Edward Corbley: Where did he go?

Edward Corbley:Birth April 19,1832 Death 20 Oct 1891 in Oakwood, IL  (Parents William Corbley and Rebecca Stephens).  Spouse Mary Ann Littler (February 7, 1860)

My aunt has decided to join the DAR and so this spurred a quest to find all the records for my paternal grandmother’s side of the family. We had already recorded the Corbley bible, but the last three generations needed more documentation. All was going fairly well until my great great grandfather Edward Corbley. Family stories differ on why he vanished and there aren’t a lot of records on him, but they all revolve around livestock that got ill and him losing everything. One story Aunt Ethel told was that Edward Corbley was driving cattle up from Texas when they became ill (she said hoof and mouth disease) and he had to hide from the government… then losing the land and everything to the federal government.

The Corbley Farm was a big farm that included the land across from the high school all the way to the land that included Muncie (there is a street in Muncie named after the Corbleys). One article shows that the Congressman J.G. Cannon purchased the farm in both Champaign and Vermilion counties for $30,000.  I’m not sure what the mention of Pearsons and Taft of Chicago means?
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From that I can piece together though Edward Corbley went on after the livestock ‘fiasco’ to live in Kansas city, Missouri.  He lived there approximately 8 years before visiting his daughter in Illinois and passing away in her home.   The article tells that he sold his property and went west when reverence overtook him.

0126e205a8ac6220535380dad48d85e38789204239Mary Ann Littler (his wife) is rumored to be buried in Stearns Cemetery in Muncie Illinois with her family, so the thought is that he might be buried in the same cemetery.  There isn’t a record of his burial that I can find so far, and the only undocumented tombstones are so worn that they can no longer be identified.

Somewhere the name switched from Corbley to Corbly also.  Edward Corbly had a brother Lindsey that was in the new constantly (a lawyer)  – so it makes it surprising to me that Edward fell off the books.  I did find one mention that Edward and another man were responsible for surveying and laying out the town of Muncie but in a book with the history of Vermilion County, Edward is dropped completely from the history.  I’m not completely sure I’m ready to quit searching for the history of what happened to Edward.  Most stories though may be lost to time.

From what I’ve found about the livestock disease at that time, Texas cattle were immune to the illness and any land that they inhabited became infected.  New cattle brought in to graze on that land then became ill and died off.  Several states closed off cattle drive routes and would not allow those cattle to be driven through their states.  Shortly after the time I was looking at Illinois closed it’s borders to new Texas cattle.  BUT not knowing what was causing the illness, the farmer bringing in the cattle was vilified by neighboring ranchers for killing off huge herds of cattle.  My ancestors seems to have been caught up in the bad luck of bringing in the wrong type of cattle at the wrong time.

The history of Texas Cattle Drives is available here, but includes:

TEXAS FEVER. Readers of the Veterinarian, an English journal, were informed in June 1868 that a “very subtle and terribly fatal disease” had broken out among cattle in Illinois. The disease killed quickly and was reported to be “fatal in every instance.” The disease was very nearly as fatal as the Veterinarian claimed. Midwestern farmers soon realized that it was associated with longhorn cattle driven north by South Texas ranchers. The Texas cattle appeared healthy, but midwestern cattle, including Panhandle animals, allowed to mix with them or to use a pasture recently vacated by the longhorns, became ill and very often died. Farmers called the disease Texas fever or Texas cattle fever because of its connection with Texas cattle. Other names included Spanish fever and splenic or splenetic fever, from its characteristic lesions of the spleen. The disease is also known as hemoglobinuric fever and red-water fever, and formerly as dry murrain and bloody murrain. To protect their cattle, states along the cattle trails passed quarantine laws routing cattle away from settled areas or restricting the passage of herds to the winter months, when there was less danger from Texas fever. In 1885 Kansas entirely outlawed the driving of Texas cattle across its borders. Kansas, with its central location and rail links with other, more northern markets, was crucial to the Texas cattle-trailing business. The closing of Kansas, together with restrictive legislation passed by many other states, was an important factor in ending the Texas cattle-trailing industry that had flourished for twenty years. (See also, e.g., SHAWNEE TRAIL.)

