5. Baldwin-Steele (10.8 Baldwin-Steele)

Newton Bascum Baldwin and Martha Ellen Steele

Marriage Register showing union of "Newton B. Baldwin" and "Martha E. Steel" [sic = Martha E. Steele] as witnessed by relatives and friends, Jackson County, Kentucy, 15 December 1881 Copped, cropped, and composed from Ancestry.com

Marriage Bond for "Newton Baldwin" and "M. D. Settle" also spelled "Martha E. Steel" [sic = Martha E. Steele] McKee, Jackson County, Kentucy, 5 December 1881 Copped and cropped from Ancestry.com

Baldwin-Steele family about 1905 Probably before leaving Kentucky, possibly after arriving in Iowa Baldwin sisters Almeda Jane Ure (3rd), Ida Mae Wetherall (4th), Sada Elizabeth Williams (1st), Lydia Margaret Anstine (2nd) Parents Newton Bascum Baldwin (Baldwin-Howard), Martha Ellen Steele (Steele-Grubb) Scan by Patricia Flint of original photo in her family collection (Patricia is a great-great-granddaughter of Ellen Steele and a great-granddaughter of Ellen's 2nd daughter Meda Baldwin)

0. Newton B. Baldwin and Martha E. Steele were "bonded" in marriage on 5 December in McKee, Jackston County, Kentucky, and registered the marriage in Jackston County, Kentucky on 15 December 1881. The registration record states that the marriage took place "at the residence of the bride's father" but Ellen Steele's father Jonas Steele died in 1868. "Father" appears to be an error for "brother", most likely "William D. Steele", the first listed witness, followed by his younger brother "John Steele" and others, ending with Newton's older brother "Wm. Baldwin". The "marriage bond" includes spelling errors like "Steel" for "Steele" and "Neuton" for "Newton" among several others.
   Following Bascum's death in 1919, Ellen lived for a while with her daughter and son-in-law Meda and Clifford Ure in St. Maries (1920 census), and later with her daughter Lydia Anstine's family in Nebraska, where she continued to live for a while after Lydia's death in 1929 (1930 census).
1. Sarah Elizabeth was "Sada" in my father's memory, though she was usually "Sadie" or "Sadie E.". My father called her "Aunt Sadie" and that is how I and my brother and sister also knew her. A transcription of a 1940 Social Security record shows "Sadie Baldwin Williams" but she was usually "Sadie E. Williams". She married Charles F. Williams (or Ambrose Powell Williams) around 1903 (or 1902). Apparently they had 4 children, of whom 2 -- Faye and Claude -- survived (1910 census).
   Faye M. Williams was born in Iowa on 4 October 1906 and died in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho on 25 November 1995. Claude J. Williams was born in Nebraska on 28 November 1907 and died on 25 November 1977. They and their mother were living with the Baldwin's in St. Maries in 1910 according to that year's census. The Baldwins were living in Spokane in 1908 and 1909.
   Sadie is buried at Coeur d'Alene Memorial Gardens in Coeur d'Alene, Kootenai County, Idaho.
2. Lydia or "Lydie" (Liddie) is also reported to have been born on 1 April 1883. The 2 April 1883 date is based on her death certificate. Ida, too, was born on 2 April.
   Lydia married Charles (aka "Charley " and "Chas") Anstine, in Lincoln, Nebraska on 12 February 1908. Charley was a Nebraska farmer she met while the Baldwin family was living in Lincoln (See Table 5.2).
3. Almeda or "Meda" ("Danny" to some in her family) -- also worked as a telephone operator. She married Clifford Ure, a St. Maries barber, on 15 March 1911. By the 1920 census he was a mailman. She and Clifford or "Cliff" -- like N. Bascum and M. Ellen Baldwin, and like Ida Baldwin Wetherall -- are buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in St. Maries.
4. Ida's death certificate states she was born in 1888. The 1900 census states March 1891, and the 1920 census states she was then 36, which implies she was born in 1888-1889. Her 1 June 1910 marriage certificate says she was 20 as of her last birthday, which implies she was born in 1890, and her tombstone says 1890.
   Ida married William Riley Wetherall in Seward, Nebraska, on 1 June 1910. Their wedding portrait is the work of a Seward photographer. Ida's oldest sister Sada Williams was working at a mental asylum in Seward at the time. Her 2nd older sister Lydia Anstine was living with her family on a farm in nearby Utica. And their mother, Ellen Baldwin, made frequent visits to Nebraska to see her grandchildren.
   The circumstances of Ida's life, after her marriage to William Riley Wetherall in 1910 and the birth of William Bascum (later "Bascom") Wetherall in 1911, were tragic (see below).

See Chronology of Baldwin-Steele family for an overview of the origins of the Baldwin line in the Baldwin-Steele family and a fuller account of the family's movements and life.

See Chronology of Steele-Grubb family for an account of the Steele-Grubb family.

See 4th cousins X removed: Steele-Grubb connections with David Crockett for a look at the possible crossing of paths of the Steele line of the Baldwin-Steele family with an offshoot of the Crockett ancestors of Davy Crockett.

Bosoms trump breasts

Compare the clothing the Baldwin sisters are wearing in the circa 1905 family portrait to the right, and those they are wearing in the circa 1907 portrait below. Sada and Lydia are wearing the same outfits. Ida, too, appears to be wearing the same or very similar blouse and belt. Only Meda's dress is clearly different.

The object of female fashions then -- in the age of virtue and modesty -- seems to have been to exaggerate the bosom rather than accentuate the breasts. A large bosom alludes to fertility and motherhood, while shapely breasts suggest sexuality and womanhood. The body, then, was not only covered -- but layered -- with clothing designed to hide a woman's actual figure -- except her waist, which was cinched as tight as possible.

N.B. and Ellen (Steele) Baldwin (Grandma Baldwin)

N. Bascum Baldwin -- also known as "N. B. Baldwin" but socially as "Bascum" -- married Martha Ellen Steele in Kentucky. The couple eventually settled and built a home in Saint Maries, at the confluence of the St. Joe and St. Maries Rivers, in Idaho. Bascum was known as a "Dealer In General Merchandise".

William B. Wetherall said in 2010 that his maternal grandparents had married and started their family in Kentucky, but later migrated to Saint Maries. He said his grandfather, N. B. Baldwin, had been a merchant and businessman, and at times owned a restaurant, general store, and laundry.

N. B. Baldwin   In his very small collection of Wetherall-Baldwin family detritus was a yellow business card showing the following information. I transcribed the card when my father showed it to me in a shoebox with other family detritus. The card has been lost.

N. B. Baldwin
Dealer In General Merchandise
St. Maries, Idaho
St. Maries at confluence of St. Joe and St. Maries Rivers

Ellen (Steele) Baldwin, circa 1940 Probably in St. Maries where Ellen died in 1943 Wetherall Family Collection

Judging from the 1880 census, Bascum and Ellen married in their teens as children in neighboring families in Kentucky. All the men in the families were laborers, presumably on the family farm.

The 1900 census shows them farming in another part of Kentucky with their 4 daughters. The oldest was "Saddy" (17) or "Sally" depending on how one reads the corrected scribble, and the youngest was Ida (9). All 4 of the Baldwin sisters were at school.

Sometime around 1904 or 1905, some of the Baldwin-Steele family members leave Kentucky. N.B. Baldwin appears to be living with Sadie and her husband C. F. Williams in Kansas in 1905 (see 1905 Kansas census below).

By 1907, N.B. and Ellen are resident employees at the insane asylum in Lincoln, Nebraska. He is working as a meat cutter, she as an assistant cook. Lydia was apparently studying at a business college in Lincoln. Meda and Ida were probably also living there. Circa 1906-1907, Lydia married Charles Anstine, a farmer in Utica in Seward County.

By 1908, N.B. and Ellen, and Meda and Ida, had moved to Spokane, Washington, where Ida (and apparently also Meda" attended business colleges, and N.B. and Ellen ran a restaurant. Lydia remained in Nebraska with her new family. In 1909, Meda and Ida are living with their parents in Spokane, Ida still enrolled in a business college, Meda working as a cashier at the restaurant.

By 1910, N.B. and Ellen are running a restaurant and boarding house in St. Maries, Idaho. Meda is living with them while working as a milliner at her own shop.

A photograph probably taken in St. Maries early in 1912, of William B. Wetherall on a boardwalk in St. Maries, shows a restaurant and boarding house that may have belonged to N.B. Baldwin. See Wetherall-Hardman family (Bill and Orene) page for details.

N.B. lived in St. Maries until his death in 1919. The 1920 census shows Ellen living in St. Maries with Meda, Meda's husband Clifford Ure, and their daughter Greta. Lydia underwent surgery for a colostomy in 1927 and died in 1929, and the 1930 census shows Ellen living with Charles Anstine and his and Lydia's daughters on the Anstine farm in Utica. The 1930 census shows Sadie also living and working in Seward. The 1940 census shows Sadie and Ellen living together in St. Maries, where Ellen died in 1943.

So Ellen spent a good part of her life supporting her daughters in their trials and tribulations, both marital and medical. She helped Sadie and her children when Sadie's marriage floundered. She went to Iowa to help Ida deliver William B. Wetherall (my father) in 1911, and then took in my father when Ida was committed to an asylum. She was helped by Meda after N.B. died but reciprocated by helping Meda raise first Greta and later Dale. She helped Lydia in the late 1920s when Lydia had cancer, and remained with Charley and the girls for a while after Lydia died. Her visits with my father in Iowa when he was going to school there during the 1920s inspired him to return to St. Maries, where he lived with Meda's family, but also Ellen and Sadie, during his college years.

Baldwin sisters about 1907 Lydia → Meda → Sadie ↓ Ida Probably taken in Lincoln, Nebraska (Wetherall Family photo)

Baldwin sisters

William B. Wetherall's mother and aunts

N.B. and Ellen Baldwin had 4 daughters in the span of 7 years from 1883-1890 -- Sadie, Lydia, Meda, and Ida. As adults they led very different lives, and some had hard times.

Sadie lost the first 2 of her 4 children in death in their infancy, separated from her husband while the 2 surviving children were still very young, and raised them alone with occasional help from her mother.

Lydia lost her 1st daughter, and then shortly after the birth of her 4th, she underwent a resection and colostomy operation. Two years later she died, leaving her husband with three daughters, the youngest only 2 years old -- and three years later he also died of cancer.

Meda would live the longest and most stable life of the Baldwin sisters.

Ida would live the shortest and most tragic life. Confined in an asylum about 8 months after her son, William B. Wetherall, my father, was born, she died in confinement 12 years later, probably a victim of what today would be called post-partum depression. In her time, she was just crazy.

Only Lydia and Meda are buried with their husbands. Lydia and Charley Anstine are buried with their eldest daughter, Velma Anstine, in Utica, Nebraska. Meda and Clifford are buried in the Baldwin plot in St. Maries, Idaho, with N. Bascum and M. Ellen Baldwin. Ida Baldwin Wetherall is also buried in the Baldwin plot with her parents and the Ures. Sadie Williams is Coeur dAlene, Idaho.

Portrait

The portrait to the right was most likely taken in Lincoln, Nebraska, around 1907, which appears to have been the last year the Baldwins and their daughters were living close together. By 1908, N.B. and Ellen, and Ida and apparently also Meda, were in Spokane, while Lydia was in Nebraska, where she had married. Sadie, who married around 1903-1904, had given birth to her Faye -- her 3rd (and 1st surviving) child -- in Iowa in 1906, but Claude -- her 4th (and 2nd surviving) child -- was born in Nebraska in 1907.

The 1910 census shows all the Baldwins except Lydia and Ida -- namely N.B., Ellen, Meda, and Sadie and her 2 children -- living together in St. Maries, Idaho. In 1910, Ida married William R. Wetherall of Iowa in Seward, Nebraska, where Lydia lived, then lived in Iowa, where in 1911 she gave birth to William B. Wetherall. Ellen came to Iowa to be with her when she gave birth, at which time Sadie was in Medical Lake, Washington.

5.1 Williams-Baldwin

Sadie (Baldwin) Williams (Aunt Sadie)

Portrait of Sadie Williams, circa 1920s Gumbel Studio, Seward, Nebraska Wetherall Family Collection

Sadie Williams as nurse (left), circa 1910s-1920s (Wetherall Family photo) WBW could not recall where or when this picture was taken and did not recognize the woman on the right. He said Sadie had once worked at a home for unwed mothers and might have been its director. She was, in fact, the head nurse at such a home in Seward, Nebraska, according to 1930 census.

Sadie Williams Place and date unknown (Severns Family photo) Sadie may have posed for these mugshots at a photo booth in a Greyhound terminal during one of her trips. Wanted: Sadie Williams "Nurse, mother, fearless traveler. Don't mess with her on a bus. If you're lucky enough to sit with her, though, she'll tear off both of your ears with amazing tales of adventure and survival."

Sadie Williams' death certificate Copped from Ancestry.com Informant "Mrs. Faye Rebenstorf" was Sadie's daughter Sadie's father was "N.B." or "N. [Newton] Bascum" or "Bascum" Her mother was, as stated, "Ellen" or "M. [Martha] Ellen" Certificate says Sadie was "widowed" 1910 census says "M" (married) 1930 census says "D" (divorced) 1940 census says "Wd" (widowed)

0. Sarah "Sadie" E. Williams was "Sada" in my father's memory though he and others in the family generally called her "Sadie", the name most commonly found on census and other records. She is "Sally" on the 1900 census, "Sallie" on 1902 marriage record, "Sallie" on a 1905 Kansas census, and "Sarah" (once "Sara) or "Sadie" on most other records.
0. "Ambrose Powell Williams" -- aka "A.P. Williams" -- is the father-on-record of Sadie's daughter Faye (below). On 19/20 September 2019, Find a Grave contributor Peter Joseph ("PJ") Braun kindly informed me that Sadie Baldwin had married Ambrose Powell Williams, in Jackson County, Kentucky, on 18 October 1902. This was a very valuable piece of information for me, for at the time I had not seen any records of Sadie's marriage, and was unable to substantiate the claim made on a delayed birth certificate in 1942 that Faye's father was Ambrose Powell Williams (below). I later learned that "PJ" was instrumental in discovering the cremains of Sadie's son Claude J. Williams (below), and I realized that he had contacted me after seeing my in the course of investigating Claude's family history through Ancestry.com.
0. "Charles F. Williams" is the father of Claude Williams accoring to Claude's Lincoln, Nebraska birth certificate. He is also listed as a "railroad fireman" (locomotive engineer) in a contemporary Lincoln directory. He is "C.F. Williams" on the 1905 Kansas census showing him with "N.B. Baldwin", "Sallie Williams", and a boy named "Oscar", who C.F. Williams appears to have brought from a previous marriage.
1. The identities of Sadie's first two children, possibly twins, are not known. Presumably she bore and lost them between her 1902 marriage and migration to Kansas before the state's 1905 census.
2. Sadie had lost 2 children according to the 1910 national census, by which time she was in Idaho. The census states that she had been married for 6 years, and she had had 4 children of whom 2 survived, namely Faye and Claude.
3. Lois McWhorter, a 3rd cousin in Kentucky, reported in 2018 that her mother, Hazel (Baldwin) Gill, had heard that an infant child of Sallie Baldwin was buried in a cemetery associated with Gabbard family property, which might have shared a border with, or once been part of, Baldwin property along today's Baldwin Branch Road south of Annville (see Baldwin-Steele homes below).
3. Faye married L.J. Mathews in February 1934 and in December a daughter, Marilyn, was born. Faye had divorced by the 1940 census. A marriage certificate filed in Missoula County, Montana on 28 October 1944, records a marriage performed in the town of Missoula on 26 October 1944, pursuant to a license issued the same day, between Wisconsin-born "Howard C. Rebenstorf" and Iowa-born "Faye M. Nelson" (mother Sadie E. Baldwin, father A. P. Williams). Rebenstorf informally adopted Faye's daughter Marilin A. Mathews, but Marilin remained legally Mathews to the day she married Norman K. Disrud (see below). Faye also went by "Faye Marjorie Williams" (apprently on a Social Security document dated December 1936). Faye was "Fay M. [sic] Williams" (single) on the 1910 census for St. Maries, Idaho, and the 1930 census for Lincoln, Nebraska, and "Faye Mathews" (divorced) on the 1940 census for Spokane, Washington.
4. "Claude Jennings" was usually just "Claude" or "Claude J." Williams. He appears to have never married (according to Darci Severns).

Sadie's husband and children

Sadie's marriage, motherhood, separation, and divorce are shrouded in mystery. She had 4 children, of whom 2 -- Faye and Claude -- survived. Both Faye and Claude were slightly older than Sadie's nephew, this writer's father William Bascom Wetherall, who partly grew up with his aunt and 1st cousins in the Baldwin household in St. Maries until he was about 6 years old. Sadie and her children -- especially Faye -- remained close to Bill and his family throughout their lives.

The 1900 census for Pond Creek in Jackson County shows what looks most like "Sally" (17) [Sarah, Sadie, Sada] living in Kentucky as the oldest daughter of "N.B." or "B." Baldwin (38), who is engaged in farming, and Ellen (36). Her younger sisters -- Liddie [sic = Lydie, Lydia] (14), "Almedie" ["Medie"?] [sic = Medie, Meda] (11), and Ida (9) -- are also listed. The census states that everyone in the family was born in Kentucky, Sadie in March 1883, her father in December 1861. Sadie is single and at school.

18 October 1902   "A.P. Williams" married "Sallie Baldwin" in Jackson County, Kentucky (Ancestry.com record, transcription).

The 1905 Kansas census for Parsons, in Labette County, enumerated on 1 March 1905, shows "N.B. Baldwin" (44), residing in a home with "C.F. Williams" (28), "Sallie Williams" (22), and "Oscar Williams" (6). C.F. Williams and N.B. Baldwin were born in Virginia, and Sallie and Oscar were born in Kentucky. C.F. Williams came to Kansas from Tennessee, while Sallie and Oscar Williams, and N.B. Baldwin, came to Kansas from Kentucky. C.F. Williams is described as a "Hospital attendant".

Who did Sadie Baldwin marry?

Oscar, if 6 as of 1 March 1905 in the Kansas census, would have been born on or after 2 March 1898 and no later than 1 March 1899, when Sallie was 16 and C.F. Williams was 22. In other words, Oscar was born about 1 year before the 1 June 1910 census showing "Saddy" or "Sally" Baldwin as single -- and 3 years before "Sallie Baldwin" is said to have married "A.P. Williams".

The above Ancestry.com record -- a transcription rather than an image -- shows a marriage between a "Sallie Baldwin" and an "A.P. Williams" in Jackson County, Kentucky, on 18 October 1902.

The 1900 census for Kavanaugh Precinct in Jackson County, Kentucky, shows "Ambrose Williams", 22 years of age, born in Mar 1878 in Virginia to Virginia-born parents, with his wife "Margaret" age 28, born in Sept 1871 in Kentucky to Kentucky-born parents, and a son "Oscar M." 1, Sept 1898. The household includes 4 other children, all bearing the family name "Powell" -- step-daughter "Maud" 8, June 1891, step-son "Leslie" 6, Dec 1893, step-daughter "Lella" 3, July 1896, and adopted "Ella" 14, Apr 1886. Ambrose and Margaret have been married 3 years, and Margaret has had 4 children, all of whom are reportedly still alive -- presumably Oscar with Ambrose Williams, and the 3 step-children with a man named Powell, implicity Margaret's deceased or divorced previous husband. Ambrose is farming on a farm he rents.

Margaret "Maggie" A. Coyle married Larkin Powell on 29 July 1890 in Jackson County, Kentucky.

"Maud Lee (Powell) Clemmons", born on 27 June 1891, died of tuberculosis on 2 July 1922 in Sand Gap in Jackson County.

Frank Leslie Powell, born on 8 December 1893 in Sand Gap, Jackson County, died in Cincinati, Hamilton County, Ohio, on 19 January 1968.

The identities of "Ambrose Powell Williams" and "Charles F. Williams" remain unclear. It doesn't make immediate sense that in 1902 Sadie (Sallie) married "Ambrose Powell Williams" (A.P. Williams), who may have had a son named Oscar -- then shows up with "C.F. Williams" and a child "Oscar", and her father N.B. Baldwin, in a 1905 census -- then in 1906 gives birth to a daughter whose father appears to be "Ambrose Powell Williams" -- then in 1907 gives birth a son whose father appears to be "Charles F. Williams" -- unless "A.P." and "C.F." Williams are the same men -- or unless they are different men with the same family name, possibly brothers, with whom Sadie had on-and-off relations.

If "Ambrose Williams" the father of "Oscar" and step-father of several Powell children in the 1900 census is the "A.P. Williams" who "Sallie Baldwin" married in 1902 -- and if this "Sallie Baldwin" is the "Sallie" married to "C.F. Williams" in the 1905 Kansas census that includes "Oscar" and "N.B. Baldwin" -- and "Sallie Baldwin" aka "Sallie Williams" is otherwise N.B. Baldwin's daughter "Sadie Baldwin -- then we have to wonder if C.F. Williams and A.P. Williams are the same person, in which case C.F. Williams brought Oscar to his marriage with Sadie Baldwin from his marriage with Margaret (Coyle) Powell.

At this point, nothing can be ruled out. Even if we leave aside the apparently contradictory marriage and census records, we are left with a delayed Iowa birth certificate for Faye stating that her father was "Ambrose Powell Williams", and an actual Nebraska birth certificate for Claude stating that his father was "Charles F. Williams". That "Ambrose Powell Williams" might be right for Faye does not mean that "Charles F. Williams" is wrong for Claude. It is not impossible that Faye and Claude were half-siblings. Both A.P. Williams and C.F. Williams appear to have been born in Virginia. That Sallie and Oscar Williams and N.B. Baldwin came to Kansas from Kentucky, while C.F. Williams came to Kansas from Tennessee, is not a problem if they came to Kansas by different routes from the same place in Kentucky.

1906   Sadie gave birth to Faye on 4 October 1906 in Iowa. Faye's obituary states she was born in Knoxville, Iowa. A delayed birth certificate issued by the Division of Vital Statistics, Iowa State Department of Health, on 23 March 1942, states that she was born in Knoxville, Iowa, on 4 October 1906 to "Ambrose Powell Williams" and "Sarah E. Williams" ("or Sadie" is printed below Sarah).

1907   Sadie gave birth to Claude on 28 November 1907 in Nebraska. Claude's birth certificate states he was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, to "Chas. F. Williams", a [locomotive] fireman, and "Sarah Elizabeth Baldwin".

The 1908 Lincoln Nebraska Directory shows Williams Charles F fireman C B & Q res 720 Q. Williams is apparently a locomotive fireman for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. The same directory shows Lydia Baldwin living at the same 720 Q address, which suggests that Sadie and Faye are also living there. Charles Anstine, who Lydia would soon marry, is living practically next door, on the same street, and is also working as a fireman for C B & Q.

The 1909 Lincoln Nebraska Directory shows Williams Charles F fireman C B & Q res 1113 Q. Williams, still working for the railroad, has moved. Lydia Baldwin and Charles Anstine are no longer listed in the directory.

The 1910 census shows Sadie E. Williams (26) living with her Baldwin parents and second younger sister Meda (21) in St. Maries, Idaho, and her children Faye M. Williams (3) and Claude J. Williams (2). The census states that she had been married for 6 years, and had had 4 children, of whom 2 survived. This implies that she had married about 1904 (actually 1902), and that Faye was born in 1906-1907 (actually 1906) and Claude in 1907-1908 (actually 1907). Newton B. was born in Virginia, his father in Tennessee, his mother in Virginia. Ellen was born in Kentucky to parents born in North Carolina, according to this census. Meda and Sadie were born in Kentucky. Faye was born in Iowa, Claude was born in Nebraska, and their father was born in Tennessee -- consistent with the "Tennessee" origins of "C.F. Williams" in the 1905 Kansas census.

Where and when did Sadie lose 2 children?
If Sadie was the "Sallie" in the 1905 Kansas census, and if "Oscar" was her biological child, then presumably he is 1 of the 2 children who were no longer alive in 1910. Faye and Claude, born in 1906 and 1907, are too closely spaced to consider the birth of any children between them. Did Sadie lose a child between 1908 and the 1910 census? Or before the 1905 Kansas census?

1920 census   I have not found Sadie, Faye, or Claude in the 1920 census. However, stories conveyed to me by Darci Severns, a great granddaughter of Lydia Anstaine, Sadie's sister, who lived in Utica in Seward County, Nebraska, suggest that Sadie was working as a nurse in Nebraska around that time.

Stories handed down by Lydia and Charley Anstine's descendants, through their daughters Lennie and Aura, suggest that Sadie, Faye, and Claude were living in Seward, Nebraska in the late 1910s and early 1920s. Darci Severns reports hearing from her grandmother, Lennie, that her (Lennie's) mother's (Lydia's) sister (Sadie) was a nurse and had seen the appendix removed from that her (Lennie's) older sister Velma, who died in 1919 from an infection. This would put Sadie in Seward in 1919, and Faye and Claude, then in their mid teens, would have been with her. See Darci's full account about Velma's death in "Anstine sisters" below.

The 1930 census shows Sadie (46), divorced, born in Kentucky, father in Virginia, mother in Kentucky, residing and working at the Nebraska Industrial House, a home for unwed mothers in "P" township in Seward County, Nebraska, as its resident nurse. She is said to have been 19 when she married, which implies that she married about 1902 (the 1910 census stated that she had been married for 6 years, which implies she married around 1904). Fay [sic = Faye] M. Williams (23), single, born in Iowa, father in Virginia, mother in Kentucky, is a teacher at a school (Temple) in Lincoln, Nebraska. I have not found Claude in the 1930 census.

The 1940 census shows Sadie Williams (57), head, and Ellen Baldwin (76), mother, living together at the Baldwin home in St. Maries. Both are said to be widowed and Kentucky born. The education box shows Sadie with 2 years of college and Ellen with 8 years of grade school. Sadie was living in Spokane, Washington on 1 April 1935, but Ellen was living in the same home. At the time of the 1940 census, Faye Mathews (33), divorced, no children, 2 years of college, born in Iowa, was working as a bookkeeper in Spokane, Washington, and she was living at the same place on 1 April 1935. Claude J. Williams (32), single, 2 years of college, Nebraska born, was working as a carpenter in building construction in Spokane, Washington, and he too was living at the same place in 1935.

Sadie's old Kentucky home

Uncle Clay's southern hospitality

September, 1947. Ellen Baldwin has joined Bascum Baldwin in Woodlawn Cemetery in St. Maries for nearly five years. Among their 4 daughters, only Sadie Williams, going on 64, and Meda Ure, then 58, survive them.

Sadie's own children have grown up and are approaching middle age. Her daughter Faye, 40, has remarried and her granddaughter, Marilyn, 12, now has a father. The war is over and her son, Claude Williams, 39, still single, is out of the Navy and working.

Sadie has an itch to see her childhood home in Kentucky. And on the way she'll pass through Nebraska and Iowa, where she had given birth to Faye and Claude and lived for a while after leaving Kentucky when she was 20. On her back to Idaho, she'll swing through San Francisco to visit her nephew, William Bascom Wetherall, and his family. Hopefully Meda will come down from Washington to join them.

In Des Moines, Iowa, where William B. Wetherall went to high school, Sadie buys several postcards of city landmarks. She sends 4 cards to "1922 24th Ave / San Francisco 16 / Calif." -- in 2 batches about 10 days apart -- the 1st from Des Moines, the 2nd from Kentucky -- and twice spells Wetherall "Weatherall".

The plot thickens with each card.

"I came 3 days ago and 2 chickens have died"

Des Moines, Iowa, 10 Sep 1947, 8:30 PM		Annville, KY, 22 Sep 1947, A.M.
Card 1 Des Moines River, Des Moines, Iowa W.B. Weatherall 6 pm, Wed, Sept. 10 Dear Bill & Bug & Babies Have you been over this bridge Bill? Just had dinner here and my bus will leave at 630 Be in Bloomington Ill at 1155 tomorrow      Love Auntie	Card 2 Roosevelt High School, Des Moines, Iowa Wm. B. Wetherall No time to write more	Card 3 Lincoln High School, Des Moines, Iowa W.B. Weatherall Don't know if these cards I picked up in Des Moines will ring a bell in your memory or not. Didn't have time to get them all out in Des Moines. I expect to be in S.F. in two weeks. Will try to write you when I leave here. I wanted Meda to meet me there but don't know if she will.      Love Sadie	Card 4 Iowa State Capitol Building, Des Moines, Iowa Mr. & Mrs. W.B. Wetherall Sunday am Sept. 21, '47 Just seen a chicken die and Uncle Clay is in the sweet potato patch which means fried chicken and sweet potatoes for dinner with the usual hot biscuts. I came to uncle's three days ago and two chickens have died. I don't want a fuss made over me but the southern hospitality of my childhood hasn't changed. I know I won't have time to see all that I want to see. Haven't seen the old home place yet but will do that this week.      Love Sadie

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Henry Clay Baldwin With laundry, circa 1947-1948 (C.W. Baldwin Family photo)

Henry Clay and Linda Baldwin With Linda in yard, circa 1947-1948 (C.W. Baldwin Family photo)

C.W. Baldwin, who provided the above scans of photographs in his family collection, is a 3rd cousin of this writer and his siblings. We have crossed paths on Ancestor.com, but have met only through email, in which he related to me the following story behind the photographs (24 January 2014). The attached pictures were taken around 1947-1948 by my mother during a visit to meet Henry Clay & Linda Baldwin. So it would have been around the time frame that Sadie Williams made her visit. However, I asked my mother if she remembered the name Sadie Williams and she said she did not. I would guess that Henry Clay and Linda -- with the many children and grandchildren and even great grandchildren they had by that time -- to say nothing of their surviving siblings and cousins, and nephews and nieces -- were busy showing their "southern hospitality" to lots of relatives paying their respects to the grand old former representative and his wife. Barring a massive Kentucky reunion, very few members of the extended and far-flung Baldwin-Howard family would have had an opportunity to meet. And few would not have heard or known much, if anything, about descendants of collateral families. C.W. Baldwin's great grandfather Henry Clay Baldwin (1867-1950), and my great grandfather Newton Bascum Baldwin (1862-1919), were brothers -- sons of our common great great grandparents, John R. Baldwin (1829–1909) and Margaret Howard (1835–1912) -- who of course knew each other. His paternal grandfather, Dewey Herbert Baldwin (1899-1980), and my paternal grandmother, Ida Mae (Baldwin) Wetherall (1890-1923), were 1st cousins, who probably met as very young children in Pond Creek, Kentucky, before Ida's Baldwin-Steele family headed west around 1904. His father, Orville Richard Baldwin (1925-2000), and my father, William Bascom Wetherall (1911-2013), were 2nd cousins, but they would have had no reason to meet, or even to know of each other's existence.

Uncle Clay

Henry Clay Baldwin (1867-1950)

"Uncle Clay" and his wife Linda would both die three years after Sadie's visit.

Uncle Clay was a younger brother of Sadie's father, N. Bascum Baldwin. Both were sons of John R. Baldwin and Margaret Howard (see 10. Baldwin-Howard below for details).

Clay was born Henry Clay Baldwin on 5 November 1867 in Laurel County, Kentucky. He married Malinda "Linda" ("Lindy", "Lindie") H. Abrams on 14 February 1898 and they had at least 8 children.

Though a farmer all his life, H. Clay Baldwin, like his namesake, was also a politician, and served as a representative in Kentucky's State House of Representative (see the "Baldwin-Howard gallery" below).

H.C. Baldwin, as he was also known, died in Annville, Jackson County, on 7 March 1950, of a heart attack. Linda, who was born on 18 August 1880, died on 16 May 1950, just 10 weeks later, from cancer. Both are buried at Medlock Cemetery in Annville (see 10.11 Henry Clay Baldwin and Malinda Abrams in the "Baldwin-Howard" section for details).

Slaughtering chickens

When I was growing up in San Francisco, most of the food I ate came out of neighborhood grocery stores and butcher shops. In earlier years, milk was delivered to our door in glass bottles. Chickens were bought headless, even feetless, dressed and plucked (thus actually undressed), and eggs came in gray pulp paper cartons. Though San Francisco prides itself on fresh fish, many were sold headless and icy.

If you went to Fisherman's Wharf, the crabs might be moving a bit, and some shellfish might also still be quick, but practically everything else was still and dead. In Chinatown, you saw tanks and cages full of live fish, chickens and ducks, a turtle or two, and other critters, destined for dinner plates in local homes and restaurants. Tourists unfamiliar with Chinese markets might have thought they were in an aquarium or zoo, but local people knew.

I learned how to clean a fish when five or six years old. I went trout fishing with a family in the neighborhood whose daughter was born a day before me in the same hospital. Our mothers had been in neighboring beds in maturnity ward. We fashioned poles from limbs and baited hooks with salmon eggs. I can't recall how much thought I gave to the fact that, to eat a fish, you had to catch it. Lure it, hook it, pull it from the water. Let it suffocate, then behead it and gut it.

About the same age, when visiting my maternal grandparents in Peck, Idaho, I witnessed my grandfather, Owen, kill a chicken. The Hardmans kept a number of hens and roosters in a pen behind their home on a lot that included a small field, barn, and outhouse. Owen cornered a rooster it seems he had named and lopped off its head. I particularly recall helping my grandmother and mother pluck its feathers. They talked while they plucked, and they fussed over the smaller feathers, which didn't come out easily and took a lot of time and patience.

I can't remember eating the chicken or how they cooked it. But I remember frying and eating the eggs we collected in the morning before breakfast. I remember the thrill of finding the eggs, some naturally brown, a few soiled by chicken poop. I never looked at clean, white, sized and sanitized store-bought eggs the same way.

The Hardmans, by then, had no cows. Their milk came directly from the dairy behind the small grocery store at the bottom of the hill, which bottled most of the milk produced on Peck's small farms. Farmers brought their raw milk to the dairy in steel cans, and the milk was run through a cream separator, pasteurizer, and homogenizer. The dairy was operated by the family that owned the store and lived in the adjoining home. They also had butter and ice cream churners.

I always associated eating in Idaho with "real butter" as opposed to the stuff we called "butter" in San Francisco. My mother used real butter only when baking, and on special occasions such as Thanksgiving, when there were usually guests for dinner. Otherwise, "butter" in our family referred to imitation butter. Some American butter producers had objected to the selling of white oleomargarine colored to look like butter, so the United States had passed a law forbidding the selling of yellow margarine. My earlier childhood memories include helping my mother mix the packet of powdered food coloring that came with margarine. During the 1950s, the laws were changed to permit manufacturers to color margarine, and the margarine-butter wars resumed. But no matter how much margarine makers tried to make their products taste like the real thing, "real butter" remained a real treat in the Wetherall-Hardman family.

Bus travel

Sadie made her pilgrimage back to Kentucky in the days when people thought nothing of busing around the country. Greyhound and other lines had thriving stations in all major cities and towns, and numerous stops between. The milk runs, and even some long-distance buses, would stop to pick you up or let you off at unscheduled places along their routes.

From about the 1970s, bus service began to both decline and deteriorate, as more freeways were built and more people owned and drove higher quality automobiles, and as air travel became faster, more convenient, and even cheaper, through airports with long-term parking facilities and rental car agencies. Many Greyhound stations became endangered species in the older parts of large cities, which were left to the poor when those with more means moved to newer urban neighborhoods or the suburbs.

