MINNIE PERMELIA MURPHIN ERVIN 1868 - 1934

I think of Grandma Minnie and Grandpa Eb sitting by the stove in their kitchen, reading.  Aunt Mary told me they were readers, and also that Grandma Minnie checked Mary's clothes before school to make sure her mother (Minnie's daughter, Rose) hadn't used a safety pin instead of needle and thread.  Minnie was organized and efficient.  When one of her grandsons who lived with them took a break from spading the garden, she took him a pan of potatoes to peel.

Minnie was 19 years old and living in Scott County, IN when she married Eb Ervin in l887.  Several internet sites show the marriage in l889, but I'm sure that is in error.  Their six children were born between l888 and l907.  Minnie's dad was Jeduthan Sanders Murphin, named for his grandfather, Jeduthan Sanders, who was a cousin of Harlan Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Minnie's mom was Mary Jane (Molly) McFall whose dad had been born in Canada.

A family story is that when Eb was a child in Iowa, he was stolen on his Pinto pony by the Indians, and when his family got him back, it wasn't Eb riding the Pinto at all, but an Indian child.  So family members said Minnie's kids had Indian blood.  The photo above is of all Minnie's grown children.

One of my early memories is watching an old man by the outdoor water well pump take out his teeth (!), pump water to wash them, then put them back in.  I've always wondered if that was Grandpa Eb who died the summer I turned 4.  Grandma Minnie died at age 66 in l934.

If anyone has a photo of her, please add it under comments.



Sue<William Ervin Lynch<Rose Ervin Lynch<Minnie Murphin Ervin

MARTHA ISABELLE GAMBLE LYNCH 1859 - 1916

Grandma Belle was only 57 when she died at the hospital for the insane in Madison, IN.  She had been living with her son and daughter-in-law, Ivan and Rose, and according to family stories, was very emotional, walking from room to room screaming.  She also had migraines.  She had only been in the hospital for a week or two when she died.

Belle was one of the younger children of Alex Gamble who had been born in Ireland.  They lived in Scott County, IN where she married William Taylor Lynch when she was 25 (and he 22) at a time when an unwed 25 year old was almost considered an old maid.  Also, she had only 3 children, unusual in those days.  Her youngest daughter died at age13.  Aunt Mary said Grandma Belle doted on her son.  There was an incident when a young man was hit by a train in Scott County, and Belle ran up the railroad track screaming, "Not my blessed Ivan!"

A couple of family stories may or may not be true.  One, Belle was very bright and she organized the assembly line at the Morgan Packing Company.  Two, an aunt by marriage told my sister that the rumor in Scott County was that Ivan, the oldest, was the son of a Morgan (founders of the packing company) rather than of Wid Lynch.  My sister arranged for Ivan's grandson and a Lynch cousin to have DNA tested, and twelve markers matched, perhaps verifiying that Ivan was indeed a Lynch.  (And the Morgan Packing Company wasn't even founded when Ivan was born.)

In the photos above, Belle is shown with Wid and three grandsons when she was about fifty and with Wid and the children when she was about forty.


Sue<William Ervin Lynch<Ivan Ebert Lynch<Martha Isabelle Gamble

Cora Rose Ervin Lynch, 1889 - 1975

"Leave her be, Hilda, she'll be alright."  I can still hear Grandma as she and Mom stood by the door, all dressed up and ready to go, Mother impatient with me not wanting to go with them.  I was 3 or 4 at the time, and Grandma sympathized and suggested leaving me with Grandpa and Uncle Pat.  I was Rose's second grandchild.  She had eleven children between 1909 and 1932.

Grandma married Ivan Lynch, both of Scott County, Indiana, and neighbors, I believe.  Except for a short time in Virginia, they lived in Austin and Indianapolis IN until they moved to California about l953.  Some of their sons were stationed in California during the war and ended up living there.  Eventually almost the entire family migrated to southern CA.

Grandpa was a mason, then building contractor.  Another Grandpa said he was the smartest kid in the class.  But they lived in a small rental with an icebox (not refrigerator) until Grandpa built a modest home in Southport, a suburb of Indianapolis.  Then after moving to California in their sixties, they lived in a rental until they died.