I almost wonder if in the mention of Texas Fever in Illinois, if the story might be referring to what occurred with Edward Corbly.  Corbly moved to Missouri in 1883, leading me to believe that the epidemic with his cattle occurred shortly before that in the 1880 to 1883 time frame – though it could have been as early as the 1870s.

MUNCIE was platted and recorded in 1875, and evidently named by the surveyors, Alexander Bowman and Edward Corbley.

One story is that part of Muncie was handed over to make restitution for the loss of livestock.

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Marriage of Lizzie Morgan

Lizzie Morgan was descended from Morgan Morgan, Zackwell Morgan, James Morgan (my ancestors)… and then Sylvester Morgan.  I found this record through ancestry.com.  Having a subscription I find all sorts of interesting stories and pieces of information.  This is another one of the ‘gossipy’ stories from the newspaper.  They even list the groom as having ‘a large bank account’, and he visited three times to get his bride!  It’s amazing the things you can find out about family.

Farmer Blue Finally Gets His Jeffersonville Bride

When the Louisville train for Indianapolis drew away from the P., C., C. and St.L railroad station in Jeffersonville yesterday, among its passengers were John M. Blue and bride, en route to Blairtown, Ia. The previous night they had been married in Jeffersonville and it was the third time that Mr.Blue had come to marry the same woman, Miss Lizzie Morgan. Twice, at the final moment, she had faltered, assigning as a reason that her father was too ill. Mr. Blue had tendered Miss Morgan a check for $2000 and had promised her a home in Chicago, but that was no inducement. The last time that Mr.Blue had returned home disappointed was last Christmas. He said that he would be back in five months and take Miss Morgan away as his bride. He did not wait that long, but as the sequel shows that cut no figure.

Mrs. Blue is the daughter of the late Sylvester Morgan whose death recently occurred in Jeffersonville. Mr. Blue is fifty-two years old and a farmer with a large bank account. He is a church deacon and Sunday-school superintendent.

The couple became acquainted through a matrimonial publication. Mrs. Blue is a sister-in-law of Magistrate Eph Keigwin.

 

From the Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky) 21 March 1895, Page 8.

 

 

Interesting Stories from History – Ida M Fisher

Every so often you find a story as you search that is interesting. Ida M Fisher – The wife of Paul Scheffler apparently shot herself according to the newspaper article.

causeddeathWhat’s even more interesting is that the newspaper article not only tells what the cause of her death was, they tell the whole story.  They even include that she playfully kicked the boat with her foot, intending thereby to make Mrs. Lavar unsteady and spoil her aim….  Apparently Mrs. Lavar aim was thrown off (being a cripple according to the article) and Ida (Fisher) Sheffler was shot in the forehead causing “a gloom over the happy crowd”.

This was from July 26, 1906.  The Plymouth Tribune and is saved in the Library of Congress.  I’ve found a few articles cut from papers in photo albums my aunts had collected.  They include articles such as Mrs Richter went visiting to her daughter and son in law on Wednesday.

For small country towns, even going into town was a newsworthy even before the advent of cars (and when cars were first available, having a car was a BIG event)…

The event in the article is such a sad event, but yet the way it’s written gives a little look into the way newspaper reporting was viewed at the time.  Personally I almost view the newspapers of the time as ‘gossip rags’?  They are a great place to get information for family history though.

 

 

 

Source:LOC Newspaper Copy

 

 

Family Pictures

One of the things I’ve done to try to prevent memories from being lost is to ask all my aunts and uncles (and anyone else I can) to let me scan the old picture albums.  Most old albums that were used were before people realized that the acid in paper would yellow and destroy photos – so the earlier you digitize pictures the better.  You can now get all sorts of acid free supplies, but I found that even trying to remove the photos from the albums might tear and destroy them.

Originally I used the HP Photosmart 7280 printer/scanner.  It has the ability to work as a flatbed scanner or you can sheetfeed through a stack of photos.  All our family photos that I had from when my kids were little are paper photos, so those I was able to just feed through in a stack.  I would start them scanning and come back later to find the pile finished. (This included the 12 rolls my husband took on our honeymoon that were all of the great scenery.)    I may send one of those off today to have a big poster made for our anniversary (19th).  Now I have the Magic Wand scanner in my pile of tools. It’s great for scanning things at relatives houses and even books that can’t be removed from the library.  It’s a small handheld scanner that uses batteries and scans to a microSD card.  These aren’t the highest resolution, but it’s a start.