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Sadie's 1947 letter to nephew William B. Wetherall Kentucky roads, family homes, growing old, being remembered Sada "Sadie" Elizabeth (Baldwin) Williams (1883-1964) was about 64 in the summer of 1947 when she set out from Idaho to visit her Baldwin and Steele relatives and friends in Kentucky, where she was born and raised, and may have left the grave of a child that didn't survive. The 8-page letter she wrote to the Wetheralls, her nephew and his wife, my parents, on 7 October 1947 -- overviewing the trip she partly described in postcards she sent them en route (see above) -- bears the weight of the 40-plus years that had passed since she left Kentucky, barely in her 20s, no later than 1904 or 1905, on a trek that would take several years, first to Parsons, Kansas, then to Knoxville, Iowa where she bore Faye, then to Lincoln, Nebraska where she bore Claude, then to other localiteis in Nebraska and Washington, and finally -- via St. Maries, Idaho, where Ellen and Meda settled -- to nearby Coeur d'Alene, where Faye and her family settled. Her remarks about the roads and family homes in Kentucky (pages 4-6), and her thoughts about aging and being remembered (pages 6-8), are especially amusing and moving. Wetherall Family Collection Click on pages to enlarge See Baldwin-Steele homes (below) for images of photographs that may have been enclosed with letter
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5.2 Anstine-Baldwin

Lydia (Baldwin) Anstine (Aunt Lydie) and Charley Anstine (Uncle Charley)

Lydia Baldwin, circa 1904 For Ida -- Lydia's younger sister -- penciled on back Among Ida's keepsakes saved by her mother Ellen Given to Ida's son William B. Wetherall by Ellen, his aunt Sadie, or cousin Faye Wetherall Family Collection

0. Lydia ("Lydie") and Charles ("Charley" aka "Chas") married in Lincoln, Nebraska on 12 February 1908.
   Some reports say Lydia was born on 1 April. The 2 April date is based on her death certificate. Her youngest sister Ida was also born on 2 April.
   1. Lydia reportedly suffered from a long illness. Her death certificate lists the causes of death as "Carcinoma Liver / Secondary to carcinoma of sigmoid flex colon" and states that she had had a "Colostomy & resection" in 1927. Her funeral was conducted by Rev. Miller of Milford, which is about 12 miles south of Seward. She is buried at Utica Cemetery, about 14 miles west of Seward. The Anstine farm was at Utica.
   2. Charles died of stomach cancer. A home funeral was conducted by Rev. Miller of Milford. He was buried at Utica Cemetery with Lydia and Velma. His death certificate, signed by the same physician who attended Lydia, stated the cause of death as "Carcinoma Stomach" and noted that a "Gastroenterostomy" operation had been performed in February 1932, or 9 months before his death on 12 November 1932. Other particulars show that he was born on 27 December 1883 to "R.D. Anstine" of Macomb, Illinois, and "Helen Clites" of Pennsylvania. He was described as a white, widowed man who had been the husband of "Lydia Margaret". The informant was Archie Severns of Seward, Nebraska, Rt. 4.
1. Velma was 10 when she died in 1919. She was "Thelma Anstine" on her death certifiate, but is "Velma" in all known family accounts, and apparently she is "Velma" on her headstone in Utica Cemetary.
2. Lennie was 19 when her mother died, at which time Imogene, who was 2 or 3 at the time, became "mine" to raise as she writes in an autobiographical account of her life (see below).
   Lennie attended the University of Nebraska, became a teacher, and taught in a one-room school for three years.
   In 1931, a year before her father's death, Lennie married William Archie Severns, who she had met in high school. Archie was also from Utica, and their two children, a son Tex Lee (1934) and a daughter Billie Rae (1936), were born in Utica.
   Archie ran the Anstine farm after Charley died in 1932. They took Imogene with them when they moved to Washington in 1937.
   The 1940 census shows them living in Skookumchuck in Lewis County. William A. is 33, Lennie is 30, Tex Lee is 6, Billie Rae is 3, and Imogene Anstine -- described as the head's sister-in-law -- is 13. William A. and Lennie had finished 4 years of high school (H-4) and Imogene had finished 1 year (H-1). William A. is the owner of a general store and Lennie as a store helper.
   Archie, born 12 November 1906, died 2 January 1991 in Centralia. Lennie died 6 years later, also in Centralia. Both are buried at Claquato Cemetery in Chehalis, also in Lewis County, Washington.
3. Aura married George M. Dey, who was also from Seward County, Nebraska.
   For a while in the 1930s, they lived in Goehner, a tiny town in Seward County near Utica (Darci Severns, email, 18 December 2013). Aura and George were living in Utica, Nebraska in 1940, in Idaho (probably in Coeur d'Alene) by 1942, in Coeur d'Alene in the late 1940s, and in Spokane by the mid 1950s. They spent some time in Riverside, California, where Aura died in 1985, but their permanent address was in Spokane, where George reportedly died. Both Aura and George are said to have been cremated.
   1. Aura's grand niece, Darci Severns, related to me that "George Dey, blind in 1987, rode a Greyhound bus alone from Spokane to Seattle to deliver to me her wedding ring on my high school graduation" pursuant to Aura's will. Darci added that she has worn the ring ever since. (Email, 23 October 2013)
4. Imogene or "Imie" was raised by her grandmother Ellen Baldwin after Lydia's death in 1929.
   The 1930 census shows Ellen living with the Anstine family. Most likely she had been living there during Lydia's bout with cancer.
   The 1930 census shows Sadie Williams also living in Seward, at the Nebraska Industrial Home for unwed mothers, where she was the resident nurse.
   Lennie also helped raise Imogene after her mother's death, and raised her as part of her own family after their father died in 1932.
   Imogene graduated from Centralia High School, in Centralia, Lewis County, Washington, in 1943. On 3 March 1945, she married Keith Roger LeBaron of Centralia. The "Marriage Return" states that the marriage license was issued on 2 March 1945. It describes Imogene as 18, "White" and a "Spinster". Roger is 19, "White", and a "Bachelor". She was an "O.P.A. [Office of Price Administration] Clerk" and he was a "meat Cutter".
   The LeBarons lived in Centralia until at least the late 1940s, in Seattle from no later than the mid 1950s. Around 1990, they spent some time in Hemet, Riverside County, California. In the mid 1990s they were living in Federal Way, King County, Washington, where Imogene passed away. Keith, born on 2 May 1925, died on 21 July 2011 in Seattle.
   The LeBarons had two daughters, Sherrie and Deborah. Sherrie Kae was born on 22 April 1946 in Centralia. She married a man named Wene and died in Seattle on 15 August 1988. Deborah "Debbie" Anne was in 1949. She married Tacoma-born Gorden Matthew Hearst in Seattle on 10 August 1968 (license 5 August 1969). Sherrie K. Wene was one of the witnesses.

German-French migration of Anstine line

Charles Anstine was the 4th of 10 children and the 3rd of 7 sons of Douglas Richard [or Richard Douglas] Anstine and Helen Belle Clites. His father, born on 1 April 1857 in Industry, Illinois, and his mother, born on 24 June 1852 in Tipton County, Pennsylvania, married on 25 December 1877 in Emmerson, Mills County, Iowa.

Charles's parents died in Seward County, Nebraska, within a few years after his death, his mother on 15 April 1937, his father on 29 January 1939. Richard D. and Helen B. Anstine share a common headstone in Utica Cemetery in Utica in Seward County, Nebraska.

Charles was a 5th-generation descendant of Sigesmund (Simon) Anstein (counted as the 1st generation) through Simon's 1st wife, Dorothy Anstine (maiden name uncertain), who he married in 1787. Simon was born on 4 November 1763 in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and died on 22 February 1849 in York County, Pennsylvania, Simon himself was a 5th-generation descendant of Nicholaus Anstein (counted as the 1st generation), who born between 1630–1640 in Germany, and Anna Barbara Buerg.

Charles thus represents the 4th generation of his line to be born in North America after Simon Anstein's migration to Pennsylvania from France, and the 8th generation in succession from Nicholaus Anstein, the line's known German progenitor (counted as the 0th generation).

One of Nicholaus Anstein's sons, Johann Michael Anstein (1663-1746), migrated to France in the late 17th century and married Catherine Bürger. Simon's paternal grandfather Johannes Anstein (1706-1789), and his father Johan Jürg Anstein (1735-1799), were born and raised in France. His father migrated from France to Pennsylvania in 1751 and sired as many as 13 children, including 8 sons, from whom several lines of Ansteins branced as Anstines, Enstines, and Onstines. Simon was Johann's and Catherine's 8th child and 5th son.

Source: Anstine / Enstine / Onstine Family [www.anstinefamily.com], "Outline Descendant Report for Nicholaus Anstein", 2012, 4 pages.

Anstine migration to Seward, Nebraska

Nebraska -- especially Seward County -- is full of Anstines. Charles Anstine's parents moved to Seward County, Nebraksa, from Mills County, Iowa, between 1881-1883. Charles's two older brothers and possibly his older sister were born in Iowa. He was thus the 1st or 2nd of Richard's and Helen's children to be born in Nebraska.

Uncle Seth and Aunt Maude

Charles's 2nd younger brother, Seth Richard Anstine, and his wife Maude, were known as "Uncle Seth and Aunt Maude" to the Anstine sisters. Seth, born on 3 May 1888 in Seward, Seward County, Nebraska, married Ethel Maude Hackworth (b1888), his 2nd wife (his 1st wife was Maude McGrew), on 22 December 1909 in Seward County. Seth stated on his 5 June 1917 World War draft Registration Card that he was a self-employed blacksmith in Stablehurst in Seward County and sufferred from deafness in his left ear. Maude died in 1954, Seth on 6 July 1973, and they share the same headstone in Seward Cemetery. Apparently they had no children.

Sources: (1) Darci Severns, (2) Anstine / Enstine / Onstine Family [www.anstinefamily.com], "Outline Descendant Report for Sigesmund (Simon) Anstein", 2012, pages 2-7 of 38 pages, (3) and Ancestor.com.

How Lydia Baldwin met Charles Anstine

Marriages, even when arranged, begin with a boy-meet-girl encounter. Where and why Lydia Baldwin met Charles Anstine can be conjectured from the few footprints they left in the 1908 Lincoln, Nebraska city directory.

Lennie Severns, Lydia's and Charley's 2nd daughter, began her family saga, published in 1985 (see below), with this recollection of how her parents met.

My parents [Lydia Baldwin and Charley Anstine] met in Lincoln [Nebraska] when both were rooming at mom's sister's [Sadie (Baldwin) Williams] home. Daddy was a railroad engineer and mom was attending [Lincoln] Business College. Their courtship was brief. The Baldwin family was moving to Spokane, Washington, and refused to let mother stay there because she was not married, even though [in 1907-1908] she was 21 years old. My, how times have changed!"

Lennie's story, like other such stories, was based on what she heard over the years, perhaps in part from her parents while they were alive, and probably in part from Aunt Sadie, if not also from Aunt Meda and even Grandma Baldwin, after her Lydia and Charles passed away. Most such stories are inevitably mixtures of fact and fiction, the products of selective and possibly faulty memory, romantic imagination, and other agents of alteration and embellishment that change or distort a story each time it is told.

1907-1910 Lincoln Nebraska directories

Like most such stories, however, Lennie's account of how her parents met is probably essentially true. As it turns out, her account is on the whole substantiated by listings in the Lincoln Nebraska Directory, Compiled and Printed by Jacob North & Company, Printers and Binders, Lincoln, Nebraska.

The 1907 Lincoln Nebraska Directory shows "Ellen Baldwin" and "Neuton B. Baldwin" [sic = Newton] both working and residing at the "Asylum" -- referring to the Nebraska Hospital for the Insane (see details below).

Charles Ansttine, about 24 in 1907, is not listed, presumably because he is working elsewhere.

Lydia Baldwin, then around 21, is not listed, supposedly because she and her sisters -- Meda 19 and Ida 17 -- are living either with their parents at the insane asylum, or with their sister Sadie Williams and her husband, Charles, in Iowa.

Charles Williams is not listed because, in 1906, when the 1907 directory was compiled, he and Sadie were living in Iowa. Sadie gave birth to Faye Williams in Knoxville, Iowa, on 4 October 1906.

By 1907, when the 1908 directory was compiled, Charles Williams, and Sadie and Faye, are living in Nebraska. Sadie gave birth to Claude in Lincoln, Nebraska, on 28 November 1907.

The Home of the Lincoln Business College, Lincoln, Neb. Postmarked LINCOLN, NEB. / AUG 21 / 730 PM / 1909 4th floor, Oliver Theatre Building SW corner 13th and P streets (Yosha Bunko collection)

Locomotive firemen The fireman on a steam locomotive shoveled or stoked coal into the firebox of the boiler, made sure the coal was properly distributed and burning and that there was enough water in the boiler, and otherwise kept the boiler at an optimum level of power. The engineer controlled the locomotive by throttling and braking the engine, and the fireman assisted the engineer, who gave orders, in other aspects of operating the locomotive, signalling, and keeping an eye on the track ahead. The fireman's job was dirty, hot, even dangerous, and required more brawn than brain. But a fireman needed to know how to keep a boiler safely fired up, and engineers generally apprenticed as firemen in order to master these skills. Many young men who became firemen aspired to be engineers, who had more status and better pay.

The 1908 Lincoln Nebraska Directory shows the following three listings.

1908 Lincoln Nebraska Directory

Anstine Charles, fireman C B & Q, res 726 Q
Baldwin Lydia, stu Lin Bus Col, res 720 Q
Williams Charles F, fireman C B & Q, res 720 Q

The 1907 directory (but not the 1906 or 1908 directories) lists the following boarding houses in the classified business directory section. This would have been the edition available to people looking for accommodations in late 1906 or early 1907.

1907 Lincoln Nebraska Directory
Classified Business Directory
Boarding Houses

Cook William C, 720 Q
Culp Stacy, 726 Q

Charles Anstine, about 25 in 1908, is a locomotive fireman for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. He is residing at a boarding house a block away from the passenger depot.

Charles F. Williams, also a fireman for C B & Q, is residing at a boarding house right next door. Presumably, Sadie Williams and their infant children, Faye and Claude, are also living there.

Lydia Baldwin, then around 22, is living at the same boarding house as Charles F. Williams. She is attending Lincoln Business College, about 5 blocks directly east of the boarding house.

N.B. and Ellen Baldwin are not listed because they have moved to Spokane with Meda and Ida. Apparently they have left Lydia with Sadie.

The 1908 Spokane Washington Directory shows N.B. and Ellen Baldwin, and Ida and apparently also Meda, living and studying there. So presumably they left Lincoln sometime in 1907 -- and Lydia remained with Charles and Sadie Williams, who had come to Lincoln, Nebraska from Knoxville, Iowa, after Sadie gave birth to Faye in 1906.

The 1909 Lincoln Nebraska Directory shows the following listing.

1909 Lincoln Nebraska Directory

Williams Charles F. fireman C B & Q res 1113 P

Presumably Sadie and the children are living with him at what appear to be better accommodations. The address is found in the "Furnished Rooms and Lodgings" section of the classified pages of the 1908 directory, which shows Kynett Mrs Agnes, 1113 P as the landlady.

Charles F. Williams is not listed in the 1910 directory. The 1910 census shows Sadie and the children -- but not Charles -- living in St. Maries, Idaho, with the Baldwins and Meda.

720 Q Street boarding house

The neighborhood immediately around Lincoln station had many hotels, boarding houses, eateries, bars, and other such accommodations for railroad hands and people in transit. The blocks to the east of the station, south of the college campus, had many vocation schools and more hotels, boarding houses, and furnished rooms and lodgings for students and others in need of places to live.

Q Street runs parallel to R Street, which originally marked the southern boundary of the University of Nebraska Campus (today parts of the campus extend as far as Q street).

The 700 block of Q Street is in today's "Historic Hay Market" area a couple of blocks southwest of the university. The block is immediately north of the Lincoln Station Building, formerly the passenger depot of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, on 7th between P and Q streets.

Lincoln Business College was in the Oliver Theatre Building on the southwest corner of 13th and P streets, about 5 blocks directly east of 720 Q and the station.

Editing Lennie's story

Lennie Severns's story of how her parents met turns out to be essentially true. It is difficult to verify such stories, after the passage of so much time, when the principals have long gone, and even those who heard them from the lips of primary witnesses have passed away.

"Fact checking" is limited to available independent sources of information. The 1908 Lincoln Nebraska Directory is hardly an infallible source, but it sheds new light on a number of details in Lennie's account.

The 1908 directory, compiled in 1907 and probably published late that year, reflects 1907 circumstances. We know from other sources that Charles Anstine and Lydia Baldwin married on 12 February 1908, and that Velma, their 1st daughter, was born on 30 November 1908 in Seward County, Nebraska.

We also know a bit about the lay of the land -- the geography of Lincoln at the time they were living there -- where they lived in relation to where they worked or sent to school. We also know more from the city directory than we do from Lennie's account about the nature of Charley Anstines relationship with the Williams and Baldwin families and their residential arrangements.

Based on everything we can conjecture about Lydia's circumstances in 1907, Lennie's story could be edited like this.

My parents, Lydia Baldwin and Charley Anstine, met in Lincoln, Nebraska, when Lydia was rooming with mom's sister, Sadie Williams, and her husband, Charles Williams, and their two infant children, Faye and Claude, at a boarding house in a rather wild part of town near the train station. Daddy, who was rooming at a boarding house next door, and Sadie's husband, Charles, both worked as firemen for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, and mom was attending Lincoln Business College a few blocks away. Their courtship was brief. The Baldwin family was moving to Spokane, Washington, and refused to let mother stay there because she was not married, even though she was 21 years old. My, how times have changed!"

In 1912 and 1913, just 5 five years after Lydia and the Williams family left the boarding house, 720 Q Street became the stage for a number of incidents involving prostitution, disturbing the public, and assault. The following articles, clipped from the Lincoln Daily News, speak for themselves.

720 Q Street, Lincoln, Nebraska Five years after Sadie Williams and Lydia Baldwin lived there
Lincoln Daily News Saturday, July 27, 1912 Page 3	Lincoln Daily News Thursday, August 22, 1912 Page 8	Lincoln Daily News Tuesday, July 22, 1913 Page 6
The writing represents a very high quality of courtroom reportage, in the days when journalists learned how to write without the constraints that regulate news style today. Most newspaper editors today would probably insist that parts of these article be recast in a drier, more mechanical style, and reflect present-day standards of "political correctness" regarding the treatment of race. Only the tabloids would possibly tolerate, if not encourage, the dramatic affect that yesteryear's writers regarded as essential to a good story.

5.3 Ure-Baldwin

Meda (Baldwin) (Aunt Meda) and Clifford Ure

Clifford Melvin Ure Image copped from Ancestry.com tree of Clifford's great granddaughter Patricia Flint	Meda Jane (Baldwin) Ure aka "Danny" Photo received 12 January 2017 from Meda's great granddaughter Patricia Flint
Mailman delivers letter to his wife Photo received 14 February 2014 from Clifford's and Meda's grandaughter Lois Slater
Clifford M. Ure's obituary The Spokesman-Review, 6 July 1953, page 6 Clipped from Newspapers.com	Meda Ure's funeral notice The Spokesman-Review, 23 November 1971, page 18 Clipped from Newspapers.com

0. C.M. Ure, 24, a barber, and Meda Baldwin, 22, no occupation given, married in Spokane, Washington, on 15 March 1911.
   Clifford was born in Iowa to John Ure, born in Illinois, and Adella Miller, born in Iowa.
   Meda was born in Kentucky to N.B. Baldwin, born in Virginia, and Ellen Steele, born in Kentucky.
1. Greta Ava is "Greta A." on both the 1920 and 1930 censuses. Her 1st cousin, William B. Wetherall, called her simply "Greta". She married William Harlan Lemmer, and they had 2 children, a son Harlan Eugene or "Gene", and a daughter Lois. William Harlan, born on 13 September 1904, passed away in Spokane on 1 May 1985, and they are buried together in Hope Cemetery in East Hope, Idaho, where they had a summer home.
2. Herbert Dale is "Dale H." on 1930 and "Herbert D." on 1940 censuses. However, he was generally called just "Dale" or "H. Dale". He married Carol Louise Trappe and they had 4 children. Carol died on died 9 April 2010, apparently also in Spokane. See Dale's and Carol's obituaries below.

The 1908 city directory for Spokane, Washington shows a "Madge Baldwin" boarding at the same address with "Ida M. Baldwin" while attending North West Business College. "Newton B. Baldwin" is shown running a restaurant. The 1909 Spokane directory shows both "Meda Baldwin" and "Ida M. Baldwin" living at the same address as "Newton B. Baldwin". Ida is attending Blair Business College and Meda is a cashier at a restaurant, presumably her father's, which is next door to their residence.

The 1910 census shows Meda living with her parents in St. Maries, Kootenai County, Idaho and working as a milliner at her own shop. She is still single. Clifford Ure is living by himself in Fernwood, Kootenai and working as a barber at his own shop.

The 1911 St. Maries directory shows Clifford Ure, a barber, and Meda Ure, an operator for the Interstate Telephone Company, at the same address.

The 1916-1917 directory shows Clifford Ure working for Ure and Lawing, possibly a barbershop.

The 1920, 1930, and 1940 censuses shows Clifford Ure working as a mail carrier in St. Maries. By 1945, however, he and Meda were residing in Spokane, Washington. The 1945 Spokane city directory lists his occupation as creamery worker. The 1950 and 1952 directories do not show an occupation. By 1950, their son H. Dale Ure and his wife Carol L. are also residing in Spokane but at a different address.

Clifford died in 1953, Meda in 1971, both in Spokane, but they are buried together in St. Maries. Greta and her husband Harlan Lemmer died in Spokane, Harlan in 1985, Greta in 1999, and they are buried together in East Hope, Idaho. See the section below on Baldwin-Steele graves for details.

Baldwin-Steele and Wetherall-Hardman families meet in Idaho

Several of William B. Wetherall's Baldwin-Steele relatives met his future mother-in-law, Ullie Hardmen, and very likely also his future father-in-law, Owen Hardman, sometime between 1936 and 1938, when he and my mother, Orene Hardman, were courting in Idaho. Shortly after my left for San Francisco to work as a clerk for the 9th District Court, my mother went to San Francisco to marry him. The marriage, which had the blessings of Orene's parents and WBW's relatives, was witnessed by only a few of my father's local friends. No relatives from either side were present.

WBW's first job after graduating from law school and passing the Idaho bar in 1937 was in Orofino, on the Clearwater river a few miles upstream from Peck, Idaho. His mother, Ida (Baldwin) Wetherall, had been committed to the insane asylum in Orofino around 1912 and had died there in 1923. Orene was born at the Hardman ranch on Central Ridge though the birth was recorded in nearby Peck. She was raised on the ranch, and when in her teens in Peck, where Ullie and Owen had settled after selling the ranch in the mid 1920s. Orene graduated from high school in Peck then went to college in Moscow. From 1935 to 1936 she taught at Yellow Rose School, a one-room all-grade elementary school on Little Bear Ridge near Deary. In 1937, however, she taught at Pierce, which is near Orofino, a bit further up the Clearwater from Peck.

St. Maries photo

The following two pictures record what was probably the first meeting of the Baldwin-Steele and Hardman-Hunter families after WBW and Orene declared their intention to marry. The choice of where to meet would have been Peck (where the Hardman-Hunters lived) or St. Maries (where the Baldwin-Steeles lived).

My mother's recollection was that the photographs were taken in St. Maries. Interestingly, Ullie Hardman, who was in the photographs, wrote identifications on her copies of the prints -- on two different occasions three or so decades later in her life, probably in the mid 1960s and early 1970s -- in which which she makes a number of mistakes, suggesting that she was experiencing the sort of memory loss that, by the mid 1970s, led to her move to a convalesent home, where her dementia continued to worsen.

WBW, a Wetherall-Baldwin, was raised by his mother's Baldwin-Steele family for the first several years of his life in St. Maries, Idaho, then by his father's Wetherall-Beaman family in Knoxville, Iowa, and finally by his father's new Wetherall-Van Houton family in Des Moines, Iowa. While going to college in Idaho, however, he lived with the Ure-Baldwin family of his maternal aunt, Meda, in St. Maries. His maternal grandmother Ellen Baldwin, and at times also his maternal aunt Sadie Williams, also lived in St. Maries, as did Sadie's daughter (WBW's 1st cousin) Faye Mathews (later Faye Rebenstorf) and Faye's daughter Marilyn Mathews (later Marilyn Disrud).

Neither Owen Hardmen (Orene's father, Ullie's husband, my grandfather) nor Faye Mathews (Sadie's daughter, WBW's 1st cousin, my 1st cousin once removed) are in the photographs, which appear to have been taken in turns WBW and Orene Hardman. At the time the pictures were taken (1936-1937), WBW was living in St. Maries with the Ures. According to the 1940 census, Ellen was in St. Maries in 1935. Sadie was in Spokane, Washington, in 1935, but by 1940 she was with Ellen in St. Maries. Faye and Marilyn were living in Spokane, and Ullie Hardman was in Peck, Idaho.

Marilyn was born on 22 December 1934, and I would guess that the photographs were taken in 1937 rather than 1936. Sadie was probably carrying for Marilyn, who was not yet of school age, while Faye, by then a single mother, worked. I would guess that Owen, too, was probably working.

Meeting of Hardman-Hunter and Baldwin-Steele families in St. Maries, circa 1937 Left Photo by Bill Wetherall showing Orene Hardman on right with her mother Ullie and WBW's Baldwin-Steele family Right Photo by Orene Wetherall showing Bill Wetherall on right with his Baldwin-Steele family and Orene's mother Ullie Wetherall Family photos
Left to right Clifford Ure (1887-1953) -- Meda's husband Dale Ure (1928-2004) -- Meda's and Clifford's son, WBW's 1st cousin Meda (Baldwin) Ure (1888-1971) -- WBW's maternal aunt Ellen (Steele) Baldwin (1863-1943) -- WBW's maternal grandmother, mother of Sadie, Lydia, Meda, and WBW's mother Ida Ullie (Hunter) Hardman (1891-1980) -- Mother of WBW's fiancee, Orene Hardman (1913-2003) Sadie (Baldwin) Williams (1883-1964) -- WBW's maternal aunt Marilyn Mathews (1934-2013) -- WBW's 1st cousin once removed, daughter of Sadie's daughter Faye (Williams) Mathews, later Rebenstorf Left photo Orene Hardman, later Wetherall (1913-2003) = LOH, Bill's fiancee, Ullie's daughter Right photo William Bascom Wetherall (1911-2013) = WBW, Orene's fiance, Ullie's future son-in-law

Lois (Lemmer) Slater, the daughter of Meda and Clifford Ure's daughter Greta Ava (Ure) Lemmer, confirmed my tentative identifications of Clifford, Dale, Meda, and Marilyn. She characterized her Ure grandparents -- and Claude Williams, Sadie's son and Faye's brother, and my father, WBW -- as follows (email, 13 February 2014, [bracketed remarks] mine).

From left to right Clifford (Daddy Cliff, my grandfather), Dale, Almeda Jane (Danny, my grandmother), the next two people [Ellen Baldwin and Ullie Hardman] I do not know, then Aunt Sadie and Marilyn. The one on the right is your father then? What a handsome man!! I thought maybe it was Claude but he wasn't as good looking.

Of interest here is that, in the mid 1960s or so, when Ullie sat down and identified the people in many family photos, she wrote on the back of her copy of the print to the left -- "At St. Maries / Bill's family / Aunt Meda, husband & son / Grandma Baldwin / myself / Aunt Sadie / Marilyn / Claud [sic = Claude]". However, on the front of her copy of the photo to the left, which was found in the small red album she carried in her purse, she wrote "Stanleys -- early 50's" -- and on the back "In Calif. -- / The Stanleys / early 50's".

In the first case, she recognized that she was looking at "Bill's family", and recalled the names or relationships of most -- but took her (future) son-in-law "Bill" for his 1st cousin, Claude, Sadie's son and Marilyn's uncle. In the second case, she associates the place with California, and the people with the Stanleys -- perhaps someone she knew in Idaho who had moved to Califoria -- apparently not wondering why she and her daughter Orene look too young to be in California in the 1950s.

Lois's testimony was the first I had from anyone in the Baldwin-Steele family on the identity of people in Baldwin-Steele photographs. But Lois, my 2nd cousin, did not recognize her maternal (and my paternal) great grandmother Ellen Baldwin.

Lois, born in 1939, undoubtedly met Ellen Baldwin before Ellen died in 1943 -- when Lois was only 3-1/2 years old. I probably also met Ellen and Sadie, and Meda and Clifford, in the summer of 1941, when I was only a few months old. My parents brought me to Peck that summer to meet my Hardman grandparents and Hunter grandfather, and I can't imagine my father not taking us to St. Maries, which is not far away, to show me to his Baldwin-Steele kinfolk there, who were directly responsible for his upbringing. . But of course I have no memories of that summer other than those created by the numerous photographs that were taken of me in Peck.

It remains unclear as to whether Faye met Ullie on the occasion the above photograph was taken. However, she clearly got to know Ullie, well enough in fact to drop in on her when she visited Lewiston from Coeur d'Alene later in Ullie's life. Faye also knew my maternal aunt, Ullie's older daughter Babe, who lived in various communities in eastern Idaho and western Washington, and was entirely at home in the larger Spokane, Coeur d'Alene, St. Maries, and Lewiston-Clarkston area.

5.4 Wetherall-Baldwin

William R. and Ida (Baldwin) Wetherall

See Wetherall-Baldwin-Van Houton and related families page for details.

5.13 Williams-Mathews-Rebenstorf

Faye (Williams) (Mathews) (Nelson) Rebenstorf (1906-1995)

Above and right Faye Williams, portrait and card, circa 1925 Gumbel Studio, Seward, Nebraska Above right Faye Williams, portrait, circa 1930 That Man Gale Studio, York and Aurora, Nebraska Wetherall Family Collection
Faye Williams in 1920s with 1st cousins Lennie and Aura Anstine, 1920s Appears to be in Seward where Sadie was working Wetherall Family Collection
Faye Williams with dog, 1920s Probably taken in Seward, Nebraska Wetherall Family Collection	Faye Williams with 1st cousin Bill Wetherall Probably St. Maries, Idaho, early 1930s Wetherall Family Collection
Click on images to enlarge Faye Williams marries L. J. Mathews in Spokane on 10 February 1934 Witnessed by brother Claude J. Williams and mother Sadie E. Williams Left Return filed 15 February 1934 shows ages and marital statuses of newlyweds and names Faye's father as A.P. Williams, born in Morristown, Tennessee Right Marriage certified and recorded on 19/20 February 1934 Copped and cropped from Ancestry.com
Faye's Delayed Certificate of Birth Iowa State Department of Health Vital Statistics Division 23 March 1942 Born: Knoxville, Marion county, Iawa Name: Faye Marguerite Williams (first signed) Name: Faye Williams Nelson (oversigned) Father: Ambrose Powell Williams, born Tennessee Mother: Sarah (or Sadie) E. Baldwin, born Kentucky Copped and cropped from Ancestry.com
Faye (Baldwin) (Mathews) Nelson marries Howard Rebenstorf Missoula county, Montana, 26 October 1944 Residents of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho Copped and cropped from Ancestry.com

0. On 10 February 1934, Faye M. Williams of St. Maries [sic = Kootenai] County, Idaho, married L.J. Mathews of King County, Washington, in the presence of her brother Claude J. Williams and mother Sadie E. Williams, in Spokane, Washington. The signed license was returned on 15 Feburary and certified and filed on 19/20 February 1934. She was 27 and single (1st marriage), and he was 35 and a widower (2nd marriage). They appear to have separated a couple of years later and divorced by 1940.
1. Marilyn Mathews, who was born on 22 December 1934, appears to have been partly raised by her grandmother Sadie Williams, possibly with the help also of her great grandmother Ellen Baldwin, in St. Maries, Idaho, during the late 1930s and early 1940s while Faye was working in nearby Spokane, Washington.
0. The 1940 census shows Faye as the head of a household in which she is the only member. She is divorced. Marilyn is divorced with Marilyn.
0. By the mid 1940s, Faye had married Howard C. Rebenstorf, who became Marilyn's stepfather at least informally. Howard, too, had been married and divorced, but apparently he had no children from his previous marriage. Marilyn's legal family name appears to have remained Mathews, her name at the time she married Norman K. Disrud in 1957.

Faye in censuses

Faye was born in Knoxville, Iowa, according to her obituary (see below).

The 1910 census shows Fay [sic = Faye] M. Williams (3), living with her mother Sadie E. Williams (26), and her brother Claud [sic = Claude] J. Williams (2), in the St. Maries, Idaho, with her maternal grandparents, Newton B. Baldwin (47) and Martha E. Baldwin (46),

I have not found Faye, or Sadie or Claude, in the 1920 census. But stories passed down by descendants of Sadie's sister Lydia Anstine, who lived in Utica in Seward County, Nebraska, have Faye and Claude living with Sadie in Nebraska.

The 1930 census shows Faye working as a teacher in Lincoln, Nebraska.

The 1940 census shows Faye living in Spokane, Washington, as Faye Mathews (33), divorced, a book keeper at a bus transportation company. She was living at the same place in Spokane in 1935.

Christmas card from Faye Mathews Wetherall Family Collection

Faye in city directories

Faye is listed as a student in the 1928-1930 Lincoln Nebraska city directories. She is not listed in the 1927 or 1931 directories.

Both the 1928 and 1929 Lincoln Nebraska Directories show Williams Faye stu r1541 S.

The 1930 Lincoln Nebraska Directory shows Williams Fay [sic = Faye] stu r341 N 12th apt 2.

The 1930 directory was compiled in 1929. Presumably Faye completed her normal school education and was teaching by the time of the 1930 census (see above).

Note that neither Lennie nor Aura Anstine are shown in the 1928-1930 Lincoln directories. They, too, would have been enrolled in teacher training courses, presumably in Lincoln, about this time. Perhaps they commuted to the city by bus or by car. They may also, at times, have stayed with Faye. In the meantime, Sadie was the resident head nurse of a home for unwed mothers in Seward (1930 census).

Spokane directories show Faye as "Mathews" in 1937 (Faye), 1938 (Mrs Faye M), 1939 (Mrs Fay M), 1940 (Mrs Faye), and 1941 (Faye M). She is typically described as a bookkeeper for Auto Interurban, a bus transportation company.

A 1947 Idaho city directory shows her living and working in Coeur d'Alene as the wife of Howard C. Rebenstorf, who apparently she met and married in the early or mid 1940s.

Faye and William B. Wetherall

The 4 Baldwin sisters bore 9 cousins, 8 of whom survived their childhood.

William B. Wetherall (WBW) was partly raised by, or lived in the same household with, all of his aunts -- Sadie, Lydia, and Meda -- and he had a practically sibling relationship with Faye and Claude, who were a few years older, but also with Lennie and Greta, who were the nearest to him in age.

Faye seems to have been WBW's closest cousin in terms of how much contact they continued to have during their adult lives, both in terms of correspondence and visitations. Faye and Claude were also the only cousins whose names were familiar to WBW's children, including this writer. Their mother, Sadie, as also the most familar "aunt" in our family, and we have more photographs of Sadie, Faye, and Claude.

Faye visited us a number of times in both San Francisco and Grass Valley, usually in conjunction with trips she made to California related to her work and other activities. During one such visit, all members of WBW's family, except my sister Mary Ellen, met Faye in San Francisco while she was attending a convention in the city. Faye taped a conversation we had over dinner in Chinatown -- her first encounter with Chinese food. And after her death, her daughter Marilyn sent the tape to my father. I now have the tape, which includes gossip about the extended Baldwin-Steele family.

Faye's obituary

Faye died on 25 November 1995 in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where she had lived most of her adult life. She is buried in Coeur d'Alene Memorial Gardens Cemetery, Kootenai County, Idaho (see below). The following obituary is a reformatted version of an obituary published in The Spokesman-Review on 28 November 1995. The [bracketed] clarifications and red highlighting are mine.

The Spokesman-Review
[Tuesday] November 28, 1995 in Idaho
Obituaries

Faye Rebenstorf
Coeur d'Alene [Idaho]

A private service and burial was held for Faye Rebenstorf, 89, who died Saturday [25 November 1995].

Mrs. Rebenstorf was born in Knoxville, Iowa. She attended the University of Nebraska [in Lincoln, Nebraska] and Kinman Business University [in Spokane, Washington].

She taught in elementary and secondary schools and in college.

She and her late husband, Howard [Rebenstorf], started Howard's Market and Nursery, now known as Duncan's Garden and Nursery [in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho].

She held many accounting positions in Coeur d'Alene and also held a real estate license.

Her memberships included Coeur d'Alene Bible Church, Christian Business and Professional Women's Club, the American Society of Women Accountants, the Idaho Retired Teachers Association and the National Council of Senior Citizens. She also was past state director of the American Association of Retired Persons.

Her husband died in 1966.

Mrs. Rebenstorf's survivors include her daughter, Marilyn Disrud, one grandson, Todd Disrud, and one great-grandson, Nathaniel Disrud, all of Coeur d'Alene.

Memorial contributions may be made to Coeur d'Alene Bible Church or the Alzheimer's Association, North Idaho Chapter.

Howard C. Rebenstorf (1898-1966)

Howard C. Rebenstorf was born on 30 August 1898 in Wisconsin. A Bonner County, Idaho marriage record shows that he married Hedwig H. Weiss, in Sandpoint, Idaho, on 20 September 1920. Bonner County and Sandpoint are immediately north of Kootenai County and Coeur d'Alene, which are just west of Spokane County and Spokane in Washington. Hedwig H. [Helene] -- who appears in most other records as "Hattie" or "Hattie H." -- was born in Wisconsin on 11 June 1898 to Austrian-born parents.

The 1930 census shows Howard and Hattie, both then 31, but 22 when married, living in Coeur d'Alene, apparently without any children. He is a laborer working for the state highway department, and she is a switchboard operator at the telephone company.

The 1938 directory for Coeur d'Alene shows Howard and Hattie living together at 207 N 10th. He is working for Potlach Forests, she at the Tenth Street Grocery. The same directory shows a "Cora Rebenstorf (wid Edgar B.)" living at 818 Garden Avenue. Cora was his mother (Cora Stella Rudsell), and Edgar B. had been his father ("Ed" Rebenstorf).

I have not found either Howard or Hattie in a 1940 census record. But the 1940 Coeur d'Alene directory shows Hattie living as "Mrs. Hattie H. Rebenstorf" at the same 207 N 10th address and still working at the same grocery, while Howard is listed immediately below her as a millworker residing at 502 Foster Avenue. Apparently they are separated.

The 1947 census shows "Mrs. Hattie H. Rebenstorf" living at the same address and working at the same grocery store. Immediately below her is "Howard C. Rebenstorf (Faye M.)" residing at 1033 N 2d. No occupations or places of work are noted for either Howard or Faye.

The 1949 directory shows Hattie at the same address and place of work. Howard and Faye are residing at 902 N 4th, and Faye is said to be working at the Camp Joy Grocery.

The 1952 directory shows Hattie at the same address and place of work. Faye and Howard are separately listed, she as "Mrs. Faye M. Rebenstorf" working as a bookeeper for Hall Plumbing and Heating, he as "Howard C. Rebenstorf" working at Howard's Market, his own store. Both Faye and Howard are residing at 1928 N 4th -- yet another address.

Howard died in Coeur d'Alene on 27 September 1966. Faye died on 25 November 1995, also in Coeur d'Alene. Both are buried in Coeur d'Alene Memorial Cemetery. Howard's headstone has a simple cross above his name, and shows his rank and occupation as a "World War I" veteran. Faye's headstone refers to her as "Beloved Mother, Grandmother, and Great Grandmother" and has strongly Christian motiffs."

A "Hattie Hel Rebenstorf" died on 12 July 1982 in Monument, Grant County, Oregon, according to a transcribed Oregon death index. She is buried at Monument Cemetery, where her headstone name is Hattie N. Rebenstorf and she is memorialized as "Aunt" in quotation marks.

Assuming that the Hattie Rebenstorf who died in Orgeon is Howard's 1st wife -- and she seems to be -- the significance of the different middle initial on the headstone is unclear. The "quotation marks" around "aunt" suggests that she was an "aunt" by address but not by blood or law to the person(s) who buried her.

Marilyn A. (Mathews) Disrud (1934-2013)

Marilyn Anne Disrud was born Mathews in Spokane, Washington, on 22 December 1934. Legally, at least, she appears to have remained Mathews when her mother remarried in the 1940s, and she became Disrud when she married in the 1957. She died in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, on 21 July 2013 and is buried at Riverview Cemetery there. Her headstone, which also has strongly Christian motiffs, includes the name and date of birth of her surviving husband, Norman K. [Kenneth] Disrud -- 13 April 1929.

An obituary, possibly posted by her husband or their son, Todd Lee Disrud, states that she was "preceded in death by her parents Howard and Faye Rebenstorf".

Norman Kenneth Disrud (1929-2016)

Marilyn's husband, born 13 April 1929 in Fosston in Polk County, Minnesota, passed in Idaho on 9 June 2016 at age 87. He was buried at Riverview Cemetery in Coeur d'Alene in Kootenai County, Idaho, with Marilyn.

