More tying up loose ends from the Civil War pension files of my grandmother’s uncle Patrick Ryan and his wife Delilah Rinehart (if you’re just now seeing this series of posting, this is #7 in the series; you may want to click and read the preceding postings for background): Continue reading “Prob. Died Young, Or How Pat Ryan Lost His Eye (As a Union Soldier) (7)”
As I ended my last posting about the Civil War pension claims filed by Patrick Ryan and his widow Delilah Rinehart Ryan in Grant County, Arkansas, I mentioned that one of the threads tying together the network of families represented in these combined pension files is that men from several of these families were Union soldiers during the war —in a state that seceded from the Union, from families living in the central and southern part of Arkansas where Confederate sentiment was stronger than it was in the northern half of the state. As we’ve seen, Pat Ryan’s first wife Rosanna Hill Spann was the widow of John H. Spann, who served in the 3rd Arkansas Cavalry along with Pat Ryan, as did John Spann’s brother James Jasper Spann, who enlisted in Little Rock in Co. K of this Union unit on the same day that Pat Ryan did, 8 November 1863. Continue reading “Prob. Died Young, Or How Pat Ryan Lost His Eye (As a Union Soldier) (6)”
I’d like to begin winding down my series of postings about the Civil War pension files of Patrick Ryan and his wife Delilah Rinehart Ryan of Grant County, Arkansas, by tying up some loose ends I’ve left dangling in my four previous postings about these genealogically rich documents. As I do so, I’m fully aware that most of you don’t share my intense interest in the people mentioned in these files. How could you, when they aren’t your relatives and the connections of your kin? Continue reading “Prob. Died Young, Or How Pat Ryan Lost His Eye (As a Union Soldier) (5)”
You obtain an unexpected new treasure trove chock full of genealogical goodies, as I did last year when, at long last, I thought to look for a Union service record for my grandmother’s uncle Pat Ryan and discovered he and his widow Delilah Rinehart Ryan had filed pension applications for his Civil War service. You obtain a new genealogical treasure trove, and you have an entirely new genealogical problem on your hands. You’ve suddenly gone from knowing too little about one of your family members of the past to that dreaded internet scourge, TMI. Continue reading “Prob. Died Young, Or How Pat Ryan Lost His Eye (As a Union Soldier) (4)”
A small St. Patrick’s day postscript to readers of this new blog: if you’re finding it worthwhile, please feel free to pass on information about it to others who might be interested in it. As I said in my initial posting, I’ve set it up because I want to find a way to share years of research with others, and for that reason, will welcome any help I can get in spreading word to others about this new blog. Thank you!
And now to that missing eye: though I have not spelled this out, it has probably become obvious to you if you’ve read the first two installments in this series that it is, in part, an extended essay about the importance of family stories in genealogical research. It’s a foray into understanding how family stories should be handled. Continue reading “Prob. Died Young, Or How Pat Ryan Lost His Eye (As a Union Soldier) (3)”
“So how did Pat Ryan lose that eye in the Civil War?” you ask. Well, I’ll tell you. Continue reading “Prob. Died Young, Or How Pat Ryan Lost His Eye (As a Union Soldier) (2)”
I’ve just shared postings tracing all I’ve been able to discover about an elusive Ulster Scots ancestor, David Dinsmore, who came from Ireland to South Carolina with his wife Margaret not long before the Revolution, took the British side during that war, and found himself exiled to Nova Scotia, leaving his wife and children behind in South Carolina. The backstory to those postings is that, for many years, my FGS for this family had neatly written, in the slot next to David’s date and place of death, the statement, “Prob. died young.” Continue reading “Prob. Died Young, Or How Pat Ryan Lost His Eye (As a Union Soldier) (1)”
And now an “aftermath” posting about the story of David Dinsmore. As the following account indicates (I’ve previously posted it elsewhere online), in May-June 2016, I took a trip to Nova Scotia to see if I could find any trace of what became of David Dinsmore after he sold his Nova Scotia land in January 1787. On that trip, I scoured all the documents I could locate that might conceivably have information about David at the Nova Scotia Archives, the provincial land office, and the Crown Lands Office. I located the tract of land David was granted as a Loyalist in the brushy hills of Rawdon township and drove to look at it, I scoured the tombstones in the Old Burying Ground in Halifax and corresponded with the archivist overseeing that historic site. I attended a meet-and-greet event of the Nova Scotia Genealogical Society and talked to the very informed folks who came to that event, including a descendant of the Densmore family from whom David bought land in August 1786. I found no trace at all of David after he sold his Nova Scotia land in 1787. Here’s my account of that search from my previous posting about it, slightly edited for republication here: Continue reading “David Dinsmore, Ulster-Scots Loyalist in South Carolina and Nova Scotia Exile: Every Life Worth a Novel (7)”
If David Dinsmore did return to his wife Margaret and their five children after he sold his Nova Scotia land grant in January 1787, then it seems strange that Margaret is listed as head of her household in Spartanburg Co., South Carolina, on the 1790 federal census. A 19 November 1799 deed of Jane McClurkin to Paul Castelberry, both of Spartanburg County, also says that the land bordered on the east on Margaret Dunmore’s land, indicating that by 1799, Margaret was regarded as the owner of the land her husband had acquired in South Carolina (Spartanburg DB G, pp. 159-161). Continue reading “David Dinsmore, Ulster-Scots Loyalist in South Carolina and Nova Scotia Exile: Every Life Worth a Novel (6)”
Begats and Bequeathals 