Researching our family is always tricky for a couple of reasons -1) They continuously move and have for hundreds of years, and 2) they re-use first names to a ridiculous degree. And then we have the Fish and Work problem. Since those are common English words, it is challenging to search out the names because the search becomes swamped by all the uses of those ubiquitous words.
But I am beginning to get a handle on at least part of the Fish family because of the homestead records I talked about in the previous post.
My great-great-grandmother Harriett B Fish married Enoch Parr August 20, 1857, in Wayne, Iowa, where both families temporarily resided. Harriett and Enoch’s first four children were born in Wayne, Iowa but the youngest, my great grandfather Elmer Clyde Parr, was born on the homestead in Oak Grove Township, Franklin, Nebraska. The closest town is Bloomington.
Harriett was the youngest child of Abner Fish and Sally Featherstone, who resided in Washington County, Ohio, at the time of their marriage and possibly until Sally died. I think Abner & Sally had about 10 children — not all of which I have been able to trace. Harriett, her sister Silence, and brother Robert all ended up in Franklin, Nebraska. Until I was able to find Robert Fish’s homestead records, I wasn’t sure he actually survived the journey from Iowa to Nebraska. But as it turns out, Robert came to Nebraska before his other siblings. He was a Postmaster, first in Iowa and later in Nebraska. But he also was a homesteader. His homestead was in Turkey Creek Township, which was the township northwest of Oak Grove. He completed his home on March 16, 1873, which started the 5-year proving period for the homestead. He bought a significant amount of land in Oak Grove Township along the Republican River in October 1873. Not many people actually bought property from the government at that time, so he must have been reasonably prosperous.
Robert’s homestead paperwork was fascinating because he died while homesteading. As far as I can tell, the only record of his death is in the homestead records. His wife Julia took over the farming part of “proving” the homestead and raising their five children: Wallace, Mary, Laura, Lavinia, and Rufus. Not only did the homesteader have to make declarations in that they met the requirements to “prove” a homestead, but they also had to come up with two or three other people who could attest to all the same questions. One of the men who filed an affidavit to testify to the homestead was Silence’s son John Swaney.