1. Howard and Hattie, living in Coeur d'Alene in 1930, had no children after 9 years of marriage.
2. Howard and Hattie are still living together in Coeur d'Alene in 1938 but are residing at separate addresses in 1940.
3. Faye married L.J. Mathews in Spokane in February 1934.
4. Marilyn was born in Spokane in December 1934.
5. Faye appears to have separated by 1937 but she continued to work in Spokane until at least 1941.
6. Marilyn is with Sadie in a set of circa 1936-1937 photographs with other members of the Baldwin family, and Bill Wetherall and his fiancee, Orene Hardman, and her mother, Ullie Hardman (see above). The photographs were taken in St. Maries, where Ellen Baldwin, Sadie (Baldwin) Williams, Clifford and Meda (Baldwin) Ure, and Bill Wetherall, were then living.
7. On 23 March 1942, an application for a delayed certificate of birth in Knoxville, Iowa, in 1906, signed on 19 March 1942 by Faye Williams Nelson and notarlized in St. Maries, is recorded in Iowa.
8. On 26 October 1944, Faye M. Nelson marries Howard C. Rebenstorf in Missoula in Missoula County, Montana. Both had been married and divorced, and both were then residing in Coeur d'Alene.
9. By 1947, Faye and Howard living in Coeur d'Alene.
10. Marilyn A. Mathews married Norman K. Disrud in [Coeur d'Alene] in Kootenai County, Idaho, on 24 August 1957.

Marilyn's family history work

In December 1973, the Wetherall family spent a few days in Lewiston, Idaho for a Christmas reunion with Orene's relatives. On Christmas day, Faye, Marilyn, Norman, and Todd drove down from Coeur d'Alene to visit with the Wetheralls at their motel for a couple of hours. Orene's mother Ullie, who also knew Faye and had met several other relatives on Bill's Baldwin side, and Orene's sister Babe, who had met Faye, were also there.

Marilyn kept in touch with the Wetheralls in Grass Valley after Faye's death in 1995, and until sometime after Orene's death in 2003. Around 1979, she sent my father some family information that survives among his papers. I have not yet had an opportunity to see it. It may answer some questions and raise others. It may partly account for the extent and quality of the information my father conveyed to me about his ancestors when talking to me about them in 2010 and 2011.

Claude Jennings Williams birth certificate Mother Sarah Elizabeth Baldwin, father Chas. F. Williams Scan of copy in Wetherall Family Collection	Claude J. Williams, circa 1926 Grumbal Studio, Seward Nebraska portrait Wetherall Family Collection
Claude Jennings Williams [Draft] Registration Card D.S.S. (Department of Selective Service) Form 1 Local Board, St. Maries, 16 October 1940 Duplicate issued 10/11/45   Discharged typed in top margin of card Card states that Claude was unemployed Find a Grave memorial states "Enlistment Date: 15 February 1942" "Release Date: 1 October 1945" Images copped from Ancestry.com

Claude J. Williams (1907-1977)

Claude Williams has left relatively few traces of his existence. Like Aunt Sadie and Faye, he was well known to the Wetherall-Hardman family in both Idaho and California.

My father, William Bascom Wetherall, partly grew up with Claude and Faye when the three children were living with their Baldwin grandparents in St. Maries, Idaho, during the early 1910s.

Faye was born in Knoxville, Iowa, where the Baldwin-Steele family lived for a while after leaving Kentucky. Ida Mae Baldwin met William Riley Wetherall, my future paternal grandparents, during this stay in Knoxville in 1906. Claude was born the following year in Lincoln, Nebraska, the next stop on the Baldwin-Steele northwest migration.

Both Faye and Claude later lived with their mother in Seward, Nebraska, near Utica, where Lydia Margaret Baldwin had settled with her husband Charles Andrew Anstine. The Anstine farm was a sort of midwest port for Baldwin-Steele family members. Martha Ellen Baldwin stayed with Lydia for a while and helped care for the Anstine girls for a while after Lydia died in 1929, and my father worked on Uncle Charlie's farm during summers while going to high school in Des Moines in the mid 1920s.

My father remained in touch with the Anstine sisters later in life. Claude, too, was close to his Anstine cousins and is known to have visited them during his travels.

After serving in the Navy during the Pacific War, Claude lived mainly in Spokane, where he had partly grown up. Spokane is geographically close to St. Maries, where my father lived with Aunt Meda's family, and with Grandma Baldwin, while attending college in Moscow, Idaho. After my father began courting my mother, who he met at college in Moscow, his Baldwin relatives in St. Maries, and Aunt Sadie and Faye and Claude, who were then in Spokane, had opportunities to meet my mother and her parents and relatives, who lived in Peck and elsewhere in the Lewiston-Clarkston area, which is close to St. Maries, Coeur d'Alene, and Spokane.

Claude appears in a number of photographs in the Wetherall family collection in California, and in photographs in the possession of Lydia Anstine's great granddaughter, Darci Severns, in Washington.

Claude's military service

Several photographs in the Wetherall and Severns family collections show Claude the uniform of a U.S. Navy sailor. The Severns Family Collection includes photographs he took in China after the end of the Pacific War. The Wetherall Family Collection includes a novelty souvenir associated with China (see Baldwin-Steele Galleries below).

Claude registered for Selective Service in St. Maries on 16 October 1940 (right) and appears to have enlisted on 15 February 1942. He seems to have served until sometime in October 1945 -- a month or so after Japan formally surrendered in Tokyo on 2 September 1945, and 2 months or so after 15 August 1945 when Japan agreed to surrender and ended hostilities. U.S. and other Allied warships began entering Chinese ports during late August, and it appears that Claude was able to go ashore.

The nature of Claude's service in the Nave is not clear. He was reportedly involved in construction with a Seabees unit. However, I have seen no military records.

Claude's death

When beginning to flesh out this family history after my father died in 2013, I was able to confirm the date and place of Claude's death but not the disposition of his remains. Baldwin-Steele cousins I crossed paths with in Washington, who had either known him or heard of him, and had seen photographs of him in their family albums, said they didn't know where he was buried.

Then on 4 March 2021, I found a Find a Grave memorial that had been created on 11 September 2019 by Peter Joseph ("PJ") Braun, a U.S. Navy veteran and member of MIAP -- Missing In America Project -- the mission of which is to locate unclaimed cremains of veterans and render them proper military honors. MIAP volunteers found Claude's cremains "sitting on the shelf" in the "Community Storage" vault in Seattle's Lake View Cemetery, and facilitated their transfer to a columbarium at Washington State Veterans Cemetery in Medical Lake in Washington. See Baldwin-Steele graves (below for an image of his memorial plaque and other particulars.

Claude Williams with Orene Wetherall Picnic outing (unknown place and date) (Wetherall Family photo)

Baldwin-Steele 1st cousins Claude Williams with Aura (L) and Lennie (R) Anstine On leave mid-1940s (place uncertain) (Severns Family photo)

	Claude Williams (1907-1977), funny man Photo booth strip photo and "Jewish Navy" membership novelty sent to nephew William B. Wetherall after the Pacific War Claude served the U.S. Navy and his ship docked in a Chinese port shortly after hostilities ended The "valentine" from "Pekin" was among my father's collection of Baldwin-Steele family detritus Wetherall Family Collection

Claude's personal cards The first card is associated with the circa 1926 portrait (above) Wetherall Family Collection

Claude visits Wetheralls, February 1951 1558 33rd Avenue, San Francisco Jerry (left), Claude holding Mary Ellen, Billy (this writer) in back Wetherall Family Collection

Snapshop of Claude circa early 1970s Claude's "Richard Burton" caption on back Claude died in Seattle in 1977 Wetherall Family Collecion

Greta and Harlan Celebrate 50th Anniversary The Spokesman-Review, Sunday, 30 August 1981, C4 Clipped from Newspapers.com
50th anniversary portrait Image from granddaughter Patricia Santa Rosa-Flint	50th anniversary portrait Scan of print in Wetherall Family Collection

Greta (Ure) Lemmer (1912-1999)

Greta Ava Ure, born and raised in St. Maries (see Table 5.3), married Harlan Lemmer, whose parents had also settled in St. Maries during the 1920s.

William Harlan Lemmer (1904-1985)

William Harlan Lemmer was born on 13 September 1904 in Antigo, Langrad County, Wisconsin, to William F. Lemmer and Lina L. Freese.

The 1910 and 1920 censuses show the Lemmers, including Harlan's older sister Cecilia, living in Hope, Bonner County, Idaho, where William Lemmer, the father, is working as a saw filer at a lumber mill. The 1930 census shows Harlan's parents, William Lemmer (57) and Lena L. Lemmer (49), living without their children in St. Maries, Idaho, where Harlan's father is working as a saw filer in logging. The Lemmers were born in Wisconsin, he to a German father and Pennsylvania mother, she to a German father and German mother.

The 1930 census, enumerated in April, shows Harlan as William H. Lemmer (25), married at age 18, working as a saw filer at a lumber mill in Emmett, in the South Precinct of Gem County, Idaho. He and his parents were born in Wisconsin, and he was boarding at a boarding house.

Greta's marriage

A marriage return filed in Asotin County, Washington, certifies that, on 7 September 1931, Greta Ava Ure (19) -- a spinster stenographer, born in St. Maries, Idaho, to Iowa-born C.M. Ure and Kentucky-born Almeta [sic = Almeda, Meda] Baldwin -- married William Harlan Lemmer (26) -- a divorced salesman, born in Intiago [sic = Antigo], Wisconsin, to W.F. Lemmer and Lena Freese, both born in Wisconsin. He signed "Harlan Lemmer" and she signed "Mrs. Harlan Lemmer".

The 1939-1940 city directory for Rexburg, Idaho, shows Harlan Lemmer (spouse Greta A.) working as a chauffeur for the Shell Oil Company.

The 1940 census shows "Wm. H. Lemmer" (35) and Greta (27) living in St. Anthony, in Fremont County, Idaho, where he was working as a salesman of gas and oil, and she as a clerk at a county agency. At the time they had two children, a son Harlan (6) and a daughter Lois (6/12). William had completed 3 years of college and Greta 4 years of high school. According to the census, the Lemmers were living in St. Maries in 1935, but had moved to Fremont County by the time Lois was born in 1939.

By 1950, Greta and her family were living in Spokane, where they are listed in the city directory at an address next door to Greta's parents, Meda and Clifford Ure. Later, Greta and [William] Harlan would reside on Hawthorne Street in the northern part of Spokane with their children, Harlan E. [Eugene] "Gene" Lemmer (see below) and Lois C. Friedlander (see below).

The 1950 Spokane directory shows Mrs. Greta Lemmer working as a bookkeeper for Soft Water Service Co., and Harlan Lemmer (Greta) working as a clerk for an unspecified employer. She is residing at 723 [sic] Knox Avenue, and his (her) home is at W. 733 [sic] Knox Avenue. [Presumably the two Knox addresses are meant to be the same.] Clifford M. Ure (Meda J.) are listed as living [apparently] next door at W. 731 Knox Avenue. H. Dale Ure (Carol L.), a clerk for an unspecified employer, are living at E. 1311 Bismark Avenue.

By 1955 or 1956, Greta and Harlan moved into a home at 4928 N. Hawthorne Street, where they would live the rest of their lives.

The 1960 Spokane directory lists Mrs. Greta A. Lemmer as an office manager for Soft Water Service, and as the spouse of William H. Lemmer (Greta A.), a salesman for Headlight Oil. Meda (Baldwin) Ure is residing at S. 206 Post. Lois C. (Lemmer) Santa Rosa is listed as a typist for Pacific Telephone, and as the spouse of Arth [Arthur Anthony] Santa Rosa, of Santa Rosa's Body & Fender Works, which is separately listed as a shop owned by Arth Santa Rosa. The Santa Rosas are residing at E. 1207 Rich Avenue. Arther Anthony Angelo Santa Rosa, born in Idaho on 21 June 1936 to Italian immigrants, passed away on 30 April 2016.

Harlan's stroke

William Harlan Lemmer appears to have suffered from a serious stroke or a series of strokes in the late 1960s or very early 1970s, according to Faye Rebenstorf, Greta's 1st cousin. Faye described their difficulties in some detail in a coversation over dinner at a restaurant in Chinatown in San Francisco on 5 September 1973, with my parents, William B. and L. Orene Wetherall, my brother, me, and my then wife Etsuko. Faye's daughter, Marilyn, sent the tape to my parents after Faye died in 1995, and I digitized it in 2013.

Faye related that Harlan was able to hear and understand everything you said to him, but he couldn't speak well enough to make himself understood. Apparently he'd get angry when people didn't understand him and become beligerent toward them. He'd gotten to the point that he didn't like seeing anyone, didn't want people to come to their place, and didn't want to go any place. He shuffled around with the help of a cane but couldn't use his right hand very well. Fortunately, though, he was left-handed.

Faye occasionally had business in Spokane and would have liked to take Greta out to lunch. But Greta, who had a full-time job, went home every day at noon -- a five-mile drive -- to make Harlan's lunch. And Faye said, in 1973, that frankly she did not want to visit Greta when Harlan was there because of his belligerence.

Faye also said, in 1973, that she had last visited Greta and Harlan at their summer home in a resort town on the other side of Lake Pend Oreille, about 60 miles from Coeur d'Alene (where Faye lived), and 100 miles from Spokane (where Greta and Harlan lived). Greta had put in a garden there and drove up every weekend to see that everything was watered. The home was in the vicinity of Hope in Bonner County, Idaho, where Harlan had grown up and worked after his family moved to Idaho from Wisconsin.

50th anniversary

Greta and Harlan celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1981.

Harlan passed away in Spokane on 1 May 1985. Greta passed away on 9 October 1999. They are buried at Hope Cemetery in East Hope, Bonner County, Idaho, on the northeastern shore of Lake Pend Oreille.

In 2000, their son Harlan Lemmer (Harlan Eugene "Gene" Lemmer), and the Greta A. Lemmer Estate, granted a quit claim deed on the 2-bedroom, 1-bath house and 6,200 square-foot lot at 4928 N. Hawthorne Street in Spokane, where Greta and Harlan had lived out their lives. They had moved from their Knox Street home to the Hawthorne Street home in 1955 or 1956.

Gene Lemmer, 1951 Scan of color version of high school yearbook portrait Image from his niece Patricia Flint

Gene Lemmer, 1951 North Central High School Spokane, Washington (Tamarack 1950-1952 yearbook)

Gene Lemmer, 1959 State College of Washington Pullman, Washington (Chinook 1959 yearbook)

Gene Lemmer (1933-2014)

Harlan Eugene Lemmer was born on 4 September 1933 in St. Maries, Idaho. The 1940 census shows him living in St. Maries with his parents, Greta and Harlan Lemmer, and his sister Lois.

Gene graduated from North Central High School in Spokane in 1951. The Tamarack 1950-1951 yearbook states that he liked math, had transferred from Coeur d'Alene, and played football and belonged to the Spanish Club among several other activities (page 54). He graduated from the State College of Washington in Pullman in 1959 with a degree in mechanical engineering (Chinook '59 yearbook, page 81).

In the conversation she taped while dining with the Wetherall family -- in Chinatown, San Francisco, on 4 September 1973 -- Faye Rebenstorf said that Gene and Pat Lemmer and their 5 children had visited Greta and Harlan that summer. She characterized Gene as a good son.

William B. Wetherall, who also knew Greta's son as Gene, said during the 1973 conversation that he had never met Pat. He knew they were settled in southern California and asked Faye if Gene was working in electronics. Faye didn't know but thought he was working for Kaiser, and she said they were doing well.

Orene Wetherall, who had a talent for connecting disparate dots in casual conversations, observed that, with 5 kids, it's good to do well.

Gene and Patricia settled in Upland, California. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversity in 2013. Patricia reported that Gene had been in California for 54 years and had worked for Kaiser Steel, and that they had 5 children, 14 grandchildren, and 2 great grand children (email, 21 January 2014).

Gene passed away on 14 December 2014 after a long bout with Parkinson's disease.

Gene Lemmer Obituary Harlan Eugene (Gene) Lemmer September 4, 1933 - December 8, 2014 Gene Lemmer, 81, passed away on December 8, 2014. He is survived by Pat, his loving wife of fifty-one years, his children Cindy (James), Debbie (Steve), Chere, Jim (Deborah) and Sam (Jim), as well as fourteen grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and his sister, Lois. The family would like to thank the VNA Hospice, who were a great source of comfort to Gene and the family in his final days. Services will be held at St. Joseph's Church at 12:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 10, 2015. In lieu of flowers, Memorial donations may be made to VNA Hospice of Claremont. Published in Inland Valley Daily Bulletin on Jan. 6, 2015.

Lois (Lemmer) (Santa Rosa) Slater

Lois, Gene's sister, was born on 17 October 1939 in St. Anthony in Fremont County, Idaho. Washington marriage records show that she married Arthur A. Santa Rosa on 16 November 1957 (license 15 November, recorded 22 November) in Spokane. The signing witnesses were Marilyn Disrud and Edward Santa Rosa. Marilyn, nee Rebenstorf (originally Mathews), was Faye (Williams) (Nelson) (Mathews) Rebenstorf's daughter, hence Lois's and this writer's 2nd cousin.

Lois reported to this writer that she married Arthur A. Santa Rosa in 1957 after graduating from high school at age 18, and between 1959 and 1966 they had 4 children -- Brenda, Shelly Ann, Bret Anthony, and Patricia Sue. Lois later married a man named Friedlander, then in 1990 she married Jerry Slater, who had a daughter Bonnie and a son Warner. Lois has 12 grandchildren, including those of Warner's 2 children (email, 8 February 2014).

Lois Slater is my 2nd cousin. Her daughter, Patricia Sue Santa Rosa, a 3rd cousin of my children, married Roger W. Flint in Spokane, Washington, on 22 August 1987 and they have 2 children, Michael and Ashley, who are 4th cousins of my grandchildren.

DNA connections

On 26 December 2020 I received email from my son, Tsuyoshi Sugiyama, with an attachment of a "DNA Ethnicity Estimate & Health Report", the result of a "My Heritage DNA" test. I had not had such a test and had never discussed such tests with him. He did this on his own. Out of curiosity, I immediately ordered a similar test.

Then on New Years Day 2021, in Japan where live, Tsuyoshi sent me a screen capture of a message he had received from "Patricia Santa Rosa", apparently sent on New Years Eve 2020, from America where she lives. The message began like this -- "Dear Tsuyoshi, / I was happy to see a dna match from Japan this morning. I knew immediately that it was likely you or your sister." Patricia then introduced herself as "Patricia Santa Rosa-Flint" and said she was a "distant cousin" -- which translates straight-up 3rd cousin, though as relatives they are also an ocean and generation apart.

I sent Tsuyoshi a summary of the parallel lines of descent in his and Patricia's branches of the Baldwin-Steele family. I have also been in touch with descendants of the keeper of the family history keys in the other two lines -- Todd Disrud and Darci Severns -- as follows.

0.    Baldwin-Howard              Steele-Grubb
   John R. ___ Margaret        Jonas ___ Elizabeth
   Baldwin  |  Howard          Steele |  Grubb 
            |                         |
            |     Baldwin-Steele      |
1.       Newton                    Martha
         Bascum __________________ Ellen 
         Baldwin        |          Steele
       _________________|_______________________
      |             |             |             |
2. Sada          Lydia         Almeda        Ida         
   Elizabeth     Margaret      Jane          Mae
   Baldwin       Baldwin       Baldwin       Baldwin
   (Williams)    (Anstine)     (Ure)         (Wetherall
      |             |             |             |
3. Faye          Lennie        Greta         William
   Marguerite    Lee           Ava           Bascom 
   Williams      Anstine       Ure           Wetherall
   (Mathews)     (Severns)     (Lemmer)         |  
   (Nelson)         |             |             | 
   (Rebenstorf)     |             |             | 
      |             |             |             | 
4. Marylin       Tex           Lois          William
   Anne          Lee           Cecelia       Owen
   Mathews       Severns       Lemmer        Wetherall
   (Disrud)         |          (Santa Rosa)     |
      |             |          (Friedlander)    |_____________
      |             |          (Slater)         |             |
      |             |             |             |             |
      |        Baldwin-Steele 3rd cousins       |  Siblings   |
      |             |             |             |             |
5. Todd          Darci         Patricia      Saori         Tsuyoshi   
   Lee           Eileen        Sue           Orene         Owen 
   Disrud        Severns       Santa Rosa    Wetherall     Wetherall
      |             |          (Flint)       Sugiyama      Sugiyama
      |             |             |          -> Ogawa 
      |             |             |          -> Sugiyama
      |             |             |          -> Kasubuchi
      |             |             |             |_____________ 
      |             |             |             |             |        
6. Children      Children      Children      Anri             | 
                                             Ogawa            | 
                                             -> Sugiyama   Tatsuki
                                             -> Kasubuchi  Kasubuchi

A century ago, descendants of families that didn't migrate might actually have known some of their 3rd cousins. When I was growing up, I barely knew my 1st cousins. A few years ago, I began to cross paths with various degrees of cousins I had never heard of, but might have known had our grandparents and parents now scattered all over the map and fallen out of touch.

DNA tests appear to be credible as measures of possible genetic connections down lines of biological descent. 3rd cousin matches seem to be fairly reliable, and reliability increases up the kinship chart, to the point that matches with half and full siblings, and parents, approach 100 percent certainty.

But contrary to the claims of companies that market DNA tests for ancestry purposes, DNA is not a measure of "ethnicity" or "heritage" -- which are social, not chemical, conditions.

See Tsuyoshi's misleading "Ethnicity Estimate" under DNA tests in the article on Cherokee blood, below,
which looks at claims of Native American ancestry in the quagmire of "identity politics".

Herbert Dale Ure (1928-2004)

H. Dale Ure, William B. Wetherall's 1st cousin, married Carol Trappe on the evening of 30 April 1949 (Spokane Chronicle, Saturday, 30 April 1949, page 14) at St. John's Lutheran Church in Spokane. The bridegroom was described as the son of Mr. and Mrs. C. M. Ure, W731 Knox Street, Spokane. The ushers included James Trappe (a brother of the bride), and Gene Lemmer (Harlan Eugene Lemmer, Dale's nephew, then about 15 years old). Those assisting at the reception included Mrs. Harlan Lemmer (Dale's sister Greta) and Miss Lois Lemmer (Greta's daughter, Gene's sister, and Dale's niece, then about 9 years old).

Dale and Carol visit San Francisco

In May 1950, a year after they married, Dale and Carol visited the Wetherall family in San Francisco. A picture postcard showing "The Golden Trail, Scotch Broom in Blossom, Oregon Coast Highway" is addressed to "The Wetheralls' / 1558 33 Ave. / San Francisco / California". A standard green 1-cent Washington stamp is postmarked Florence, Oregon, 20 May 1950. Carol wrote the following message.

Memories of California

Dear folks, Sat.     Tonite we should be thru Portland anyhow (Just my luck . . . no more ink.) Now we are anxious to get home. Everything we now see seems very insignificant with the memories of S.F. still so fresh. We surely hated to leave Calif. yesterday. No doubt some day we will be living down there somewhere if we have our say. We have been making fine time and the weather is as sunny & clear as can be. The scotch broom is out just like that as well as masses of rhododendron. Will let you know as soon as we reach home.     Love, Carol & Dale

Picture postcards

Picture postcards were the contemporary equivalents of text messages with attached images -- except that postcard messages were anything but instant. You needed, first of all, a postcard. And a pen with ink or a sharp pencil or both. And a proper stamp. And then you had to find a post box -- and trust that the card would be picked, routed, and delivered in two or three days -- rain or shine, snow or sleet.

This writer began to collect picture postcards, beginning those I got from my maternal grandmother and parents, in my early teens, growing up in San Francisco during the early 1950s. I usually wrote my name "Bill Wetherall" at the tops of cards I added to my collection with the intention of keeping them. I did this to make sure that other people, particularly classmates and neighbors with whom I traded stamps and postcards, knew who they belonged to. I never got higher than a complimentary "C" in penmanship. After learning the art of printing in high school and college drafting classes, I lost the ability to write in longhand other than to sign my name. Notes and memos I write for myself are always odd mixtures of printing and cursive.

Dale's and Carol's obituaries

Dale and Carol would live the rest of their lives in Spokane.

The following is a cut and paste of an obituary re-posted by Ancestor.com from SpokesmanReview.com. The obituary reportedly appeared in the 10 July 2004 edition of the paper but the copy on the website shows 9 July 2004. It was probably run in the classifieds on both days.

Dale's wife, Carol Louise (Trappe) Ure, born on 6 November 1928, apparently in Spokane, passed away in Spokane on 9 April 2010. Her obituary was published in the classified ads section of The Spokesman-Review from 14-15 April 2010, according to the following Legacy.com version. The portrait was published with the obituary. The caption below the portrait, and the portrait's approximate date, are mine. The date is based on information in the image's file name.

Dale and Carol Ure Circa 1988 The Spokesman-Review April 14-15, 2010 Carol L. Ure Spokane URE, Carol L. (Age 81) Now with her Lord, Christ Jesus as of April 9, 2010. She was preceded in death by Dale, husband of 55 years. Wife, mother, homemaker, journalist and elementary teacher, she is survived by their four children and six grandchildren. Memorial Service 10:00 AM Saturday April 17, 2010 at Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church, 4320 S. Conklin St., Spokane 99203. Flowers accepted and donations in Carol's name should be made to Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church or Lutheran Marriage Encounter.

The 4 surviving children as of the time of the above obituary were Douglas Ure of Salem, Oregon; Diane Richards and Janice (Jan) Christensen, both of Spokane, Washington; and Wendy Davis of Spangle, Washington.

Douglas Ure (1950-2014)

Douglas Ure, born on 31 July 1950, died on 28 January 2014. He had been an instructor at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, Oregon. He taught courses in life sciences, and his research interests were vertebrate biology and terrestrial and forest ecology.

Douglas C. Ure In loving memory Douglas C. Ure July 31, 1950 - January 28, 2014 SALEM – Douglas C. Ure, a lifelong teacher, died due to complications with cancer on Tuesday, January 28, with his family at his side. He was born July 31, 1950, in Spokane, Washington. He was preceded in death by a son, Andrew, and his parents, Dale and Carol Ure. He is survived by his wife, Susan, and two additional sons, David and Jamie, and three sisters, Diane Richards, Janice Christensen, and Wendy (Steve) Davis. Doug taught 17 years at Chemeketa Community College, teaching a variety of science classes; his favorite was the non-majors biology. His lifelong love of scouting led to a personal achievement of Eagle Scout that he also helped his sons to achieve. He became a Cub Master for younger scouts, then a Scout Master, thus giving 17 years of service in Salem. He also helped start a community garden in Salem. He was active in his church and especially loved acting in a variety of religious plays. In the summer time, he and his family vacationed at Flathead Lake in Montana. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the Boy Scouts Troop 108 or Marion County Food Shares. Services for Doug will be at 2:00 PM on Sunday, February 16, 2014 at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, 1770 Baxter Road SE. Arrangements by Virgil T. Golden Funeral Service.

Anstine sisters

William B. Wetherall's 1st cousins

Lydia and Charley Anstine had 4 daughters -- Velma, Lydia, Aura, and Imogene -- between 1908 and 1926. Velma, Lydia, and Aura were spaced about two years apart. Imogene came 14 years later. Their lives reflect the difficulties of a farming family that didn't own its own land, had only daughters, and more than its share of early death.

Velma

Velma would die when she was 10 years old. Darci Severns sheds light on the circumstances surrounding Velma's death (email, 16 November 2013).

My mom and I both recall Lennie [Velma's younger sister, Darci's paternal grandmother] referring to an Aunt Sadie. We never heard Sally. I strongly believe Aunt Sadie was present when Velma had her appendix removed. As I recall grandma said, "Mother's sister was a nurse and saw that Velma's appendix was small, pink, and healthy. It had been removed unnecessarily. Velma then died from an infection she received due to the surgery." So tragic!

Velma was "Thelma Anstine" on her death certificate. The place of death was Seward City in Seward County in Nebraska. The medical certificate of death, signed by B.E. Morrow, M.D., stated she died at 12:30 [12:20?] am on 27 May 1919 [Tuesday]. The cause of death was "Ether pneumonia" and the contributory (secondary) cause was "Acute apendicitis". The personal and statistical particulars describe her as a white, single female who was born in Seward County on 30 November 1908 to "Charlie Anstine" born in Nebraska and "Lydia Baldwin" born in Kentucky. She was 10 years 3 months and 27 days old at the time of her death. The informant's name was "Charlie Anstine" of Utica, Nebraska. She was buried on 28 May 1919 in Utica.

"Ether pneumonia" and "ether bronchitis" -- also called "operative" pneumonia and bronchitis -- are possible side effects of ether when administered as an anesthetic in especially abdominal operations, or when inhaled in an industrial plant. Ether, and the sort of impurities that commonly found in ether in the past, can irritate the bronchial membranes and reduce pulmonary resistance to viral and bacterial infections.

Lennie and Aura

Lennie and Aura, having lost their older sister when they were 9 and 7, would go to college in Lincoln, Nebraska, and become teachers. Darci Severns, Lennie's granddaughter, says this about her great aunt Aura's academic standing (email, 19 November 2013).

Aura graduated from high school 5/29/29 [29 May 1929] from Seward High. She was the pick of the school.

Imogene was born a year before Lydia had a colostomy for colon cancer. She was going on 3 when Lydia died in 1929, and had turned 6 shortly before Charley died in 1932. She was then raised in Lennie's family.

Lennie married Archie Severns in 1931, and Archie moved into the Anstine family to help his father-in-law run the farm. Lennie, who had been helping raise Imogene after their mother (Lydia) died, continued to raise her with her own children after their father (Charley) died. Lennie and Archie took Imogene with them when they left the farm in Nebraska in 1937 for an entirely different life in Washington.

Aura married George M. Dey, also from Utica. The 1940 census shows them still living in Utica, where both were employed in government work, he as an "over-seer" in road construction, she as a "clerk" at the post office. By 1942 they were living in Idaho, probably in Coeur d'Alene. They would later live in Spokane, Washington, and also in Riverside, California.

An Army enlistment record shows that, on 21 January 1943, George M. Dey, born in Nebraska in 1907, then residing in Kootenai County, Idaho, enlisted in Spokane, Washington. He is said to have had 3 years of high school, been employed as a foreman in construction, been married, and was 70 inches tall and weighed 146 pounds. The nature of his military service is not clear.

Imogene

Imogene Anstine had completed 1 year of high school (H-1) by the 1940 census, when she was 13 years old and living with Lennie and Archie Severns in Washington. She graduated from high school around 1943, and by 1945 she had married a local boy, Keith R. LeBaron (1925-2011), and they would have two children. She passed away in 2005, and he died 6 years later.

Darci Severns reported that Aura and George Dey resided in Spokane, while Imogene and Keith LeBaron were denizens of Seattle and then Federal Way. They were snowbirds, she said, hence their occasional stays in Southern California. (Email, 16 November 2013)

Only Velma is buried with Lydia and Charley in Nebraska. Lennie is buried with Archie in Washington. Imogene is also buried in Washington, presumably with Keith. Aura died in California, apparently during one of their sojourns there, and George reportedly died in Spokane. Apparently Aura and George were cremated, and presumably their ashes are in Washington.

Top  

Educating daughters

Lennie (Anstine) Severns wrote in the early 1980s that, after high school, she attended the University of Nebraska, received a teaching certificate, and taught 3 years in a one-room country school while also teaching piano and violin on weekends. The 1930 census shows both Lennie and Aura as public school teachers when they were respectively 20 and 18 years old. However, the 1940 census shows that they had completed only 4 years of high school.

1930 census shows Charles Anstine (46), widowed, his daughters Lennie (20), Aura (18), and Imogene (3 6/12), and his mother-in-law Ellen Baldwin (66), also widowed, living on the Anstine farm in Utica. Both Lennie and Aura are still single, and both are teachers in a public school.

1940 census shows William A. Severns (33), head of household, with Lennie (30), his wife, their two children, Tex Lee (6) and and Billie Rae (3), and Imogene Anstine as Archie's sister-in-law. They are living in Skookumchuck, Lewis County, Washington, were Archie is the owner of a general store and Lennie is a store helper. The census states that that they living in Utica, Seward, Nebraska in 1935. According to the census, Archie and Lennie had completed 4 years of high school (H-4).

1940 census shows "George Day" [sic = Dey] (32) and Aura (28) living in Utica in a non-farm home they rented for 12 dollars a month. They were living in a different home (or in different homes) in Seward in 1935. Both were employed in government work, he as an "over-seer" in road construction, she as a "clerk" at the post office. He earned earned 1,200 dollars and she 600 dollars a year. George had completed 3 years (H3) and Aura 4 years (H4) of high school.

This does not rule out the possibility -- or likelihood -- that Lennie and Aura completed a series of teacher-training courses of a normal school at the University of Nebraska.

Nebraska, like other more recently settled states with numerous sparsely populated communities in many counties, had many 1-room and 2-room schools to which local farm children commuted fairly long distances. School buses made commutes somewhat easier and also facilitated the building of larger schools to serve larger areas. Teacher education varied from county to county, but as in most states, high school graduates were able to became teachers with relatively little formal training.

At the time, there were a variety of normal schools in the state. Some programs ran as short as 6 weeks, others 1, 2, and even 4 years. Possibly the program Lennie and Aura completed did not qualify as "college education" for census purposes.

Lennie, already very busy during her mother's illness and after her mother's death in the late 1920s, would have been even busier as a farm wife after marrying in 1931. She was then 21, and if she had been teaching for 3 years before she married, then she would have been 18 when she began teaching -- the same age as Aura was when said to have been teaching in the 1930 census. Thus suggests that the two girls graduated from high school when 17 or so, then completed short teacher certification courses.

Lennie and Aura didn't teach for long in Nebraska, and they didn't teach after for the Northwest. Had they wanted to teach in Washington or Idaho, they would probably have need to localize their credentials. Even today, credentialing standards considerably vary from state to state, like practically all other standards. Like lawyers and doctors, and people in many other regulated vocations, migrating teachers usually have to satisfy local standards before they can practice their trade.

Reflecting the importance of education in Lennie's own upbringing, though, both of her children became certified teachers in Washington, where they were entirely schooled.

Education in the Steele-Grubb and Baldwin-Steele families

Lydia Anstine appears to have continued the tradition, established by her Baldwin parents, to invest as much as possible in her children's educations -- presumably to give them an edge in life. Census data clearly shows that education became increasingly important in the lives of Lennie's and Aura's ancestors -- as it did, in fact, for most families in the United States and other industrializing and urbanizing countries.

20.0 percent of people 14 years old and older in the United States in 1870, according to data compiled from that year's census, were illiterate. The rates for 1880, 1890, and 1900 were 17.0, 13.3, and 10.7 percent.

Over 25 percent of all people over the age of 10 in Kentucky were unable to read or write in 1870. By 1900, Kentucky's illiteracy rate was down to 16.5 percent -- which made the state the second most literate state in the south following Texas. Still, about 1 in every 5 eligible voter could not read or write.

The Steele-Grubb family that produced Ellen Baldwin, Lydia Anstine's mother, appears to have been less literate than the average Kentucky family at the time, but may have been more literate than the average family in their neck of woods.

The 1850 census classified Elisabeth Steel [sic = Elizabeth Steele] (30), Lydia's maternal grandmother, as a "Person over 20 y'rs of age who cannot read & write". At the time she was raising the first 5 of the 10 children she would have before her husband, Jonas Steele, died in 1868.

The 1870 census classified Elisabeth [sic = Elizabeth] Steele (50), as a person who "Cannot write" but not as a person who "Cannot read". Apparently over the years since the 1850 census, Elizabeth (Grubb) Steele she had learned to read. In 1870, as the widowed head of her family, she was keeping house for the 7 children still living with her, including all of the youngest. The 1870 census shows that 4 of the children -- George (23) and James H. (21), both farmers, Nancy E. (15), and John W. (12), a farm hand -- could neither read nor write. Sarah H. (17) appears to have been literate. Mary J. (9) and Martha E. (6) -- the future Martha Ellen Baldwin, Lydia's mother -- were probably attending school, but appear to have been too young for the literacy items on the census.

For some reason, the "Attended school within the year" (Item 15) column on the two census sheets that included the Steele family is blank for everyone on the sheets. The "Cannot read" (Item 16) and "Cannot write" (Item 17) columns are blank for everyone under 10 years old. The two sheets include a few entirely illiterate families, in which both parents and all children over 9 were unable to either read or write.

The 1880 census oddly shows that Elizabeth Steele (59), keeping house, and Martha (15), at home, are unable to either read or write -- while the "Cannot read" and "Cannot write" columns remain unchecked for John W. (22), laborer, for whom both were checked in the 1870 census. On the same sheet, living apparently next door, Nancy E. Steele, now Nancy E. Brewer (24), keeping house for her laborer husband and their infant daughter, can still neither read nor right.

The 1900 census for the family of N.B. Baldwin (38) shows that everyone in the family -- himself (38), Ellen (36), and all 4 Baldwin sisters, ranging in age from 17 to 9 -- can both read and write. I cannot find our "John W." in the 1900 census.

Notwithstanding the inexplicable discrepancies in the above and other late-19th-century Steele-Grubb censuses, the sands of literacy in the family are shifting toward higher levels of literacy among the younger generations. By the middle of the 20th century, the average level of educational achievement for descendants of the family appear to be at par if not above the national average. Practically all descendants of Ellen Steele are finishing high school and going to vocational schools or colleges.

The 1940 census shows that Ellen Baldwin (76) had completed 8 years of schooling. The same census census shows that Sadie (Baldwin) Williams (57) had completed 22 years of college, while Meda (Baldwin) Ure (50) had finished 3 years of high school. Sadie had become a nurse. Meda, like her younger sister Ida, may have attended a business college.

So-called "business colleges" were vocational schools for training bookkeepers, accountants, typists, stenographers, office clerks, and cashiers. Such schools offered courses in subjects germane to such vocations, including business arithmetic, commercial law, typing, shorthand, penmanship, letter writing, English, spelling, and even geography. Most students completed programs at such schools in their early years were men, but by the start of the 20th century, the majority of typists and stenographers were women.

Whatever the conditions that prevented so many of her siblings from learning to read and write, Martha Ellen Steele would complete 8 years of grade school education in rural Kentucky before she married Newton Bascum Baldwin in 1880. And by the time they settled in St. Maries in 1910, all 4 of their children would finish 3 or 4 years of high school and a year or two of vocational school or college.