Grandma was a quiet, reserved woman.  One relative used the word "apathy" to describe her and said she sat and listened to soaps on the radio all day.  A grandchild said she was very political when young and tore the placard of an opponent off a young girl.  When I was about 12, Grandma came into some unexpected money, and took my sister, Nancy, and I downtown shopping for outfits for us.  Partly I felt very special , and partly I felt guilty since I thought they were not financially well off.

Most Sundays, everyone gathered at Grandma's for dinner.  Rather than a buffet, there were at least two table seatings.  My family usually didn't go for dinner, but afterwards when the adults would sit in a circle on the floor and play poker.  Driving home in the dark we listened to Edgar Bergan and Charlie McCarthy on the car radio.

When her mother-in-law (Grandma Belle) was about 55 and needed a place to live, she moved in with Rose and Ivan rather than with her daughter, even though Rose had three little boys to care for.  Later, Ivan's grandmother, Sarah Arbuckle Lynch, lived with them for a while.

I don't think Rose knew that she and Harlan Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, shared a great great grandfather, Stephen Sanders.  Rose died when she was 86.


Sue<William Ervin Lynch<Cora Rose Ervin

Katherine Meyer Kindlinger Heiligenstein. 1837 - 1928

"Don't stay by the Meyers for dinner, Minnie!"  My mom used to mimic her great-grandma Kate's German accent.  As a child, Mom was taken to Mascoutah, IL to visit her great-grandma by her mother, Minnie Davis Casey (and Mom didn't realize that the Meyers were her cousins, Kate's family).  Kate had been born in Baden in l937 and came to the United States as a teenager with her famiy.  They came to Mascoutah, IL which had been settled by German immigrants, and as far as I know, Kate lived there all her life.

A few years after arriving, Kate married another German immigrant, Valentine Kindlinger, and they had six children before Valentine died.  He was a handsome man according to an 8 x 10 photo passed down, and came to the US from Nassau as a young man.

Census records show Valentine was an inn and saloon keeper.  Almost 10 years older than Kate, he died in his 50's; then she married Leonard Heiligenstein in l889.  She was called Grandma Heiligenstein by her grandchildren. 

I haven't found a record of Kate's mother, only her father, August, and brother, George.  Kate lived to be 90 years old.

Sue<Hilda Casey<Minnie Davis<Sophia Kindlinger<Katherine Meyer

Sophie Kindlinger Davis, 1862 - 1952

Although I was almost 17 when Grandma Davis died, I only remember her from a couple of occasions.  And although she lived probably not more than 150 miles away, we never drove to Litchfield IL to visit her or the Davis cousins.  I remember being with her, a small woman, in Austin IN in the winter and playing beanbag in the living room at her daughter Minnie Casey's house, with a fire burning in the fireplace.  The beanbag smelled to high heaven and I'm pretty sure Grandma Davis had made it and taken it to Austin.

Sophie Kindlinger was born to German immigrants:  her mother came to Illinois as a child and her father as a young man.  They met and married in St. Clair County IL where they had about six children.  Her dad died fairly young, around 1880, and her mom remarried.  I have one letter from Grandma Davis written to her daughter, Minnie, in l940.  It's apparent that she didn't have much education and you can detect an accent in her phonetically spelled words.  A cousin thought she didn't get beyond fourth grade.

Sophie raised her family in a two bedroom home with a barn in the back.  Her husband was a coal miner and as her sons grew, they worked in the mines, too.  Before coming in the house after work, they had to clean up in the barn.  After her husband died and she grew older, her sons insisted she live with one of her children in the winter so she wouldn't have to build and tend a fire for heat.  One cousin wrote that she always wanted to go home the first of March, regardless of the weather.

Even though Sophie was the daughter of German born parents, she married Louis Davis whose parents had immigrated from Great Britain.  He was tall, she was short.  She had worked as a servant before marriage and he was a coal miner.  One of her grandchildren wrote that Sophie fussed at her husband a lot.  She lived to be nearly 90 years old.

Sue<Hilda Casey<Minnie Davis<Sophie Kindlinger

Minnie Hilda Davis Casey

The postmaster in Austin, Indiana told my mom that Minnie Casey was the most beautiful woman to come to Scott County.  By the time I knew her, she has lost her youthful beauty, wore her hair in a bun, always wore a dress and when working, an apron, hummed as she worked, and she frowned and worried a lot.  She was early rather than late and soft-spoken.  In her sixties, she developed a high, hoarse voice which the doctor said was caused by nerves.

