Alice's interesting dead folks
- by Alice
Marie BeardI collect dead people, and I keep them around by
telling their stories.
Finding the stories of women is a
particular pleasure because their stories so often vanish
behind husbands and children. Here are some of the women
whose stories I've found in records left behind:
| u NEW:
A 12th Century lady, in transition (Eleanor of Aquitaine) |
| u A mother executed as a witch in about
1651 because she believed she saw her dead baby (Alice, Mrs. Henry Lake) |
| u A woman who danced with Abe Lincoln AND
Stephen Douglas (Permelia Payne) |
| u A teenaged indentured servant who
secured a land patent on several thousand acres
for many wealthy men in Orange Co., NY (Sarah
Wells, Mrs. William Bull, the great-grandma of Hannah Earle) |
| u A Hoosier farm woman who was pregnant at
48, and a widow soon after, a woman who survived
on raw guts in the mid-1800s (Sarah Catharine Cripe) |
| u A woman who unknowingly became addicted
to morphine as a physician tried to ease her
pain, who stopped "cold turkey" as soon
as she learned that what her doctor had been
giving her was morphine (Katie Hooker) |
u My Mayflower connection: A rural midwife
in Vermilion Co., IL, who descended from
Mayflower passengers George Soule and Richard
Warren (Lucy Peterson)
Welcome to the stories of my dead people! |
A peek at the stories
inside . . .
 
Frank Reed, a.k.a. Tom Doyle
Frank Reed was a poor, illiterate immigrant from
Quebec. During the Civil War he was a soldier in
the U.S. Army; he missed getting on a boat and
trapped himself in a lie for the rest of his
life. He lived out his life hiding under a false
name and died in a state institution for the
insane, with folks believing he was someone other
than who he was. Check this site
to read his story and to learn how his secret was
finally uncovered eighty years after he died. |
John Payne, Jr., & his
Mrs., Virletta O'Neal
He was a veteran of the U.S. Army and had sons
fighting for the Union during the Civil War. In
August 1863 he was on the courthouse steps in
Danville, Illinois, with a "butternut
pin" pinned to his lapel. It incited a riot,
and he was shot. His brother, the sheriff, came
to the scene to find John mortally wounded.
Virletta was a bride at 16. She was dead at 27.
When she died, her baby was buried with her, and
she left six children with the oldest only ten.
Three of the little boys she left behind grew up
to fight with the Union Army in the Civil War. |
George Hooker
George Hooker came to the U.S.A. when he was
three. He was in the Union Army during the Civil
War. On the day Abraham Lincoln died, George lost
his hearing as a result of firing cannons in a
salute to the dead president. |
Andrew Hufford
 When
George Hooker needed a job after his stint in the
Civil War, Andrew Hufford hired the returning
veteran. Hufford was Brethren, and his church
opposed all wars. However, Andrew's own father
had been both a Brethren and a veteran of the War
of 1812. Check this site
to see the basics on this man from Carroll Co.,
IN |
Alice (Mrs. Henry) Lake
In about 1651, the people of what is now Boston,
MA, executed a grieving mother because she
imagined she saw her recently deceased baby. Her
accusers said the devil was coming to her in the
form of her beloved child. |
John Hockertz & Margaret
Hames: case study
John and Margaret were a Catholic couple who left
their native Germany and came to America in 1847
with their two young children. This case study
will show how a genealogist separates the wheat
from the chaff. Which stories are true? Which
stories are just stories? What do the documents
turn up on this family? The page will be updated
as new information turns up. |
Abraham Hufford &
Elizabeth Plank
 Abraham
and Elizabeth moved with their children from
Fairfield Co., Ohio, to Carroll Co. and Clinton
Co., Indiana. They were Brethren, but Abraham
fought in the War of 1812 anyway. He had 1,900
acres of timber land in the two Hoosier counties.
He and Elizabeth had a dozen children. Eleven
reached maturity: six sons and five daughters.
