The Hyphen Family Lineage

[Death notice for David Ogle, from the Muncie Morning News, 14 Feb 1879, p1.]

Mr. David Ogle, for forty-three years a resident of Monroe township, died at his residence Wednesday evening last, and was buried to-day at ten o'clock. He had attained a ripe old age, being nearly 80 years old.

 

[Excerpts from the biographical article "Elijah Ogle" from the text Commemorative Biographical Record of Prominent and Representative Men of Indianapolis and Vicinity, pp1024-1025.]

The Ogle family is of English extraction and came to Virginia in Colonial days. James and David Ogle, respectively, the grandfather and father of Elijah, was born in Virginia, the later in 1801. His education was of the most meagre description, but he was reared to agricultural pursuits, and in 1826 in order to secure a farm in the newly opened territory in Monroe township, Delaware county, Ind., he covered the distance on foot, and after reaching here he entered several hundred acres of land. On a tract of sixty acres in the woods, he built a log cabin, in which his first wife died. The children of the first marriage were: Carrie, Hannah, Matilda and Elizabeth. His second marriage was in Delaware county to Mrs. Nancy (Gibson) West, a native of Ohio and a daughter of William and Diana Gibson.

...

David Ogle was a man who had many friends and was noted for his kindness and hospitality. At one time when the frost had killed most of the corn in the fields of his neighbors, and he owned a lot of old corn which with good business management he had stored for several years, it is related that he would sell none for money, but trusted all who desired it until they were able to pay. As another instance of his kindness it is told that he once bought a cow of a widow, and after the purchase he returned to the widow and gave her five dollars more than the price, saying that the animal was worth it. He was a consistent member of the U.B. Church. In politics he was first a Whig, later a Republican. His death occurred at the age of seventy-seven years, from the result of a railroad accident at Muncie in 1878.

 

Note: Researching David Ogle

Researching David Ogle has proved particularly challenging, owing in part to the large number of Ogle families in Indiana during the 19th century, but also due to some inconsistencies in the records I have been able to find while pursuing verification. There are a number of online pedigrees and family trees that contain a great deal of information and names of purported ancestors, siblings, spouses, and descendants, but they seem to be unsourced or incompletely sourced. Additionally, there is some question as to the exact relationship of David to the presumed children of his second marriage, the youngest of which (Elijah Ogle) is the subject of a biographical article in the 1908 text Commemorative Biographical Record of Prominent and Representative Men of Indianapolis and Vicinity. I believe this article was based primarily on contemporary interviews with or concerning Elijah, and occurred decades after the deaths of nearly everyone else in the family, including David, and is likely to contain some errors, inaccuracies, and perhaps less-than-truthful representations of some of the men described therein.

The first important point - establishing David as part of my ancestry - was resolved when Mark DeWitt finally pointed me to David's will, as hosted on the Muncie (Delaware Cty, Indiana) Public Library website. Among other inheritors, this document, written by David in1872, named his adult grandchildren from his daughter Malinda (Ogle) DeWitt, including my third-great-grandmother, Rebecca Ann (DeWitt) Smith. Rebecca had lived with the Thomas family on the farm belonging to her son-in-law, Lewis S. Thomas, in her later years, and was the sole source of any knowledge or family lore the Thomas family had regarding both the Ogles (the family of Rebecca's long-deceased mother) and the DeWitts (the family of Rebecca's father, who had relocated with his second wife and children to Kansas).

In addition to his wife Nancy, David's will names several of his children, most of whom are noted as deceased at the time the will was written and thus have their inheritance delivered to their children: Malinda DeWitt (noted above), Elizabeth Ogle, James Ogle, and Thomas Ogle. His children named as living at the time of the will's writing were also listed: Canaan Ogle, Hannah DeWitt, and Elijah Ogle. Elijah was one of the two witnesses (signing his name "Elisha"), and Canaan was named executor. By the time of the will's probate at David's death in 1879, though, Canaan had died (five years' prior), and Elijah appears to have assumed the role of executor.