Education in the Hunter-Thomas and Hardman-Hunter families

By the late 19th century, the majority of grade school teachers were women. At the turn of the century, high school education was still a province of male teachers, but the ratio of female teachers was slowly increasing. Both trends reflected the recognition of the need for literate women in the non-farm labor force, as well as the view that women might be better suited for teaching, especially younger children.

My great grandmother, Ida (Thomas) Hunter, a farm wife in a sparsely populated region of Idaho that had no high school, arranged for her oldest daughter, Ullie Hunter, my maternal grandmother, to board in town so she could go to high school. In a taped conversation between my grandmother, mother and aunt, it was revealed that Ida was disappointed when Ullie -- rather than become a teacher -- married Owen Hardman, a semi-literate farm boy who had barely completed the 8th grade, and became a farm wife. Ullie made sure, with Owen's help, that their two daughters, my aunt and mother, went to high school in an era and a locality in which few young people went beyond the 8th grade.

My mother, Orene (Hardman) Wetherall, graduated from a country grade school and high school, before completing a 2-year normal school program at the University of Idaho. She then taught about 3 years at 2 different country schools in Idaho, the first a 1-room school with about a dozen students spanning all 8 grades. The 1940 census, two years after she had quit teaching and married, shows her as having completed 2 years of college (C-2). My father, who had graduated from law school after finishing an ordinary 4-year course at the University of Idaho, is shown to have completed 6 years of college (C-6).

My mother's Idaho credentials were out of date even in Idaho by the time she returned to teaching in California. She was allowed to do some home teaching to students who were sick, injured, or otherwise unable to attend classes. But even these opportunities were limited by her lack of a 4-year college degree and sufficient additional training under California certification laws. She would have had to go back to school, and take a number of methodology courses, to qualify as a teacher in California. Instead, she became the attendance secretary at the local high school. And a whole generation of local students came to appreciate the gracefulness of her discipline, and years later would greet her as Mrs. Wetherall when crossing paths with her in town.

5.22 Severns-Anstine

Lennie Lee (Anstine) and William Archie Severns

0. Lennie reported that she met Archie when she was a senior in high school 5 years before they married in 1931. Their granddaughter Darci, who wears the "promise ring" Archie gave Lennie, reports that "Lennie left the farm to attend the University of Nebraska to get her teaching certificate. 19 year old Archie put the promise ring on 16 year old Lennie's finger before she left." This would have been about 1926.
   Lennie also reported that Archie, a town boy, took over her father's farming business after his death in 1932. In 1937 the couple moved their family to Washington, where they bought a grocery store. The 1940 census shows Tex as the owner of a general store and Lennie as a store helper.
1. Lennie reported that her baby sister Imogene was "hers" when their mother died in 1929 (see her autobiographical account below). Imogene married Keith LeBaron of Centralia, Washington in 1945. They lived in Seattle in the Queen Anne neighborhood. They would later live in Hemet, Riverside County, California, then in Federal Way, King County, Washington, where Imogene passed away in 2005. Keith died in Seattle in 2011.
2. Tex became a teacher after graduating from the University of Washington. He married Eileen M. Greer in King County, Washington, on 8 June 1963, and they had two children, a daughter Darci and a son Blake.
3. Billie became a teacher after graduating from the University of Washington. She married Donald Arthur Dorland in King County, Washington, on 9 July 1960, and they too had two children, a daughter Paige and a son Ty.

Lennie Severns's family saga

Lennie Lee (Anstine) Severns wrote a brief account of her life for the following publication.

Alma Nix and John Nix, editors
The History of Lewis County, Washington
Chehalis: Lewis County Historical Society, 1985
2 volumes, 464 plus 88 pages.
Hardcover numbered limited edition.
Illustrated with numerous b&w photographs
Volume 2 is a Pictorial Essay.

The following text is a reformatted version of Lennie's story from a text file created from scans of a part of this work and posted on USGenWeb Archives by Wesley Cox in February 2003. Lennie's account is found on page 326 in Part 9 of the 10-part work. The title is mine. The comments in (parentheses) are as received in the scanned version, but the comments in [brackets] are mine.

The photo of Lennie and Archie Severns in the original source was omitted in the USGenWeb Archives extract. The graduation portrait of Lennie, and the snapshots of Lennie, Archie, and Imogene with the children, Tex and Billie, belong to the Severns family. The scans were kindly provided by Lennie's granddaughter, Darci Severns, the Anstine-Severns family historian.

Lennie, Archie, Tex, and Billie "We couldn't get Tex off of that stump" Circa 1937 possibly in Nebraska before move to Washington (Severns Family photo) Imogene with Tex and Billie "Billie always plays with your mouth when she sucks her thumb to go to sleep" Circa 1937 possibly in Nebraska before move to Washington (Severns Family photo) Lennie (Anstine) Severns's story Charles and Lydia (Baldwin) Anstine were married, February 12, 1908, at Lincoln, Nebraska. They had 4 daughters: Velma (1908-1919), Lennie (myself) (1910-), Aura Dey (1912-1985), and Imogene LeBaron (1926-). (photo): Lennie and Archie Severns [omitted] My parents [Lydia Baldwin and Charley Anstine] met in Lincoln [Nebraska] when both were rooming at mom's sister's [Sadie (Baldwin) William's] home. Daddy was a railroad engineer and mom was attending [Lincoln] Business College. Their courtship was brief. The Baldwin family was moving to Spokane, Washington, and refused to let mother stay there because she was not married, even though [in 1907-1908] she was 21 years old. My, how times have changed! My father and we girls were born and raised in Seward County, Nebraska. Mother and her family were from Kentucky, leaving there when mother was about 18 years old [about 1904]. After my parents' marriage, they left the city (at mom's insistence) to become successful farmers and cattle feeders. They continued to farm until cancer claimed their lives. Mother was 43 [when she died in 1929] and daddy died three years later [in 1932], at age 48. Imogene [born in 1926] was 2 years old and I was nineteen [when mother died]. She was "mine" from that day on. I rode horseback to attend a two-room country school (grades 1-10), during which time I took private piano and violin lessons. Our small high school in Utica [in Seward County] did not have a music department, so my parents decided to send me to Seward High School where I could continue to study music. After high school, I attended the University of Nebraska, received my teaching certificate, taught 3 years in a one-room country school, and taught piano and violin on weekends. W.A. "Archie" Severns and I met when I was a senior in high school [in 1926]. We were married five years later in 1931. We took over the farming business after my father's [Charley Anstine's] death. Archie was a town boy and I a country girl. After seven years of farming, he knew it was not the life for him. By then we had a son, Tex (1934) and a daughter, Billie (1936). Starting a new life was big decision, especially for me, to leave the only home I had ever known. It was a wise decision. We chose Centralia (1937) [in Lewis County, Washington] because Archie had a brother, Ray, in Chehalis [also in Lewis County]. We bought a grocery store on Waunch's Prairie [in Centralia]. We are now retired and still living on Waunch's Prairie. Our children attended Centralia High School, Centralia College, and the University of Washington [in Seattle]. Both are teachers. Tex and family live in Seattle and he teaches in Kent. Billie and family live in Renton and she teaches in Snoqualmie. Tex and Eileen (Greer) have a daughter, Darci, and a son, Blake. Billie and Don Dorland have a daughter, Paige, and a son, Ty. We are proud of our children, their spouses, and our grandchildren. Eileen is a Medical Technician and Don is an administrator in Kent High School. All the men in our family are avid hunters. Our children have cabins at Crystal Mt., not far from the ski area, where they and their families love to ski. It is also a hunter's paradise. The guys have elk and deer antlers to prove it. We have never regretted coming to the West Coast. We have made some lasting friendships with some very dear people. By Lennie (Anstine) Severns [ Written no later than 1985 ]

Darci Severns's tales

Lydia and Charley Anstine's great grandaughter, Darci Severns, recalled a number of tales she heard from her grandmother Lennie (Anstine) Severns, her great aunt Aura (Anstine) Dey, and her mother Eileen (Greer) Severns. Darci is the daughter of Lennie's and Archie's son Tex Severns, who was my 2nd cousin, and so she and I (William O. Wetherall) are 2nd cousins once removed. Darci shared the following account of her memories with me (email, 23 October 2013).

Uncle Charley stories

Charles Andrew Anstine (1883-1932) was the son of a farmer, and he himself became a farmer, in Utica, Seward County, Nebraska. He married Lydia Baldwin, who he had met in Lincoln Nebraska, in 1906, and they were the parents of three daughters when he registered for 2nd draft on 12 September 1918 near the end of the World War or Great War, now know as World War I.

Charles Anstine's enlistment card describes him as a resident of Utica, Seward, Nebraska, 34 and white, a native born citizen and self-employed farmer. He gave Mrs. Lydia Anstine, at the same address, as the name of his nearest relative. The Seward County Local Board official agreed that Charles was short and stout, had brown eyes and light brown hair, and had no obvious disabilities that would have disqualified him from service.

Darci Severns remembers that her grandmother Lennie (Anstine) Severns, and her great aunt Aura (Anstine) Dey, said that Charley "had very small feet and fit into Lydia's shoes. And he could wear her gloves." (Email, 8 November 2013)

Charles Anstine was "Uncle Charley" to William B. Wetherall, who -- especially in his later years -- told his children, including this writer, and a few of his friends, what we children dubbed "Uncle Charley stories".

My dad rarely talked about himself when we, his children, were growing up. He told his Uncle Charley stories late in his life, almost always at the dinner table. He was a disciplinarian when it came to eating. We had to clean our plates. No food was ever thrown out. Failure to eat something on our dinner plates meant eating it the next morning.

Our mother, raised on a farm, shared our father's distaste for waste. She had all manner of ways to remake leftovers into tasty meals. Both of our parents impressed on us the austerity they had experienced when they were growing up.

My dad told his Uncle Charley stories partly out of nostalgia, and partly to impress on us how hard -- but good -- life was in his youth. We knew how he felt about farming, for he always had a huge vegetable garden after moving from San Francisco to Grass Valley in 1955.

While living in San Francisco, we went camping practically every summer and "roughed" it with a tent, sleeping bags, and a Coleman stove and lanterns. After moving to Grass Valley, we never again went camping. In fact, my parents took only two family trips during the years we were growing up in Grass Valley -- in 1958 to Iowa, and in 1959 to Idaho -- both related to family reunions.

William B. Wetherall's 2011 testimony

On 8 March 2011, William B. Wetherall was interviewed at his home by Gregg Schiffner, a local cinematographer and good friend, who was preparing for a presentation of Bill's life at his 100th birthday party. In the course of the interview, Bill talked a bit about his experiences working on his uncle's farm in Nebraska during the summers when he was going to high school.

Gregg wondered if Charley was on his father's side, and my father said yes, and then corrected himself. He was on his mother's side, he said, but he never did clarify that Charley was the husband of his mother's sister Lydia.

He emphatically stated that he had worked on the Nebraska farm 6 summers. The first summer, he said, was after completing the 8th grade of grade school in Knoxville, which agrees with his 2010 oral account to this writer, his son. And he stressed that he had also worked the summer after he graduated from high school, which he hadn't mentioned in 2010.

In 2010, he related that he graduated from the 8th grade in Knoxville in 1924, and from high school in Des Moines in 1928, in what was a conventional 8-4 system. In Knoxville he lived with his paternal grandfather's family, and in Des Moines he lived with his father's new family. This, too, suggests that he worked only 5 summers -- unless he also worked the summer of 1923 (which is possible), or perhaps the summer of 1929 (which is possible but less likely).

In 2011, he did not go into detail about his life on the farm in Nebraska. It started talking about Nebraska in the course of explaining what he did after graduating from high school, and he ended up telling four stories, about (1) his plans to go to college in Iowa the next fall, (2) his work on Charley's farm that summer, (3) Charley's offer of an interest in the farm if he stayed and went to college in Nebraska, and (4) his decision to Idaho instead. And parts of all these stories are confusing.

Though he seemed confused as to when he first worked on Charley's farm, he clearly stated that the first time, someone -- presumably Charley -- came to Knoxville to pick him up, and camped at the fair grounds. "That's what they did in those days," he said. He didn't say how Charley came. Possibly he drove. The distance would have been about 250 miles or 400 kilometers. While not an especially long distance by today's standards, in the early 1920s it would have been a long and arduous day on the road, with a pit stop or two to gas up and check the water and oil, and pray that there be no flat tires, broken fan belt, or blown gasket.

My father said in the 2011 interview that the farm was 360 acres -- "half a section" he added, a section being 640 acres. He said that Charley offered him "a quarter" of the farm or "produce" -- apparently meaning a quarter of the income from the farm, since Charley didn't own the land -- if he would join him on the farm. However, he told his uncle he planned to go to college.

It's not clear from the interview how big Charley's farm was, and I have no idea how large a typical farm in Seward might have been. By the 1920s, it was probably a partly mechanized operation, as by then mechanization was sweeping the country. But many farmers, including Charley, farmed on land belonging to someone else.

My mother was raised on an Idaho farm her grandparents had homesteaded from the late 1890s and her parents then operated until the mid 1920s, about the time my dad began working on Charley's farm in Nebraska. My grandparents sold their farm in the face of rapid mechanization, which radically changed the economics of farming, as the more successful farmers bought up smaller homesteads and merged them into larger mechanized operations.

Tenant farming

The 1900 to 1940 censuses for the Anstine family tell the following story.

1900 census shows Richard and Helen Anstine (Charley is 16) renting farm land.

1910 census shows Charley and Lydia Anstine (Velma is 1-5/12, Lennie is 0) renting farm land.

1920 census shows Charley working as a farmer on his "Own account" as opposed to working for wages.

1930 census shows Charley working as a farmer on his "Own" rather than as an employee. The Anstines have a radio set, but the box stating whether they own or rent their farm home is blank. Half of their farming neighbors owned, and half were renting, their homes.

Charley thus appears to have been a tenant farmer -- which means that he stood to prosper only if production was good and the market was strong. I would guess that he made the offer to my dad in 1928 because he felt his farm would produce enough to make it worth both his and my dad's while.

Having 3 surviving daughters, 2 of them marriageable, the 3rd not yet 2 years old, with Lydia suffering from cancer, Charley was definitely in need of reliable help. I imagine he saw my father -- his nephew-in-law -- as a sort of son, born the year between his 2nd and 3rd daughters, Lennie and Aura. And he must have been impressed by Bill's work during previous summers.

Charley would have understood my father's desire to go to college. Lennie, his daughter, was then going to the University of Nebraska in Lincoln to become a teacher. His suggestion that my father go to college in Lincoln, instead of Penn College in Oskaloosa, Iowa, would have put my father close enough to Seward (30 miles), and the farm in Utica (40 miles), that he could have worked there at least part time.

The depression, triggered by the market crash a couple of months after Lydia's death in 1929, probably contributed to the difficulties Charley had as his own health declined. Lennie married Archie Severns in 1931, and they attempted to make a go of the farm before and after Charley's death from cancer in 1932. But as Lennie relates in her 1985 account (see "Lennie's saga"), they decided to restart their lives in Washington.

Farming life in the 1920s and 1930s

Darci Severns has shared similar stories she recalls hearing from Lennie, her paternal grandmother, and Aura, her paternal great aunt, of life on the Anstine farm in Utica during the 1920s and 1930s.

William B. Wetherall, when telling his Uncle Charley stories, sometimes said the family was poor but they had lots of food and ate well -- and all the food you could eat. He said they had some cows, hogs, and chickens, and his chores included feeding and caring for them every day, begining every morning before breakfast. Other work involved the crops. I can't remember what he said they were. I would guess they grew a little bit of everything, larger crops for sale, smaller crops for family consumption or bartering with neighbors, which included other Anstines.

My dad's work on Charley's farm spanned the mid and late 1920s, before Lydia's death and the Wall Street crash two months later. By the time Charley died, the Great Depression was in full swing, making tenant farming even more difficult.

William B. Wetherall laced his Uncle Charley stories with the idioms of times. "A dollar a day plus found" was a standard refrain, and he often repeated "Found. Food." -- stressing both words -- and sometimes added "All you could eat." Life on the farm was mainly about food, as perhaps life is everywhere.

In the 2011 interview, he said Charley had always given him a little money when he went home at the end of summer. And the last two summer, he had paid him 30 dollars a month, the standard wage for farm labor at the time.

1959 Baldwin-Steele family reunion

The following photographs show two family reunion dinners with different mixes of the descendants of 3 of the 4 Baldwin sisters -- Sadie, Meda, and Ida. Sadie's and Meda's families were in Idaho and Washington, and Ida's family (this writer's Wetherall family) was in California. Lydia's line was not represented, though the families of a couple of her daughters were in Washington.

The Wetherall family traveled to Idaho during the summer of 1959 for the purpose of reunions on both my father's Baldwin-Steele side and my mother's Hardman-Hunter side. I didn't make the trip because I had just graduated from high school and started a full-time summer job in San Francisco.

Of the two gatherings shown here, the one with the most attendants was held at the home of Greta and Harlan Lemmer in Meda's line in Spokane, Washington. The smaller gathering met at the home of Faye and Howard Rubenstorf in Sadie's line in Coeur d'Alene in Idaho.

The images are scans of 3-1/2in square glossy color prints with 1/4in borders in the Wetherall Family Collection. There are similar prints in the collections of some of the other families.

See keys to identifications below the panel of photographs

	Photo 1 Sitting 1. Mary Ellen Wetherall (later Zweig), my sister 2. Almeda Jane (Baldwin) Ure 3. Sadie (Baldwin) Williams 4. Lois (Lemmer) Santa Rosa (later Slater) 5. (elbow) Marilyn (Mathews) Disrud Standing 1. Orene (Hardman) Wetherall, my mother 2. Gene Lemmer, Meda's grandson 3. Howard Rebenstorff, Faye's husband 4. Harlan Lemmer, Greta's husband 5. Claude Williams, Sadie's son		Photo 2 Sitting 1. Sadie (Baldwin) Williams 2. Lois (Lemmer) Santa Rosa (later Slater) 3. Marilyn (Mathews) Disrud, Faye's daughter 4. ? Unidentified woman Standing 1. (shoulder) Gene Lemmer, Greta's son 2. William B. Wetherall, my father 3. Howard Rebenstorf, Faye's husband 4. Harlan Lemmer, Greta's husband 5. Claude Williams, Sadie's son 6. Jerry Wetherall, my brother 7. Norman Disrud, Marilyn's husband
	Photo 3 Sitting 1. Sadie (Baldwin) Williams 2. Lois (Lemmer) Santa Rosa (later Slater) 3. Marilyn (Mathews) Disrud, Faye's daughter 4. ? Unidentified woman Standing 1. William B. Wetherall, my father 2. Howard Rebenstorf, Faye's husband 3. Harlan Lemmer, Greta's husband 4. Claude Williams, Sadie's son 5. Jerry Wetherall, my brother 6. Norman Disrud, Marilyn's husband		Photo 4 Sitting 1. Lois (Lemmer) Santa Rosa (later Slater) 2. Marilyn (Mathews) Disrud, Faye's daughter 3. ? Unidentified woman Standing 1. Faye Rebenstorf, WBW's 1st cousin 2. Greta (Ure) Lemmer, WBW's 1st cousin    holding granddaughter Brenda Santa Rosa 3. Brenda Santa Rosa (in arms), Lois's daughter
	Photo 5 Standing 1. Mary Ellen Wetherall, my sister 2. Gene Lemmer (brown coat), Greta's son 3. Faye Rebenstorf, Marilyn's mother    holding Brenda Santa Rosa 4. Brenda Santa Rosa (in arms), Lois's daughter 5. Claude Williams (jacket), Sadie's son Sitting 1. Orene (Hardman) Wetherall, my mother 2. Meda (Baldwin) Ure, Gene's grandmother 3. Sadie (Baldwin) Williams, Faye's mother 4. Greta (Ure) Lemmer, Meda's daughter 5. Lois (Lemmer) Santa Rosa (red dress)    Greta's daughter, my 2nd cousin		Photo 6 Sitting 1. Greta Lemmer, Meda's daughter, WBW's 1st cousin 2. Lois (Lemmer) Santa Rosa (red dress)    Greta's daughter, Meda's granddaughter 3. Marilyn (Mathews) Disrud, Faye's daughter 4. ? Unidentified woman Standing 1. Brenda Santa Rosa, Lois's daughter    in arms of Faye Rebenstorf 2. Claude Williams, Faye's brother 3. Jerry Wetherall, WBW's son, my brother 4. Harlan Lemmer, Greta's husband 5. Howard Rebenstorf, Faye's husband 6. William B. Wetherall, my father
	Photo 7 Cherry (rhubarb?) pie dessert IDs similar to those in Photo 8 -- except they begin with back of Howard Rebenstorf's head, Norman's father cannot be seen, and William B. Wetherall, my father, is sitting where Norman is sitting in, which suggests that Norman snapped this shot. Norman's parents were visiting from minnesota. Marilyn had given birth to Todd Lee Disrud on 5 June 1959, shortly before the reunion. Apparently he is sleeping in another room. Both shots catch Jerry Wetherall studying someone. Claude is smoking.		Photo 8 Kicking back after dessert Left to right around table  0. William B. Wetherall, taking picture  1. Selmer Disrud, Norman's dad  2. Norman Disrud, Marilyn's husband  3. Claude Williams, Sadie's son  4. Jerry Wetherall, my brother  5. Sadie (Baldwin) Williams, WBW's aunt  6. Orene (Hardman) Wetherall, my mother  7. Mary Ellen Wetherall (later Zweig), my sister  8. Marilyn (Mathews) Disrud, Faye's daughter  9. Olga Disrud, Norman's mother 10. Faye Rubenstorf, Sadie's daughter 11. Howard Rubenstorf, Faye's husband

10. Baldwin-Howard

John R. Baldwin and Rebecca and Margaret Howard

Click on image to enlarge John R. Baldwin and Margaret Howard marry on 13 June 1855 Makeshift mixed-bag Kentucky County marriage register Copped and cropped from Ancestry.com

Margaret Baldwin's death certificate Informant A.F. Baldwin does not know his mother's maiden name and only supposes she was born in Virginia. Copped and cropped from FamilySearch

0. John Baldwin was one of 4 sons of about 7 children of John Milton Baldwin (1792-1855) and Elizabeth Seale (b1806). He may have been a Methodist minister, but if so it was a part-time vocation, for all censuses show him as a farmer.
0. John and Rebecca appear to have married in late 1848. Both would have been 19 or 20.
   They had 3 children before her death on 3 April 1855 (according to Margaret's 1909 pension declaration).
   
   Both Rebecca and her younger sister Margaret, who John would marry after Rebecca's death, are often said to have been born in Harlan County, Kentucky, to John Flannery Howard (b 5 Nov 1802, d 25 Dec 1870, Lee County, Virginia) and Elizabeth Denny Mark (1812–1853, Lee County, Virginia). The 1850 census for District 31, Lee County, Virginia enumerates "Rebecca" (22) as born in Kentucky, but shows "Margaret" (14) as born in Virginia, to Virginia-born "John F. Howard" (48) and Virginia-born "Elizabeth" (38). Among the 8 Howard children enumerated on the 1850 census, only the oldest of the 8, "Martha J." 19, was born in Kentucky. All other children, including Margaret, were born in Virginia. The Howards married no later than 1828, the year Rebecca was born. Rebecca is not in the 1850 census with her parents and siblings because she married John R. Baldwin in 1848 when about 20 and is enumerated with him and a daughter, Elizabeth, in the 1850 census.
   1. See Chronology of Baldwin-Howard family (below) for records related to
      10. John R. Baldwin, Rebecca and Margaret Howard, and their children.
1. Elizabeth is the only child shown in the 1850 census when she is 1 year old. She married Jesse Milburn Taylor and they had 8 children of whom 6 survived as adults.
   1. See 10.1 Elizabeth Letitia Baldwin and Jesse Milburn Taylor in the "Baldwin Galleries" section (below).
2. John Milton's namesake seems to have been his paternal grandfather. He reportedly married Verena Marie McCoy (1864–1934) on 5 July 1880 in Wells, Elko County, Nevada. He may have first married Minerva Jane Burchfield (1859–1941) on 25 November 1879 in Claiborne, Tennessee. It appears that John and Marie had 15 children of whom 10 survived into adulthood. They seem to have been "Pappy" and "Mammy" in the family.
   John appears with his sisters Elizabeth and Mary, all of whom are John R. Baldwin's children with Rebecca Howard, in the 1860 census, after Rebecca had died and their father had married her sister Margaret.
   1. See 10.2 John Milton Baldwin and Verena Marie McCoy in the "Baldwin Galleries" section (below).
3. Mary Ellen Baldwin appears with her older siblings Elizabeth Letitia and John Milton in the 1860 census after their father had remarried their mother's sister Margaret. One Baldwin family tree gives Mary Ellen's familiar name as "Mollie". Another lists "Mollie" as a child born in 1852 between John and Mary. If there was such a child, then she either died or was adopted out before 1860. The "Mollie = Mary Ellen" contention seems more likely.
   The 1860 census for John R. and Margaret Baldwin lists Mary Ellen Baldwin as "Mary E.D." age 7. I have not seen "E.D." on any other records.
   Mary Ellen Baldwin married Zera Thomas Lewis on 8 March 1880 in Jackson county. The ledger clearly shows that "Zera Thomas" and "Mary Ellen Baldwin" were married on "March 8th 1880" but the place of marriage box is blank. All censuses are consistent with an 8 March 1880 marriage. However, the 1 June 1880 census shows Mary Ellen with 3 children born before the marriage. Some family histories have treated these children as her biological children. Other records, however, show that they were Zera's from an earlier marriage.
   1. See 10.3 Mary Ellen Baldwin and Zela (Thomas L.) Lewis in the "Baldwin Galleries" section (below)
      for a record-based analysis of the origin and composition of the Lewis-Baldwin family.
0. Margaret, John's second wife, Rebecca's younger sister by about 10 years, was born in Kentucky.
   
   John and Margaret married on 13 June 1855 in Harlan, Kentucky, according to a makeshift "MARRIAGE REGISTER" (see image). The "BY WHOME MARRIED" column states athat they were married by "Solomon Pope, M.M.E.S." The "PLACE OF MARRIAGE" and "NAMES OF WITNESS PRESENT" columns are blank for most couples listed under "PARTIES NAMES". "Solomon Pope, M.M.E.S." apparently refers to Elizabeth Susan (Ball) Pope (1815-1906), the wife of Solomon Pope (1812-1883), both of whom were born and died in Harlan County, Kentucky, and are buried in Pope Cemetery in the county -- she as "SUSAN BALL POPE / A CHILD OF GOD" (Find a Grave). A similarly constructed makeshift marriage register shows that "Solomon Pope - E.S. Ball" married in "1836" -- no month or day or other particulars.
   1. Harlan County, Kentucky, is immediately north of Lee County, Virginia, where John R. Baldwin was born.
      Both Baldwin-Howard families originated, and all children through N.B. Baldwin were born, in Lee County.
   
   Margaret raised Rebecca's 3 children, and she and John had at least 12 (as many as 14) of their own (see particulars below). Their 1st child, William, was born on 19 March 1856, and their 12th and last child, Charles, was born on 2 September 1878, which works out to about 1 child every 22 months.
   Margaret's death certificate gives her date of birth as 1 December 1835 and states that she died of chronic valvular heart disease. The informant was A.F. Baldwin, presumably her second youngest son Archelus Fernando Baldwin, who was then 35 years old. Margaret's father's name was given as John Howard, birthplace Virginia. Her mother's maiden name was "Do not know" and her mother's birthplace was "Supposed to be Va." The undertaker was James Baldwin -- possibly Margaret's son James Alfred.
   1. See Chronology of Baldwin-Howard family (below) for records related to
      10. John R. Baldwin, Rebecca and Margaret Howard, and their children.
4. William "Will" Henley Baldwin married Nancy Jane Robbins (1860–1945) and they had as many as 13 children. Both died in Stites in Idaho County, Idaho.
   1. See 10.4 William Henley Baldwin and Nancy Jane Robbins in the "Baldwin Galleries" section (below).
5. Robert Ewing Baldwin (1858-1942) married Lydia Ketron (1858-1895) but she died leaving no children. He then married Eliza Jane King (1873-1938) in 1896, and they appear to have had 5 children. She died of stomach cancer on 30 May 1938. Lydia is buried in Wilson Cemetery in Moores Creek near Annville in Jackson County, Kentucky. Robert and Eliza are buried in King Cemetery in Peoples, which is also near Annville. Robert's younger brother George married Eliza's younger sister Emeline, and they and their youngest son, Charles, are also buried in King Cemetery.
   Someone on a Baldwin-family message board has claimed that "Emmaline King's mother was a full blooded Cherokee" (see King family and Cherokee blood below).
   1. See 10.5 Robert Ewing Baldwin and Lydia Lutitia Ketron
      and 10.5 Robert Ewing Baldwin and Eliza Jane King in the "Baldwin galleries" section (below).
6. "Sarah" and "Sarah J." and "Mary J." may be the same person or possibly were twins. The 1860 census data comes from a scan of "Schedule 3: Persons who Died during the year ending 1st June, 1860, in the Western District in the County of Lee State of Virginia" downloaded from Ancestry.com. Other data for Sarah, Sarah J., and Mary J. are as taken from unconfirmed transcriptions reported by FamilySearch. "20 Oct 1859" and "30 Oct 1859" probably reflect a transcription error. "S.R." is most likely a transcription error for "J.R."
   1. "Poor Valley" is in the "Western District" of "Lee County", Virginia.
   2. See 10.6 Sarah Baldwin in the "Baldwin galleries" section (below) for transcriptions of records.
      See Margaret Baldwin's children for images of records.
7. Data for "Unnamed Baldwin son" are as taken from an unconfirmed transcription reported by FamilySearch.
   1. See 10.7 Unnamed Baldwin son in the "Baldwin galleries" section for transcriptions of records.
      See Margaret Baldwin's children for images of records.
8. Newton Bascum Baldwin married Martha Ellen Steele, hence the "Baldwin-Steele" family and its descendants.
   1. See 10.8 Baldwin-Steele and related links at the top of this page for all photographs, genealogical records, and family stories about N.Bascum and M. Ellen (Steele) Baldwin.
9. James married Nancy Ann McGee (1873-1946) on 4 August 1891 in McKee, Jackson County, Kentucky, and they had at least 8 children. By the 1900 census they had had 3 children of whom 2 survived. By 1910 census 4 of 6 children had survived, and after this they would have at least 2 more surviving children. James and Nancy are buried in McGee Cemetery in Jackson County, Kentucky.
   If the "James Baldwin" named on Margaret's death certificate was James Alfred, then it would appear that he was an undertaker as well as a farmer.
   1. See 10.9 Baldwin-McGee: James Alfred Baldwin and Nancy Ann McGee (below) for genealogical details and some photographs.
10. Elihu Joseph was known as "Joe". He married Mollie W. Wilson (1893–1946) on 29 December 1917 in London, Laurel County, Kentucky. He was 52 and Mollie was 24 according to the 1930 census for the Second Civil District of Campbell, Tennessee. The census shows "Joseph" 63 with his wife "Mollie" 37 and 5 children -- "Joseph Jr." 11, "George" 9, "Ruby Lee" 6, "John B." 4, and "Clifford" 1. Joseph Jr. [Joseph Robert] was born in Idaho, Clifford in Tennessee. Elihu Joseph and Mollie, and the middle 3 children, were born in Kentucky, as were Mollie's parents. Elihu Joseph's father was born in Tennessee and his mother in Virginia. He was a farmer working on a general farm on his own account, but apparently he did not own the farm, and he was renting his home. Joseph was 52 when he first married and Mollie was 24, according to this census.
    1. See 10.10 Elihu Joseph Baldwin and Mollie Wilson in the "Baldwin galleries" section (below).
11. Henry Clay was known as "Clay" or "H. Clay". He married Malinda "Linda" ("Lindy") H. Abrams (1880–1950) on 14 February 1898. They seem to have had 10 children, 2 of whom died in infancy.
    Linda, born on 18 August 1880, died on 16 May 1950 barely 10 weeks after Clay died, and she is buried with him at Medlock Cemetery in Annville in Jackson County, Kentucky.
    Henry Clay Baldwin's namesake was Kentucky's most famous Washington politician -- Congressman, Speaker of the House, and Secretary of State Henry Clay (1777-1852). H. Clay Baldwin himself, though mainly a farmer, served a two-year term as a Republican representative of the 80th District of Kentucky in the State House of Representatives from 1932 to 1933.
    Clay was "Uncle Clay" to Sadie (Baldwin) Williams and her sisters. See "Sadie" (above) for an account of his "southern hospitality" during her visit with him in 1947.
    1. See 10.11 Henry Clay Baldwin and Malinda Abrams in the "Baldwin galleries" section (below).
12. Martha Ann Baldwin, called "Annie", married Samuel Moore (1872–1963) on 11 April 1889 at the home of her father John R. Baldwin of Jackson County, and in the witness of her brothers N.B. and James Baldwin. She appears to have had at least 11 children 9 of whom survived long enough to be enumerated on 1900-1920 censuses.
    1. See 10.12 Martha Ann Baldwin and Samuel Moore in the "Baldwin galleries" section (below).
13. George married Emeline King (1875–1961), Eliza's younger sister, in 1898, and they had at least 10 children.
    The 1900 census shows him to be teaching, but later censuses show him as a farmer.
    His death certificate states that he died of heart failure due to over exertion. It says he was born in Tennessee to John Howard, born in Tennessee, and Margaret Howard, born in Virginia. The informant -- signed "Charlie Baldwin" of Peoples, Kentucky -- was probably George's son Charles.
    George and Emeline are buried in King Cemetery in Peoples, which is near Annville, in Jackson County, Kentucky. Charles (1912-2001) and his wife Flora Estridge (1922-2002), George's older brother Robert (1858-1942) and his wife Eliza (1873-1938), are also buried in King Cemetery.
    1. See 10.13 George Finley Baldwin and Emeline King in the "Baldwin Galleries" section (below).
14. Samuel L.B. Baldwin used various versions of his name including Samuel Berton Baldwin, Samuel B. Baldwin, and S.B. Baldwin, but he also went by "Sam" and "Bert". He and Nancy Jane Smith had 4 children of whom 3 survived.
    1. See 10.14 Samuel L.B. Baldwin and Nancy Jane Smith in the "Baldwin galleries" section (below).
15. Archelus was publicly "Arch". The 1900 census shows Arch (22) living with his parents, John and Margaret. His father was farming but he, like his brother George, was teaching.
    He married Martha Louverna Davis on 8 June 1907. By 1910 they had had 2 children of whom 1 survived, and by 1930 they would have 5 more. The 1910, 1920, and 1930 censuses show him as a farmer.
    Arch and Martha are buried together in Wilson Cemetery in Moores Creek, Jackson County, Kentucky.
    1. See 10.15 Archelus Fernando Baldwin and Martha Louverna Davis in the "Baldwin Galleries" section (below).
16. Charles or "Charlie" was born on 2 September -- in 1877 according to his death certificate, in 1878 according to his draft registration card, and in 1879 according to his headstone at Pilgrims Rest Cemetery in East Bernstadt, Laurel County, Kentucky. He died on 31 July 1944 according to his death certificate, and on 1 August 1944 according to his headstone.
    Charles's 1st confirmable wife was Cinthia Emma McDowell (1879-1916), with whom he had 7 children -- Stella [Stella Jane], Robert [Bob L.], Maggie [Margaret], Coy, Earnest, Eldon, and Maud [Maude, May]. His 2nd confirmable wife was Grace [Nancy G., Grace L.] [Fullington] [Fullerton] (1900-1980), with whom he had at least 5 more children. Some reports say he was also married to, or lived with, a Martha Combs, with whom he may have fathered children.
    Census and other data shows that Charles raised his children alone for at least 5 years between his marriages to Emma and Grace.
    1. See 10.16 Charles Nelson Baldwin and his families in the "Baldwin Galleries" section (below).

Chronology of Baldwin-Howard family

10. John R. Baldwin, Rebecca and Margaret Howard, and their children

John R. Baldwin seems to have fathered 3 children with his 1st wife, Rebecca Howard, and 12 (or 14) with his 2nd wife, Margaret Howard, Rebecca's younger sister. All of the 15 children listed in the table -- except Sarah -- are found on censuses. Their full names and many other particulars have been culled from various sources. Many but not all details have been confirmed by scans of official records.

Margaret Baldwin's children

Rebecca and Margaret were sisters. Rebecca had at least 3 children between 1849-1853. Margaret raised Rebecca's children in addition to the at least 12 she had with John.

"Heaven Sent", whose genealogy research includes the Baldwin line, has posted a scan of Margaret Baldwin's death certificate on the Internet. She also posted the following information about Margaret, which I have slightly edited and reformatted. The numbers, which are those I assigned the children in the above table, and the underscoring of the children who do not appear in the table, are mine.

Margaret Anne Baldwin was the daughter of John F. and Elizabeth Mark Howard. She married John R. Baldwin on 13 June 1855 in Harlan County, Kentucky. God blessed this marriage with the following children: (1) William Henley, (2) Robert Eqing [sic = Ewing], Clayton, Anne, (4) Newton Bascum, (5) James Alfred, (6) Elihu Joseph, (7) Henry Clay, (8) Martha A., (9) George F., (10) Samuel I. B. [sic = L.B.], (11) Archelus Fernando, and (12) Charles Nelson.

Heaven Sent appears to have listed the children in the order of their birth. Only Clayton and Anne are not found on any census. William Henley was born in March 1856 and Robert Ewing around 1858. And Newton Bascum was born in December 1862, James Alfred in April 1864, and all subsequent children only a year or two apart. This leaves roughly 4 years -- 1859-1863 -- between which to bear and lose two children.

Some lists of Baldwin children include a "(3) Sarah", who apparently was born and died in 1859. If "Clayton" and "Anne" or "Sarah" were in fact children of John and Margaret, then they died before the 1860 census (when they would have been about 1 year old), or before the 1870 census (when they would have been going on 10).

The 1900 and 1910 censuses state that Margaret had respectively 14 and 12 children of whom 11 survived. In addition to the children he had with with Margaret, John fathered 3 children (Elizabeth, John, and Mary) with Margaret's older sister Rebecca. A couple of the 14 children reported in the 1900 census may have been Rebecca's.

