Whew! We did it...we had our second full day
in Columbus, Bartholomew County, Indiana and made connections like crazy!
Where to start?
For those of you NOT into genealogy research, here
are the highlights of the second day in Columbus, Wednesday, July 10:
·
Meeting Mary Ellen Grossman who works in county
records at the Bartholomew County Courthouse.
Mary Ellen spent countless hours pouring over Bartholomew County records
searching for Harrisons in the later 90’s;
·
Chance meeting with Donna Kuhlman, genealogy
researcher in Bartholomew County, at the sweltering Indiana Room in the
Columbus Public Library designed by I. M. Pei (they were replacing the air
conditioner). Donna’s research provided
the first information we had about where our ggg grandparents were buried. I still had the directions she sent me in the
late 90’s;
·
Seeing the farm where Vincent Harrison and Nancy
Keith Harrison (parents of Walter Harrison) are buried – our ggg grandparents;
·
Standing by Vincent’s land he purchased in 1834 –
an original sale of this land in Indiana AND it’s still farmland!;
and
·
Visiting the cemetery where our ggg grandfather
William Luckey (father of Melissa Caroline Luckey Harrison) is buried at the Mt.
Zion United Methodist Church outside of Columbus. Grandfather William helped form the Mt. Zion
Methodist Episcopal church in 1850 and died in 1865. He was a trustee of the church at the time
the cemetery was formed.
This might have been part of William Luckey's stone. We knew from the cemetery records that it was broken.
If you’re interested in how this journey happened
(and if you’re family – you better be!), read on.
When Dennis and I got married in 1972, my
Grandfather Harrison (1904-2005; Vincent,
Walter, Charles Willis, Charles LaVerne, Donald LaVerne, Kay Louise)
asked me to find out more about HIS grandfather, Walter Harrison (1841-1928)
who moved from Bartholomew County, IN to Mitchell County, KS in 1878.
Dennis and I were active as archivists for the Kansas Yearly Meeting of
Friends (Quakers) and it was a natural question for my Quaker grandfather to
ask! Of course, in 1972 genealogy research was reading, making personal connections,
and spending time in libraries! We had no idea whether Walter was a
Quaker or not so we started with Quaker meeting records in Bartholomew County.
When we noticed that there were Harrisons and Tabers in the same meeting
in Sand Creek Township who were urged to change meetings because there were too
many cousins marrying, we shut the books with a slam!!!! Newlyweds do NOT
want to think they are related. LOL
By the middle 90's the internet was up and running and genealogy
research was taking off in new and exciting ways. I got in on the ground floor with Becky
Bonner who developed the Harrison Genealogy Repository, a one-surname study
on-line, and my cousin Erma Luckey of Mitchell County, Kansas was a librarian
and joined the hunt with me! We had so much fun finding Walter in Bartholomew
County, Indiana and discovered that his father was Vincent Dilliard Harrison.
My grandfather knew Walter
well. When grandfather rode his horse to
high school in Glen Elder, he would “park” it at his grandparents’ house. I grew up with stories from him of Walter’s
Civil War Days (22nd Indiana Regiment) and about his wife,
Grandmother Melissa Caroline Luckey Harrison.
In fact, we named our younger daughter, Caroline, after the spunky
Melissa Caroline!
Grandfather Walter enlisted
along with his two brothers, Carter
Harrison and Francis Marion Harrison,
on the same day in April, 1861 after news of Fort Sumpter. Their regiment had one of the most
distinguished service records: Pea Ridge, Stones River, Lookout Mountain, Missionary
Ridge, Chickamauga, Siege of Chattanooga, Siege of Atlanta, continuing on with
Sherman’s March to the Sea. They ended
by camping out on the White House Lawn and then marched back to Indianapolis in
1865 to be mustered out. Brother Francis
Marion was killed in a battle in Jacinto Mississippi and Brother Carter died in
a skirmish at Rome, GA on the way to Atlanta.
Can you imagine how Walter must have felt? His service and pension records from the
National Archives are rich with information about how his war years were spent….times
of despair as he left his unit and would be put into a Union prison for going
AWOL and time spent in Confederate prisons when he was captured. Then he would re-join his unit, ill with
dysentery and terrible, terrible vein inflammations from all the marching. One affidavit from a fellow soldier describes
Walter’s legs as having so many bulging veins they looked like a road map! The physical description in the papers say he
was a slightly built man with sandy brown hair.
Think about marching from Indiana to Arkansas, back to Missouri,
Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and on to the Atlantic Ocean and
Washington, D.C. AND then back to Indianapolis!
Bartholomew County only had 20,000 residents during the Civil War and
5,000 men joined up. They had the most casualties of any county in Indiana!
Vincent, Walter’s father, had passed away in 1857 and when Walter
returned from the Civil War, he was faced with having to be the guardian of the
minor children of Vincent and his mother, Nancy, and of Vincent and his
stepmother, Rebecca. His health was so
shattered that he spent the major part of the next seven years in bed being
cared for by a neighbor and overseeing the remainder of his father’s estate and
his older brother’s clothing allowance from the Civil War which was used for
the minor children.
The last minor child was finally emancipated and Walter married Melissa
Caroline Luckey in 1872. Doing the math
--- they were both 31.
Between 1872 and 1878 they had three children but two died and are
buried somewhere in Bartholomew County.
Only Minnie survived and made the trek to Kansas with them in a wagon. In 1878 they made plans to move westward to
Kansas. Two of Melissa Caroline’s
brothers had already settled in Kansas.
There was land available and the family doctor urged them to move to
Kansas to escape the hard winters in Indiana (all Kansas residents may now
laugh since Kansas winters are also hard!) in order to keep improving Walter’s
health. Something must have worked
because he lived into his late 80’s!
After they got to Kansas they had three more children and I descend from
Charles Willis Harrison. Their Kansas
story is for another time….let’s go back to Bartholomew County.
A BIG breakthrough yesterday was Donna Kuhlman’s discovery that Carter
“Pap” Harrison was not really named Carter.
Yes, he had sons named William, Calib and Carter….but his first name was
Thomas! I am anxious to go home and read
probate records I have on this particular Thomas and his son, William, who were
early settlers in Bartholomew County.
Son William was a blacksmith in the town of Columbus.
And, I’ll post a newspaper story about Carter “Pap” Harrison (really
Thomas Harrison) that you will love!
Let’s just say that being a planner started early in the life of
Harrisons….Thomas built himself a coffin in his later years and began sleeping
in it in case he died in his sleep --- planner extraordinaire – just sayin’!
Most likely Thomas was Vincent’s uncle and not his father….but stay
tuned as I go home and sort out all my notes!
Three years ago my father graciously agreed to do DNA testing and
Vincent is now linked to another Vincent Harrison who was born in 1765 and
appears to be his father. More about
that when I write about the Virginia Harrisons!
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