Establishing David's vital dates has been somewhat of a challenge; his death date seems most reliably stated as 11 Feb 1879, as this is the date given in his listing on the FindaGrave.com website, as pictured carved on his headstone. His death notice from the Muncie Morning News issue of 14 Feb 1879 gives his death as occurring "Wednesday evening last," which would have been 12 Feb. I would suspect that the headstone engraving is more likely correct. (I will also note that the Indianapolis and Vicinity text misstates the year of David's death as 1878.) As for his birthdate, the FindaGrave listing states his age at death as "78y 1m 3d," and the photo included in the listing does seem to validate this. That age at death calculates back to a birthdate of 8 Jan 1801. (I will note that the visibility of the engraving, as pictured on the FindaGrave photo, is not very good, and a rubbing may be necessary to actually confirm what age is given on the stone.) The three US Census records available for David which list a specific age - those from August 1850, June 1860, and June 1870 - give his age as fifty, sixty, and sixty-nine, respectively. I suspect it is possible that the engraving should read as "7m," which would make his birthdate 8 Jul 1800.

His place of birth is not fully established, though he consistently reported it as Virginia on all relevant census records. The Indianapolis and Vicinity text also says David was born in Virginia. Based on the reported birthplaces of his known children from his first marriage, the eldest three were consistently reported as being born in Virginia, while the youngest two were reportedly born in Indiana in 1833 and 1834. In support of David hailing from Virginia, it should be note there is a marriage record for David Ogle (to Sarah Jennings) in 1823 in Grayson Cty, Virginia, along with a listing in the 1830 US Census for the household of David Ogle, also in Grayson Cty. Notably, the indexed records for the 1840 US Census do not show a David Ogle in Virginia, though several show up in other states: Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and two in Indiana (Fountain Cty and Delaware Cty). Of these, the Maryland household is listed under the "free colored persons" section, and the Fountain Cty, Indiana household lists the head of household as too young to be our David Ogle. This would suggest, but not fully validate, that the Grayson Cty household and the Delaware Cty household could both belong to the same David Ogle.

For David's marital history, the online pedigrees reflect a similar picture to that conveyed in the Indianapolis and Vicinity text - that David was married twice, the second time coming in 1836 to Nancy (Gibson) West in Delaware Cty, Indiana. Nancy was the young widow of Thomas William West, and a mother of two children from that marriage (Rachel and William, the latter of whom may have been counted as living with David and Nancy in the 1850 US Census).

Nancy's parentage, birthdate, and birthplace are not fully established; the Indianapolis and Vicinity text names her parents William and Diana Gibson, says she was an Ohio native, and describes William as a pioneer of Monroe Twp, Delaware Cty, Indiana. The online pedigrees name him William Gibson (b. 1780, d. 1853), and give his birthplace as Surry Cty, North Carolina. I will note that there is a listing in the 1850 US Census for a seventy-one-year-old William Gibson, native of North Carolina, in Monroe Twp. That census record also shows a Rachel Gibson, aged sixty-three and also native of North Carolina, in the household, presumably as William's wife. The online pedigrees suggest she is Rachel Sarah DeWitt (b. 1786 in Surry Cty, North Carolina, d. 1871), but I have not found any marriage records to conclude whether Rachel is Nancy's mother. I have also not found any specific information about any previous marriage for William Gibson.

For determining Nancy's birthdate, I thought to compare how the various records report her age:

- forty in the 1850 US Census, birth year of about 1810;
- forty-five in the 1860 US Census, birth year of about 1815;
- sixty-three in the 1870 US Census, birth year of about 1807;
- seventy-four in the 1880 US Census, birth year of about 1806;
- eighty-five in 1892, reported by the Muncie Morning News, birth year about 1807.
- eighty-five in 1892, report by her Indiana Death Index record, birth year about 1807.

For Nancy's birthplace, it was reported as unknown, Tennessee, Ohio, and Tennessee in the census records from 1850 through 1870. I will note that the online pedigrees report all her older siblings as Tennessee-born, and all her younger siblings as Ohio-born, so presumably the family was undergoing some migration throughout the years their children were born.