John R. Baldwin's family in 19th century censuses

The 1850 census for District 31 of Lee County, Virginia, shows John R. Baldwin (22) farming with his wife Rebecca (22) and their daughter Elizabeth (1). Other sheets from the same Lee County census show Margaret (14) still living with her parents, John F. Howard (48) and Elizabeth (38), and 2 older and 5 younger siblings. Margaret in John F. Howard's household is shown as born in Virginia. Rebecca in John R.Baldwin's household was born in Kentucky.

Rebecca Baldwin died on 3 April 1855 according to Margaret's 1909 widow's pension eligibility declaration.

John R. Baldwin and Margaret Baldwin married on 13 June 1855 in Harlan, Kentucky.

The 1860 census for "Free Inhabitants" of the Jonesville post office area of the Western District of Lee County, Virginia, shows "John R. Balwin" [sic = Baldwin] 31, Farmer, with his wife "Margret" [sic = Margaret] 22, Housekeeper, and 5 children -- "Elisabeth L." 10, "John M." 8, "Mary E. D." 7, "Wm. H." 4, and "Robbert E." 3 -- and John R. Baldwin's younger brother "Thos. N." 16, Farm labor. Everyone in the household -- including Margaret -- is said to have been born in Lee County, Virginia. Elizabeth, John, and Mary are Rebecca's children. William and Robert are Margaret's children. "Thos. N." is John R. Baldwin's younger brother Thomas Newton Baldwin (1843-1924).

Family moves to Kentucky during Civil War

The Baldwin-Howard family moves from Virginia to Kentucky around 1863.

The 1870 census for the Gray Hawk Post Office area of Sturgeon Precinct No. 6 in Jackson County, Kentucky, shows "John R. Baldwin" 41 with is wife "Margaret" 35 and 8 children -- "John M." 18, "Mary E." 17, "William H." 14, "Robert E." 12, "Newton B." 8, "James A." (6), "Elihu J." 3, and "Henry C." 2. Two others -- "James N. Howard" 23 and "Sarah E. Thomas" 14 were also living with the family. John R. Baldwin is a farmer and Margaret is keeping house. Sons John, William, and Robert were farm laborers. James Howard, probably Margaret (nee Howard's) brother, was also a farm laborer. Sarah Thomas was a domestic servant. The household's real estate and personal property were valued at 400 and 250 dollars. Margaret and her youngest sons James A., Elihu, and Henry C. were born in Kentucky. All others in the household were born in Virginia. The two oldest children -- John M. and Mary E. -- are John R. Baldwin's children with his 1st wife, Rebecca (Howard) Baldwin (1828-1855), Margaret's deceased older sister.

The same enumeration sheet of the 1870 census for Gray Hawk Post Office area in Sturgeon Precinct No. 6, in Jackson County, Kentucky, shows John R. Baldwin's younger brother, Virginia-born "Thos. N. Baldwin", 24 years old, with his Kentucky-born wife "Emily C.", 21, farming and keeping house with 2 Kentucky-born children, "John C.", 3, and "Elizabeth A.", 1, and a Tennessee-born domestic servant, "Susan A. Thomas", 13.

By the 1880 census, Thomas N. Baldwin has moved to Raccoon Precinct No. 2 of Laurel County, Kentucky, where he is enumerated as "Newton Baldwin" 34, with his wife "Emily C." 33, and 6 children -- "John C." 14, "Elizabeth" 11, "Steven M." 9, "Lissie C." 7, "Martha" 11, and "Joseph" 2. Newton is a farmer, Emily C. is keeping house, John C. works on farm, and Elizabeth is at home.

Thomas Newton Baldwin was born on 29 October 1843 in Lee County, Virginia. He died on 10 March 1924 in Laurel County, Kentucky, where he is buried as "N. B." under a plain tombstone in Carrier Cemetery. His wife, Emily C. (Carrier) Baldwin, was born in 1847. She died in Laurel County in 1908, and she too is buried in Carrier Cemetery under a plain tombstone marked "E. B."

The 1880 census for Precinct No. 5, Enumeration District No. 50, Jackson County, Kentucky, shows "John R. Baldwin" 51 with his wife "Margaret" 44 and 9 children -- "Newton B." 19, "James A." 16, "Elihur J." 13, "Henry C." 12, "Martha A." 9, "George F." 7, "Samuel L. B." 5, "Archelus F." 3, and "Charles N." 8/12 year old. All but 2 of the surviving children John R. fathered with Margaret are enumerated here. John R., Newton B., James A., Elihur J., and Henry C. are "laborers" presumably on the family farm. Margaret is keeping house.

Enumerated immediately after John R. Baldwin's household is the household of "Elizabeth Steele", who is widowed, and 2 children, "John M. and "Martha E." Martha Ellen Steele would become the wife of Newton Bascum Baldwin on 15 December 1881 the following year. They would eventually settle in St. Maries, Idaho.

Margaret Baldwin's 1st son, William Henley Baldwin, is enumerated in another household on the same sheet as "William Baldwin", with his wife "Nancy J." and 3 children. They would eventually settle in Stites, Idaho.

Their 2nd son, Robert Ewing Baldwin, is enumerated in the 1880 census for Precinct No. 5, Magisterial District No. 7, Jackson County, as "Robert Baldwin", 22, the son-in-law of "Phiarzina Ketron" (57), who is widowed. He is shown after Phiarzina's son Nelson (17), and before his wife, Phiarzina's daughter "Liddia L." (31). Liddia died, leaving no children, and Robert would remarry Eliza Jane King. They lived in Jackson county for a while but resettled in Laurel County.

The 1890 census was mostly destroyed in a fire.

Neighboring Baldwin families in 1900 and 1910 censuses

The first two censuses of the 20th century show several children of the Baldwin-Howard family living as adults in separate households next door to each other.

The 1900 census for the 3rd Magisterial District, Pond Creek, of Jackson County, Kentucky shows -- on the same enumeration sheet -- three Baldwin households in a row.

1. 1st Baldwin household   John R. Baldwin (71), head, born September 1828, farming, his wife Margaret Baldwin (64), and their 6th son, Arch [Archelus Fernando] Baldwin (22), teaching.
   John and Margaret had been married for 46 (or 47) years (the correction of the second digit is unclear), and she had borne 14 children of whom 11 survived.
2. 2nd Baldwin household   George Baldwin (27), Arch's older brother, teaching, his wife Emaline [sic = Emeline] (24), and their 2 sons.
   George and Emma had been married for 2 years, and both of the children Emeline had borne survived.
   The 1910 census shows George (38) and Emma (34) living inn Horse Lick in Jackson County with all 7 of the children Emma had borne by then. Both of George's parents are said to have been born in Virginia.
   The 1930 census shows George (56) and Emiline [sic = Emeline] (54) still in the Rock Castle River area of Horse Lick with three children, all born after 1910.
3. 3rd Baldwin household   N.B. Baldwin (38), George's and Arch's older brother, farming, with Ellen (36) and all 4 of their daughters.
   N.B. and Ellen had been married for 18 years, and all 4 of their children survived. See "Chronology of Baldwin-Steele family" below for details.

John R. Baldwin died on 10 March 1909. Margaret would live with a grandson next door to the households of other sons.

The 1910 census for the 3rd Magisterial District of Jackson County, Kentucky shows shows Margaret Baldwin living in the family of a grandson apparently next door to the households of two of her other sons. All three families were living on Terrell Creek Road, which was listed after Pond Creek Road.

1. 1st Baldwin household   H. Clay Baldwin (42), a farmer, his wife Malinda (29), and the 4 surviving of the 5 children she had borne in their 11 years of marriage.
2. 2nd Baldwin household   Charley Baldwin (30), a farmer, his wife Emma (29), and all 5 of the children she had borne in their 11 years of marriage. The youngest child is a 1-month-old nameless son who became Earnest.
   The 1930 census shows Charles Baldwin (51), a farmer, 19 when first married, with Grace (30), 18 when first married, and 7 children aged 19, 17, 14, 8, 6, 3, and 1-6/12. The youngest 4 children were probably Charles's children with Grace, assuming they married around 1918. On his 12 September 1918 draft registration card, Charles shows "Stella Baldwin" -- his daughter and first child with Cinthia Emma -- as his nearest relative. The census shows them living in Brodhead in Rockcastle County, Kentucky.
   1. Brodhead in Rockcastle County is close to the Horselick Creek area in Jackson County where the Rockcastle River divides the two counties.
3. 3rd Baldwin household   Bradley Baldwin (21), a farmer, his wife Maude Baldwin (20), childless after 1 year of marriage, and Bradley's grandmother Margaret Baldwin (78), widowed, a mother of 12 children of whom 11 survived. Bradley is farming on his own account, on land he owns free of mortgage.

Margaret Baldwin died on 3 June 1912.

Baldwin, Howard, and other family names

In the English-speaking world, family names are acquired through birth from the father, and through marriage and adoption from the husband or adopting father. And family historians tend to focus on "lines" defined by the family names of parents, hence "Baldwin" and "Howard" if speaking of the "Baldwin-Howard" family. Yet John R. Baldwin was a "Baldwin-Steale" descendant, and Rebecca and Margaret Baldwin were "Howard-Mark" descendants. Hence every union of 2 parents represents unions of 4 grandparents, which represent unions of 8 great-grandparents, which represent unions of 16 great-great-grandparents, ad infinitim. There is no biological reason to focus on only one name, but social biases -- in particular the dominence of male lines -- lead many people to focus on the history of only their (usually) patrilineal family name.

Baldwin

Dictionary of American Family Names, Edited by Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges (1990, 2003, 2006), 3 volumes, Oxford University Press, gives the following description of the family name "Baldwin" (as cited by FamilySearch, viewed and copied 25 December 2019).

Howard

Wikipedia gives the following account of "Howard" as a family name (viewed and copied 25 December 2019).

Some writers report that "Howard" as either a family or given name is a conflation of two distinct but now homophonic names with a history of other pronunciations and spellings -- one "Hayward" from the title of a parish officer or warden in charge of the hedges (hay), fences, or other enclosures around a ward, parish, village or town, or public pastures -- the other from elements meaning heart, mind, and spirit (hug) and hardy, brave, and strong (hard) -- to put it most simply without several pages of obscure geographic and linguistic history. In other words, on its surface today, the name "Howard" reveals nothing about its origin or history, but is merely a fairly recent conflation of several spellings representing different origins and histories.

Variations

Most family names in English-speaking countries are not exclusively English. Many have origins in other languages, and those that originated in English make their way into other languages, where their spellings may change. The following table shows a few of the variations of "Baldwin" and "Howard" in other languages.

           Baldwin      Howard

Dutch      Boudewijn
English    Baldwin      Howard < eowu (ewe) + hierde (herd)
                          As name of keeper of female sheep
French     Beaudoin     Huard < OG Hugihard "heart brave"
           Baudouin
German                  Howard / Howart < ON "high (chief) warden"
                          Hereward "army guard" 
Icelandic  Baldvin
Italian    Baldovino
Spanish    Balduino

Bradley Baldwin

William Oconnel Bradley Baldwin

Who were Bradley Baldwin's parents?

According to a 1963 death certificate for "William Oconnel Bradley Baldwin", his mother was "Ann Baldwin" and his father was "? Taylor". This would suggest that, if he was in fact Margaret Baldwin's grandson, that his mother was Martha Ann Baldwin -- who did not marry Samuel Moore until 11 April 1889, about 14 months after Bradley Baldwin's birth on 22 February 1888. However, the death certificate does not establish that "William Oconnel Bradley Baldwin" is the "Bradley Baldwin" identified as Margaret Baldwin's grandson in the 1910 census. And a few other matters need to be considered. So let's pursue the trail of evidence -- back from the 1910 census, then forward to the 1963 death certificate -- and see where it leads us.

If Bradley Baldwin was a grandson of John R. Baldwin's widow Margaret Baldwin -- as stated in the 1910 census -- then he is either a son of one of her sons, or a son of her only surviving daughter Martha Ann Baldwin.

If Bradley Baldwin was 21 at the time of the 1910 census, then he was born around 1888-1889, and so he should be in the 1890 and 1900 censuses with his parents or guardians. But the 1880 census data is not available. And there is no Bradley Baldwin -- or Brad or William or William Oconnel or other likely person in a 1900 census for any of the Baldwin-Howard households that I can find.

Marriage dates of Baldwin-Howard children
and ages when Bradley Baldwin was born

The Age column in the following list shows the sibling's age at the time Bradley Baldwin -- presumed to be be William Oconnel Bradley Baldwin -- was born on 22 February 1888.

                        Age  Born-Died  Married
 1. Elizabeth Letitia   38  1849-1930  1870 J.M. Taylor
 2. John Milton         36  1851-1936  1880 Verena Marie McCoy
 3. Mary Ellen          35  1853-1909  1880 Zela Lewis
 4. William Henley      31  1856-1937  1875 Nancy Jane Robbins
 5. Robert Ewing [*]    29  1858-1942  1896 Eliza Jane King
 6. Sarah                   1859-1859
 7. Unnamed son             1861-
 8. Newton Bascum       25  1862-1919  1881 Mary Ellen Steele
 9. James Alfred        23  1864-1954  1891 Nancy Ann McGee
10. Elihu Joseph        21  1866-1942  1918 Mollie W. Wilson 
11. Henry Clay          20  1867-1950  1898 Malinda Abrams
12. Martha Ann          17  1870-1934  1889 Samuel Moore
13. George Finley       14  1873-1946  1898 Emaline King
14. Samuel L.B.         12  1875-1941
15. Archelus Fernando   11  1876-1935  1907 Martha Louverna Davis
16. Charles Nelson       8  1879-1944  1920 Grace Fullington

The 1890 census was mostly lost.

1900 census I can find no likely candidate for Bradley or Maude, or for a William, William Oconnel, or William Oconnel Bradley as either a Baldwin or a Taylor.

The 1900 census shows Martha Ann Baldwin married to Samuel Moore, living in Laurel County with 5 of their children.
This is 1 fewer child than the 6 children the census said had survived of the 7 children it said she had borne.
Could the missing surviving child have been Bradley Baldwin? He would have been about 12 years old.
See Martha Ann and Samuel Moore in censuses (below) for details.

John R. Baldwin died on 10 March 1909.

The 1910 census for Magisterial District 3 shows 3 Baldwin households living on Terrell Creek Road, which is enumerated immediately after Pond Creek Road.

1. Household of John R. and Margaret Baldwin's son "H. Clay Baldwin" (42).
2. Household of John R. and Margaret Baldwin's son "Charley Baldwin" (30).
3. Household of "Bradley Baldwin" (21), a farmer, with his wife "Maude" (19), childless after 1 year of marriage, and Bradley's grandmother "Margaret" (78), widowed, a mother of 12 children of whom 11 survived. Bradley is farming on his own account, on land he owns free of mortgage.

Bradley Baldwin with Maude and Margaret on Terrell Creek Road In 1910 census for Jackson County, Magisterial District 3 Copped and cropped from Ancestry.com

This is the first appearance of a "Bradley Baldwin" associated with the Baldwin-Howard family.

The datum for this census was 15 April. Hence Bradley -- if 21 as of this date -- was born between 16 April 1888 and 15 April 1889.
If born on or before 15 April 1888, Bradley would have been 22 years old or older

Margaret Baldwin died on 3 June 1912.

Baldwin fixing to move away" Right   Article reporting community news from Bond, Jackson County in the "Eastern Kentucky Correspondence" column of the Thursday, 11 February 1915 edition of The Citizen (page 5). Copped and cropped from Newspapers.com William Oconnel Bradley Baldwin Below   1942 Selective Service Registration Card for "William Oconnel Bradley Baldwin". The earliest document on Ancestry.com to show "William Oconnel" in addition to "Bradley Baldwin". See his 1963 death certificate (bottom of this column) for another example. Whether Bradley Baldwin was given this longer name at the time of his birth, or whether he acquired it later in life, is not clear. It may have been inspired by the name of the late 19th-century Kentucky politician William O'Connell Bradley (see main text). Copped and cropped from Ancestor.com
Nancie Maudie Baldwin's 1950 death certificate informed by Bradley Baldwin Copped and cropped from Ancestry.com
William Oconnel Bradley Baldwin's 1963 death certificate informed by Audrey Music Copped and cropped from Ancestry.com
Audrey Music Death certificate informants are generally family members or friends close enough to know more than just the name of the deceased. Audrey Music's relationship with W.O.B. Baldwin is not known, but she appears to have known things about him that a casual friend would not know. She was going on 28 when he died at 77. She could have been anything from a girlfriend to a caretaker. The death certificate states that Bradley Baldwin died in West Liberty Hospital. Audrey Music might have been a nurse or other hospital staff member that had reason to know enough about the circumstances of his life and death to act as informant. The 1940 census for Floyd County shows (1935-1994) is "Audrey Joe Music" (4) as the 1st of then 3 children of "Theodore Music" (47) and his wife "Sara" (24). Theodore was a laborer doing government work, Sara was doing housework, and they were renting a non-farm home. He had 4 years and she 1 (one) year of schooling. Her name on Social Security records is "Audrey Jewell Music". She died in Paintsville, the seat of Johnson County, just north of Floyd, but is buried in Akers-Music Cemetery in Bonanza in Floyd County as "Audrey J. Music". She was born in Bonanza and her mother's maiden name was Sarah Akers. The bottom of her headstone reads "I Love You Mom".

1915 newspaper article   An article datelined Jackson County, Bond, 6 February 1915 -- published in the 11 February 1915 edition of The Citizen, a Berea County weekly paper, reported that "Bradley Baldwin is selling out and fixing to move away" (page 5 continuation of "East Kentucky Correspondence Column" beginning on page 8).

Berea is the county seat of Madison County, which shares a border with the northwest part of Jackson County The Citizen reported local community news for Jackson and other nearby counties in a column called "East Kentucky Correspondence".

Bond is less than 2 kilomters (about 1 mile) east of Annville, or roughly 10-11 kilometers (6-7 miles) north-northeast of Terrells Creek or Baldwin Branch.

When and why did Baldwin move?

Assuming the Bradley Baldwin of Bond in the 1915 article is the Bradley Baldwin who was farming on Terrell Creek Road in the 1910 census -- when and why did he move to Bond? Did he stay at the farm on Terrell Creek Road until Margaret died in 1912? And why is he leaving Bond only a few years in 1915?

1917 draft registration   A Form 1 Registration Card, signed on 5 June 1917 in Floyd County, Kentucky, show a "Bradley Baldwin" as a "Natural Born" citizen, born on 20 February 1888 in "Moores Creek" in Kentucky, USA, then living in Beaver in Floyd County. He was "Farming & Teaching" and self-employed. He was married claimed an exemption [from military draft during the Great War] on the grounds that he had a "Dependant wife" (original card). He was tall, of medium build, had brown hair and eyes, was not bald, and had no missing limbs or other disabilities. His "Race" was "Caucasian" and the "If person is of African descent, tear off this corner" tab in the lower-left corner of the form was intact on both forms.

Two versions

There are two versions of Form 1 Registration Card for Bradley Baldwin -- the original and a "true copy" of the original. The original is in two hands. Bradley's hand is evident in the "Name in full" and on the "Signature or mark" line. The "true copy" in an entirely differen cursive hand. The original has "Dependant wife" and the copy has "Dependent wife". British usage differentiates the condition of being dependent (adjective "dependent") and a dependent person (noun "dependant") the two. American usage generally uses "dependent" for both. So the "True copy" was has what is called a "copiest error" -- possibly an intentional "correction", possibly an inadvertent "error".

Floyd County is in the heart of Eastern Kentucky coal country, to the east of Jackson County, between Jackson County and Tennessee.

Beaver is an unincorporated community in Floyd County.

Moores Creek is about 5 kilometers (roughly 3 miles) southwest of Annville in Jackson County.

1920 census I can find no likely candidate for Bradley and Maude Baldwin in any Kentucky census.

The 1930 census for Magisterial District 4, Paint Precinct, in Morgan County, Kentucky, shows "Bradley Baldwin" 42 with his wife "Maud" 44. He was 20 and she was 22 when they married. They were renting their home, and he was working as a farmer on a general farm on his own account. Living with them was a niece "Mildred Mathews" 11.

"Mathews" was Maude's maiden name.

Morgan County northwest of Floyd County. Morgan County originated from parts of other counties, including an earlier larger incarnation of Floyd county, but is separated from Floyd County by Maggofin County. These and other adjacent counties are in the heart of Eastern Kentucky's coal mining region.

The 1940 census for Magisterial District 3 of Floyd County shows a "Bradley Baldwin" 52 with his wife Maude 54. They were renting a home on Clear Creek and he was employed as a "tiple [sic = tipple] worker" in a coal mine. Both had completed 8 years of schooling.

The tipple of a mine is where coal or ore extracted from the mine is loaded onto railroad hopper cars or other vehicles for transport. The census also specified jobs like "coal loader" and "mine forman".

Age difference discrepancies

The 1910 census shows Bradley to be 1 year older than Maude, whereas the 1930 and 1940 censuses show Maude to be 2 years older than Bradley.

1942 draft registration   A Department of Selective Service D.S.S. Form 1 Registration Card signed 27 April 1942 shows "William Oconnel Bradley Baldwin", age 54 [sic = 53], born on 22 February 1988 in Jackson County. His wife is "Maud" and they were residing in Fed in Floyd County. He was working for "Panes Babes Coal Co." He was 5'10-1/2" tall, weighed 200 lbs, had brown eyes and gray hair, a light complexion, and a "Scar side of right eye". The card is specifically for "Men born on or after April 28, 1877 and on or before February 16, 1897".

Hand writing

As is commonly seen on official forms filed by people with limited writing skills, all items on this form -- except the name box and the signature -- are written in a smooth cursive hand. "Bradley Baldwin" is printed in the name box in an awkward hand that confuses upper- and lower-case letters -- BRɑDley BalDWIN -- which uses the closed single-story "script ɑ" (more common in writing) in Bradley, and the open double-story "Latin a" (more common in printing) in Baldwin. "WilliAM OCONNel" is written above Bradley in the "First" part of the "Name (Print)" box. He has no "Middle" name, and signed his name "Brɑdley Bɑldwin" with closed spript style "ɑ" and only "B" is upper case, but the cursive has an angular quality about it.

The Department of Selective Service (DSS) oversaw thousands of draft boards in states and territories of the United States.

Nancie Maudie Baldwin dies on 13 March 1950 in Dungus in Morgan County, Kentucky.

A Commonweath of Kentucky Certificate of Death, informed by "Bradley Baldwin", states that "Nancie Maudie Baldwin" died in Dungus in Morgan County on 13 March 1950 from "Hypertensive H. [Heart] disease" due to "apoplexy". The typed certificate states that she had been living in Dingus for 21/2 years, was married, and was occupied as a housewife doing housework. She was said to have been born on 9 April 1887 in Clay County, Kentucky, and had lived for 62 years 11 months and 4 days. Her father's name was "Moses Mathew" and her mother's maiden name was "? Goforth". The funeral home was in West Liberty and her body was removed for burial in a family cemetery in Dingus on 15 March 1950.

1963 death certificate   A Commonweath of Kentucky Certificate of Death filed in Morgan County, Kentucky, on 14 January 1963 states that "William Oconnel Bradley Baldwin" died in West Liberty, Morgan County, on 10 January 1963, of "Cong. [congestive] failure" due to "Ca- [cancer] intenstines". His marital status was "widowed" and his occupation was "retired miner". He'd been residing in a home on a farm. His mother's name was "Ann Baldwin" and his fathers name was "? Taylor". He was born on 22 February 1888 in simply "Kentucky". The informant was "Audrey Music". His Social Security No. was "unknown" -- although other data shows that a Social Security claim was made by him, or in his name, on 25 February 1953. The death certificate states that he was buried in Baldwin Cemetery in Dingus on 14 January.

West Liberty is the county seat of Morgan County. It is roughly 130 kilometers (80 miles) northeast of Annville in Jackson County.

Dingus is an unincorporated community in Morgan County about 16 kilometers (10 miles) to the east of West Liberty.

Out-of-wedlock chronology

William Oconnel Bradley Baldwin's 1963 death certificate confidently identifies his mother as "Ann Baldwin" and equivocally names his father "? Taylor". Whatever the relationship between his parents, he appears to have gone by his mother's maiden name -- which suggests that he was an out-of-wedlock child of Martha Ann Baldwin, who went by "Ann" and "Annie".

The chronology makes the out-of-wedlock scenario plausible. Bradley was born on 22 February 1888, when Martha -- who was born on 3 July 1870 -- would have been 17 years, 7 months, and 15 days old. She married Samuel Moore on 11 April 1889, some 13 months and 10 days later.

Would the lost 1890 census have shown Bradley in the household of Samuel and Martha Ann Moore, as a child she brought to the marriage? Or in the household of his Taylor father? Or in the household of another relative, possible John R. and Margaret Baldwin?

William Oconnel Bradley Baldwin's namesake

Bradley Baldwin's full given and middle names -- William Oconnel Bradley -- may have been inspired by the name of the Republican politician William O'Connell Bradley (1847-1914) -- the Governor of Kentucky from 10 December 1895 to 12 December 1899, and a U.S. Senator from 4 March 1909 until his death on 23 May 1914. Bradley had served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and rose to political fame as a champion of the causes of Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party in Kentucky, which had tired to remain neutral at the start of the war but by 1863 had declared itself on the Union side.

Kentucky in many ways symbolizes the divide in various opinions over questions of slavery and secession. It was the birthplace of both Civil War presidents -- Abraham Lincoln on the Union, and Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy. Kentucky was the site of a number of skirmishes, while the vast majority of the battles in the war took place to the east in Virginia, to the south and southeast in Tennessee and North Carolina, and in states further south.

Some non-governmental groups in Kentucky sided with the Confederacy, but the state of Kentucky itself always remained in the Union and essentially backed the Union cause.

The following article offers a particularly interesting perspective on Kentucky's role in the Civil War.

A. C. Quisenberry
Kentucky Union Troops in the Civil War
Register of Kentucky State Historical Society
Published by Kentucky Historical Society
Volume 18, Number 54, September 1920
Pages 13-18
PDF JSTOR

Quisenberry estimates that "Kentucky furnished many prominent men to the Confederacy, as well as about thirty five thousand soldiers" (page 13), and that "Kentucky furnished 51,000 white volunteers and 23,000 colored-volunteers to the Union army -- a total of 74,000 troops" (page 13). Later in the article, after adding more troops to the Union side of the ledger, he concludes that, "If accurate figures could be obtained, it is believed that the number of Kentuckians who served the Union in the Civil War would not fall far short of 125,000" (page 14) -- which means (1) accurate figures cannot be obtained, and (2) the number would fall short of 125,000 -- qualifications which have been lost on Wikipedia and other sources which tend to stress inflated figures.

The question of Cherokee blood

Are Baldwin-King descendants part "Indian"?

The Baldwin and King families of Jackson County, Kentucky, appear to have been socially as well as geographically close. Two Baldwin-Howard sons, Robert Baldwin and George Baldwin, married King-Nichols daughters, Eliza and Emeline, and several King-related Baldwins are buried in the King Cemetery in Peoples in Jackson County.

Someone posting to a Baldwin message board claimed that "Emmaline King's mother was a full blooded Cherokee." The claim was made in reference to the wife of George F. Baldwin, a son of John R. Baldwin and Margaret Howard.

The 1870 and 1880 censuses do not support the "Cherokee" thesis.

The 1870 and 1880 censuses had 5 "Color" classifications -- White (W), Black (B), Mulatto (M), Chinese (C), and Indian (I).

1870 censuses for Eliza's and Emeline's parents

The 1870 census for Pond Creek, Jackson County, Kentucky, shows "Woodson T." (23), a farm laborer, as the oldest of 5 children still at home with "George W. King" (53), a farmer, born in Tennessee, and "Tabitha" (53), keeping house, born in Virginia. Everyone in the family is classified "W" under "Color".

The 1870 Pond Creek census also shows "Josephine" (18) as the 3rd of 9 children of "R.E. Nichols" (62), born in North Carolina, and "Emaline" [sic] (44), born in Tennessee. Everyone in the family is classified "W" under "Color".

1880 census for Eliza and Emeline with their parents

The 1880 census for "Ex. Dist. No. 57" of "Precinct No. 7" of Jackson County, Kentucky, shows "Eliza J." (6) and "Emaline" [sic] (5) among 3 other children of "Woodson T. King (33), a laborer, and "Josephine" (30), keeping house. The census states that Woodson was born in Tennessee to Tennessee-born parents, while Josephine was born in Kentucky to a father born in North Carolina and a Kentucky-born mother. Everyone in the family is classified "W" under "Color".

Josephine, born in 1851, died on 22 January 1941. Josephine's mother, Emeline Shiplett, born in Tennessee in 1835, died in Pulaski County, Kentucky, on 15 January 1905.

Woodson T. (1846-1931) and Josephine (1951-1941) share an erect King headstone in King Cemetery in Peoples in Jackson County, where both Eliza and Emeline are buried as "Baldwins" with "K" middle initials.

Cherokee blood

As for the "full blooded Cherokee" allegation -- the census "Color" classifications ascribed by census takers are "colored" by their own impressions and claims by informants, and not in and of themselves proof of biological descent. However, in the absence of positive evidence of Cherokee ancestry, the census classifications weigh against the claim that Josephine (much less her mother) was an "Indian" in the eyes of census enumerators.

One would think that a "full blooded" Indian of any tribal origin would have been physically distinct, and that -- according to the racialist principles of the "Color" classification scheme -- someone who was known to be, or seen or regarded as being, a "full blooded" Indian would have been classified as an Indian, and that halfbreeds would have been classified as Mulatto -- a common practice at the time.

Indians were not racially identified in the 1790-1840 censuses, which classified people by their status and/or color.

1810 Free whites, All other free persons, Slaves
1820 Free whites, Slaves, Free colored persons, All others except Indians not taxed
1830 Free white persons, Slaves, Free colored persons
1840 Free white persons, Free colored persons, Slaves
1850 Color White, black, or mulatto
1860 Color White, black, or mulatto
1870 Color White (W), Black (B), Mulatto (M), Chinese (C), Indian (I)
1880 Color White (W), Black (B), Mulatto (M), Chinese (C), Indian (I)
1890 Color or Race Whether white, black, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, Chinese, Japanese, or Indian
1900 Color or Race Whether white, black, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, Chinese, Japanese, or Indian

The 1850 and 1860 censuses were the first to identify people by color -- white, black, or mulatto. 1870 and 1880 censuses added Chinese and Indian, and the 1890 and 1900 censuses added quadroon, octoroon, and Japanese.

The 1850 census and subsequent censuses included "Indians" living in the general population. Most Indians in the general population were citizens of the United States -- unlike the "non-taxed" Indians who usually lived on reservations within tribal jurisdictions, or were otherwise enrolled as members of a Federally-recognized tribe and subject to special Indian censuses. Non-taxed Indians were nationals but not citizens, until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, which recognized all Indians as citizens.

Whether someone was tallied as "Indian" or as something else depended a lot on the enumerator, the community, the family, and the person. Indians in some southern states were apt to be classified as "mulatto", especially if they were perceived as being mixed, as the word was broadly used to mean anyone of mixed race. But an Indian might also be classified as "black" or "white" depending on perceptions. Some people who might have been classified as other than "white" passed as white, or were said to be white by their families.

Not a few family-tree genealogy enthusiasts search "in vain" for blood ties -- and now DNA links -- with history's famous and infamous, or with yesteryear's victims of discrimination and oppression. States like Kentucky -- through which many Cherokee and other Indians passed after the Indian Removal Act of 1830 -- especially on the mass exodus in 1838 along the fabled "Trail of Tears" -- are supposed to have witnessed many unions between Indians and whites and blacks.

Update

On 7 July 2017, a member of the Baldwin Genealogy group on Facebook, of which I became a member from 22 November 2018, posted an image from an Ancestry.com message board stating that "Emmaline King's mother was a full-blooded Cherokee." Another member replied that "My gr gr grandmother was Josephine Nichols, mother of Emiline [sic = Emeline] (Shiplett) King. My line is via Eliza Jane King, sister to Emiline, and wife of Robert E., Baldwin. Ancestry shows no Indian in me. However if you had seen my grandfather, her son you would swear to differ, but no Indian shown for me on Ancestry dna testing."

These are familiar experiences. There were "Cherokee blood" stories in a collatoral line of my Hardman-Hunter mother's Hunter-Thomas side -- not my Wetherall-Baldwin father's Baldwin-Steele side -- based on the stature, black hair, and high cheek bones of her first cousin once-removed Eleanor Theodosia (Thomas) Vincent (1916-2007). The cousin, more like a sister to my mother and an aunt to me, did extensive research on her family history, including trips back to North Carolina, Missouri, and Kentucky -- and ruled out Cherokee connections.

Appearances, too, can be deceptive. People seeing my maternal grandfather Owen Hardman when a younger man, and his wedding photograph with Ullie Hunter, think he looks "Indian". But he's not of Indian descent so far as I can tell, and there are no stories to that effect in the family. His oldest daughter, my aunt, characterized him as "Black Irish", through his mother, alluding to his black hair, steel gray eyes, and skin that deeply darkened from the sun. I too had dark hair and deeply tanned, to the point that I once played Pocahontas in a cub scout skit when living in San Francisco. Later in life, a passenger at a shuttle terminal in San Francisco asked me if I was on 60 Minutes, thinking I was Ed Bradley -- on account of stubbly salt-and-pepper hair and beard, and a tan and other facial features that apparently the man had seen as Negroid. Or perhaps it was the way I peered over my glasses, sitting off to the side with a lap top pretending to be a writer deep in thought.

