Biography

A Bit of More Modern History

Candace W Leave a comment

4-H club

 

Thanks to a cousin, Ken Baker, who found this clipping in an old scrapbook.

First row (left to right): Ruth Schmidt, Janet Schmidt. Rachel Schmidt, Barbara McCormick, Phyllis McCormick

Second row: William Milan, Richard Pitstick, John Schmidt, Richard Schmidt, Dale McCormick, Edwin Pitstick, Gerald McCormick

Third row: Charles Clifford (leader), Bob Lattimore, Vincent Pitstick (junior leader), Emmett Baker, Hubert Pitstick, Henry Schmidt.

Please leave comments below about anything you remember about this group, particularly when this might have been taken.

Tying Two Families Tightly Together

Candace W Leave a comment

Eliza and Wm Dunavan            Joseph Albert and Nancy Green Dunavan

Among the very early marriages in La Salle county are the marriages of three brothers, William, Joseph, and George Dunavan, with three sisters, Eliza, Nancy, and Katherine, the daughters of John Green, founder of Dayton. William and Eliza were the first to marry, on November 6, 1831. Nancy and Joseph followed on January 26, 1834, and finally, Katherine and George married on June 15, 1837. In later years, Noah Letts, the younger half-brother of the Dunavan boys, reached the age where he was thinking about acquiring a wife. His brother Madison’s wife, who was John Green’s sister-in-law, suggested a Trumbo girl, a niece of hers. Noah, knowing that several Trumbos had also married into the Green family, felt that Dayton was full of his relatives and thought that he would look elsewhere for a wife.

Who was Ann Muddamin?

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picture of Ann Muddamin tombstone

There is a tombstone in the Dayton Cemetery which reads:
ANN MUDDAMIN
DIED
Apr. 17, 1843
AE 75 years

A search in three large on-line genealogical sites, Ancestry, Family Search and Mocavo, found no one with a last name of Muddamin. A search for Muddaman produced some results, mostly from the British Isles. A search for Muddiman produced many results, mostly from the US and Britain. It appears, then, that “Muddamin” may be a misspelling of the more common “Muddiman”. There is no head of household in the 1840 census of La Salle county with a name beginning MUDD, so she is not the wife or sister of a local man. Muddiman might be her married name and she might be in the household of a married daughter. There are no households in the 1840 federal or state censuses for Dayton that contain a female over seventy.

She was unlikely to have been traveling on her own. Was she with someone who came to Dayton after 1840? Perhaps she was with a group that was only passing through and she was buried at the nearest place to where she died. Tracing the families of the early residents may eventually turn up a Muddiman connection, but for the present she remains a mystery.