Minnie met Ulric "Doc" Casey when he was in telegrapher's training in Litchfield, Illinois where she lived with her family with her grandmother Pullen just down the street.  I wish I knew exactly what happened back in l905 and l906, but all I know is that a marriage license was issued to Minnie and Doc in May l906 in Scott County and that their daughter, Mabel, was born in Litchfield, Illinois in July, l906.  Sometime after that, Grandma and little Mabel took the train back to Austin where they lived, first in the Casey family home at the corner of Plum and the railroad tracks, then in a two bedroom home Doc built on the northeast corner of the Casey property.  I can still hear my mother moaning the fact that he built only two bedrooms when they already had two girls and a boy with another yet to come.  Grandma Minnie had grown up in a two bedroom in Litchfield in a large family.  Her father and brothers worked in the coal mines and had to clean up in the barn every evening before being allowed in the house.

I loved to visit in Austin.  I can remember lying on the hardwood floor by the bookcase reading, rocking in the front porch swing, standing at attention and saluting as military convoys drove down the highway, watching Grandma feathering chickens after Grandpa had wrung their necks.  Grandma was the only person who called me "Susie" and she didn't boss or nag or quiz, but she did a lot of cooking and filled the dining room table with lots of food.

My mother said that when she was little and someone came to the door, Grandma would say, "Go get your father, someone's here."  I often wonder what she would have been like if Grandpa had moved to Litchfield instead of Grandma moving to Austin.  Grandpa's parents and grandparents had known the Scott County families for a few generations.  Grandma was a newcomer and depended on him to direct her socially.

I don't ever remember hearing of the Davis and Casey families meeting.  But I found a special photo taken in Austin about 1911 showing Minnie, Doc, both sets of their parents, and sitting in front were Mabel and her two younger siblings, Dahlgren and Margaret.

Minnie lived to be 92.  In her older years, she often sat in her rocking chair, reminding visitors that that's what Jack Kennedy, president in the early sixties, did.


Sue<Hilda Casey<Minnie Davis

Hannah Long Waldsmith, about 1785 - 1835

Hannah's background is an ongoing mystery.  Once I went to a medium and asked about her.  The psychic said she pictured a woman at the door of a farmhouse, waving, but that's all she saw.  Big disappointment!

One great thing that's been found is a short bio in a town history in Kansas of Hannah's sister, Elizabeth Long McCoy.  From it, we know that Hannah's family went from Pennsylvania to Butler County, Ohio by river, I think, with sister Elizabeth's husband, and they settled about five miles south of Hamilton in southwestern Ohio.  Mr. McCoy said they were of "Dutch" descent, so perhaps they originally were Langs.  Hannah married Peter Waldsmith whose father had a mill in the area, and they had many daughters born between 1806 and 1824, who were named on a deed from Peter.  No record has been found of Hannah's mother, so perhaps she died before they traveled from Pennyslvania down the Ohio.

I've been searching for information about Hannah for 30 years.  Maybe someday someone will find more clues from her dad, James, sister Elizabeth McCoy, or brother Minor(d).  In the meantime, I think of her as standing at the front door of an old farmhouse, smiling and waving.


Sue<Hilda Casey<Ulric Casey<Lemira McClure<Deborah Young<Jane Waldsmith<Hannah Long

Jane Waldsmith Young, 1806 - 1880

I love to "google" Grandma Jane and find so many hits.  She had many descendents, including daughter Sarah Bovard whose diary written in the l860's is on the internet, and she was the granddaughter of Christian Waldsmith whose home has been preserved as an historic site in Hamilton County, Ohio.

Jane's grandfather, Christian, left Pennsylvania where his dad was an immigrant German Reformed minister, and built a mill near the Ohio River in Ohio where he raised his family.  Son Peter farmed in Butler and Hamilton counties, married out of the German community, and his daughter, Jane, was born in l806.   Jane met Abner Young, a Yankee whose family had been in New England for 200 years and who had moved to Cincinnati as a young man, and they married when Jane was l7.  Around l840, Peter, whose wife had died, moved on west with most of his family, including Jane and Abner, to Jefferson County, Indiana where he bought land for farming.

