’s original enlistment would have expired. One explanation for not seeing him in the records could be that when he escaped, he returned home (remember, a 4-month journey down) only to be discharged at the end of his enlistment. Or…

Remember last week, in Edward’s Trail, we discussed how Edward Callin – who enlisted at the same time as James – may have been involved in the Jan 1781 mutiny of men held after their enlistment expired. If James, an escaped POW, took 4 months to return north, he would have arrived in the aftermath of that mutiny. Or…

In July 1781, nearly all American prisoners of war in the South were released as part of a prisoner exchange between the United States and Britain.4 If James had been on the prison ships, he would have been returned home after his release, and his enlistment would have already been up.

We don’t know where James was after Dec 1779, whether he went to Charleston, whether he was captured, whether he escaped, or whether he ended up on a prison ship – but we have to assume that he survived whatever adventures he was involved with, otherwise, that information would have surely found its way into the Callin Family History. The Callin Family History asserts that James served until the war’s end, and then settled on federal land in Westmoreland County, but as we mentioned in a previous post, no such land records have been found.

That said, let’s continue to look at General Scott’s story and explore that 1794 clue.

The Story of General Scott

Scott was paroled due to ill health on 30 January 1781, and after he was exchanged for a British officer in July 1782, he was put back on duty to recruit in Virginia again. Recruiting stopped when the preliminary peace agreements between the United States and Great Britain were signed in March 1783. Scott was made a major general on 30 September 1783, just before his discharge from the Continental Army.

Scott first visited Kentucky in 1785 and settled near the city of Versailles in 1787. The new United States had a much worse relationship than the British had with the Native American tribes that lived throughout the Northwest Territory. In July 1787 Scott’s son, Samuel, was killed and scalped by Shawnee warriors as he crossed the Ohio River in a canoe – while Gen. Scott watched helplessly from the shore.

Tensions built in the region until Washington authorized a campaign against the tribes living around what is now Fort Wayne, Indiana, led by General Josiah Harmar. (Harmar had been the lieutenant colonel in command of the 6th Pennsylvania Regiment during the Revolutionary War, the unit Edward Callin likely transferred to in 1778.)

1,500 settlers were killed between 1784 and 1789, as more encroached on territory along the Ohio River. Gen. Scott raised a contingent of volunteers to follow Harmar in April 1790 that ultimately caught and killed four Shawnee but didn’t accomplish much else. Harmar’s Campaign in October of that year was considered a disaster, demonstrating that the Kentucky militias were reluctant to serve under federal command.

Congress approved a 5,000-man federal force in March 1792, and for two years, federally authorized troops under General Anthony Wayne tried to work with the two new Kentucky militia Divisions commanded by General Scott and General Benjamin Logan. After earning the grudging respect of Kentucky soldiers, Wayne led a combined force supported by Scott’s Kentucky militia in the Battle of Fallen Timbers on 20 August 1794. The battle took place near modern Maumee, Ohio, and led to the Treaty of Greenville a year later.

Among Scott’s troops that summer, a single record shows us a familiar name – two, actually:

Muster Roll of a Company of Mounted Spies and Guides under the command of Captain Joshua Baker, Major Notley Conn’s Battalion, in the Service of the United States, Commanded by Major General Charles Scott, from Jul 10 to Oct 21, 17945

Rank, Name:

[Private], Callen, James

[Private], Callen, John

Conclusion:

This is a very thin peg to hang such a bold claim, but I think the James and John Callen named in that Kentucky Militia record could be the brothers named in George Callin’s Callin Family History. It’s not much of a stretch to guess that James Callin’s “Westmoreland County” land might have been in modern-day Virginia, or that he sold it to move to Kentucky. And if he lived in Kentucky, he would have been a good candidate for service under his old commander.

Serving in this unit would have also taken James and John all over what is now the state of Ohio. The site of the Battle of Fallen Timbers is only 100 miles from the township that James’s sons (also named James and John) would settle on 15 or 20 years later.

I have to wonder (since I still don’t know) where James lived after the Revolutionary War, where he raised his family, and where he died. I’ll keep looking, but if anyone thinks they have an answer: Contact Mightier Acorns!

1

Maloy, Mark, “The Virginians’ 800-Mile March to Save Charleston” – Emerging Revolutionary War Era, 7 Apr 2021.

2

National Park Service, “Siege of Charleston 1780”

3

Revwarapps.org, “Prisoners of War From the Siege of Charleston and the Battle of Camden Who Joined the British in the Duke of Cumberland’s Regiment”, 1 Dec 2023.

4

Berry, Mark, “In Enemy Hands,” The College Today, College of Charleston, 25 Jun 2015.