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Son's DNA report MyHeritage, 26 December 2021 MyHeritage calls this an "Ethnicity Estimate" At best, though, it's a guestimate of the regional genetic origins of ones ancestral lines My son has legal nationality connections, and ethnic linguistic and sociocultural links, only with Japan and the United States of America. Biologically, his Japanese (mother's) ancestral lines probably include all or most of Japan's several older indigenous lines and several more recent continental lines. But they may also include some lines from other parts of the region and the world. His major American (father's) lines -- i.e., my lines -- appear to go back to various lines in Europe including the United Kingdom. But they may also intersect with some non-European lines. Bloodlines, however, have nothing to do with "ethnicity" or "heritage" -- such as they are. Bloodlines cannot be parsed into discrete parts representing different "ethnicities" or "heritages". Genes determine anatomical traits and physiological conditions, and a range of related abilities -- including the ability to acquire the ethnic (linguistic and sociocultural) qualities of the locality where one is raised during ones developmental years, or where one settles later in life. Ethnicity, in other words, has nothing to do with genetic composition, and everything to do with life experiences -- which are unique and, at any moment of time, singular, whole, complete -- and more diverse and elastic for some individuals than other. As a "legal person" residing in Japan with Japanese nationality my son is Japanese Nationality, as a formal affiliation with a state, is a binary variable in that one either has or does not have a state's nationality. Like all such nationalities, Japan's nationality is a purely civil status having nothing to do with ethnicity as a sociocultural identity or race as a biological identity. In Japan, nationality is a legal artifact of possessing a family register in a Japanese municipality. While essentially territorial, it is acquired at birth mainly through family lineage but at times through place of birth, and later in life mainly through naturalization. As an "ethnic person" residing in Japan at this point in his life my son is 100 percent Japanese and 20 percent American Ethnicity is a variable that changes as one acquires and loses the sociocultural qualities and abilities that define the ethnicity -- the languages, literatures, laws, customs, beliefs, musics, and costumes that characterize the society associated with the ethnicity. As such, my son is primarily "Japanese" and secondarily "American". Were he to live in America, his "American ethnicity" would quickly develop more and his "Japanese ethnicity" would slowly atrophy. DNA tests DNA tests appear to be credible as measures of possible genetic connections down lines of biological descent. 3rd cousin matches seem to be fairly reliable, and reliability increases up the kinship chart, to the point that matches with half and full siblings, and parents, approach 100 percent certainty. To the extent that so-called "ancestral regions" can be genetically mapped, then DNA tests may also be credible as measures of possible biological connections with anthropologically defined "geographical races", or politically defined "national populations", or socially defined "racioethnic groups" -- however, with the understanding that racialized biological connections are not measures of "belonging". In other words, contrary to the claims of the companies that commercialize DNA tests for ancestry purposes, assessments of DNA -- a purely chemical condition -- are not indicators of "ethnicity" or "heritage", or of "race" or "nationality" -- all of which are anomalies of social (including cultural, political, and legal) conditions. My son's DNA test experience In 2020, my son had a DNA test which linked him with a 3rd cousin who had had a similar test. See DNA connections above for details. The results were predictable. The regional DNA percentages showed the expected distribution of East and Central Asian versus European bloodlines. There were traces of other connections, including Papuan and Inuit, which marvelled my son -- until I told him that they were too small to warrant attention. I added that even the classifications with larger percentages of composition were not to be taken as evidence of ethnicity or heritage -- never mind the catchy characterization of the results as an "Ethnicity Estimate" (see right). Results from different companies are notorious for their variations, especially with respect to compositions that amount to only a few percent. Overlap between the genetic patterns of all defined populations makes drawing lines difficult at best. And the algorithms used to parse a person's DNA into a list of "ethnicities" by percent of composition involve more art -- and even racial politics -- than science. Many people have taken reports of small traces of one or another "ethnicity" too seriously -- never mind that DNA is at best a biological association with a geographically or anthropologically defined population -- not a measure of "ethnicity" or "heritage". But such buzzwords fuel the obsession with "race" and "roots" -- especially in America, where DNA technologies have been exploited by family history and genealogy companies as measures of "ethnicity" and "heritage". I am very conservative when it comes to rules of evidence to support a claim of ancestral connection, whether biological or social. All forms of evidence have to be used with caution. Documentary evidence can be faulty because claims on birth and death certificates can be false or misleading for any number of reasons. Family stories can also be faulty for many reasons. DNA tests can contradict and upset documented and/or oral understandings of biological family ancestry. Test results can reveal unknown adoptions, baby mix-ups, and extramarital or premarital affairs. Some results have connected multiple half-siblings who had no idea they were conceived at a fertility clinic with the sperm of the same donor, who was socially the father of only the children he sired with his wife. For people who know they were adopted, DNA tests have provided ways to circumvent agencies that refuse to open their files. For people raised by a single mother or father, who do not know their other parent, or who know of a twin or other sibling who was anonymously adopted by another family, DNA tests have hold out hope of finding the missing parent, brother or sister. But DNA labs that market their tests as indicators of "ethnicity" or "heritage" are making false promises. For biological descent, even when plausibly confirmed, is not the same as "belonging" to an "ethnic" or "heritage" group whose members claim to be the determiners of membership. To put it differently -- DNA tests signify biological conditions -- whereas "identity" in the sense of "belonging" is a social (political) condition. My son and Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Warren in the United States reportedly claimed to be of part Cherokee ancestry on the basis of a family story and a DNA report (see next). The question arises -- what if my son, on the basis of his DNA "ethnicity estimate", were to claim to be "Irish, Scottish, or Welsh"? If not also "Papuan" or "Inuit"? What if my son -- as a spoof of such proof of his self-styled "ethnicity" -- wore a green kilt made of Welsh wool over a pair of seriously distressed original button-fly 501 Levis inherited from his father -- with a happi sporting his mother's Sugiyama-crest -- and Nez Perce moccasins, inspired by the fact that his paternal grandmother grew up on a homestead on the Nez Perce Reservation, and wore moccasins made by the Nez Perce parties who traded them to her father for his deer hides -- not to mention that his father, yours truly, this writer, collected Nabisco Shredded Wheat Straight Arrow Injun-uity Cards, wore feathered headresses around the house and neighborhood, played Poccohantas in a cub scout skit, and to this day treasures a book about Chief Joseph given him by his maternal grandmother on his 10th birthday, and learned Japanese from a professor in the Oriental Languages Department at the University of California at Berkeley who happened to be the foremost authority on the Nez Perce language and a translator of oral Nez Perce narratives? Should real Irishmen, real Scotsmen, real Welshmen, and real Nez Perce reel with offense -- and chastise my son for ethnic imposture and cultural appropriation? My son has never experienced what it's like to be Irish, Scotish, Welsh, Papuan, or Inuit. He's never applied for membership in presentday Irish, Scotish, Welsh, Papuan, or Inuit tribal or national entities. For fleeting moments while pondering the implications of his DNA report, he's only imagined what life would have been like had he been born into and raised within such ethnic communities. He understands that his racial (biological) identities are essentially meaningless -- based as they are on DNA associations with historically racialized geographical regions that have nothing directly to do with his actual legal nationalities and actual functioning ethnicities -- which are "Japan" and "America". True ethnicity My best definition of "ethnicity" is where one functions to the point of feeling at home -- whether in one's cradle of birth if one was raised and remains there -- or elsewhere, if ones parents migrated when one was young, or if one was adopted and raised by someone elsewhere -- or, if later in life, one migrates to and settles in another locality or country. Ethnicity is umbilically linked with the sort of neurological capacity that defines the human condition -- abilities that transcend and supercede both legal status and biological race -- the capacity to absorb and learn family, neighborhood, regional, and national languages and shared behaviors and beliefs, especially when young but throughout life. To the extent that a person assimilates, embodies, mediates, expresses, and identifies with the local conditions of ones existence, including the languages, behaviors, and sentiments of another human community, the person acquires the "ethnicity" or "ethnicities" of the community. Ethnicities, to the extent that they are real and animate sociocultural (including linguistic) behaviors, are are formed through sociocultural experiences and observable in behaviors. As a variable, ethnicity is a measure of "ethnic competency". Mathematically, ethnicity is a vector, and its magnitude changes as one acquires and loses the abilities to function under the sociocultural conditions that essentially define the ethnicity -- the languages, literatures, laws, customs, beliefs, musics, and costumes that characterize the society associated with the ethnicity. As such, my son is primarily "Japanese" and secondarily "American". He is 100 percent at home in Japan in that he can reflexively function in Japan's mainstream -- understand, relate to, and respond to the full range of ordinary conditions one has to navigate when living in Japan. He would probably feel about 20 percent at home in America, as he speaks and understands a lot of English and has visited America a few times, sometimes for several weeks, once for a few months. Yet he would encounter a lot of English and many situations that would not make immediate sense to him. And many Americans would perceive his lack of reflexive "nativity" in Americanese and American life. The "100 percent" and "20 percent" figures are assessments of my son's ability to function in Japan and America as an "ordinary person" in the respective country -- regardless of nationality, which is a civil status -- and regardless of biological descent or "race" in its narrow sense, which is best regarded as an independent variable along with nationality and ethnicity. Were my son to live in America rather than just visit every few years, his American ethnicity would quickly and significantly increase. He might someday approach 100 percent or "typical American". Or he might plateau at 80 percent of typical American sociocultural competency. In the meantime, if my son, while living in America, never returned to Japan, or infrequently returned only to visit, his Japanese ethnicity would atrophy as a result of what he lost and/or failed to gain by being out of touch with a constantly changing country. True ethnicity, in other words, is not a binary-state variable like nationality, which one either has or doesn't have, obtained through legal procedures at birth or later in life. Ethnicity is more like a set or array of variables that acquire values through life experiences -- learning and practice -- digestion, assimilation, acculturation, accommodation, and adjustment, and maintenance. Ethnicity, once gained, has to be maintained. Like muscles built through exercise, you continue to use them or lose them. Ethnicity as competency As a "legal person" residing in Japan, I am Japanese. I am Japanese because I possess a family register affiliated with a local (municipal) polity in Japan's sovereign dominion. Japan's territorial family registers are tantamount to nationality regisiters. In other words, Japan's nationality comes and goes with territorial affiliation with Japan in the form of a family register in a territory under Japan's sovereign control and jurisdiction. Having a valid family register is proof of nationality and the singular requisite for obtaining a Japanese passport, which I have. Japan's nationality, like all such nationalities under international private law, is a purely civil status, entirely without ethnic or racial qualifications or significance. Historically, ethnicity and race have had little standing in Japanese law, and from its inception in the late 19th century, Japan's nationality laws have been entirely civil. As an "ethnic person" in Japan, I am probably around 60 percent Japanese and 70 percent American. These are purely private concerns, not matters of law or policy. "60 percent Japanese" is up from 0 percent when I first came to Japan, and "70 percent American" is down from 100 percent when I left America. These numbers signify my overall "ethnic competency" in Japan and America -- not where I now feel most comfortable. Linguistically I use mainly Japanese in my daily life and research and am able to deal with all situations, though some require study and preparation. I long ago reached a plateau of non-native competency in Japanese, but at a level far below my native English ability. The later, however, has suffered because I haven't maintained the degree of American cultural and social literacy I had at the time I settled in Japan in the mid 1970s. Newer aspects of American life are alien to me. When visiting America, I inevitably have to ask a lot of "fresh off the boat" questions. My ignorance immediately signals to others that, never mind my seemingly native American English, I might not be American. Unlike when I first came to Japan, I now feel less tense when landing in Japan than when landing in America. I look forward to visiting America, but then look more forward to returning to Japan. America feels like a place I've been in the past and know well. Japan feels like a place I may not know as well as America but want to be and feel more at home. This is what "ethnicity" actually is. It's not DNA. It's not nationality. It's a mix of competency and feeling at home. For some people -- like Elizabeth Warren (see next) -- it may be an "ancestral identity" linked with a "family story" bolstered by a DNA report. For me and my son, however, it's a lot more than just family lore or DNA ancestry. It's the ability to "function" and "feel at home" somewhere. Ethnicity as memory The variables of ethnicity include emotional elements, such as memories of past experiences conveyed by family stories. To the extent that the foundation of a memory conveyed in a family story is factual, the account of the past is factual. But memories of the past can be distorted by romantic and bitter sentiments. And story tellers may indroduce totally imaginary elements that are perceived as facts rather than fabrications. Family histories embrace all manner of stories -- whether the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth -- or taller or shorter than the truth, if not entirely false. Some stories are subject to "fact checking". Others are beyond the ability to vet and validate. Some "Cherokee blood" stories can be proven true or untrue. Others will remain in the "who knows" bin. Even when true, however, a biological (racial) ancestral link is not the same as ethnic (sociocultural) competency, much less of legal (political) belonging.

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Images of documents related to Elizabeth Warren's revision of her "Ethnicity" classification on University of Pensylvania personnel records Copped and cropped from Ethnicity not a factor in Elizabeth Warren's rise in law By Annie Linskey, Boston Globe, 1 September 2018 The case of Elizabeth Warren The politics of DNA nativity testing In the fall of 2018, Elizabeth Warren (b1949), a Senator for Massacheusetts, while campaining for the Democractic Party candidacy in the 2020 presidential election, became a target of attacks and criticism from President Donald Trump and others -- not all Republicans -- who ridiculed or criticized her claim that she was of "part Cherokee heritage", or otherwise questioned her motives for making the claim. A year later, on 19 August 2019, at a presidential forum on Native American issues held in Sioux City, Iowa, she publicly apologized for her past claims of Native American ancestry. In October 2019, days before announcing her bid for the Democratic candidacy, Warren released the results of a DNA examination, which suggested that she had a quantum of Native American blood that originated 6 to 10 generations ago -- i.e., 1/64th (1.6 percent) to 1/1024th (0.1 percent) Native American blood -- which centers on 8 generations or 1/256th (0.39 percent). Other reports put the range at 1/32nd (3.1 percent, 5 generations) to 1/512th (0.2 percent, 9 generations). Warren publicized the results of the DNA analysis, partly through a staged video conference with the Stanford genetics professor she commissioned to analyze her blood. This got her into trouble with some tribal governments and other critics of DNA tests as qualifiers for claiming Native Ameican identity. Shortly after this, she apologized both for the DNA test and for identifying herself as a Native American after first classifying herself as white, while a law professor. She insisted though -- and a Boston Globe investigative career report agreed -- that she had always been hired as a "white" or "caucasian" and not as a "Native American". This, though, also posses a problem -- namely, that race should matter in the selection of a law professor, if not in the selection of any professor. A 19 August 2019 report in The New York Times by Thomas Kaplan included the following remarks about reaction from some quarters to Warren's apology. Elizabeth Warren Apologizes at Native American Forum: 'I Have Listened and I Have Learned' By Thomas Kaplan Aug. 19, 2019 [ First part of article omitted ] Ms. Warren, who has said she learned of her Cherokee and Delaware ancestry through family lore, angered some Native Americans with her decision last year to use a DNA test to provide evidence of Native American descent. Though Ms. Warren did not claim citizenship in any tribe, a Cherokee Nation official said at the time that "using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong." Joseph M. Pierce, 36, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation who did not attend the forum but watched Ms. Warren's remarks and tweeted about them, said Ms. Warren had eroded tribal sovereignty "by taking into her own hands the ability to determine who is and who is not Cherokee." He said of Ms. Warren's apology, "It's not enough for me." "It seems like she's not willing to really engage or name, even, the harm that she's caused," he said in an interview. "The harm is that she has shifted the conversation towards DNA testing, towards biology, towards family lore." [ Rest of article omitted ] See the full article at www.nytimes.com Warren reportedly "deleted a Twitter post where she spoke about her 'Native American ancestry' and DNA . . . The post, which was made one year ago . . . and had over 56,000 likes read, 'My family (including Fox News-watchers) sat together and talked about what they think of @realDonaldTrump's attacks on our heritage. And yes, a famous geneticist analyzed my DNA and concluded that it contains Native American ancestry.'" (Charlie Nash, 16 October 2019, www.mediaite.com). A year before this, Ellen Goldbaum reported as follows in a University of Buffalo UBNow article. The View Warren's use of DNA test indicates lack of sensitivity, UB geneticist says By ELLEN GOLDBAUM Published October 17, 2018 "I was personally dismayed when I heard she had done this." That was the first response UB professor James N. Jarvis had when he learned that Sen. Elizabeth Warren had taken a DNA test, presumably to provide evidence that she is of Native American descent. Jarvis, who is of Akwesasne Mohawk ancestry, is a professor of pediatrics in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB. He is the former chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Native American Child Health, and has worked on American Indian and Alaska native child health issues for more than 30 years. "This is exactly the kind of thing that tribes have been trying to discourage, as it impinges on their sovereignty," he says of Warren's use of the DNA test. "It's up to the tribe to say who is a member and who isn't." He notes the fact that Warren had specifically said the DNA test proves she has some Cherokee ancestry was disturbing because, as a statement from the tribe pointed out, DNA testing cannot identify individuals as members of tribes. As a geneticist, Jarvis says the reliability of DNA testing is also uncertain, especially where Native American ancestry is concerned. "I don't know how many Native American specimens are in any of these databases, and if they are there, I'm not sure that those specimens are being used legitimately. I don't think any tribe would permit people to come onto their territory to say, 'Can we collect some of your DNA for ancestry.com?' We don't know the circumstances under which those specimens were collected and was there tribal input." He says the fact that Warren went ahead with the DNA test revealed a lack of understanding of the complex issues around Native American ancestry and DNA testing. "The fact that she did it was almost prima facie evidence that she isn't very connected culturally to how delicate an issue is the use of DNA from Native Americans," he says. [ Rest of article omitted ] See the full article at UBNow University at Buffalo The State University of New York

Circe Sturm's Becoming Indian, 2011 "The Struggle over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-First Century" Examines "race shifting" -- used here to mean growing up "white" and later adopting a "Native American" identity on the basis of a family story and/or a DNA test, on ones own authority, without validation through tribal vetting resulting in recognition and acceptance as a citizen of the tribe Kim TallBear's Native American DNA, 2013 "Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science" Examines the manner in which family history websites and DNA testing companies have conspired to nurture and commercialize the racialist belief that Native American identity is a matter of ancestry validated by genetic biology -- rather than a matter of possessing the citizenship of a sovereign native nation Yosha Bunko scans

The faces of racialism

No case better dramatizes the pathological consequences of racialism -- the belief that there are races, and the formation, expression, and defense of racial identities.

The belief that there are races is passively acquired while growing up in the language of a society of people who have learned to racialize themselves and others. Racialization becomes both habitual and customary -- reflexive, expected, and accepted -- and socially, politically, and economically exploited.

Critics of Warren's behavior made three points.

1. Warren had no business claiming Cherokee ancestry in the first place because the stories she heard in her family were false. Her family has been white, and she is white.
2. Regarding DNA results as tantamount to heritage or identity, as though tribal ancestry and membership are determined by race or biology, is wrong. Only affiliation based on recognition by a tribe, exercising its sovereign right to determine its membership, generally through objective assessments of kinship, gives an individual the right to identify with the tribe.
3. Claiming identity without formal recognition subverts the principle of self-determination implicit in the notion of tribal sovereignty.

Warren never questioned the "legitimacy" or "validity" or "appropriateness" of race boxes. She grew up with them -- took them for granted. She denies that she "gamed" them -- "played" them to her advantage in a system that ranks some races higher than others on a scale of favourability. But on a scale of fashionability -- she publicized her family story and took pride in its implications of ancestry -- which was racialist if not racist.

Warren based her claims on family lore -- a story told her by her mother, apparently by way of explaining high cheek bones in the family. When Donald Trump called her "Pochohantas" and challenged her to prove her claim, she took a popular discover-your-roots DNA test and posted the results -- which, on the surface, suggested that she had a fraction of Cherokee blood in her veins.

"What do the facts say?" she asked one analyst on camera. "The facts suggest that you absolutely have a Native American ancestor in your pedigree," the analyst replied. The ancestor was said have been in the range of from 6 to 10 generations ago.

So there it was. Being Cherokee was reduced to a question of DNA. Never mind that the reduction of identity to DNA took the form of guesswork based on racialized assumptions about what constitute "Cherokee" genetic traits, compounded with statistical speculation about when the ancestor whose bloodline putatively had such traits mated with someone from another bloodline and created the bloodline that eventually contributed to Warren's bloodline.

Enter representatives of the "Cherokee nation", who strongly objected to Warren's citation of her DNA profile as a vindication of her claim to be of part Cherokee descent -- as though to say DNA tests, and not tribal vetting and recognition, determined whether she had to the right to identify as Cherokee. If so, then the very existence of genealogical DNA tests, which reduce genetic data to "ethnicity" and "heritage", threatens to usurp the sovereign right of every tribe to determine its own membership.

Legally, recognized Native American nations, as self-governing semi-sovereign entities, have the right to determine who belongs to the nation or tribe. This right is equivalent to the right of every sovereign state to determine who qualifies for its nationality and a passport. Just as no sovereign state would tolerate another state or 3rd party telling it who belongs to its affiliated nation, no legally recognized Native American tribe can countenance DNA test results as evidence of membership.

Warren, however, has countered -- fairly I think -- that she has never sought or claimed affiliation or membership. She has only claimed ancestry, based on family lore and what she perceives as DNA evidence that -- though it fails to absolutely corroborate the family story -- stops short of debunking it.

Cherokee representatives acknowledge Warren's public admissions that she identifies as a "white woman", has never claimed to be a "tribal citizen", that only tribes can determine membership, and that DNA is not a token of native identity. In other words, being Cherokee -- Cherokee identity -- is not a matter of race or ancestry, but a status determined by sovereign tribes based on treaty and other formal arrangements with the federal government (in the case of federally recognized tribes).

Some tribal representatives, however, resent the fact that Warren still cherishes the story in her family about having a Cherokee ancestor. They want her to renounce her family story as false -- as an encouragement to other white families with similar stories to denounce them.

The complexity of the Native American DNA controversy echoes the complexities of American-style "identity politics" generally. The commercialization of the rapidly developing science of DNA testing, to exploit the expanding and lucrative genealogy market, which feeds the romanticization of links with victims of genocide and slavery, is a relatively minor issue. The most emotional issues are these.

1. self-determination Tribes have a sovereign right to determine who belongs to the tribe. Tribal membership -- tribal citizenship -- is a political construction based on kinship, among other social and legal qualifications -- not race.
2. authenticity Who is and isn't "Native American" is a matter of collective tribal recognition. Non-native people do not have the right to stylize themselves as native on account of a family story or DNA test.
3. identity Only authentic Native Americans have the right to claim and mediate -- as opposed to "appropriate" -- the culture and heritage of their tribe as a "self-determined" people.

But here's the rub . . .

Reducing identity to a matter of tribal sovereignty is fine -- if one overlooks a few demographic facts that favor the Warrens of the world. Tribal memberships today are largely based on kinship trails leading back to 19th-century and early 20th-century "Indian Rolls". The rolls were created by federal government agents, who registered Indians when removing them from their homelands to a reservation, or Indians residing on a reservation, or Indians residing off a reservation but enrolled as a member of a tribe in order to benefit from Bureau of Indian Affairs and other programs available only to enrolled members.

These are the most salient problems when it comes to understanding the limitations of "Indian rolls" as a necessary and sufficient requisite for claiming ancestry -- speaking only of ancestry and not ethnic (sociocultural) competency or legal (political) affiliation.

1. Some Indians left their tribe before the tribe was removed and were not subject to tribal enrollment.
2. Some Indians evaded enrollment because they didn't support the tribal decision to submit to enrollment.
3. Some Indians were residing in areas not reached by government agents.
4. Some Indians married into non-Indian families, and some Indian children were adopted by non-Indian families,
   and thereby lost the tribal affiliations that may have claimed them before their marriage or adoption.

The ultimate questions, then, are these.

1. Do governments of legally recognized Native American tribes -- never mind their sovereign right to determine membership qualifications -- have the right to tell the Warrens of the world that they must disavow their "family stories" on the grounds that such stories, when told by "whites", are ipso facto romantic projections, hence false?
2. While sovereign tribes have the right to dissociate membership from biology -- an attitude that a number of ethnic interest groups would do well to emulate -- do they have conclusive evidence that DNA testing cannot reveal probable biological descent from an ancestor who belonged to an historical tribe?

Military records show that John R. Baldwin (1828-1909), born in Lee County, Virginia, died in Jackson County, Kentucky, served as a Private in a U.S. Army infantry regiment from 1847-1848 during the Mexican War of 1846-1848, mustering in when 18 and mustering out when 19. Veteran records show that he qualified for a pension from 1887 until his death in 1909, and that Margaret Baldwin (1835-1912), as his widow, continued to receive 3/5ths of his pension until she died in 1912. Records show that John R. Baldwin applied for certification as an "invalid", though the grounds for his claim, and when it was recognized, is unclear.

Descriptive and Historical Register of Enlisted Soldiers of the Army, Continued → No. 919, Baldwin, John R., 18, Hazel, Sandy, Fair, 5-11, Virginia, Lee, [Occupation unread], [April 1847] 24th, Manchester, [Enlisted by whom "Cpt. unread"]

Continued → for during the War with Mexico, under the Acts approved January 19th and February 11th, 1847 [No. 919, Baldwin, John R.] 16th Inf E, 5 Aug 48, Termination of War, blank, blank, blank, blank, at Newport Ky a Pvt.

As of this writing (2021), only about 20 percent of surviving Civil War pension records have been digitalized on specialized military record websites like Fold3. Currently available records show many John Baldwins and several John R. Baldwins in Union and Confederate military units -- but no John or John R. Baldwin corresponding to John R. Baldwin (1828-1909) of the Baldwin-Seale and Baldwin-Howard families of Virginia and Kentucky. There is speculation that he served, and that his service was rewarded by grants of land in Kentucky. But available documents support only his service in the earlier Mexican War before he married Rebecca Howard.

After Rebecca's death, John R. Baldwin married her sister Margaret Howard, and they were living in Lee County, Virgina, when the Civil War started. But his war pension records, and records of payouts to Margaret as his widow, show only the Mexican War.

A military service eligibility record for Kentucky, however, shows that in July-August 1863, at the age of 34, while residing in Owsley County in the 8th Congressional District of Kentucky, a Union state, "John R. Baldin" from Virgina -- presumed to be "John R. Baldwin" of the Baldwin-Howard family -- was registered as a Class A male "subject to do military duty between the ages of twenty and thirth-five".

Civil War records also show that John R. Baldwin's younger brother, Thomas N. Baldwin (1843-1924), enlisted in a Confederte infantry regiment in Virginia, served all but the first few weeks of the war, and witnessed the end of the war as a corporal.

Selected Civil War participation cases

The following cases of Civil War participation are introduced in this section.

Other John R. Baldwins (Confederacy)

Halltown John R. Baldwin
Richmond John R. Baldwin

Neither of these John R. Baldwins is the John R. Baldwin of the Baldwin-Seale and Baldwin-Howard families.

John R. Baldwin's youngest brother (Confederacy)

Thomas N. Baldwin (1843-1924)

Thomas Newton Baldwin is John R. Baldwin's 3rd younger brother in the Baldwin-Seale family.

John R. Baldwin's brother-in-law and nephew (Union)

James Alvin Thomas (1827-1861)
Henry Clay Thomas (c1845-1904)

James Alvin Thomas is the husband of Mary Ann Baldwin, hence John R. Baldwin's and Thomas Newton Baldwin's brother-in-law.
Henry Clay Thomas is James and Mary Thomas's son, hence JR and TN Baldwin's nephew.

Husbands of Baldwin and Grubb widows (Confederacy, Union)

Moles brothers
William Hamilton Moles (1834-1864)
Elihu Hardin Moles (1838–1890)

William Moles is the husband of Archibald Grubb's 2nd widow Nancy (Markham) Grubb.
Elihu Moles is the husband of Archibald Grubb's daughter Harriet (Grubb) Baldwin, the widow of William Baldwin, John R. Baldwin's 1st younger brother.
Nancy (Markham) (Grubb) Moles is Harriet (Grubb) (Baldwin) Moles's step-mother.

Chronology of Baldwin-Steele family

5. Newton Bascom Baldwin and Martha Ellen Steele

The Baldwin-Steele family descends from at least England, Scotland, Ireland, and France through several American colonies and territories including New York (NY), Massachusetts (MA), Virginia (VA), Tennessee (TN), and Kentucky (KY).

Baldwin line down to Baldwin-Steele union

The Baldwin line seems to have migrated from Ireland to Virginia in the late 18th century. The following reconstruction is based and various reports of very uneven quality. Only information from John R. Baldwin on down has benefited from inspection of census and other civil records.

The smaller 1st number represents the ancestral generation "n" counted back in time from my own generation taken as n = 0. Accordingly, my parents are n = 1 (1. Wetherall-Hardman), their parents are n = 2 (including 2. Wetherall-Baldwin), and their grandparents are n = 3 (including 5. Baldwin-Steele).

The larger 2nd number represents the family number counting from the union of my parents (1. Wetherall-Hardman). These numbers are the basis for the numbers assigned all family tables on this website. See the Wetherall families section of the "Wetherall family history" page on this website for a table showing how this numbering scheme works for 6 ancestral generations of the Wetherall-Hardman family.

8. 160. Baldwin-Gore
   John Baldwin (1721-1791)
   Born 11 Apr 1721, Thorpe, Morieux, Suffolk, England
   Died 13 Jan 1791, Brent Eleigh, Suffolk, England
   Mary Ann Gore (1725-1798)
   Born 1725 in Suffolk, Alpheton, England
   Died 1798 in Suffolk, Brent Eleigh, England
7. 80. Baldwin-Ferrel
   James Baldwin (1752-1798)
   Born 1752 in Kilkenny, Kilkenny, Ireland
   Died 19 Nov 1798, Wythe, Tazewell County, Virginia
   Elizabeth Ferrell (1752-1835)
   Born September 1752 in Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
   Died 22 March 1835, Sneedville, Hamilton, Tennessee, USA Migrated from Ireland to Virginia and married nlt 1772.
   Whether they married before or after they migrated is unknown.
6. 40. Baldwin-Newberry
   John Baldwin (1772-1830)
   Born 1772, Bedford, Montgomery County, Virginia
   Died 13 Feb 1830, Sneedville, Hancock County, Tennessee
   Elizabeth Newberry (1770-1825)
   Born 1770 Bedford, Montgomery County, Virginia
   Died 1825 Sneedville, Hancock County, Tennessee
   John Baldwin was the 3rd (4th) of 11 (12) children and the 1st of 3 sons.
5. 20. Baldwin-Seale
   John Milton Baldwin (1792-1802 - ntl Nov 1855)
   Born 1792 or 1802 in Bedford, Montgomery County, Virginia
   Died nlt November 1855 in Lee County, Virginia
   Elizabeth Seale (abt 1808 - nlt 1858)
   Born about 1808 in Virginia
   Doed nlt 1858 in Lee County, Virginia
   Married about 1825 in Virginia
   John Milton Baldwin was the 1st of 11 children including 6 sons.
4. 10. Baldwin-Howard
   John R. Baldwin (b 21 Sep 1828 VA, d 10 Mar 1909 KY)
   1st wife Rebecca Howard (b 31 Oct 1828 KY, d 3 Apr 1855 VA)
   2nd wife Margaret Howard (b 1 Dec 1835 KY, d 3 Jun 1912 KY)
   John R. Baldwin was the 2nd of 9 child and the 1st f 5 sons.
   He may have been a Methodist minister, but if so it was a part-time vocation, for all censuses show him as a farmer.
   Rebecca and Margaret were sisters. Rebecca had at least 3 children between 1849-1855. Margaret bore at least 11 and as many as 11 children between 1857-1880. She also raised Rebecca's 3 children. The 1900 census states that Margaret had 14 children of whom 11 survived. The 1910 census states she had 12 of whom 11 survived. A couple of the 14 children counted in the 1900 census may have been Rebecca's.
   In 2010 and 2011, when 99 and 100 years old, William B. Wetherall recalled from deep within his generally accurate memory that the names of his maternal great grandparents were John Baldwin and Margaret Howard, while those of his maternal great grandparents were Jonas Steele and Elizabeth Grubb. He had no family records of any kind other than his own birth certificate. While he said very little to us about his ancestors, he had clearly learned and remembered quite a bit about them from his relatives, most likely his grandmother Ellen Baldwin, his aunt Sadie Williams, and his cousin Faye Rebenstorf.
3. 5. Baldwin-Steele
   Newton Bascum Baldwin (b 24 Dec 1862 VA, d 22 Mar 1919 ID)
   Martha Ellen Steele (b 14 Oct 1863 KY, d 27 Apr 1943 ID)
   Married 5 December 1880 probably in Jackson County, Kentucky.
   N. Bascum Baldwin was John R. Baldwin's 6th child and Margaret's 3th child assuming that John R. fathered 3 children with Rebecca and 11 with Margaret.

Steele line down to Baldwin-Steele union

See 4th cousins X removed: Steele-Grubb connections with David Crockett an account of the Steele line of the Steele-Grubb from which the Baldwin-Steele family partly descends, and the possible crossing of paths of the Steele line with an offshoot of the Crockett ancestors of Davy Crockett.

See 4th cousins X removed: Steele-Grubb connections with David Crockett for a look at the possible crossing of paths of the Steele line of the Baldwin-Steele family with an offshoot of the Crockett ancestors of Davy Crockett.

Baldwin-Steele chronology

1860 census for the Jonesville post office area of the Western District of Lee County, Virginia, shows "John R. Balwin" [sic = Baldwin] 31, Farmer, with his wife "Margret" [sic = Margaret] 22, Housekeeper, and 5 children -- "Elisabeth L." 10, "John M." 8, "Mary E. D." 7, "Wm. H." 4, and "Robbert E." 3 -- and John R. Baldwin's younger brother "Thos. N." 16, Farm labor. All are shown to have been born in Lee County in Virginia.

Elizabeth Letitia Baldwin (1849–1930), John Milton Baldwin (1851–1936), and Mary E. Baldwin (1853-1870) were John R. Baldwin's children with Rebecca (Howard) Baldwin (1828-1855).

William Henley Baldwin (1856–1937) and Robert E. Baldwin (1858–1942) were the first of at least 11 (possibly 12 or 14) children that John R. Baldwin would have with Margaret [Anne] (Howard) Baldwin (1835–1912), Rebecca's older sister. "Thos. N." is Thomas Newton Baldwin (b1843), John R. Baldwin's younger brother.

Newton Bascum Baldwin was born in Virginia on 24 December 1862, the 3rd child and son of John R. Baldwin (1828-1909), who was born in Virginia, with Margaret [Anne] (Howard) Baldwin (1835–1912), who was born in Kentucky.

Martha Ellen Steele was born on 14 October 1863 in Kentucky to a father born in Kentucky and a mother born in North Carolina (1880 census), though parents born in North Carolina.

Baldwins move from Virginia to Kentucky around 1863
The 1870 census shows all children up to and including "Newton B." (8) as having been born in Virginia, while all children from and including "James A." (6) were born in Kentucky. Newton Bascum Baldwin (1862-1919) was born on 24 December 1862, and James Alfred Baldwin (1864-1934) was born on 23 April 1864.

1870 census shows "Newton B. Baldwin" (8) living in Sturgeon Precinct No. 6 in Jackson County, Kentucky (Post Office: Gray Hawk) with his father John R. Baldwin (41), a farmer, his mother Margaret (35), keeping house, siblings John M. (18), Mary E. (17), William H. (14), Robert E. (12), James A. (6), Elihu J. (3), and Henry C. (2). James V. Howard (23) and Sarah E. Thomas (14) were also living with the family. John, William, and Robert were farm laborers. James V. Howard, probably Margaret's brother, was also a farm laborer. Sarah H. Thomas was a domestic servant. The household's real estate and personal property were valued at 400 and 250 dollars. Margaret and her youngest sons James A., Elihu, and Henry C. were born in Kentucky. All others in the household were born in Virginia. The two oldest children -- John M. (18) and Mary E. (17) -- are John R. Baldwin's children with his 1st wife, Rebecca (Howard) Baldwin (1828-1855), Margaret's deceased older sister.

1870 census shows "Martha E. Steele" (6) living in the household of Elisabeth [sic = Elizabeth] Steele (50), in which she is the youngest child, following George (23), James H. (21), Sarah H. (17), Nancy E. (15), John W. (12), and Mary J. (9). Elizabeth is a widow keeping house, while George and James are single farmers, and John is a farm hand. Elizabeth's place of birth is shown as "Va, Ky" as though she wasn't sure, while all the children are said to have been born in Kentucky. Elizabeth cannot write, while George, James, Nancy, and John can neither read nor right. George and James are "Male citizens of U.S. of ages 21 years and upwards".

1880 census shows "Newton B. Baldwin", age 19, living in Jackson County, Kentucky, apparently in Pond Creek, with his father John R. Baldwin 51, mother Margaret 44, and 8 younger siblings -- James A. 16, Elihur J. 13, Henry C. 12, Martha A. 9, George F. 7, Samuel L. B. 5, Archelus F. 3, and Charles N. 8/12. His father, himself, and all his brothers down to and including Henry, are laborers, presumably on the family farm. Margaret is keeping house.

As of 1880, John R. Baldwin had fathered at least 13 children, including 2 girls and 11 boys. In 1870, Newton B. was in the middle of the pack. In 1880 he was the oldest of those still at home.

1880 census shows "Martha E. Steele" (15) also living in what appears to be Pond Creek, Jackson County, Kentucky, with her mother Elizabeth Steele (59), and her brother John W. Steele (22). The Steele household is listed immediately after Baldwin household, on the same census sheet, so apparently the two families were neighbors. Elizabeth, widowed, is keeping house. John is a laborer, and Martha E. is at home.

Elizabeth, equivocally born in "Va, Ky" in the 1870 census, is reported in the 1880 census to have been born in North Carolina, while her father was born in Germany and her mother in Virginia. John and Martha (Ellen) were said to have been born in Kentucky, their father in Kentucky, and their mother in North Carolina.

1880-1882   The 1880 census was enumerated on 2 June. Some reports claim that N. Bascum and M. Ellen married on 5 December that year. However, the 1900 and 1910 censuses record that they had been married respectively 18 and 28 years, which implies they had married in 1882, the year before their first daughter, Sadie, was born.

Between 1883 and 1890, Bascum and Ellen had 4 daughters, all born in Kentucky. Their youngest daughter, Ida Mae Baldwin, would marry William Riley Wetherall and give birth to William Bascum (later Bascom) Wetherall.

1890 census was destroyed in a fire.

1900 census shows "N?? B. Baldwin" (38), born December 1861, head of household, with his wife Ellen (36), born October 1863. Both have been married 18 years, and she has had 4 children of whom 4 survived -- namely, the 4 daughters listed in this census -- Sa??y (Saddy? Sally?) [sic = Sadie, Sada] (17), born August 1883, Liddie [sic = Lydie, Lydia] (14), born April 1886, Almedie [sic = Meda] (11), born December 1888, and Ida (9), born March 1891. N.B. was engaged in farming, and all the girls were at school.

The same enumeration sheet shows two related Baldwin-Howard families -- (1) N.B.'s parents, John R. and Margaret Baldwin, and his 6th younger brother, their 7th (John's 8th) son, Arch Baldwin, and (2) N.B.'s 4th younger brother, George, and his family. The three Baldwin-Steele families are grouped together, as though they were living on neighboring farms or were farming the same land. The fertility figures on the 1900 census state that Margaret had given birth to 14 children of whom 11 survived. John R. died in 1909, after which Margaret would live with a grandson next door to the families of two other sons. See 1910 census (below) and "Neighboring Baldwin families in 1900 and 1910 censuses" (above) for fuller details.

1904 seems to have been the year that Bascum and Ellen Baldwin uprooted their family from Kentucky and began the westward wanderings that took them through at least Nebraska and Washington before settling in Idaho around 1910. In the early 1980s, their granddaughter Lennie Lee Anstine wrote an autobiographical account of the Anstine family in which she said that her mother, Lydia (Baldwin) Anstine, Bascum and Ellen's 2nd daughter, born in Kentucky in 1886, had left Kentucky when she was 18 -- ergo 1904.

1905 Kansas census for Parsons, in Labette County, enumerated on 1 March 1905, shows "N.B. Baldwin" (44), residing in a home with "C.F. Williams" (28), "Sallie Williams" (22), and "Oscar Williams" (6). C.F. Williams and N.B. Baldwin were born in Virginia, and Sallie and Oscar were born in Kentucky. C.F. Williams came to Kansas from Tennessee, while Sallie and Oscar Williams, and N.B. Baldwin, came to Kansas from Kentucky. C.F. Williams is described as a "Hospital attendant".

1907 Lincoln, Nebraska directory shows "Ellen Baldwin" and "Neuton B. Baldwin" [sic = Newton] both working and residing at the "Asylum" -- i.e., the Nebraska Hospital for the Insane -- he as a "meat cutter", she as an "asst cook". Lennie Anstine's account says that Lydia met Charley in Lincoln, where she was attending business school. Apparently they were living at the same boarding house.

1908 Spokane, Washington directory shows "Newton B Baldwin" working at a "restaurant" at 914 1st Avenue and residing at 907 1/2 1st Avenue. The "Restaurants" section of the classifieds shows a "N B Baldwin" at 914 1st Avenue. The same directory shows "Ida M Baldwin" as a student at "N W Business College" boarding at 1222 Sprague Avenue. There are many Baldwin's in the directory, including a "Madge Baldwin", a student at the same college, boarding at the same address. "Madge" may well be a corruption of "Meda".

1909 Spokane, Washington directory shows "Newton B Baldwin" working at a "restaurant" at 914 1st Avenue and residing at 921 1st Avenue. The "Restaurants" section of the classifieds show "N B Baldwin" at 914 1st Avenue. "Ida M Baldwin" is shown as a student at "Blair Bus Coll" boarding at 921 1st Avenue, which is Newton B. Baldwin's address. "Meda J Baldwin" is shown working as a "cashr" at "N B Baldwin" and residing at the same 921 1st Avenue.

Ida Mae Baldwin has transferred from North West Business College to its rival Blair Business College and moved in with her parents. Marge Baldwin is not listed in the 1909 directory. "Marge" may actually have been Ida's older sister "Meda" boarding with Ida and attending the same North West Business College.

1910 Spokane, Washington directory shows "Ida M Baldwin" boarding at Apartment J 1017 3rd Avenue. No place of work or study is shown. Neither her parents nor sister are listed.

1910 census shows "Newton B. Baldwin" (47), a restaurant keeper, and his wife Martha E. Baldwin (46), living on First Avenue in St. Maries, Kootenai County, Idaho. They had been married for 28 years in what was a 1st marriage for both, and she had had 4 children of whom all 4 survived. Residing with them were their daughters Meda J. Baldwin (21), single, a milliner working at her own shop and Sadie E. Williams (26), married for 6 years, no occupation, a granddaughter Fay [sic = Faye] M. Williams (3), and a grandson Claud [sic = Claude] J. Williams (2). Also listed as living in the Baldwin household were 12 boarders, ranging in age from 24 to 51, and working . The first listed boarder, a 48-year-old unmarried man who had immigrated from Germany in 1880 and since naturalized, was working as a dishwasher at a restaurant, most likely N.B. Baldwin's. The only female boarder was a 42-year-old childless widow, who was working as a teacher at a public school.