Jane and Abner had l4 chilcren, one about every two years.  Several of the children died as infants or small children, and three of her daughters had tragic deaths as adults.  Jane lived the last 40 years of her life in Scott County, Indiana within a buggy ride of most of her children and sisters.

In the Chronicle March 11, 1880:  Mrs. Jane Young, a very old and much respected lady, after a short but painful spell of illness, died on the 4th inst.


Sue<Hilda Casey<Ulric Casey<Lemira McClure<Deborah Young<Jane Waldsmith

Deborah Young McClure 1834 - 1875

The only picture I have of Grandma Debbie is a xerox of a photo in a locket.  I don't know who wore that locket or where it is, but the photo was taken when she was a young woman.  Debbie died of childbirth when she was 41.

The family story is that Debbie overdosed herself during childbirth.  Her husband, Dr. Dexter McClure, was away on a call.  Family stories aren't very reliable (I grew up thinking I was a descendant of Thomas Lynch, Jr. who signed the Declaration of Independence) but Debbie and the baby, William did die in Austin, Indiana in l875 not far from where her parents and many brothers and sisters lived.

Debby was only 19 when she married Dexter McClure who was 34.  He had grown up in New York and moved to Southern Indiana as a young man out of medical school.  Debbie was born near Cincinnati and her family moved to northeastern Scott County about l839.  By the time they married, Debbie would have known about the other Dexter McClure in Scott County, and I wonder how she felt about it.

In census records in the VanBuskirk family is a Dexter McClure born about l848 or l849.  Sometimes he is called Dexter McClure and sometimes Dexter McClure VanBuskirk.  None of the young women in the household, and there were several, were named McClure.  So this Dexter could have been named after Dr. McClure who delivered him, or Dr. McClure could have been married to a VanBuskirk (no record found in Scott County marriages) who died in childbirth and the child was raised by the VanBuskirks, or this may have been an out-of-wedlock son and Dexter didn't marry the mother, perhaps never acknowledging a son.  In any event, Dexter McClure VanBuskirk grew up and died in Scott County, and there is no hint in our family records of a relationship.

The diary of Debbie's sister, Sarah Young Bovard, tells about the family during the Civil War.  Sarah called Debbie and another sister "southern sympathisers."  One sister's husband was killed during the war.  Sarah also wrote about her boys eating wild mushrooms and finally getting a doctor to come.  She wrote that Dr. McClure was "summoned, but he did not come."

Two of Debbie's sisters had tragic deaths.  Margy was hit on the head with a rock and died (perhaps hit by her mother-in-law who was listed in the census as insane), and Aunt Ethe took carbolic acid.  Debbie's husband died about 4 years after she did.

Two of her daughters married Milhouse brothers who were cousins of President Nixon.  Two of her sons married Amanda Wiles, first one who later died, and then the other.  Her daughter, Lemira, also married a medical doctor and became the mother of another medical doctor.

Sue<Hilda Casey<Ulric Casey<Lemira Casey<Deborah Young

Lemira Orilla McClure Casey

What I've learned in thirty years of tracing family history is that facts, like births and deaths, are recorded in black and white in official records to be absorbed by family searchers.  But personalities, like someone being fat and sassy or a frowning pessimist, can ony be learned through letters and oral history.  I only wish we had more of that as letters are nearly obsolete.

My great grandmother, Lemira Orilla McClure Casey, died a few years before I was born (l860-1933) so I did hear stories of her all my life.  She was even-tempered, seldom made meals on time, and had her grandchildren do chores and errands for her.  What no one talked about though, were the deaths she had to face.  Her mom died when she was 15.  Two siblings died before she was born and three more while she was growing up.  And her father, Dexter McClure, was a medical doctor.

Lemira married Dr. Henry Casey and three of their ten children died.  Grandpa talked about his little sister, Lemira's daughter, Louise, who died when she was two.  Grandpa's youngest child's middle name was Louise as is his granddaughter's and great granddaughter's.

