The Hyphen Family Lineage

[Article "SILLS" from the text Huntington County, Indiana History & Families 1834-1993, p367.]

SILLS - On Jan. 21, 1912 a son, Clyde Albert Sills, was born to George Albert and Emma (Holley) Sills. He was the son of William Sills (1839-1915) and Nancy Jane Fuller (1842-1880), buried in Blackford County. Clyde's parents divorced and Emma (Holley) Sills married Albert R. Minnear on June 15, 1920 in Wells County.

Clyde spent his youth in Midland, MI. He left home young to make his own start in life. He ended up in Wells County where family members lived. Clyde came to Huntington County and married Wanita Isabelle (Grush) on Sept. 9, 1939. They had 15 children: James E. Sills, Huntington; Juanita Crouch, Huntington; Lloyd E. Sills, Arkansas; George William Sills, Vicky Wininger, Doris Wininger, Mike Sills, and Melody Benfer, Hope Voght and Dusty L. Sills, Steve K. Sills, all of Huntington and Shanna Schlichter of Ossian, Marvin Dean Sills (1942-1943), Robert Sills (1960-1960), also a son died at birth Rony sills [sic]. Surviving are 43 grandchildren, 37 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.

Clyde's family roots can be traced back to the 1735s. To his great-great-great-grandparents, Michael (1735-1813) and Barbara (Rhodes) Sills, Michael was born in Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany and died in Bedford County, PA. He purchased land next to his brother, George, in a land called "Dutch Corners" in Bedford County, PA. They had 11 children.

Joseph Sills (1769-1854), son of Michael and Barbara (Rhodes) Sills, married Catharine in 1799. They had 11 children. They settled in Champaign, OH. There [sic] children settled in Wells County, IN. To carry on to our family, Michael Sills (1800-1871), married Margaret Myers on Dec. 25, 1823 in Clarke County, OH. They moved to Montpelier, IN in 1840 and later died in Wells County, IN.

William Sills (1839-1915), son of Michael and Margaret (Meyers) Sills, resided in Indiana. William married Nancy Jane Fuller on Jan. 12, 1863 in Wells County. She was born to George Fuller and Lucinda (Bowen) Fuller in 1863 in Wells County, IN. Their son, George Albert Sills (July 17, 1865-Nov. 28, 1918) in Wabash, IN. George married Emma Holley in Midland, MI. They had six children, one of which is my husband's grandfather, Clyde Albert Sills. He worked for the Erie Railroad for 29 years and resided in Majenica, IN for many years. In 1992 he lived with his son and daugher-in-law, George and Sandra Sills. Clyde Albert Sills was hard working and lead a good life. Clyde past [sic] away Nov 18., 1992 at George and Sandra Sills [sic] home. He is buried at Star of Hope Cemetery in Huntington, IN along with his wife and friend.

Submitted by Mrs. Tracy G. Sills.

Note: Researching Clyde Albert Sills

Establishing specifics about Clyde Albert Sills has been somewhat challenging; the bulk of the information I have been able to find for him stems from an article in the text Huntington County, Indiana History & Families 1834-1993, written by the wife of one of his grandsons. Several of the obituaries for his children verify at least some of the information, but there are still several unanswered questions and conflicting information that I have not yet resolved.

One potential point of confusion is that there were three Michigan-born men living in the northeastern quarter of Indiana in the 1930s, and both of whom were married in the latter part of the decade, quite close in their ages and with similar names. One of them was Clyde's twin brother, Claude A. Sills, and many of the online pedigrees and family trees have mistakenly assumed the two men were one and the same. (Claude A. Sills appears to have married four times - his second marriage was only months apart from Clyde's marriage to Wanita Grush. After that second marriage, Claude returned to Michigan, where he died in 1984.) Further complicating things is a third man, Claude Lowell Sills, who born in Wells Cty, Indiana, to Albert Sills and Ethel King in November 1912; this man died in mid-1993, less than seven months after Clyde.

Tracey Sill's article in the above-mentioned text indicates that Clyde's parents divorced, and that Clyde's mother Emma (Holley or Hawley) Sills remarried in 1920 to Albert Minnear. Their marriage record gives Albert Minnear's status as divorced from his first wife (in 1914), but Emma states that her previous marriage ended in death in 1919. (It should be noted that her first husband died in late 1918.) This also seems to be supported by the Indiana Death Record for George Albert Sills (which notes him as married at the time of his death and names Emma as his wife), and by the 1920 US Census listing for Emma's household (in which she gives her marital status as widowed).

Clyde and the unrelated Claude each appear to have remained married to their wives until death, while Clyde's twin brother Claude was married at least four times that I have been able to determine. Claude L. had two daughters, and Clyde himself had fifteen children (up to a dozen of whom were still alive at the time of Clyde's death in 1992). I have not found any record to confirm whether or not Claude A. had any surviving children, though there are records for at least three different children who died as infants (born to his last two marriages) for him.