5

Clark, Murtie Jane, “American Militia in the Frontier Wars, 1790-1796,” pg. 43-44.
Family Reunion: Frederick

June 12, 2024

Going four generations back to find another line

This surname can be found among my wife’s Sixteen great-great-grandparents. We have to go that far back to find the first Frederick –

Daisy Deane Frederick – Dec 1871 – 14 Jan 1964

Merilyn (Martin) Rossiter’s maternal ancestry

Daisy was the daughter of Lafayette Frederick (1837–1918) and Jane Eliza “Jennie” Smith (1840–1916), born in Dec 1871 in New Albany, Floyd County, Indiana. She married Charles Walter Putnam (1859-1922) on 5 Jan 1899 in New Albany, Floyd, Indiana – we discussed their family in “Family Reunion: Putnam” a few months ago.

Daisy had an older brother, Merrill, and a younger brother, Sherley. When I first got to know my in-laws, I was told a few stories about “Dee Daw and Uncle Sherley” that I think were references to Daisy and her brother.

Lafayette Frederick was the son of Charles Frederick (1809–1882) and Mary Elletha Miller (1815–1867), born on 12 Aug 1837 in Indiana. He likely grew up in Greenville, Floyd County, Indiana, and he lived with his family in New Albany in 1860. During the Civil War, Lafayette served as a Captain in Company K of the 93rd Regiment, Indiana Infantry, from 29 Aug 1862 to 13 Aug 1863.

Lafayette married Jennie Smith on 26 Nov 1863 in New Albany, Floyd, Indiana. They resided in New Albany in 1870, where Lafayette worked as a confectioner. He later went into the real estate business.

There is a lot left to discover about Lafayette’s ancestors – his parents both have relatively common names and the records from the first half of the 1800s are sparse. But if you have Fredericks in your family tree, and one of them appears to be a Union Army captain and candy maker, we just might be distant cousins.

So say hello!

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Edward's Trail

June 7, 2024
Teasing meaning from the absence of evidence (part 2)

Last week, we were Still Finding James Callin – laying out records that may confirm that he was a Continental soldier in the Revolutionary War. We lack firm proof that the records show the same James Callin recorded in the Callin Family History in 1911, but pay and muster rolls show that men named James and Edward Callin enlisted on 19 Sep 1777 in the 4th Virginia Regiment of Foot.

Edward Callin enlisted as a private for a 3-year term on 19 Sep 1777 and after two months in Capt. John Stith’s company was reorganized into Capt. James Lucas’s company. There, he served with James until another company claimed him during another reorganization in May 1778.

The only other military record for Edward I have found (so far) consists of two pages in the US, Pennsylvania Veterans Card Files, 1775-1916 database, stating that he was a member of the 6th Regt. and that he was paid a final settlement of 33 dollars for “Pay and subsistence to 1 Jan 1781. Interest from 1 Jan 1781.”

It would be nice if we had the kind of detailed muster and pay records for the 6th Pennsylvania Regt. as we had for the 4th Virginia, but it makes sense that Edward might move from the 4th VA to the 6th PA in May 1778. Both units were at Camp Valley Forge1 at that time and the fact that Edward’s 6th Regt. record shows him being paid through 1 Jan 1781 may be significant, too.

Woodcut of Mutiny of the Pennsylvania Line 1881 – on Wikipedia

On 1 January 1781, 1,500 soldiers from the Pennsylvania Line, the 11 regiments under General Anthony Wayne’s command, protested that their three-year enlistments had expired and complained that they had not been paid.2

We know Edward enlisted in Sep 1777 for 3 years, which would have expired in Sep 1780. The mutineers were very lucky that they were allowed to negotiate with General Wayne and Congressional President Joseph Reed, and they came to an agreement on 7 January. “Half the men accepted discharges, while the other half took furloughs coupled with bonuses for reenlistment. Those who reenlisted formed the Pennsylvania Battalion, which went on to participate in the southern campaign.”

The absence of additional records for Edward after 1 Jan 1781 may suggest he took the discharge, but this account also seems to indicate that all of the men who enlisted when Edward did took the discharge:

On January 4th, the soldiers entered Princeton and delivered their official propositions to Wayne. These asked for immediate discharges for men enlisted in 1776 and 1777 at $20 bounty…[a]lso, they asked for pay and clothing for those who remained enlisted, and that there be no punishment for mutiny after the issue was settled.

…Finally, negotiations for terms began – only one proposal remained: that the 1776 and 1777 “twenty dollar men” be given their pay and clothing and be discharged. The sergeants insisted that officers had tricked and punished soldiers to extend enlistments and Reed concluded that the issue was legitimate.3

According to Wikipedia:

In the aftermath of the mutiny, the Pennsylvania Line underwent a reorganization. … the 6th [Regiment] under Colonel Richard Humpton went to Lancaster. The rank and file, though not the sergeants and musicians, were all furloughed until 15 March. On that date the regiments reassembled at their respective towns. In May, Wayne led the 2nd, 5th, and 6th Pennsylvania south to join operations against the British in Virginia.

Since other members of the 6th Regt. have records in the same database that prove their service after 1781 and Edward does not, I would conclude that he took the discharge. So, where did Edward go after 1781?