What many of us remember about Lemira is her house.  It was built in the mid nineteenth century as the Tull Hotel next to the new railroad through Austin, Indiana, and purchased by Lemira's father about 1875.  I was born there.  It had four rooms up and four rooms down plus a large attic which served not only as storage space but also as the playroom for a few generations.  The attic walls were like an autograph book (also now obsolete), signed by my grandpa's generation as well as my mom's and mine.  Cousin Wilma recently wrote me this:  when she and Harold became engaged, she took him to Lemira's attic to memorialize the wedding date on the attic wall.  Aunt Ethyl heard them and called up the stairway asking if Wilma had Harold up there.  Then she told them to come down that instant.  She wasn't going to have any hanky panky in her attic.

At one time, Lemira and her husband owned a plot of land between the Pennsylvania Railroad and Highway 31 in Austin. Then after Grandpa married, they gave him land by Highway 31 to build a house.  When I was growing up, there was a path through the garden between Lemira's house and Grandpa's house.  When the family congregated in Austin, we kids slept in the "big house," Lemira's house, almost close enough to reach out the window and touch the trains as they screamed by in the night.

Now, after a tornado one year and fire another, the house is a four room, one-story, cottage.  It broke my heart to see a photo of it taken about fifteen years ago.  But it is still there at Plum Street and the railroad.

My mom said her grandpa Henry would ask her, when she was small, "where's your grandma?  I haven't had my dinner yet.  See if she is in the outhouse reading the Sears catalog."  Cousin Wilma wrote that when they visited, she always hoped she would get an invitation to have dinner with Minnie and Ulric (Lemira's son down the garden) since Lemira's meals were always late.

I wonder if Lemira may have been a bit passive aggressive.  She must have been pretty mad that her mom left her motherless and with four little sisters and brothers to bring up, including a two-year old and five year old.  After two of the sisters had grown, married Milhouse brothers (cousins of President Nixon), and moved to California, Lemira took the train across the country to visit them.  She also visited her sister who lived on a farm in Scott County, and it must have been by horse and buggy as neither she, nor her daughter-in-law, Minnie, who visited with her, drove cars.

Grandma Lemira wrote great letters and thankfully, some of her sisters and daughters saved them.

Sue<Hilda Casey<Ulric Casey<Lemira McClure

Grandma Eliza Hancock Casey

I wish I knew all my grandmothers better.  When my young cousin was dying, my meditation was picturing her on the field of a stadium filled with our grandmothers who were cheering in the stands and giving her an enormous ovation for her life.  Not just our Grandma Minnie Casey, whom we both knew, but generations of grandmothers back to the beginning of time.

The grandmother I'm thinking of now is Eliza Hancock who lived in the nineteenth century and married Tom Casey, my great-great grandfather.  Eliza grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.  One of my grandpa's cousins wrote that when she visited there, they walked through a field filled with mosquitos.  She didn't like it very much.

Eliza grew up in Snow Hill, Maryland, although there, her family was known as the "Boxiron Hancocks."  Who her grandparents were, I haven't found out, but I imagine they went from Virginia to Boxiron, Maryland and then to Snow Hill.  But in l837, when she was 23, Eliza was in Cincinnati and married Tom Casey.  He also had moved to Cincinnati from Maryland, but from Baltimore, as a young man.  I couldn't find a hint that they knew each other before Cincinnati.  So it is a mystery why she moved to Cincinnati and how she met Tom Casey.

Grandpa Tom, whose father had had a mill on a river near Baltimore, worked for Shreve Steel and Rolling Mill.  When I was small I was told that as a child, their son, Elberton, had boarded a cruise ship on the Ohio River when the ship suddenly sank, and the last thing the family could see of him was his white gloves waving goodbye.  The newspaper reported that the Casey boy was playing on the dock, slipped and fell in and drowned.

There must have been some smarts in the family as a couple of the other sons grew up to be doctors.  Tom left Shreve and bought land in Scott County, Indiana where they moved and farmed.  He was also a lay minister of the Methodist Church.

Grandpa told me his Grandma Eliza smoked a pipe.  He remembered her funeral on a cold, snowy day in 1900.  She is buried in Austin cemetery, not far from the Methodist church.

She had to have courage to have moved so far away from family in those days.

sue<Hilda Casey<Ulric Casey<Henry Casey<Eliza