I have accepted a challenge to participate in an event called 52 Ancestors in 52 Days, sponsored by Genealogist and Podcaster Amy Johnson Crow. Amy has assigned a general topic to each week in 2023. The topic for week 1 is “I’d like to meet.”
Week 1 – I’d Like to Meet
There are so many exciting and curious characters in my family tree that I would like to meet. But to choose one and cover them well would take me more than the week allocated in the challenge. So instead, I will give a snippet of information on three of these family members.
Captain John Fish
John Fish was a rough character who excelled in hunting, tracking, and farming. He used these skills in the French and Indian War (1754-1763), fighting against the French as a British Colonial subject. This war set the stage for the help the colonists would receive from the French and Spanish governments in the American Revolution.
By the time of the American Revolution, John was an old man and initially tried to stay out of the war. But when several of his neighbors were captured in an Indian raid, he and two of his sons enlisted in the Pennsylvania Militia. One son was already a soldier in George Washington’s Continental Line.
John’s personal life was even more dramatic than his military life. John moved to Dansbury (now East Stroudsburg) in 1745 and marries for the first time. Life was hard in the wilderness, and women typically didn’t live long. John had at least four wives over fifty years. At his death, he had two minor children living at home, and his eldest children already had grandchildren.
Three people fought over John’s military pension. A grandson, John (son of John), and the two youngest children. John testified that he was the only son of John. The two girls testified that they were John’s only children. I don’t know how many children John had, but 13 were alive and living nearby during the court battles related to the probate of John’s estate. John’s friends and his male adult children all refused to accept guardianship of his two youngest children. I am so curious about family dynamics.
See more about the Fish family in Fish in Northampton County PA.
Effie Ann Parr
Effie Ann Parr was born two years before her father, Enoch Parr, enlisted in the Iowa Regiment for the Civil War. Enoch enlisted with two older brothers, and their three families moved in with Morgan Parr, Effie Ann’s grandfather.
According to multiple affidavits in Enoch’s military files, he was a healthy and energetic man when he enlisted. But when he was released from his military duty, he was a very sick man. He spent much of the war in various hospitals after he contracted pneumonia while guarding prisoners of war along the Mississippi. He had severe lung disease, chronic diarrhea, weak eyes, and partial paralysis of both legs for the rest of his life.
Her father was gone for three years, and when he returned, he was in and out of the hospital and unable to do manual labor. When Effie Ann was 12, her parents decided to homestead in Nebraska with family and neighbors.
The heavy work of meeting the requirements of a homestead would fall on Effie, Effie’s mother, her older brother, and their neighbors. They filed their original homestead application in February 1874. In August, Effie Ann’s youngest brother and my great-grandfather, Elmer, was born. And by April of the following year, their mother was dead.
Now Effie was 14 and had two small children and her father to care for, in addition to the work on the homestead with two brothers. Effie raised her two youngest siblings and finally married when she was 25. Nine months later, with the birth of her first child, she was dead.
Meet Margaret Callahan
Margaret was born in County Monaghan, Ireland. She was the third child born of Michael Callaghan and Bridget McGeough. For unknown reasons, her older sister, Kate, immigrated to the US and went to Cando, North Dakota. In Cando, she met a nice young man and married him. Kate must have immediately sent for Margaret. Margaret found her own young man and married him. They lived in a house made of sod. They stored their food in a hole in the ground. Did she wonder if she had made a mistake? Was this life better than what she had in Ireland?
I guess it was. Their brother Patrick immigrated in 1899 and settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Their father, Michael Callaghan, died in February 1901 of cancer at 63. Their mother died in December 1901. She was 55 and had been ill for two years with muscle weakness, fatigue, and brain fog.
What was it like to leave home without ever seeing your parents again? Without knowing if you would ever see any of your siblings again. If I could have asked her these questions, would she have answered?