Sadie had 4 children of whom only Faye and Claude survived. That she had been married for 6 years suggests she had married around 1904 (the 1930 census reports her age as 46 and says she was 19 when first married, which implies she married in 1903). She is apparently already separated from their father, who was said to have been born in Tennessee. Faye was born in Iowa in 1906 and Claude was born in Nebraska in 1907.

The 1910 census for the 3rd Magisterial District of Jackson County, Kentucky shows N. Bascum Baldwin's mother Margaret living with the family of her grandson, Bradley Baldwin. Bradley is living next door to the families of two of Margaret's sons, H. Clay Baldwin (1867–1950) and Charley Baldwin (1878–1940). This census states that Margaret had borne 12 children of whom 11 survived. Margaret died in 1912. See "Neighboring Baldwin families in 1900 and 1910 censuses" (above) for fuller details about the neighboring Baldwin-Steele families in these censuses.

1911-1912 St. Maries, Idaho directory shows the following people related to the Baldwin's or their enterprises.

Abel John, clerk Baldwin & Thatch (page 186) [employee at grocery story]

Baldwin Mrs Ellen (page 186)
Baldwin Meda, b N B Baldwin [apparently an old listing for Meda]
Baldwin Newton B (Baldwin & Thatch)
Baldwin Samuel, employe [sic] Milwaukee Lumber Co [probably not related]
Baldwin & Thatch (N B Baldwin, G T Thatch), grocers [grocery story]

Ure Clifford M, barber (page 211) [listing for Meda after marriage]
Ure Meda, operator Interstate Telephone Co [Meda married]

Williams Mrs Sara E (page 212) [possibly an old listing for Sadie]

1914-1915 St. Maries, Idaho directory shows both Newton B. Baldwin (and parenthetically his wife Ellen), and also William R. Wetherall (and Ida M.), but no Clifford Ure or Sadie Williams.

Baldwin Newton B (Ellen), St Maries (page 70)
Wetherall William R (Ida M), printer St Maries Gazette, St Maries (page 325)

1916-1917 St. Maries, Idaho directory shows the following members of the Baldwin-Steele family.

Baldwin Newton B (Ellen), lab, $50, h 2004 Idaho av, St Maries (page 527)
Ure Clifford M (Meda) (Ure & Lawing), $525, h 1845 Main av, St Maries (page 599)
    The introduction to the directory explains that
    "Wife's name will be found in parenthesis [sic] following husband's name.
    Amount following name is assessed valuation of property, taken from County Assessor's List."
Wetherell [sic] William R (Ida M), printer St Maries Gazette, St Maries (page 602)
    The St. Maries Gazette was a local newspaper.
    An advertisement states that the company also did "Fine Job Printing".
Williams Sadie Mrs, chf opr Interstate Utilities Co, $1,050, St Maries (page 603)

William B. Wetherall was uncertain about the nature of his father's employment in St. Maries but assumed he had found work as a printer. He consistently reported that his mother had been in an asylum and not at home. The parenthetic inclusion of "Ida M." as William R. Wetherall's wife in the 1914-1915 and 1915-1917 directories give the impression that perhaps Ida was living at home. Perhaps William R. had her listed in order to create the impression that he had a wife and his son had a mother. It is not clear from the directory where William R. was living. William B. reported that he lived with his father in St. Maries but consistently spoke of being raised by his mother's family. Possibly William R. was living with the Baldwins.

N. Bascum Baldwin died on 22 March 1919 in St. Maries,

1920 census for St. Maries, Idaho shows the household of Clifford M. Yre [sic = Ure] (32), head, born in Iowa, Meda (31), wife, born in Kentucky, Greta A. (7 1/12), daughter, born in Idaho, and Ellen M. [sic = M. Ellen] Baldwin (56), mother, widowed, born in Kentucky. Clifford was working as a a US mail carrier at the post office. Meda and Ellen had no occupation. The family was living at 2004 in what was called the "Townsite Addition". "2004" is also the house number of the St. Maries home in which Ellen and Sadie were living in 1940 (see below).

Ida Mae (Baldwin) Wetherall, born in March 1891 in Jackson County, Kentucky, the youngest of the 4th and youngest Baldwin sister, died in North Idaho Sanitorium in Orofino in Clearwater County, Idaho, on 2 April 1923.

Lydia Margaret (Baldwin) Anstine, born on 1 April 1886 in Jackson County, Kentucky, the 2nd Baldwin sister, died on 31 August 1929 in Utica, Seward County, Nebraska.

1930 census shows Ellen Baldwin (66), widowed, in "E" Township of Seward County, Nebraska, as the mother-in-law of Charles Anstine (46), head, widowed, his daughters Lennie (20), Ora [sic = Aura] (18), and Imogene (3 6/12). Charles is a farmer, and Lennie and Aura are public school teachers. Charles was the husband of Ellen's 2nd daughter Lydia, who had died the year before after a 2-year bout with colon cancer. It appears that Ellen had been living with the Anstines to help care for Lydia and Imogene, who was born in 1926 shortly before Lydia's colostomy operation in 1927 and hence was still an infant. The 1930 census for "P" township in Seward County shows Sadie (46), divorced, residing and working at the Nebraska Industrial House, a home for unwed mothers. The census shows Sadie's daughter Faye Williams (23) as a teacher in Lincoln, Nebraska. Claude is also possibly living in Seward or Lincoln at the time.

1940 census shows "Sadie Williams" (57), divorced, living as head of household at 2004 Idaho Avenue in St. Maries, Benewah County, Idaho. She had been living in Spokane, Washington in 1935. Living with her is her mother, Ellen Baldwin (76), widowed, who had been living in the same St. Maries home in 1935. Sadie had completed 2 years of college, Ellen 8 years of grade school. Their home is valued at 600 dollars, and they own it free of mortgage.

M. Ellen Baldwin died in St. Maries on 27 April 1943.

Left to right  John R. and Margaret Baldwin's tombstones Wilson Cemetery, Moores Creek, Jackson County, Kentucky Photographs by Dale Przybyl copped from Find a Grave
Elizabeth and J.M. Taylor's headstones A.R. Dyche Memorial Park, London, Laurel County, Kentucky Photographs by Hank Cox copped from Find a Grave
John and Verena Baldwin John Milton Baldwin (1851-1936) and Verena Marie McCoy (1864-1934) are buried as "Mother / Verena" and "Father / John" under a common Baldwin headstone in Meeteetse Cemetery in Meeteetse, Park County, Wyoming Photograph by Eric Scott copped from Find a Grave
Robert, Lydia, and Eliza Robert Ewing Baldwin married Lydia Lutitia Ketron, and after she died he married Eliza King. Lydia is buried in same cemetery as John R. and Margaret Baldwin. Robert and Eliza are buried in Eliza's family's cemetery. Right Lydia L. Baldwin's tombstone Wilson Cemetery, Moores Creek Jackson County, Kentucky Photograph by Dale Przybyl copped from Find a Grave Below Robert E. and Eliza K. Baldwin's headstones King Cemetery, Peoples Jackson County, Kentucky Photographs by Peddle copped from Find a Grave
George F. and Emeline K. Baldwin's headstones King Cemetery, Peoples, Jackson County, Kentucky Photographs by Peddle copped from Find a Grave
Elihu J. and Mollie Baldwin's headstone Davidson Cemetery, Peoples Jackson County, Kentucky Ancestry.com image posted by Elizabeth Loman Henry Clay and Linda Baldwin's tombstone Medlock Cemetery, Annville Jackson County, Kentucky Photograph by Janie Suggs Thatcher copped from Find a Grave
Martha Ann and Sam Moore's tombstone Landrum Cemetery, London Laurel County, Kentucky Photograph by kyvictory copped from Find a Grave	Arch and Martha Baldwin's tombstone Wilson Cemetery, Moores Creek Jackson County, Kentucky Photograph by Dale Przybyl copped from Find a Grave
Charley N. and Grace L. Baldwin's headstones Pilgrims Rest Cemetery, London, Laurel County, Kentucky Photographs by P Renee T copped and resized from Find a Grave

Baldwin-Howard graves

William Bascom Wetherall's maternal-paternal great grandparents

John R. Baldwin and Margaret A. Howard, parents of N. Bascum Baldwin

N. Bascum Baldwin's father John R. Baldwin (1828-1909), and his mother Margaret (Howard) Baldwin (1835-1912), are buried at Wilson Cemetery in Moores Creek, which at the time of their deaths was in the Pond Creek voting precinct of Jackson County in Kentucky. The photographs shown to the right were taken by Dale Przybyl and posted on the Find a Grave website in 2010.

The inscriptions on their headstones are as follows.

REV. JOHN R. / BALDWIN
BORN / SEPT. 22, 1828
DIED / MAR. 10, 1909
[ Unread inscription ]
BALDWIN

MARGARET / BALDWIN
BORN / SEPT. 1, 1835
DIED / JUNE 3, 1912
Thy work is done,
thy trials (?) [ unread ]
BALDWIN

Margaret Baldwin's death certificate

Margaret Baldwin's death certificate shows the following particulars among others.

Margaret Baldwin
Female, White, Widow
Born: 1 December 1865, Lee County, Virginia
Died: 3 June 1912, Moores Creek, Jackson County, Kentucky
Age: 76 years, 6 months, 2 days
Occupation: House wife
Cause of death: Chronic valvular heart disease
Father: John Howard
Father's place of birth: Virginia
Mother's maiden name: Unknown
Mother's place of birth: Suppasadte, Virginia
Informant: A.F. Baldwin
Place of burial or removal: Moores Creek, Kentucky
Undertaker: James Baldwin
Date of burial: 4 June 1912

Major Baldwin-Howard graveyards

The graves of the Baldwin-Howard family are scattered in the following Kentucky, Wyoming, and Idaho graveyards. Most of the siblings and their spouses, though, are buried in Kentucky.

Wilson Cemetery (Kentucky)

Wilson Cemetery, in Moores Creek, near Annville in Jackson County, Kentucky, is the resting place of both John R. and Margaret Baldwin, and of Robert Baldwin's 1st wife Lydia Ketron.

Baldwin-Howard

John R. Baldwin (1828-1909)
Margaret (Howard) Baldwin (1835-1912)

Baldwin-Ketron

Lydia (Ketron) Baldwin (1858-1895)

A.R. Dyche Memorial Park (Kentucky)

A.R. Dyche Memorial Park is in London, Laurel County, Kentucky. It includes a "Taylor" family tombstone surrounded by several members of the extended Taylor family, Elizabeth Letitia (Baldwin) Taylor and her husband J.M. Taylor. Began as Parker family cemetery, then included some neighbors, then sold and renamed Pine Grove Cemetery, which passed through other hands until it assumed its present identity.

Taylor-Baldwin

Elizabeth Letitia (Baldwin) Taylor (1849-1930)
J.M. Taylor (1842-1934)

King Cemetery (Kentucky)

The Baldwin brothers Robert and Charles married respectively the King sisters Eliza and Emaline. All four are buried in separate graves in King Cemetery in Peoples, Jackson County, Kentucky, with several other members of the extended King family. Robert married Eliza after the death of his 1st wife Lydia Ketron (1858-1895), who is buried in nearby Wilson Cemetery.

Baldwin-King (Robert-Eliza)

Robert E. [Ewing] Baldwin (1858-1942)
Eliza K. [King] Baldwin (1873-1938)

Baldwin-King (George-Emeline)

George F. [Finley] Baldwin (1873-1946)
Emeline K. [King] Baldwin (1875-1961)

McGee Cemetery (Kentucky)

McGee Cemetery is a small family graveyard in Jackson County, Kentucky. Practically all of the fewer than 20 graves in the cemetery are of people named McGee. The few that are not McGees by name are former McGees or in-laws, such as Nancy Ann (McGee) Baldwin and her husband James A. Baldwin.

Baldwin-McGee

James Alfred Baldwin (1864-1954)
wife Nancy Ann (McGee) Baldwin (1873-1946)

See Baldwin-McGee graves.

Medlock Cemetery (Kentucky)

Medlock Cemetery, in Annville, Jackson County, Kentucky, includes the following Baldwin-Howard and Baldwin-McGee graves.

Baldwin-Abrams

Henry Clay Baldwin (1867-1950)
Linda (Abrams) Baldwin (1880-1950) (Henry's wife)

Baldwin-McGee children

Roy E. Baldwin (1906-1980)
wife Oma Mae (Shepherd) Baldwin (1909-1992)

Walter R. Baldwin (1910-1990)
wife Edith (Price) Baldwin (1919-2001)
son Lonnie L. Baldwin (1938-1967)

See Baldwin-McGee graves.

Meeteetse Cemetery (Wyoming)

Meeteetse Cemetery in Park County, Wyoming, is the resting place of John and Verena (McCoy) Baldwin.

Baldwin-McCoy

John Milton Baldwin (1851–1936) Verena Marie (McCoy) Baldwin (1864-1934)

Baldwin-McCoy children

The following Baldwin-McCoy children are also buried in Meeteetse Cemetery.

John Dwight Baldwin (1882-1942)
Robert Newton Baldwin (1888-1938)
William Harrison Baldwin (1891-1951)
Bertha Violet (Baldwin) Cogdill (1898–1978).

Woodlawn Cemetery (Idaho)

Woodlawn Cemetery, in St. Maries, Benewah County, Idaho, contains the following Baldwin-Steele graves, of N.B. Baldwin and M.E. Steele, their 3rd daughter Meda and her husband, and their 4th daughter Ida (my paternal grandmother).

Baldwin-Steele

N. Bascum Baldwin (1862-1919) M. Ellen Baldwin (1863-1943)

Baldwin-Steele children

The youngest 2 of the 4 Baldwin sisters are buried by their parents in the same plot.

Meda J. (Baldwin) Ure (1888-1971)
Clifford M. Ure (1887-1953)

Ida Baldwin Wetherall (1890-1923)

See Baldwin-Steele graves.

Above   Baldwin-Steele plot, circa 1970s Woodlawn Cemetery, St. Maries, Idaho General view centering on Baldwin tomb stone from viewpoint of Ida's headstone in foreground. The three headstones in front are those of Ida Wetherall Baldwin, Mother (Ellen), and Father (Bascum). The two headstones in back are those of Clifford Ure and Meda (Baldwin) Ure (see below). Wetherall Family photo Right   Baldwin-Steele plot, 5 December 2018 Taken from front over headstone of "Mother" (M. Ellen Baldwin) in foreground Photo by B.J. Baldwin Rudder
Baldwin-Steele family headstones Woodlawn Cemetery, St. Maries, Idaho Note changes During the roughly 40 years that have passed between the taking of the above two pictures, (1) The main "Baldwin" tombstone and the "Mother" headstone have settled a bit to the right, and (2) a tree can be seen immediately in front of the Ure (Meda Baldwin) graves behind the Baldwin tombstone. Time line N. Bascum Baldwin died in 1919, Ida Baldwin Wetherall in 1923, M. Ellen Baldwin (Mother) in 1943, Clifford M. Ure in 1953, and Meda J. (Baldwin) Ure in 1971. Presumably the plot was acquired either before or at the time of N.B.'s death with the rest of the family in mind. Only Sadie and Lydia, the oldest Baldwin sisters, are not buried in the plot -- Lydia, who died in 1929, because she settled in Utica, Nebraska, and is buried with her husband there, and Sadie, who died in 1964, because she lived mainly with her daughter Faye and son-in-law in nearby Coeur dAlene and is buried there, as later were they. Right top  Front of Baldwin tomb stone N. Bascum Baldwin (1862-1919) M. Ellen Baldwin (1863-1943) Photograph by Khat copped from Find a Grave Right center  Ida Wetherall Baldwin headstone Ida Mae (Baldwin) Wetherall (1890-1923) Photograph by Khat copped from Find a Grave Right bottom  Back of Baldwin tomb stone Ure family of third Baldwin sister Almeda Photograph by Khat copped from Find a Grave Bottom  Ure-Baldwin headstones Clifford Melvin Ure (1887-1953) Almeda Jane (Baldwin) Ure (1888-1971) Photographs by Khat copped from Find a Grave
Sadie (Baldwin) Williams's headstone Coeur dAlene Memorial Gardens, Idaho Photograph by Michael Young copped from Find a Grave	Faye (Williams) Rebenstorf's headstone Coeur dAlene Memorial Gardens, Idaho Photograph by Michael Young copped from Find a Grave
Claude J. Williams morturary plaque Washington State Veterans Cemetery Medical Lake, Spokane County, Washington Photograph by David Luders Find a Grave CMI = Construction Mechanic 1st Class USN = United States Navy Find a Grave memorial note In close collaboration with staff of Seattle's Lake View Cemetery, volunteers from the Missing In America Project found his unclaimed cremains; held in the cemetery's "Community Storage" vaults. After verification of his eligibility by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, based on his WW-II US Navy "Sea Bee" service, they picked up his cremains, arranged for a 130+ motorcycle escorted "Final Honors Ride" across the state to Medical Lake & interment with military honors at their "Forgotten Heroes Ceremony". Laid to rest on 10 September 2019.
Howard Rebenstorf's headstone Coeur dAlene Memorial Gardens, Idaho Photograph by Michael Young copped from Find a Grave	Hattie Hel Rebenstorf's headstone Monument Cemetery, Grant, Oregon (Find a Grave photo)
Disrud family graves Marilyn A. (Mathews) Disrud (1934-2013) Riverview Cemetery, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho Photograph by Michael Young copped from Find a Grave
Lydia M. (Baldwin) Anstine (1886-1929) Charles A. Anstine (1883-1932) Utica Cemetery, Utica, Seward County, Nebraska Photograph by weston04 copped from Find a Grave	Lennie Lee (Anstine) Severns (1910-1997) William A. Severns (1906-1991) Claquato Cemetery, Chehalis Lewis County, Washington Photograph by Willie Dee copped from Find a Grave Anstine family graves and columbarium niches
Anstine family graves Velma Marie Anstine (1908-1919) Utica Cemetery, Utica, Seward County, Nebraska Photograph by weston04 copped from Find a Grave
Lemmer family graves Harlan Lemmer (1904-1985) Greta Ava (Ure) Lemmer (1912-1999) Hope Cemetery, East Hope, Idaho (Find a Grave photo)

Baldwin-Steele graves

William Bascom Wetherall's maternal grandparents

N. Bascum Baldwin and M. Ellen Steele, parents of Ida (Baldwin) Wetherall

The Baldwin-Steele plot of graves are in the original addition of Woodlawn Cemetery in St. Maries, in Benewah County in Idaho. The plot includes the graves of Bascum and Ellen (Steele) Baldwin, their 4th (youngest) daughter Ida (Baldwin) Wetherall, and their 3rd daughter Meda (Baldwin) Ure and her husband Clifford Ure.

Woodlawn Cemetery, St. Maries, Benewah County, Idaho
N. Bascum Baldwin (1862-1919)
M. Ellen Baldwin (1863-1943)
Ida Baldwin Wetherall (1890-1923)
Clifford M. Ure (1887-1953)
Meda J. Ure (1888-1971)

The general Baldwin tombstone in the middle of the plot is slightly tapered stone -- wider on top -- with an oval top. The face is engraved with the names of the Baldwin-Steel family's progenitors -- N. Bascum and M. Ellen Baldwin. Their headstones the "Mother" and "Father" headstones in front of general Baldwin tombstone.

The back of the general Baldwin tombstone is engraved "Ure" -- the family name of Clifford M. Ure, who was Bascum's and Ellen's son in law. Clifford was from St. Maries, and he and Meda continued to live in the town after they married in 1911 and they moved to Spokane no later than 1945.

Ida's son William B. Wetherall (1911-2013), this writer's father, was born in Iowa but raised by the Baldwins in St. Maries from the end of 1911 to 1917, when he began living with his paternal Wetherall-Beaman grandparents in Iowa. After graduating from high school, however, he moved back to St. Maries and lived with the Ure's while going to college and law school in Moscow.

After Bascum died in 1919, Ellen lived with all of her daughters except Ida, who died in 1923 at the state asylum in Orofino, where she had been committed for many years. Ellen lived with her 3rd daughter's Ure family, as well as with her 1st daughter Sadie Williams, who had also settled in St. Maries, during the period when WBW was going to college. She was living in Nebraska with her 2nd daughter, Lydia Anstine, when Lydia died in 1929. During the late 1920s, WBW worked summers on the Anstine farm.

The first three of the above graves are grouped together in the Baldwin family plot with the following inscriptions.

N. BASCUM BALDWIN / DEC. 24, 1862 / MAR. 22, 1919
M. ELLEN BALDWIN / 1863-1943
    Erect stone in center
IDA BALDWIN / WETHERALL / 1890-1923
    Flat stone, front left
MOTHER [Ellen]
    Flat stone, front center
FATHER [Bascum]
    Flat stone, front right

The Ure graves, in the back of the general Baldwin tombstone, have the following inscriptions.

CLIFFORD M. URE / 1887-1953
    Flat stone, back left
    Stone has a Masonic emblem
MEDA J. URE / 1888-1971
    Flat stone, back right

After Bascum Baldwin's death in 1919, Ellen lived for a while with her 3rd daughter Meda Ure and Clifford in St. Maries (1920 census). Ellen would have seen to the burial of her 4th daughter, Ida Wetherall, who died in Orofino, Idaho in 1923.

Ellen later lived with the family of her 2nd daughter Lydia Anstine in Nebraska, and she continued to live there for a while after Lydia's death in 1929 (1930 census).

The 1940 census shows Ellen living in St. Maries with her 1st daughter, Sadie Williams. Sadie and Meda would have seen to her burial after her death in 1943.

Meda and Clifford moved to Spokane no later than 1945. Their daughter Greta A. Lemmer and her family, and their son H. Dale Ure and his family, settled there no later than 1950. Presumably Meda saw to the burial of Clifford in Woodlawn Cemetery in 1953, and her children saw to her burial with him in 1971.

Some Ure and Lemmer descendants are still residing in Spokane, and presumably they are maintaining the Baldwin graves at Woodlawn Cemetery in St. Maries, in addition to the graves of their own immediate families.

Lemmer graves

Greta (Ure) Lemmer (1912-1999) and her husband Harlan Lemmer (1904-1985), both of whom died died in Spokane, where they had settled, are buried together in Hope Cemetery in East Hope, Bonner County, Idaho.

Woodlawn Cemetery

Woodlawn Cemetery was established in 1911 on the outskirts of St. Maries on land that was then part of Kootenai county, and the tombs which had been in a small cemetery within the city were moved to the new cemetery. The city and the cemetery are now part of Benewah county, which was created in 1915 from a part of Kootenai. The cemetery is now within the expanded city limits and is owned and managed by the city.

Williams graves

The Baldwin's 1st daughter, Sadie Williams, and her daughter Faye and son-in-law Howard, and their daughter Marilyn, are all buried in Coeur d'Alene, Kootenai County, Idaho cemeteries.

Coeur d'Alene Memorial Gardens Cemetery, Kootenai County, Idaho
Sadie E. Williams (1883-1864)
Faye M. Rebenstorf (1906-1995)
Howard Rebenstorf (1898-1966)
 
Monument Cemetery, Grant County, Oregon
Hattie Rebenstorf (1898-1966)
 
Riverview Cemetery, Coeur d'Alene, Kootenai County, Idaho
Marilyn A. Disrud (1934-2013)

The photographs of the above graves, shown to the right, were taken by Michael Young and posted on the Find a Grave website in 2013, with exception of Hattie Rebenstorf's grave, which was posted by "Pam R." in 2007. The inscriptions on their tombstones are as follows.

SADIE E. WILLIAMS / OUR MOTHER   GRANDMOTHER / 1883-1964

BELOVED MOTHER, GRANDMOTHER / AND GREAT GRANDMOTHER
FAYE M REBENSTORF / OCT 4 1906   NOV 25 1995
THEREFORE IF ANY MAN BE IN CHRIST / HE IS A NEW CREATURE   II COR 5:17

HOWARD C REBENSTORF / IDAHO
PFC   321 REPAIR UNIT MTC / WORLD WAR I
AUG 30 1898   SEPT 27 1966

"AUNT" / HATTIE N. REBENSTORF / 1898 1982

DISRUD
NORMAN K. / APR. 13, 1929 / [blank]
MARILYN A. / DEC. 22, 1934 / JULY 21, 2013

Claude Williams

The location of the grave of Claude Williams, Sadie's son and Faye's brother, was unknown to me until discovering on 4 March 2021 that his cremains had been found and consecrated in a columbarium for war veterans in 2019. Family lore held that Claude had just "disappeared". My impression is that even his sister Faye, who died in 1995, did not know the particulars of his death.

Coeur d'Alene Memorial Gardens

Coeur d'Alene Memorial Gardens originated as Restlawn Memorial Park in 1955. It later became Coeur d'Alene Memorial Gardens Cemetery, Columbarium & Monuments.

Anstine graves

The Baldwin's 2nd daughter, Lydia M. (Baldwin) Anstine, her husband Charles A. Anstine, and their 1st daughter Velma, who died in her childhood, are buried together in the same plot at Utica Cemetery in Seward County, Nebraska, where the Anstines farmed.

Utica Cemetery, Utica, Seward County, Nebraska
Section B, Row 18
Velma Anstine / 1908-1919
Lydia M. Anstine / 1886-1929 / "Mother"
Charles A. Anstine / 1883-1932 / "Father"

The Anstine's 2nd daughter, Lennie Severns (1910-1997), is buried with her husband, William Archie Severns (1906-1991), in Claquato Cemetery in Chehalis, Lewis County, Washington, near Centralia, their home for over half a century after their migration from Seward, Nebraska to Washington in 1937.

Their 3rd daughter, Aura Dey, died in Riverside, California. However, she may be buried in Spokane, Washington, where she and her husband George M. Dey had lived most of their lives after migrating to Washington from Nebraska. Apparently he returned to Spokane after her death.

Their 4th daughter, Imogene LeBaron, died in Federal Way, Washington, and her husband Keith R. LeBaron died in Seattle. Presumably they are buried together in Washington.

10.9 Baldwin-McGee

James Alfred Baldwin and Nancy Ann McGee

James Alfred Baldwin (1864-1954) with Nancy Ann McGee (1873-1946) Occasion, place, date unknown Ancestry.com photo posted by MSteckley

0. James Alfred Baldwin, 1864-1954, was the 8th child and 5th son of John R. Baldwin, the 5th child and 4th son of John R. Baldwin with Margaret Howard. He was born in Jackson County, and died in Annville in Jackson County.
   If the "James Baldwin" named on Margaret's death certificate is James Alfred Baldwin, then it would appear that James was an undertaker as well as a farmer.
   
   Nancy Ann McGee was a daughter of Robert McGee and Malinda McGee. She was born on 21 September 1873 in Welchburg, Jackson County, Kentucky, and she died on 13 April 1946 in Welchburg in Jackson County. She died at home of a heart attack, and had no doctor, according her death certificate, the informant for which was her daughter-in-law, Edith Baldwin, Walter's wife.
   
   James and Nancy had at least 8 children. By the 1900 census they had had 3 children of whom 2 survived. By the 1910 census 4 of 6 children had survived, and the 1920 census shows that they had at least 2 more surviving children.
   James and Nancy are buried together in McGee Cemetery in Annville, Jackson County, Kentucky.
1. William Chester Baldwin (1893–1971) was born on 6 February 1893 in Jackson county, Kentucky. The 1900, 1910, and 1920 censuses show him as "Wm. C.", "Chester", and "Chester" in Pond Creek with his parents, James Alfred Baldwin and Nancy Ann (McGee) Baldwin, and 1, 3, and 5 siblings. Wm. Chester or just "Chester" married Florence McKinney (1899-1969). The 1930 and 1940 censuses show Chester and Florence Baldwin farming in Jefferson in Washington county in Indiana. The 1930 census states that he was 27 and she 21 when they married, which suggests that they married in 1920 sometime after the census. Both are said to have been born in Kentucky to Kentucky-born parents. The 1940 census states that Chester had had 10 years of education (H2) and Florence 7. She died on 28 May 1969 and he died on 22 June 1971. They are buried under a common marker in Crown Hill Cemetery, Salem, Washington County, Indiana (see Baldwin-McGee graves below).
   
   Florence McKinney was born on 13 February 1899. She is shown in the 1900, 1910, and 1920 censuses with her parents and siblings. Florence's mother was Mollie Ann (Garland) McKinney (1869–1940). Mollie's father (Florence's grandfather) was Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Garland (1844-1921), aka "B.F. Garland", who owned land which bordered on the property John R. Baldwin deeded to his wife Margaret Baldwin in 1904, which she in turn deeded to their son N.B. Baldwin in 1909 (see Baldwin deeds below).
2. Martha Leonie Baldwin 1895–1899. Died in childhood. 1900 census states that Nancy had borne 3 children of whom 2 survived.
3. Stephen "Steve" Baldwin 1899–1965. Married Elizabeth "Eliza" Carpenter (1900-1996). They are buried together in Rose Hill Burial Park, Hamilton, Butler County, Ohio.
4. Name unknown. Postulated 4th child presumed to have been born and died between 1900 and 1910 censuses, for 1910 census states that Nancy had borne 6 children of whom 4 survived.
5. John A. Baldwin, 1903-1961, a Ford employee, married Navaline Murray (1907, a maid, in Butler County, Ohio, on 12 October 1929.
6. Roy Eldon Baldwin, 1906–1980. Married Oma Mae Shepherd (1909-1992). 1940 census shows them with 2 children, Hazel 11 (Hazel Maxie Baldwin, b1928) and Doris 9 (Doris Baldwin, b1931). Roy and Oma are buried together in Medlock Cemetery, Annville, Jackson County, Kentucky.
7. Walter Raleigh Baldwin, 1910–1990. Walter married Edith Price (1919-2001). The 1940 census shows them living with Walter's parents James and Nancy Baldwin, with a 1-year-old son Lonnie L. Baldwin. They are buried together in Medlock Cemetery, Annville, Jackson County, Kentucky.
   Pronounced "Walder Rawlee Balden" according to Ross Murray, a son of B.J. Baldwin Rudder, a daughter of Walter Baldwin (Facebook, 22 November 2018).
8. Dorothy Ellen Baldwin, 1913–2001. Also known as "Dortha Ellen" but usually as just "Ellen". Married Rovie Straus Mullins (1906-1982). 1940 census shows them with 3 children -- Lora G. 6, Billy W. 5, and Lenville L. 1.

James Alfred Baldwin and Nancy Ann (McGee) Baldwin with children, circa 1915 Back Steve, Chester Front John, James (sitting), Walter, Nancy (sitting), Ellen (lap), Roy Slightly straightened image of photo from B.J. Baldwin Rudder

James Alfred Baldwin and sons at Nancy Ann (McGee) Baldwin's burial, 1946 Left to right Steve, Walter, Chester, John, Roy, James Slightly straightened image of photo from B.J. Baldwin Rudder

Chronology of Baldwin-McGee family

10.8 James Alfred Baldwin and Nancy Ann McGee

Baldwin-McGee chronology

1870-1880 censuses

1870 census for the Gray Hawk Post Office area in Sturgeon Precinct No. 6, Jackson County, Kentucky, shows "James A. Baldwin" (6) living with his father John R. Baldwin (41), a farmer, his mother Margaret (35), keeping house, siblings John M. (18), Mary E. (17), William H. (14), Robert E. (12), Newton B. (8), Elihu J. (3), and Henry C. (2). James V. Howard (23) and Sarah E. Thomas (14) were also living with the family. John, William, and Robert were farm laborers. James Howard, probably Margaret (nee Howard's) brother, was also a farm laborer. Sarah Thomas was a domestic servant. The household's real estate and personal property were valued at 400 and 250 dollars. Margaret and her youngest sons James A., Elihu, and Henry C. were born in Kentucky. All others in the household were born in Virginia. The two oldest children -- John M. (18) and Mary E. (17) -- are John R. Baldwin's children with his 1st wife, Rebecca (Howard) Baldwin (1828-1855), Margaret's deceased older sister.

1880 census shows "James A. Baldwin" (16) living in Jackson County, Kentucky, apparently in Pond Creek, with his father John R. Baldwin (51), mother Margaret (44), and younger siblings, brothers Newton B. (19), Elihur J. (13), and Henry C. (12), sister Martha A. (9), and brothers George F. (7), Samuel L. B. (5), Archelus F. (3), and Charles N. (8/12). His father, himself, and all his brothers down to and including Henry, are laborers, probably in a coal mine. Margaret is keeping house.

1900-1940 censuses

1900 census shows "James A. Baldwin" (36) born April 1864, as head of household, farming, with his wife, "Nancy A." (26) born Sept 1874, and sons "Wm. C." (7) born Feb 1893 and "Stephen" (1) born April 1999, in Pond Creek, Jackson County, Kentucky.

1910 census shows "James Baldwin" (44), with wife "Nancy" (36), and sons "Chester" (17), "Stevie" (11), "John" (7), and "Roy" (3), farming on a general farm on East Bernstadt Road in Magisterial District 3, Jackson County, Kentucky.

1920 census shows "James Baldwin" (55) with wife "Nancy A." (46), sons "Chester" (26), "Steve" (20), "John A." (16), "Roy" (12), and "Walter" (10), and daughter "Ellen" (6). James A. is a "farmer" on a "general farm", and Nancy and all the children except Ellen are "farm laborer" on a "home farm", in Pond Creek, Jackson County, Kentucky.

1930 census shows "James A. Baldwin" (61) and wife "Nancy" (52) with son "Walter" (18) and daughter "Ellen" (16) at Pond Creek, Jackson County, Kentucky. James A. is a "farmer" on a "general farm" and Walter is a "laborer" on a "farm".

1940 census shows "James Baldwin" (75) with wife "Nancy" (66) and son "Walter" (29) and his wife "Edith" (21) and their daughter "Lonnie L." (1), living in Magisterial District 1. John is a "farmer" and Walter is a "laborer" both on a "farm". The "Highest grade of school completed" for the 4 adults was respectively 4, 4, 6, and 8.

The average levels of schooling in poorer rural communities at the time reflected a social climate in which children were valued more for their labor on farms and in mines than for their potential as recipients of a 12-grade or even 8-grade school education. Such were then the economic realities of such communities in the United States. And such are still the realities in some other countries today.

James A. Baldwin (1864-1954) and Nancy Ann (McGee) Baldwin (1874-1946) McGee Cemetery, Jackson County, Kentucky Death certificates as posted by Heaven Sent on Find a Grave
	Wm. Chester and Florence Baldwin headstone Crown Hill Cemetery, Salem, Indiana Photograph by richard dixon copped from Find a Grave

Baldwin-McGee graves

William Bascom Wetherall's great uncle
James A. Baldwin and his family

The graves shown here are of members of the family of James Alfred Baldwin (1864-1954) and his wife Nancy Ann McGee (1874-1946). James was the first younger brother of N.B. Baldwin, the maternal grandfather of this writer's father William B. Wetherall, hence his great uncle and my great-great uncle.

James A. Baldwin appears to be the sibling with whom N.B. Baldwin remained the closest, in that deeds concerning N.B. Baldwin's land turned up in the possession of the Roy Baldwin and Walter Baldwin lines of Baldwin-McGee descendants still living in Kentucky.

McGee Cemetery

McGee Cemetery is a small family graveyard in Jackson County, Kentucky. Practically all of the fewer than 20 graves in the cemetery are of people named McGee. The few that are not McGees by name are former McGees or in-laws, such as Nancy Ann (McGee) Baldwin and her husband James A. Baldwin.

James Alfred Baldwin (1864-1954)
wife Nancy Ann (McGee) Baldwin (1873-1946)

Medlock Cemetery

Medlock Cemetery, in Annville, Jackson County, Kentucky, includes the following Baldwin-Howard and Baldwin-McGee graves.

Baldwin-Howard

Henry Clay Baldwin (1867-1950)
Linda Abrams Baldwin (1880-1950) (Henry's wife)

Baldwin-McGee

Roy E. Baldwin (1906-1980)
wife Oma Mae (Shepherd) Baldwin (1909-1992)

Walter R. Baldwin (1910-1990)
wife Edith (Price) Baldwin (1919-2001)
son Lonnie L. Baldwin (1938-1967)

20. Baldwin-Seale

John M. Baldwin and Elizabeth Seale

Preface to notes

In the above table, I have taken into the account that 4 of John M. Baldwin's heirs -- Mary A. Thomas, John R. Baldwin, Sarah J. Grubb, and Harriet H. Baldwin -- are known to have sold his 150-acre farm on 20 March 1858. Presumably they did so after father and mother had died (the order of their deaths is not clear). And apparently 3 other siblings who stood to be heirs had either died before their father (Margaret and Clinton) or after their father (Joseph). It was clear in John M. Baldwin's will of 2 March 1855 (see below) that William was already dead and his son, little William, would have equal standing with his aunts and uncles. Only Thomas Newton Baldwin -- who, born on 29 October 1843, was only 14 on 20 March 1858, and was living with John R. and Margaret Baldwin. While he and William's son little William clear stood to be heirs, on a par with Mary, John, Sarah, and Harriet, it appears that the 4 adults of the 6 heirs were the only legally competent representatives. Perhaps they intended to share the amount they received from the sale with their minor sibling Thomas Newton and their nephew little William. Whatever their intent, however, some 45 years later, Lulu May Postelwait, with the support of the testimony of Harriet (Grubb, Baldwin) Moles, her paternal grandmother (see below), sought to recover her father's share of the property.

While Lulu May Baldwin Postelwait's case is interesting in its own right, the implications of the dates and events revealed in the supporting documents, including John M. Baldwin's will, but especially the deposition of William's wife Harriet (Grubb, Baldwin) Moles, forces family historians to consider the following tentative facts.

1. Fact 1   As of 2 March 1855, John M. and Elizabeth Baldwin, and all their children except William, are live. William has left a son, however, and he is treated as an heir of his father's share of John M. Baldwin's estate on a par with his aunts and uncles after Elizabeth dies. John M. clearly anticipates that he will die before Elizabeth. He has probably been ill.
2. Fact 2   John M. Baldwin's deed is recorded on 19 November 1855 (not 1895), presumably shortly after he died. This is at least a clue as to when he may have died.
3. Fact 3   As of 20 March 1858, both John M. and Elizabeth are dead. Presumably John M. died first and Elizabeth inherited his property pursuant to the will. Then she died and left her children and grandson what was left of the original estate. However, apparently Margaret and Clinton died before John M. and Joseph died after him but before the sale in 1858 -- all without issue.
4. Fact 4   William Baldwin died between 1852 and 1855 depending on how one reckons the birth of little William. Hattie (Grubb, Baldwin) Moles's deposition suggests 1852, but little William's ages on 3 successive decennial censuses -- 5, 15, and 25 in 1860, 1870, and 1880 -- suggest that little William was born around 1855, hence his father was alive as late as 1854.