Once in a while the copy I find is a copy printed from a copy, so resolution takes even more of a hit – but in some cases the originals may not be available, or have degraded so badly that the copy is the highest resolution. If you are going to preserve lots old old photos having good software is a must.  I’ve tried several, memory manager from Creative memories is good for a beginner, but isn’t heavy duty enough.  Photoshop Elements is pretty great for the Album feature, I have notes, albums, and sharing all set up.  But for heavy duty editing something like Photoshop is really ideal.  (Gimp is a free alternative with the same features).  I actually even have a book on restoration…. Some are below.  One is even available for the Kindle.

The toughest part of course is knowing who’s in the photo.  I actually stuck little post it notes next to what photos before scanning to identify the people (My grandmother at the time was with me).  After scanning I editing the tags out, but as I put them in photoshop album I added notes for who was in the photos.  I also could tag them with the people so that when doing a search I could identify every photo of that person.  I currently have over 10,000 pictures, so organization is essential. (Those include our family pics too).

I’ll post pics in my next post.  I also have to mention backups, since doing all this work would be pretty painful if a hard drive crash took it all out.  I have several backup methods that include using photoshop.com to backup and share photos.  Me.com for a few things, and Mozy for full backup of important files (not just pics and video).  I also have an external hard drive for a local backup.  Having more than one method of backup is important.  (And don’t forget you want a backup off site too, so if something happens to your house your still covered.)

I also have converted our old VHS tapes, slides, 8MM films and more to digital. The toughest being the old 8MM since it’s really tough to find a bulb for an 8MM projector now.  We have one more to go for that….  🙂  It actually was one that turned up a couple years after we finished, so we don’t have the projector anymore.  I have it waiting while I consider options. There are services that do this for about 12 cents a foot.  It might be worth it for one reel.  Projectors for these varied too, I might be able to find one on Ebay – but this might be so much easier.  The negatives are another story though.  We have a lot of these left, so having the equipment could make life a lot easier.  VHS to DVD is really the easiest conversion.

Family Stories

Family stories are hard to find once your older relatives are gone.  On my mother’s side, my grandmother was the best source – and she didn’t know her father since he passed away when she was little.  I’ve heard rumors he was a small man compared to my great grandmother that was large.  He worked in the mines and had a hard life. I’m sure that the mines contributed to his lack of ability to fight the flu in 1918.  That flu killed off large amounts of middle aged people and was one of the worst epidemics in history.

Stories I’ve heard include how my great grandmother would work in the garden and stop long enough to come in, have a baby and go back out.  My great grandfather had applied for citizenship and my great-grandmother would have gotten it through him if he hadn’t passed away before completing the process.  Stories sound like she was always afraid they would send her back to Italy and not let her come back to the US if she tried to visit family back home.

The story I had heard was that they started in Clinton IN and then moved to Westville, IL.  My great-grandmother came over to the US with three girls in tow and passed through Ellis Island.  After coming to the US a daughter Theresa died in Clinton IN as a child.  The story is that Theresa was the name of a sister to my g-grandmother so she named my grandmother Theresa since she wanted to use the name (after the first Theresa had passed away).  The grave of the first Theresa in Clinton supposedly washed away many years ago.

Can you imagine coming to a foreign country on a LONG boat trip with three girls afraid that one would get sick and cause the new country to deny you entry?  My great grandparents left everything they new behind to come to the US with very few possessions to start over with.

Stories of Italy that my grandmother remembered included that they lived above the barn  in Italy.  The heat from the animals kept the house warmer.  My aunt Kate also told stories filled with superstition.  One I remember involved a beggar coming to the door in Italy and a relative throwing hot coffee out that landed on the beggars face.  A few days later a dog showed up at the door with a burnt face and they were sure it was the beggar. Of course these stories come to me not even second hand, but third hand in this case. My Aunt Kate was one of the youngest kids and she told me many years ago.  If only I had used a tape recorder then to preserve the stories….