When each child turned 21, Abraham gave the child
160 acres of land. |
 Sarah Catharine Cripe,
Mrs. Andrew Hufford
Sarah had her 13th child at 43. At 48,
she had her 14th child. Eight months
later, her husband died in an accident. Suddenly,
she not only was 48 with a little baby, she was a
widow in rural Indiana. Nonetheless, she didn't
turn to drinking or drugging. She kept on keeping
on. She did what had to be done, and on Sundays
she went to the Middlefork Brethren Church to
pray with her family. |
 Victor,
a casualty of WWII
A Polish lady named Olga became a mother in the
summer of 1942 when she gave birth to a little
boy. She named him Victor. It was the wrong time
and wrong place to be born Polish. Eighteen
months later, on New Year's Eve, a Nazi medical
doctor injected the baby with a drug, walked
away, and let Victor die like a euthanized
animal.
From a poster of the 1970s come the words,
"War is not
nice for children, and other living things." |
Travelers on the Oregon Trail
In 1851 a train of
covered wagons drawn by oxen left Vermilion Co., IL,
headed for Willamette Valley in Oregon. Check this site to
read about the journey.
Beard Cemetery
There's a pretty
little spot secluded in the woods behind a corn field in
Carroll Co., IN. Buried there is a second-cousin to the
only American First Lady who was ever legally declared
insane. Check this site to see
a list of the other nice folks buried along with that
second-cousin and to read the story of how I began my
genealogical research.
The Passing of the Backhouse
All of the dead folks
whose stories I collect would have been familiar with
outhouses. Genealogy is much more than just collecting
names and dates. It's about -- oh, well, I'll be honest:
I just like this poem! It reminds me of my favorite
outhouse from the past -- with a bucket of old corn cobs,
a bag of lime, and a Sears catalogue, right beside the
finest strawberry patch for any summer day. The poem has
been attributed both to James Whitcomb Riley and to Charles
T. Rankin; both were Hoosiers. Absolute authorship is not
known: "When memory keeps me company and moves to
smile or tears . . . "
|
Contents
Every
genealogy-related page at this web site is listed
in the TABLE of CONTENTS.
Not every entry has a summary on this page. To
see all of the genealogy pages,
Click here!
Questions & Answers:
Genealogy tips
Guestbook
If you're
family,
leave a howdy!
gedcom
info, off site:
@ geneanet
@ gencircles
@ rootsweb
| |
HISTORY &
CEMETERIES:
Owasco, IN
Beard Cemetery
witch list
Oregon Trail
CIVIL
WAR:
8th Illinois
Co. K, 8th IL
149th Illinois
Battle of Shiloh
Battle of Donelson
POEMS:
outhouse poem
Civil War poem
COOKIES:
Klutz-proof cookies
Keflies
PEOPLE:
Beard, G.I.
Beard, Jesse
Beard, John
Beard, John M.
Beard, Miles G.
Borden, Lizzie
Cripe, David
Cripe, Sarah
Cripe descendants
Doyle, Itha Elmer
Doyle, Lucy May
Doyle, Tom
Earle, Hannah
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Grannis, Esther
Griffith, Alice
Griffith, Bernice
Griffith, Henry
Hockertz, John
Hooker, George
Hooker, Kate
Hufford, Abraham
Hufford, Andrew
Hufford, Casper
Hufford, Christian
Hufford, Elizabeth
Hufford descendants
Hukill, Eveline
Hukill, Henry B.
Hukill, Henry H.
Jack, Hannah
Lake, Alice (Mrs. Henry)
Lake descendants
Lane, Allen
Lane, Cilinda
More, Sophiah
Oliver, Elizabeth
O'Neal, William
Payne, John, Jr
Payne, John, Sr
Payne, Mary Louise
Payne, Permelia
Payne, William
Paynes of Vermilion Co.
Peterson, Cornelius
Peterson, Lucy
Reed, Frank
Smith, Rachel
Smith, Richard
Todd connection
Wise, Mary Ann
THE POLISH CONNECTION:
A Nazi slave
Olga
Poland v. Germany & Russia
|
site by
Alice Marie Beard,
Bethesda, MD
A few years back I was at my
grandmother's grave site. With a pocket knife, my
bare hands, and wet paper towels, I was cleaning
the weeds from around her grave marker and wiping
her marker clean. It's a nice cemetery, with
full-service grounds keepers. One rode up on a
little tractor and said, "We'll do that for
you." I looked at the nice man and said,
"There's not too much I can do for Grandma
any more. This is one thing I can still do for
her." I remember four wonderful
grandparents. For them, I do this genealogy.
email Alice
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