The Baldwin-Seale nuclear family -- 11 strong in 1850 -- was reduced to only 5 siblings by 1860. Moreover, the 6 lost members were taken by death in the span of only 3-5 years between roughly 1853/1854 to 1857/1858. However one shuffles these facts, they suggest an epidemic -- typhoid fever?

Whatever happened, the Baldwin-Seale household ceased to exist. With the sale of John M. Baldwin's farm, his children scattered to the winds. It appear they kept in touch, as well as they could at the time. Thomas Newton Baldwin was especially close to John R. Baldwin, who had taken him in after their parents died, and followed him to Kentucky after the Civil War.

Sometime during the first half of 1863, at the height of the Civil War in Lee County, even John R. and Margaret Baldwin -- arguably the most robust of the large families spawned on the Baldwin-Seale and Howard-Mark sides of the Baldwin-Howard union -- decided to leave Lee County and seek their fortunes west of the Cumberlands.

Notes

0. John Milton Baldwin was born the 2nd of as many as 13 children (and the 2nd of as many as 6 sons) of John R. Baldwin (1772–1830) and Elizabeth Newberry (1770–1825). He was born in Bedford in Montgomery County, Virginia, according to some family trees (unconfirmed) -- in 1792 (58 on 1850 census) or 1802 (30-39 on 1840 census). The birth of Mary Ann Baldwin (1826-1910) in July 1826 (according to 1900 census) suggests that he and Elizabeth Seale married in 1825 when he was about 23 and she around 18 (taking the earlier of the contending birth years). He appears to have fathered at least the 9 children listed in the above table. 4 of these nine, including the youngest 2, died during the 1850s. 3 of the 4, and John M. Baldwin himself and Elizabeth, also died between 1855 and 1858, suggesting a common illness.
0. "Elizabeth Seale" appears on the death certificate of "Thomas Newton Baldwin" (1843-1924) as the maiden name of his mother. Her parents appear to have been "Fielding Seale" (1770–1838) and "Jane Bales" (1787–1841). Elizabeth was alive in 1855 when John M. Baldwin wrote his last will and testament. She appears to have passed away before 1858, when 5 of her children sold the farm, which would have been hers to sell were she still living.
1. Mary Ann Baldwin (1826–1910) is "Mary A." or "Mary" in most records. She appears to have married James Alvin Thomas (1824–1861) around 1842 and they had around 8 children. On 14 July 1867, she married John Vanderford Orton (1795-1870), with whom she had 2 children, one born in 1871 shortly after his death.
   1. The 1850 census for District 31 of Lee County, Virginia, shows "James A. Thomas" (25) farming with "Mary A." (24) and 2 children, "Henry C." (5) and "Elizabeth" (3). All were born in Virginia. James is a person over 20 years old who cannot read or write.
      1. The Thomas household is enumerated immediately after John M. Baldwin's household. I would guess that John M. and Elizabeth Baldwin set up Mary Ann, their first child, and the first of their children to marry, in a home of her own on the same property.
   2. The 1860 census for the "First Sub-division" of the "County of Claiborne" in Tennessee enumerates the household of "James A. Thomas" (33) with "Mary A." (32) and 6 children -- "Henry C." (15), "Elizabeth" (12), "Wm. H." (9), "Harvey C." (7), "Sarah E." (4), and "Susan J." (2). James A. is a laborer with real estate and personal property valued at respectively $100 and $235. Everyone was born in Virginia except Susan, who was born in Tennessee.
   3. James Alvin Thomas, born in 1827 in Warren in Knox County, Kentucky, died of measles on 9 October 1861 [or 11 September 1861] in Crab Orchard in Lincoln County, Kentucky, while visiting his wife at the home of his sister-in-law Harriet (Baldwin) Mink in Kentucky. At the time, he was serving in Company C, 1st Regiment, Tennessee Infantry Volunteers. Apparently he was on leave.
      1. A Find a Grave memorial states -- "Civil War Union Veteran. Died of measles while still enlisted at the home of Emanuel & Harriet Minks [sic]. Enlisted for 3 years on Aug. 9, 1861, Private, Co. C, 1st Tennessee Volunteer Infantry. Married to Mary Ann Baldwin. Most likely buried at Crab Orchard, Kentucky in 1861, and re-buried at Lebanon National Cemetery [in Lebanon in Marion County, Kentucky] between April 1867 to October 1867." -- This burial scenario is based on a 6 June 2014 letter from the National Cemetery Administion of the Department of Veteran Affairs. The letter initially states "most likely" but its final qualification is "may". The bureaucrats were uable to find any records of Thomas's burial and could only speculate that he "may" have been among some "unknown" soldiers reinterred from Crab Orchard to Lebanon National. "Harriet Minks" is Mary Ann and John R. Baldwin's younger sister Harriet Baldwin married to John Mink.
   4. Mary A. (Baldwin) Thomas marries John V. Orton on 14 July 1867 in London, Laurel County, Kentucky.
   5. The 1870 census for the Raccoon Post Office District of Raccoon Voting Precinct in Laurel County, Kentucky, shows her as Virginia-born "Mary Orton" (42), head of household, with 2 children -- Tennessee-born "Harriet" (9) and Kentucky-born "James" (3). The 1870 census for the London Post Office area of London Voting Precinct in London County, Kentucky, enumerates John V. Orton as "Jno. V. Orton" (75) in the household of a "W" [white] "Waggon Maker". He is listed last, apparently as a boarder, following a "B" [black] "Black Smith", who was probably an employee. I would guess that Harriet, born in Tennessee, was Mary's last child with James Thomas, while Jesse was the 1st of the 2 children she had with John, in what for him was a 3rd marriage.
   6. 17 March 1873   A declaration for pension benefits for 5 minor children of James A. and Mary A. Thomas, made on 17 March 1873 by their guardian, Jesse Rogers, to the Chancery Court of Claiborne County, Tennessee, south relief for the children under the 6 June 1866 Pension Act, on grounds that they had been abandoned by their mother, who was unsuitable by reason of immoral conduct.
   7. 27 March 1889   Henry Clay Thomas, son of John A. and Mary A. Thomas, made a deposition, dated 27 March 1889, regarding himself and his parents during the War of the Rebellion, apparently related to an application for a pension.
      1. Both the 1873 declaration and the 1889 deposition remark that James A. Thomas died of measles while visiting his wife at the home of her sister Harriet Mink in Kentucky.
   8. 25 July 1890   A Civil War pension record card shows "Mary A. Thomas" as the dependant widow of "James A. Thomas", a soldier who served in Company C, 1st Tennessee Infantry. The filing date is 25 July 1890 and the application number is 463,037, but there is no certificate number. Whether this is Mary Ann (Baldwin) (Thomas) Ortin reverting to Thomas -- or another James A. and Mary A. Thomas -- is not yet clear to me. Some family trees say she died in 1890, others in 1891.
   9. 2 January 1904   Henry Clay Thomas, born on 7 October 1845 Lee County, Virginia, died on 2 January 1904 in Georgetown in Scott County, Kentucky.
   10. 11 March 1904   A Civil War pension record card shows "Martha J. Thomas" as the dependant widow of "Henry C. Thomas", a soldier who served in both Company A, 10th Illinois Infantry, and Company E, 2nd Tennessee Infantry. The filing date is 11 Mar 1904, the application number is 801,724, and the certificate numbers is 594,862.
   11. 1924   A Kentucky death certificate shows that "Harvey Clinton Thomas", born in Virginia on 7 October 1855, died on 20 July 1924 in Rockcastle of diabetes. His father was Virginia-born "Marion Thomas" and his mother was Virginia-born "Mary Baldwin". The informant was "W.H. Thomas" -- Harvey's younger brother. Apparently they called their grandfather "Marion".
   12. 1945   A Kentucky death certificate states that "Jesse Green Orton", born in Kentucky on 8 March 1871, died in Rockcastle on 22 November 1945. His father was North Carolina-born "John Orton" and his mother was Virginia-born "Mary Baldwin". His birth date suggests that he was conceived around June 1870. The 1870 census was enumerated in June and July as of 1 June 1870.
   13. See both James Alvin Thomas and Henry Clay Thomas under Civil War for images of pension-related records and transcriptions of part the 1873 declaration and 1889 deposition.
2. John R. Baldwin (1829–1909) was the patriarch of the Baldwin-Howard line.
   1. See 10. Baldwin-Howard: John R. Baldwin and Rebecca and Margaret Howard for details.
3. Sarah Jane Baldwin (1833–1888) married Lorenzo Grubb, a neighbor. Sarah's younger brother William Baldwin married Harriet Grubb, Lorenzo's younger sister. The Grubb farm appears to have shared a boundary with the Baldwin farm, according to a 1903 deposition by Harriet Moles, nee Harriet Baldwin, nee Harriet Grubb (see John M. Baldwin's will (below) for details. The 1850 census for Lee County enumerates the Grubb and Baldwin families on the same sheet. Wyrick, Thomas, and Markham households, then or future Grubb and Baldwin in-law families, are also on this sheet.
   1. 2 September 1833   Born in Lee County, Virginia.
   2. About 1834   Lorenzo D. Grubb born in Lee County, Virginia. His parents, "Archibald Grubb" (1810–1853) and "Elizabeth Wyrick" (1809–1844), married on 11 April 1830 in Wythe County, Virginia. By the 1840 census, they were farming in Lee County
   3. The 1850 census for District 31 of Lee County, Virginia, enumerates the Archibald Grubb and John M. Baldwin households -- and three in-law families (Wyrick, Thomas, and Markham) -- on the same sheet. The census shows "Archibald Grubb" (39) with his 2nd wife "Ann" (22) and 8 children, 6 by his 1st wife Elizabeth -- "Mary A." (19), "Lorenzo" (17), "Hariet" [sic = Harriet] (15), "Elizabeth" (13), "John" (12), and "Catharine" (10) -- and 2 by Ann, "Martha J." (3) and "William" (1). Archibald Grubb is farming and his owned real estate is valued at $800. Lorenzo is also farming, presumably with his father. Ann -- who Archibald married in 1846, after the death of his 1st wife Elizabeth in 1844 -- is marked as a person over 20 who is unable to read or write (as was Elizabeth).
   4. About 1851   Sarah J. Baldwin married Lorenzo D. Grubb. Their first 2 children were born in Virginia, the next 2 in Kentucky, and 2 more in Indiana. Their first child appears to have been "Naervesta J. Grubb" (1854–1880), who was born in Rose Hill in Lee County on 13 November 1854 but died in Lawrence County in Indiana on 18 April 1880, 6 weeks shy of the 1 June 1880 enumeration datum.
   5. The 1880 census for Shawswick Township in Lawrence County in Indiana shows "Lorenzo D. Grubb" (40) with "Sarah J." (46), "Archible" (23), "John M." (19), "Charles C." (17), "Jessie S." (12), and "Dudly H." (4). Lorenazo, John, and Charles are farmers, Archible is a laborer, and Sarah is keeping house. Lorenzo, Sarah, and Archible are Virginia born to Virginia-born parents. John and Charles were born in Kentucky, and Jessie and Dudly were born in Indiana.
   6. 23 April 1888   Sarah Jane (Baldwin) Grugg died in Lawrence County, Indiana. She is buried in Fish Cemetery in Lawrence County.
   7. 1 July 1893   Lorenzo dies in Lawrence County, Indiana.
4. William Baldwin, born about 1834, died about 1852, is "William Baldwin deceased" on his father John M. Baldwin's last will and testament dated 2 March 1855. He appears to have married Harriet Grubb, a neighbor, around 1850 in Tazwell, Tennessee, just south of the Rose Hill area of Lee County, Virginia, where they lived on the "Milton Baldwin farm" with William Baldwin's parents. Harriet Moles testified in 1903 that she married William Baldwin about 52 or 53 years ago, and married Elihu Moles in 1856 after about 4 years as a widow. See John M. Baldwin's will (below) for details.
   1. 1829-1830   William Baldwin born according to 1850
   2. 8 April 1836   Harriet Grubb born in With [sic = Wythe] County, Virginia, but raised in Lee County, Virginia, according to Harriet's deposition. Her father's Grubb farm, and her step-father John M. Baldwin's farm "joined" (were immediate neighbors).
   3. 1838   Elihu Harden Moles born in Virginia. However, the 1850 census shows "Harden" (12) living with his parents "Wm. S. Moles" (38) and "Elizabeth" (37) -- the 3rd oldest of 10 children ranging in age from 18 to 1. Everyone in the family was born in Virginia.
   4. The 1850 census for District 31 of Lee County, Virginia, shows "Archibald Grubb" (39) with his 2nd wife "Ann" (22) and 8 children, 6 by his 1st wife Elizabeth -- "Mary A." (19), "Lorenzo" (17), "Hariet" [sic = Harriet] (15), "Elizabeth" (13), "John" (12), and "Catharine" (10) -- and 2 by his 2nd wife Ann, "Martha J" (3) and "William" (1). He is farming and his owned real estate is valued at $800. Lorenzo is also farming, presuming with his father. Ann is marked as a person over 20 who is unable to read or write (as was Elizabeth).
   5. 1850-1851   William Baldwin married Harriet Grubb in Tazwell, Tennessee, according to her deposition on behalf of her granddaughter. In the deposition, she remarked that "Taswell [sic], Tennessee, . . . is in the county immediately joining Lee County, Virginia." By roads today, Tazwell, the county seat of Claiborne County, Tennessee, is about 72 kilomters (45 miles), roughly 50 minutes, west and south of Jonesville, the county seat of Virginia County. It's about one-third closer from the Rose Hill area where the Baldwins and Grubbs lived practically cheek by jowl.
   6. 26 May 1856   William's widow Harriet (Grubb) Baldwin married Elihu H. Moles in Claiborne County in Tennessee, according a Tennessee marriage index.
      1. In her 1903 deposition in the matter of her granddaughter Lulu May Postelwait's claim to her Baldwin father's inheritance, she recalls that she and Elihu Moles were married in Tazwell, the county seat of Claiborne County. However, her recollection that she remarried after about 4 years of being a widow is not supported by the ages assigned her Baldwin son, William L. Baldwin aka William Moles, who appears to have been born only a year or two before she remarried.
   7. The 1860 census for the Stanford Post Office area of Lincoln County, Kentucky, shows "Elihu H. Moles" (23) with "Harriett" (24), and 2 children, "Wm L. Moles" (5) and "Edmond Delany" (12). Elihu is a carpenter. All were born in Virginia. Harriet is a person over 20 who is unable to read or write.
      1. William's stated age in 1860 -- 5 years old -- is consistent with his the ages given in 1870 and 1880 -- 15 and 25 years old. All ages suggests that he was born in 1855. This implies that he was conceived in 1854, which means that his father -- William Baldwin died no earlier than 1854.
   8. The 1870 census for Jefferson Townswhip in Owen County in Indiana shows "Elihu Moles" (33) with "Harriett" (34), "William" (15), "John H." (9), and "Mary E." (7). Elihu is preaching, Harriett is keeping house, and William "has no employment". Elihu, Harriett, and William were born in Virginia, John in Kentucky, and Mary in Indiana." Harriet can neither read or write.
   9. The 1880 census for "Buck-Creek Township" in Hancock County, Indian, shows the household of "Elihu H. Moles" (43) with his wife "Harriet" (44), a daughter "Ada I." (9), and a "S Son" [step son] "William L. Baldwin" (25). Elihu is a preacher and Harriet is keeping house, while William, who was single, is a roof painter. All were born in Virginia to Virginia-born parents except Ada, who was born in Indiana.
   10. 30 September 1881   William L. Baldwin, William's son with Harriet Grubb, was married to Phoebe Isabell Williams in Putnam County, Indiana, by Babtist minister Alexander S. Mayhall, according to marriage license.
   11. 27 January 1885   Lulu May Baldwin was born in Mineral Springs in Barry County, Missouri, according to a delayed certificate of birth, an application for which was signed, subscribed, and sworn to before a notary public on 14 November 1953 by "Lulu May (Baldwin) Murray". The application was supported with an affidavit by F.G. Wilkenson, a friend, dated 25 November 1953, and it was filed on 4 December 1953 in the Division of Health, Jefferson City, Missouri.
   12. June 1885   Bell (Williams) Baldwin, born about 1857, dies in Barry County, Missouri.
   13. 20 January 1888   William L. Baldwin dies in Barry County, Missouri.
   14. 31 July 1890   Elihu Hardin Moles, born in Virginia in 1838, dies in Indiana.
   15. 1901   Lulu May Baldwin marries Charles Postelwait (b1877) in Pawnee County in Oklahoma Territory.
   16. 23 August 1902   Lulu May Postelwait gives birth to Verna Postelwait (1902–1977).
   17. 1903-1905   Lulu May Postelwait files a legal action in Lee County, Virginia, to recover equity in her father's share of John M. Baldwin's land. See John M. Baldwin's will (below) for details.
   18. 27 October 1904   Lulu May Postelwait gives birth to her second daughter, Thelma Postelwait (1904–1998), in Mound County in Oklahoma Territory.
   19. 17 July 1907   Harriet Moles died in Muncie in Delaware County, Indiana, of "Acute Gastro-enteritis". She had been a widow of "Rev. E.H. Moles". Her father was Virginia-born "John Grubb" and her mother was "Unknown" according to the death certificate. The informant was "John Moles" -- her son. She was slated for burial in Monticello in White County in Indiana. The death certificate of Archibald Grubb's last son, born shortly after his father's death (nlt November 1852), gives his name as "John Grubbs". Apparently he was also known as "John" -- his father's name, as well as the name of his 2nd son John Grubb (1838-1900).
   20. 16 November 1907   Oklahoma Territory becomes the 46th state.
   21. 10 September 1969   Lulu May (Baldwin) (Postelwait) (Maltby) Murray dies in Tonkawa in Kay County, Oklahoma. She appears to have had at least 5 children -- 2 with Postelwait and 3 with Maltby -- 4 of whom survived her. She had married Murray by 1953 when she applies for and receives a delayed certificate of birth from the Division of Health of Missouri (see image).
5. Harriet K. Baldwin (1835–1900) is represented as "Harriett" on many records. Some transcriptions show "Harriet H." but the clearest handwritten record shows "K." rather than "H." Her husband's family name is mostly "Mink" but some records show "Minks", and it appears that some of their children may have been known by "Minks". Both Emanuel and Harriet are still alive at the time of the 1900 census. Presumably they died before the 1910 census.
   1. The 1850 census for District 31 of Lee County, Virginia, shows "Harriet" (16) living with her parents, John M. and Elizabeth Baldwin.
   2. The 1850 census for the Southern District of Rockcastle County in Kentucky shows "Manuel" (14) as the 3rd oldest of 9 children of "John Mink" (47) and "Susan" (37). John has no occupation. Neither he nor Susan can read or write. The oldest child, Elizabeth (20), cannot read or write. John Mink was born in Virginia. The place-of-birth column for others in the household is blank.
   3. The 1860 census for Mt. Vernon Post Office area in Rockcastle County, Kentucky, shows "Emanul Mink" (26) living in household of "B. K. Bethewram" (46) and his wife "Lucy Ann" (40) and 5 children. Bethewram is the presiding judge at the county court. Mink is a laborer. Everyone in the household was born in Kentucky, according to the census.
   4. 13 January 1861   Emanuel Mink marries in Rockcastle County, according to a Kentucky marriage index.
   5. June 1863   Register of Class 1 persons subject to military duty in 8th Congressional District consisting of Rockcastle, Pulaski, and other counties of Kentucky shows, under Rockcastle, "Mink Emanuel 33 White Farmer Married Kentucky [place of birth]".
   6. The 1870 census for the Mount Vernon Post Office area in Voting District No. 1 of Rockcastle County in Kentucky shows "Emanuel Minks" [Mink] (38) with "Harriett K." (36) and 5 children -- "John A. N." (8), "Margarett S." (6), "Martha A. F." (4), "Mary A. E." (3), and "James W. B." (6/12). Emanuel is farming and Harriett is keeping house. She can neither read nor write. The parents were born in Virginia to Virginia-born parents, the children in Kentucky.
   7. April 1875   Scan of original roll of "White" births in Rockcastle County, Kentucky, shows -- "Mink Lydia M.E. / F / Alive / Rockcastle / Emanuel Mink / Harriet K. Balwin [sic = Baldwin] / Va / Va / Rockcastle" -- Family name "Mink", Harriet's middle initial "K.", both parents born in Virginia, residing in Rockcastle.
   8. The 1880 census for Enumeration Distict No. 96 (76?) of Rockcastle County, Kentucky, shows "Emanuel Mink " (49) as head with his wife "Harriet" (46) and 8 children -- "John A." (18), "Margret S." (16), "Martha" (15), "Ellen" (13), "William" (10), "Robert" (6), "Lidda" (5), and "Florence" (2). Emanuel is farming, Harriet keeping house, John is a laborer, William is working on a farm. The parents were born in Virginia to Virginia-born parents, the children in Kentucky.
   9. The 1900 census for London Voting Precint 2, part of Magisterial District 3, Laurel County, Kentucky, shows "Emanuel Mink" (68) with his wife "Harriett" (65) -- only. They have been married for 39 years, and 7 of her 9 children are still living. Both were born in Virginia to Virginia-born parents. He is a day laborer and rents his home.
   10. 21 August 1947   "Martha Francis Carpenter" dies of "Senility" in Dorthae in "Lawrel" County, Kentucky. The death certificate states that she was born in Kentucky on 15 October 1857 [sic = 1867], and identifies her father as Virginia-born "Manuel Minks" [sic = Emanuel Mink] and her mother aas Virginia-born "Harriet Balton" [sic = Baldwin]. The informant, Robert L. Carpenter, appears to be Martha's son. Her husband, W. T. Carpenter, had died.
   11. 19 March 1952   "James William Minks" dies in Pittsburg, Laurel County, Kentucky, of chronic nephritis. He was born on 20 November 1876 in Kentucky. His father was "Emanuel Minks" and his mother was "Harriet Baldwin".
   12. 15 May 1952   "Lyda A. White" dies in Phoenix, Arizona of "Acute Coronary Occlusion". Her death certificate states that she was born in Kentucky on 20 April 1877 [sic 1875]. Her father was Virginia-born "Emmanuel Minks", her mother Virginia-born "Harriett Baldwin".
6. Joseph Baldwin was born around 1838 judging from his age in the 1850 census. And he died shortly after his father died, according to a 1903 deposition made by his sister-in-law, Harriet (Grubb) (Baldwin) Moles. John M. Baldwin seems to have died around November 1855, and Joseph had to have died before March 1858 when surviving children sold their father's farm in Lee County, Virginia. So Joseph seems to have died between 1855-1858, most likely in 1856 or 1857. Apparently he hadn't married.
7. Thomas Newton Baldwin (1843–1924), orphaned in the late 1850s when in his mid teens, was taken in by his older brother John R. Baldwin and sister-in-law Margaret. During the War of the Rebellion, he served in the Confederacy, and after the war he settled in Kentucky near his brother.
   1. See both Thomas N. Baldwin and Thomas N. Baldwin in Confederate service for details.
8. Robert Clinton Baldwin was born around 1844-1845 as he was 5 years old in the 1850 census. According to a 1903 deposition made by Harriet (Grubb) (Baldwin) Moles, his sister-in-law, "Clinton" as he was called died before her father John M. baldwin. But she was alive when John made his will on 2 March 1855. And John appears to have died around November 1855. So Clinton appears to have died in 1855.
9. Margaret M. Baldwin was born around 1847-1848 as she was 2 years old in the 1850 census. According to a 1903 deposition made by her sister-in-law, Harriet (Grubb) (Baldwin) Moles, Margaret died before her father John M. baldwin. But she was alive when John made his will on 2 March 1855. And John appears to have died around November 1855. So Margaret seems to have died in 1855.

Chronology of Baldwin-Seale family

The Powell Valley that practically defines the country that became Lee County, Virginia, became a funnel of westward migration from eastern parts of Virginia but also from North Carolina and Tennessee. Some people continued west through Cumberland Gap into western Tennessee or Kentucky. Others stayed on whatever land they could find.

Lee County quickly filled up during the early 1800s. The boundaries of the county, formed from Russell County in 1792, and named after then incumbant governor of Virginia, Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III (1756-1818), a Revolutionary War officer, and the father of Robert E. Lee (1807-1870), a Conferate States Army commander.

Censuses

The 1800 and 1810 censuses for Lee County are lost but some taxation records survive.

1820 and 1830 censuses show no Baldwins, Seales, or Howards in the county. Several families that had prominently figured in the formation of Lee County, and which at some point were neighbors of the Baldwin-Seale, Howard-Marks, and Baldwin-Howard families in the Rose Hill area west of Jonesville, are well represented in these earlier censuses -- including several Ewing families in both the 1820 and 1830 census, and some Bales families in the 1830 census.

The 1840 census for Lee County in Virginia shows "John M. Baldwin" as the head of a household consisting of 8 members including himself -- all "Free White Persons" of the following ages by sex. The names and ages keyed to the 1850 census (below) are my conjuctures.

      Male  Female  Totals  Conjectured names and ages   
  0-4    1     1       2    Joseph 2 (1838), Harriet 6
  5-9    1     1       2    William 10 (1829), Sarah 7 (1833-09-02)
10-14    1     1       2    John R. 12 (1828-09-22), Mary Ann 14 (1825)
15-19
20-29
30-39    1     1       2    John M. 38, Elizabeth 34 (1838)
---------------------------
Totals   4      4      8
1 person engaged in agriculture.

The 1850 census for District 31 of Lee County, Virginia, shows "John M. Baldwin" (58) as head of household with "Elizabeth" (44), "William" (20), "Sarah" (17), "Hariet" (16), "Joseph" (12), "Thomas N." (7), "Robert C." (5), and "Margaret M." (2). John M. is farming on an estate valued at $800. William is also farming, presumably with his father. William attended school within the year. Elizabeth is enumerated as a person over 20 years of age who is unable to read and write.

1. On the same 1850 census", enumerated immediately after John M. Baldwin's household, is the household of "James A. Thomas" (25) farming with "Mary A." (24) and 2 children, "Henry C." (5) and "Elizabeth" (3). James is a person over 20 years old who cannot read or write. All were born in Virginia.
   1. Mary A. Thomas is John M. and Elizabeth Baldwin's 1st child, and also the 1st of their children to marry -- around 1842.
2. Another sheet of the same 1850 census shows "John R. Baldwin" (22) farming with his wife "Rebecca" (22) and their daughter "Elizabeth" (1). Yet another sheet shows Rebecca's younger sister "Margaret" (14) still living with her parents, "John F. Howard" (48) and "Elizabeth" (38), and 2 older and 5 younger siblings.
3. Apparently neither James A. Thomas nor John R. Baldwin own land, for the "Value of Real Estate owned" column on the general census is blank -- and neither is enumerated on the agriculture schedule.
   1. My impression is that John M. Baldwin set up his daughter and her husband in their own home, on the premises of the Milton Baldwin farm. His son-in-law is helping him run the farm in lieu of his son John R. Baldwin, who appears to be living elsewhere and may be working on another farm.

Schedule 4 of the 1850 census, concerning Productions of Agriculture in District 31 of Lee County, Virginia, shows the following figures for the farms of Archibald Grubb and John M. Baldwin, enumerated in succession on lines 28-29 on pages 258-259.

Note that John M. Baldwin owns a total of 150 acres of land, of which 50 acres are "improved" and 100 acres are "unimproved" land. The farm has a value of $800 -- the same value shown for "Value of Real Estate owned" on the general census. The Grubb farm totals a similar 160 acres of which 60 are improved. The whereas John M. Baldwin's farm equipment is valued at only $20, Archibald Grubb has $75 worth of equipment.

The farm has a cash value of 800 dollars and the farm equipment is worth 20 dollars. John M. has 2 horses, 3 milch cows, 2 working oxen, 25 other cattle, and 25 swine, 200 sheep, 500 bushels of Indian corn, and 75 bushels of oats.

1850 agriculture schedule

John M. Baldwin and Archibald Grubb farms

                        28      29
                 Archibald  John M.
 1. Name of owner    Grubb Baldwin
Acres of Land
 2.   Improved          60      50    Acres
 3.   Unimproved       100     100    Acres John M. Baldwin owns 150 acres of land
 4. Cash value farm    800     800    Dollars $800 "Value of Real Estate owned" on general census
 5. Value farm equip    75      20    Dollars
Live stock 1 June 1860
 6.   Horses             5       2    Number
 7.   Asses and mules                 Number
 8.   Milch cows         4       3    Number
 9.   Working oxen               2    Number
10.   Other cattle       2       3    Number
11.   Sheep              5      25    Number
12.   Swine             50      25    Number
13. Value livestock    300     200    Dollars     
Produce during year ending 1 June 1860
14.   Wheat                           Bushels
15.   Rye                             Bushels
16.   Indian corn      200     500    Bushels
17.   Oats             200      75    Bushels
18.   Rice                            Pounds
19.   Tobacco                         Pounds
20.   Ginned cotton                   Bales (400 pounds)
21.   Wool              12      50    Pounds
22.   Beans and peas     5       5    Bushels
23.   Irish potatoes             5    Bushels
24.   Sweet potatoes             5    Bushels
25.   Barley                          Bushels    
26.   Buckwheat                       Bushels
27. Value of orchard products         Dollars
28. Wine                              Gallons
29. Value of produce market gardens   Dollars
30. Butter             100      50    Pounds
31. Cheese                            Pounds
32. Hay                               Tons
33. Clover seed                       Bushels
34. Grass seeds                       Bushels
35. Hops                              Pounds
Hemp
36.   Dew rotted                      Tons
37.   Water rotted                    Tons
38. Flax                25      25    Pounds
39. Flaxseed             2       2    Bushels
40. Silk cocoons                      Pounds
41. Maple sugar                 25    Pounds John R. Baldwin produced maple sugar in 1860　
42. Cane sugar Hhds (1,000 pounds)    Hogshead 
43. Molasses                          Gallons
44. Beeswax             10            Pounds
45. Value of homemade
      manufactures      25      25    Dollars 
46. Value of animals 
      slaughtered       50      50    Dollars

On 20 March 1858, Mary A. Thomas, John R. Baldwin, Sarah J. Grubb, and Harriet H. Baldwin -- John M. and Elizabeth Baldwin's 4 adult heirs -- sold their "undivided interest" in the "Milton Baldwin farm" in Rose Hill to to F.H. Bales, who took possession of the whole farm , according to documents associated with an equity bill raised in the chancery court of Lee County in 1903 claiming 1/6th interest in the farm. See John M. Baldwin's will (below) for details.

The 1860 census enumerates the household of "John R. Balwin" [sic = Baldwin] (31) and "Margaret" (22) with 6 children -- 3 born to Rebecca, 2 born to Margaret, and John R's brother "Thas N." (16), who has been orphaned by the deaths of their parents, John M. and Elizabeth Baldwin. The household is enumerated immediately after the households of "R.M. Bales" (53), a farmer, and "Joshwa [sic = Joshua] Ewing" (56), whose occupation is "Dr of Phisicn (?)" [Physician].

The "Value of Estate owned" column shows the following dollar amounts for R.M. Bales (and two Ewing members of his household), Joshua Ewing, and John R. Baldwin.

                              Value of Estate owned
                              Real    Personal
Head of household             Estate  Estate

R.M. Bales (53) farmer         56000   34000
   Margaret W. (43) [wife]
   Catherine E. Ewing (50)      8000    4100
   Harriet C. Ewing (41)                5500
Joshua [H.] Ewing (56) doctor  15000    7443
   Catherine (52) [wife]
John R. Baldwin (31)                     157
   Margaret (22) [wife]

Joshua Ewing, born on 2 May 1804, died on 3 August 1884 in Ewing in Lee County, Virginia. Joshua married Catherine Fulkerson (c1808-c1880). Joshua son of Samuel E. Ewing (1772-1851) and Mary Houston (1787-1842). Samuel son of Patrick Ewing (1737-1819) and Jane Porter (1739-1784). Patrick son of Joshua (1704-1753) and Jane Patton (c1710-1754).

Catherine E. Ewing, the daughter of Samuel E. Ewing, is not to be to be confused with "Catherine H. [Hannah] Ewing" (nee Fulkerson), the wife of Joshua Ewing the doctor, who owned real estate valued at $4000 on the 1850 census.

Two "Joshua Ewing" households are enumerated on the same sheet of the 1840 centus for Lee County, who I will call "Joshua Ewing A" and "Joshua Ewing B".

Joshua Ewing A
7 Free Whites 5 Slaves
Slaves - Males   - Under 10:   	2
Slaves - Females - Under 10:    1
Slaves - Females - 10 thru 23: 	1
Slaves - Females - 24 thru 35: 	1

Joshua Ewing B
6 Free Whites 5 Slaves
Slaves - Males -   24 thru 35: 	1
Slaves - Females - 10 thru 23: 	1
Slaves - Females - 24 thru 35: 	2
Slaves - Females - 55 thru 99: 	1

Joshua Ewing (1763-1843) married Rachel Craig (1765-1820) in 1788. This Joshua was a son of Patrick Ewing (1737-1819) and Jane Porter (1739-1789).

James A. and Mary A. (Baldwin) Thomas are no longer in Lee County in 1860. They are enumerated in the "First Sub-division" of the "County of Claiborne" in Tennessee, as "James A. Thomas" (33) and "Mary A." (32), with 6 children -- "Henry C." (15), "Elizabeth" (12), "Wm. H." (9), "Harvey C." (7), "Sarah E." (4), and "Susan J." (2). James A. is a laborer with real estate and personal property valued at respectively $100 and $235. Everyone was born in Virginia except Susan, who was born in Tennessee.

Schedule 4 of the 1860 census, concerning Productions of Agriculture in the Jonesville Virginia Post Office area of the Western District of Lee County, Virginia, Showed the following figures for the R.M. Bales, Joshwa [sic = Joshua] Ewing, and John R. Balwin [sic = Baldwin] households as of 1 June 1860. The three households are enumerated on lines 26-28 of pages 303-304. My transcriptions from Ancestry.com images. Some of figures are difficult to read, hence some of the transcriptions may be wrong.

Line                    36      37      38
                       R.M. Joshua  John R.
 1. Name of owner    Bales   Ewing  Baldwin
Acres of Land
 2.   Improved         500     200            Acres No acreage shown for John R. Baldwin here
 3.   Unimproved      1500     200            Acres No acreage shown for John R. Baldwin here
 4. Cash value farm   4000   10000            Dollars No "Value of Real Estate" on general census
 5. Value farm equip   300      50       3    Dollars
Live stock 1 June 1860
 6.   Horses            25      14       1    Number
 7.   Asses and mules    4       3            Number
 8.   Milch cows        36       7       3    Number
 9.   Working oxen       6       2            Number
10.   Other cattle      46       8       3    Number
11.   Sheep             65      46       5    Number
12.   Swine             80      35      14    Number
13. Value livestock  3,000   1,833     107    Dollars $157 "Value of Personal Estate" on general census     
Produce during year ending 1 June 1860
14.   Wheat            130      50      30    Bushels
15.   Rye                                     Bushels
16.   Indian corn     2000    1000     150    Bushels
17.   Oats             300     300      50    Bushels
18.   Rice                                    Pounds
19.   Tobacco                                 Pounds
20.   Ginned cotton                           Bales (400 pounds)     
21.   Wool              85     100      40    Pounds
22.   Peas and beans     2      10       2    Bushels
23.   Irish potatoes    30      20      10    Bushels
24.   Sweet potatoes    20      10       5
25.   Barley                                  Bushels    
26.   Buckwheat                               Bushels
27. Value of
      orchard products  50      10       5    Dollars
28. Wine                                      Gallons
29. Value of produce
      market gardens                          Dollars
30. Butter             500     500     100    Pounds
31. Cheese                                    Pounds
32. Hay                 20      10            Tons
33. Clover seed                               Bushels
34. Grass seeds                               Bushels
35. Hops                                      Pounds
Hemp                           
36.   Dew rotted                              Tons
37.   Water rotted                            Tons
38.   Other prepared hemp                     Tons
39. Flax                                      Pounds
40. Flaxseed                                  Bushels
41. Silk cocoons                              Pounds
42. Maple sugar                         25    Pounds John M. Baldwin produced maple sugar in 1850　
43. Cane sugar Hhds (1,000 pounds)            Hogshead 
44. Molasses                    25            Gallons
45. Beeswax             10                    Pounds
46. Honey              100              25    Pounds
47. Value of homemade
      manufactures      60      75      10    Dollars 
48. Value of animals 
      slaughtered      500     300      70    Dollars

R.M. Bales

R.M. Bales, a Rose Hill hog farmer, signed John M. Baldwin's 2 March 1855 last will and testament, according to a typescript copy of the will among documents found in an equity case raised in the Lee County Chancery Court in 1903-1905 (case 1905-043) concerning a claim by John M. Baldwin's great great granddaughter to 1/6th of the former "Milton Baldwin farm" in Rose Hill. See John M. Baldwin's will (below) for details.

Robert M. Bales -- also "Robt. M. Bales" and "R.M. Bales" -- was born on 5 May 1807 in Botetourt, Virginia, and he died on 26 June 1893 in Lee County, Virginia. His wife, Margaret W. Bales, was a daughter of ​Samuel E. Ewing (1772-1851), a son of Patrick Ewing (1737-1819) of Maryland. Samuel and two brothers, Nathanial Ewing (1759-1831) and Joshua Ewing (1763-1843), settled in the western district of Lee County, Virginia, and many descendants bear their names.

Robert M. Bales was appointed Rose Hill Postmaster at least twice -- from 14 February 1846 and from 17 December 1883.

Joshua Ewing

Joshua Ewing (1804-1884), a son of Samuel E. Ewing (1772-1851), was a medical doctor. His younger sister, Margaret W. Ewing (1817-1889), married Robert M. Bales (1807-1893) in Rose Hill on 23 February 1845.