There are a handful of records that name an Edward Callin in Pennsylvania:
- 1785: Pennsylvania, U.S., Tax and Exoneration, 1768-1801 lists him in Lower Dublin Township, Philadelphia County.
- 1798: Pennsylvania, U.S., U.S. Direct Tax Lists, 1798 lists him in Lurgan Township, Franklin County.
- 1800: 1800 United States Federal Census lists him in Lurgan Township, Franklin County.
- 1801: Pennsylvania, U.S., Septennial Census, 1779-1863 lists him as a “Labourer” in Lurgan Township, Franklin County.
The 1798 records list Edward as a tenant of Charles Maclay, renting an “old cabbin” on Maclay’s property. The 1800 Census lists Edward as the head of a household of 5 people:
- 1 male, 45 or over (presumably Edward, born before 1755)
- 1 female, 45 of over
- 2 males, 10 to 15 (so, born between 1785 and 1790)
- 1 female under 10 (born after 1790)
There is an Edward Callin (various spellings) who appears in Charlton, Saratoga County, New York, in the 1820 Census; the same man is also listed there in 1830, 1840, and 1850. That 1850 record is the “non-population schedule” which does not include birth information, but if that were our Edward, he would be in his mid-80s by then.

Conclusion

I don’t know what happened to Edward after he left the service. I think it’s plausible that he lived near Philadelphia (the Lower Dublin records) and then moved west to Lurgan Township. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find more evidence of his family in later records, and have not been able to trace the sons evident in the 1800 Census.

If anyone out there has traced their family back to an Edward Callin in Pennsylvania, let me know and we’ll compare notes!

Next week, I’ll go back to James, and see if I can trace his movements post-Revolution.

1

See the Valley Forge Muster Roll project: https://valleyforgemusterroll.org/continental-army/regiments/

2

“Mutiny of the Pennsylvania Line” – History.com

3

The Pennsylvania Line Mutiny, its Origins and Patriotism, By: Charles S. Yordy, III (Penn State University Libraries)
When Asking Becomes Telling

June 5, 2024

Musing about an inflection point

In my defense, there is just so much to know!

Let me back up: a few weeks ago, Substacker Kevin Ferguson asked,

Kevin Ferguson Apr 17, 2024

The Centenarian Playbook

Do you remember what triggered your interest in genealogy? What was it?

…and you can go see what I said, of course, and take a look at Kevin’s newsletter about family history and winemaking. But ever since, I’ve been thinking about an inflection point, where my interest went from being triggered to firing on all cylinders.

When I was a kid, my sister and I loved hearing stories from our grandfathers. Neither Grandma Nancy nor Grandma Bert could be considered “tellers of stories.” In their different ways, they had deep concerns about not spreading gossip, which made them reluctant to spin tales out of their childhood experiences. But Grandpa Bob and Grandpa Russ were both full of humorous tales of their youth.

I wrote about Grandpa Russ in A Fire in the Desert, but Grandpa Bob had a drastically different style. Where Russ liked to draw you in and adapt the story he was telling to teach you some moral lesson, Bob tended to get deep in the weeds and agonize over details. He loved to start with a story about WWII, then get into the mechanical differences between the aircraft he worked on, divert himself into a dissertation on railways, and then segue into a tale of the old West that just might have been the plot of the Louis L’Amour book on his reading table that day.

My dad used to wind Grandpa up with a spot-on impression of “Bob telling a story” that was part Bob Newhart, part Mister Magoo, and 100% dead accurate. And Grandpa would laugh himself silly, then start in on another wildly digressive story.

Bob and Nancy, and my aunt Vickie – even my dad, briefly – were all public school teachers, which meant they were all accustomed to commanding the attention of a room. Over the years, I realized that of the four of them, Bob was the one who would give up first and let the others have the floor. So when I would find him by himself and start asking questions, he would light up and tell me anything I wanted to know. Assuming he knew it.

I wish I could go back in time and ask better questions. And maybe take notes or record the answers. Sadly, I was not one of those 12-year-old kids who took a lot of notes, so I don’t recall most of the stories. But I do remember that feeling of curiosity that drives me today bubbling up as he talked about the far-off and exotic lands of his youth – Ohio and Florida – and his travels across the country with grandma.

I also remember that sometimes, I would reach his limits. I would ask about someone he only recalled vaguely, or I would ask for details that a normal person wouldn’t be expected to know about their most distant cousins. When that happened, he would usually shrug and point toward the room that housed that ever-growing collection of boxes and memorabilia and say, “The Callin Family History is in there somewhere!”

And then he would make a face like this one, as if to say, “Your guess is as good as mine, kid!”

Bob Callin in 1972 – he was the same age then as I am now

At some point, of course, I started to learn enough that I became the one telling the stories. I got to share a few with Grandpa before he died in 2007. I wish he was still around so I could share a few more.

The point is, I never really outgrew asking questions. That’s all research is – you start with what you know and follow the threads at the edges. When you’ve gathered enough of them together, you might be able to weave them into a story that makes sense.

And then you hope like heck there is a curious mind around to share them with.

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