Yet another question arose from the consideration of the children that may have been born to this marriage - online pedigrees indicate there were four, by name James (b. 1837), Thomas (b. 1839), John Henry (b. 1842), and Elijah (b. 1845). Of these, three are named in David's will, either as inheritors (Elijah) or as deceased with living children of their own as heirs (James and Thomas). All four can be found in David's household in the 1860 US Census, listed as Indiana-born, but oddly enough none of them were listed in the 1850 US Census record for David's household. The 1840 US Census listing for David's household, though, includes two boys under the age of five; presumably these would have been James and Thomas. I have not found any of the four boys listed by name in any other household in the 1850 records, which suggests to me that they were omitted from the 1850 Census in error, for some reason or another. (I speculated briefly on the possibility that these four boys were not biologically the sons of David and Nancy, but this seems unlikely; both parents were certainly young enough to have additional children in their second marriage, and both had children from a previous marriage, suggesting there would be no reason they could not have had further children.)

David's first marriage, from which I am descended, is more uncertain. The Indianapolis and Vicinity text does not name his first wife at all, nor provide any information on her family; it says only that she died in their log cabin home in Delaware Cty. The online pedigrees name her Sarah Jennings (b. 1802 in Virginia), oldest daughter of Jonathan Jennings (b. 1780 in Bedford Cty, Virginia) and Nancy Hensen (b. 1792 in Virginia), with Sarah's death indicated as occurring before 1836 (the year David remarried), likely in Delaware Cty, Indiana. David's youngest known child from his first marriage (Rachel) was born about 1834, so his first wife's death would have necessarily occurred between about 1834 and 1836 (as mentioned prior). I will note that the aforementioned marriage record for David Ogle and Sarah Jennings from 1823 occurs in the same county (Grayson Cty, Virginia) as that of a marriage record for Jonathan Jennings and "Nancey Henson" in 1803. In the 1830 US Census listing for David Ogle in Grayson Cty, the oldest woman in the household (which would presumably have been his wife) is listed as being twenty to thirty years old; as Sarah would have been twenty-eight at that point, based on the presumed birth year, the purported ages line up well enough.

So far as the migration of David's first family from Virginia to Indiana, the Indianapolis and Vicinity text gives that as occurring in 1826, though this seems unlikely. David's death notice from the Muncie Morning News issue of 14 Feb 1879 states he was resident in the area for forty-three years, which would place his arrival in the area about 1836. Additionally, the birthplaces of the oldest two children have typically been given as Virginia, while the younger children (from his first marriage) were consistently reported as born in Indiana. Middle son Canaan (again, from the first marriage) saw his birthplace reported as either Virginia or Indiana. Additionally, if the previously-mentioned 1830 US Census record from Grayson Cty, Virginia applies to our David Ogle, that not only places the family in Virginia in 1830, but it also includes a boy under the age of five in the household, which could possibly be Canaan. The 1840 Census for his household in Delaware Cty, Indiana lists the youngest two girls as between five and ten years of age, and since these are presumably Elizabeth and Rachael (again, both reportedly born in Indiana to David's first marriage), that would suggest that David and his first family came to Indiana in the early 1830s, rather than 1826. This also suggests that his first wife died in Indiana, after the family left Virginia and had settled in Delaware Cty.

I have not yet found much at all to either confirm Sarah as David's first wife, nor to more concretely identify her ancestry if she is connected to our family. Other than the marriage record for her purported parents, I have not found any confirmed records for the family. I will note that there are other contemporary Ogle-Jennings connections in Grayson Cty - such as the marriage of Thomas Jennings (purported brother of Sarah Jennings) and Elizabeth Ogle (younger sister of David Ogle) in 1822. The online pedigrees display a great more detail for these families, but a closer review reveals either a lack of sources, or sources that fail to provide enough information to validate the relationships and potential ancestry.

For now, I have documented my research on David's first wife here, and have left her name and details blank in the database and tree. Should I find more complete information, I will make sure to update the files accordingly.