The Hyphen Family Lineage

[Obituary for Jerry Smith, from the Huntington Herald, 20 Mar 1920.]

[headline] Jerry Smith, 74, is dead of pneumonia
[second headline] Had been ill for more than a year - seriously ill ten days
[third headline] Funeral will be held Sunday

Jerry W. Smith, seventy-four years old, died at his home in Union township Friday afternoon at 1:45 o'clock, following ten days of serious illness. Mr. Smith had been ill for about a year, but did not become seriously ill until ten days ago. Death was due to pneumonia.

Mr. Smith was born in Ohio March 22, 1846, and was the son of Henry and Sarah Smith. His marriage was to Rebecca DeWitt, which took place on July 29, 1868.

Mr. Smith came to Indiana when a young man of seventeen years of age.

Surviving are the widow, two daughters, Mrs. Lewis Thomas, of Union township and Mrs. Fred Chaney, of Jackson township, and two sons, George Smith, of Aboitt, and LeRoy Smith, of Huntington; three brothers John King, Roanoke, Ephriam [sic] Smith, city and Henry Smith of near Roanoke; one sister, Mrs. William Fogwell, of Allen county. Three daughters are deceased.

Mr. Smith was a member of the Church of God, of Huntington. Funeral services will be conducted from the Union church Sunday afternoon at 2 o'clock, in charge of the Rev. Marshall Mercer. Burial will be made in the Feightner [sic] cemetery, near the church.

Note: Jeremiah W. "Jerry" Smith and family

The second-oldest of seven children born in Morrow Cty, Ohio to Pennsylvania natives Henry S. and Sarah (Walker) Smith, Jerry was brought up in the livelihood of farming. Around 1864, he moved with his parents and siblings to Union Twp, Huntington Cty, Indiana, where many of their relatives and friends had moved as that portion of Indiana was in its early few decades of settlement. In the summer of 1868 Jerry was married to Rebecca Ann DeWitt, the second-oldest child of Clark Edward DeWitt Sr. and his late first wife, Malinda Ogle.

Jerry and Rebecca remained in Union Twp for the rest of their lives, and had a household of seven children, mostly daughters. Three of those girls would precede them in death:

- Etta Viola (the firstborn of the siblings) married George Plasterer in 1886, and died at the age of eighteen in childbirth bearing their first and only daughter just over a year later. The infant girl was noted in Etta's obituary as dying during the funeral services the next day. Etta is buried in Feighner Cemetery in rural Huntington Cty, where parents Jerry and Rebecca are both buried.

- Susan (fourth-born of the siblings) married Jacob Harris Middaugh in 1894, and died in early 1903 when her two children (son Melvin Ray and daughter Gertrude) were still young. Susan is buried in Hoverstock Cemetery near Zanesville, Wells Cty, Indiana.

- Esther may have been the third daughter pre-deceasing her parents; buried in the same cemetery as Jerry and Rebecca (and sister Etta) is an Esther Smith, b. 9 Dec 1872, d. 11 Aug 1875. I have not been to the cemetery yet to confirm, though I suspect either a close inspection (or grave rubbing) of the stone may yield her parents' names or initials, and the grave placement (close to either the parents' or to Etta's) may help corroborate this assumption. Her presumed age would make the timing slightly tight, but certainly possible - Esther would have been born nearly twenty months after older sister Rosanna (and thus conceived when Rosanna was just under one year old) and nearly twenty-one months before younger brother George Henry (putting his conception when Esther would have been about one year old).

Of the other siblings:

- Second-born Rosanna married Lewis S. Thomas in early 1890, and had two surviving children and eight grandchildren, and raised her family on the Thomas farm in Union Twp until her death in 1948. Rosanna is buried with a large portion of her husband's family in Hoverstock Cemetery.

- Third-born George Henry, the eldest son, married Mary Elizabeth "Libbie" Middaugh (believed to be a cousin of George's brother-in-law Jacob Middaugh) in early 1896, had two surviving children and one grandson he adopted and raised as his son, and eight other biological grandchildren (seven of whom he raised as well after their mother, George's oldest daughter Mabel, was widowed, remarried, and moved away - see the notes for George for details). George moved to nearby Lafayette Twp, Allen Cty, Indiana, in the early years of his marriage, and would remain there until his death in 1959. George and his wife are buried in Glenwood Cemetery in Roanoke, Huntington Cty.

- Fifth-born Roy Clark (sometimes called Leroy), the only other son, married in early 1903 to Hattie Elvira Haney; the couple had three surviving children before Hattie's death in 1924. Roy remarried a few years after her death to Bertha Eddy, and continued to live in the city of Huntington, Huntington Cty, until his death in 1958. Unlike his grandfathers, his father, and his older brother, Roy eschewed farming and instead worked for the Erie Railroad, primarily as a car inspector. He and Hattie eventually had at least seven grandchildren, and Roy is buried with both wives in Pilgrims Rest Cemetery in Huntington.

- Youngest child Lucille (sometimes spelled "Luceal," a misspelling that seemed to stem from her oft-used nickname "Ceal") married Fred Chaney in early 1906, and had only one daughter, Woneta. Lucille and Fred divorced before their daughter was fourteen years old, and while Fred died soon after (at the age of thirty-seven), Lucille remarried at least once, possibly twice more (see the notes for Lucille for details). Like her older brother George, she is also buried in Glenwood Cemetery in Roanoke.

Jerry died in early 1920 after an extended illness; his obituary attributes his death to pneumonia. The closest and most sensible place for Rebecca after she was widowed was with daughter Rosanna and son-in-law Lewis Thomas (along with their son Floyd and his wife and children) on their farm in the same township. After several years of poor health, including suffering from tuberculosis, Rebecca persuaded Lewis to purchase a bottle of carbolic acid by telling him it was for a skin ailment on her feet. Instead, after dinner she went for a walk on the farm grounds, taking the bottle with her with the intent to commit suicide; her body was found by Lewis later that evening with the empty bottle "an arms length from her," according to her obituary.

It should be noted that Jerry might well have been related to his wife's brother-in-law. Rebecca's older sister, Sarah DeWitt, married Joseph F. Smith (b. 1847 in Morrow Cty, Ohio). Both couples were married in 1868 in Huntington Cty, Indiana, and lived in Union Twp, Huntington Cty, in 1870 and 1880. Joseph and Sarah moved to Kansas in 1883; Sarah died there in 1887. The biographical article on Joseph in the text Portrait and Biographical Album of Washington, Clay and Riley Counties, Kansas gives his parents as Adam H. and Susan (Feighner) Smith. Both Adam and Susan are buried in Feighner Cemetery, as are Jerry and Rebecca (noted above).

In that 1870 US Census listing for Union Twp, the households of Adam, his son Joseph, Daniel Feighner (father of Adam's wife Susan), Jerry, and Jerry's father Henry are all within the same three pages, in the same portion of the township. Going back to the 1850 US Census for North Bloomfield, Morrow Cty, Ohio, the households of Adam Smith, Henry Smith, and Daniel Feighner are all within two pages of each other. The persistent proximity is certainly common amongst migrating families, and strongly suggests possible relationships here.

Joseph's biography article names his paternal grandfather Jacob Smith, a pioneer of Pennsylvania. I have not yet found evidence to confirm this, but I suspect that Jerry and Joseph were cousins, and that their fathers Henry and Adam were brothers, both sons of Jacob. I've not yet found any vital dates for Jacob, nor have I found any mention of his wife's name as of yet. The article mentions that the Pennsylvania-born Adam was brought to Ohio when he was "but a child," suggesting that Jacob's family came to Morrow Cty, Ohio sometime in the 1830s or possibly even the 1840s (when Adam would still have been a teenager). This could well line up with the dates for Henry's family migration, as his oldest son Joseph was born in Pennsylvania in about 1843, while Jerry was born in Morrow Cty, Ohio in 1846.