John Quigley had two wives, both of which are buried next to him at Middle Spring Presbyterian. Tradition states that the first wife was Eleanor McCune, who died in February of 1854, after which John remarried. The various pieces of information about Eleanor are a bit contradictory though. Several sources state that she was born in 1826, but that birth date doesn’t jive with what is actually on her gravestone, so let’s take a closer look at that stone. The death date is not in question, so I’ve focused on the section that states  her age at death. To me, that figure could be either 33 or 39 but neither of those work if she was supposedly born in 1826, since we know she died in 1854. The figure most likely reads “39th” as the superscript looks more like a “th” than the “rd” that would appear if it were “33rd”.

The records from Middle Spring show that Eleanor McCune married John Quigley on March 30, 1848, so we do know that his wife was a McCune. Now, here’s where it gets fun: Samuel McCune married Eleanor Sharp and had numerous children, 9 of which were baptized at Middle Spring.

Here are the listings for the children and their baptismal dates from Middle Spring:

Margaret  4/9/1811
Bethsheba  4/13/1813
John  4/9/1816
Alexander Sharpe  4/8/1818
Samuel Elder  4/13/1819
Eleanor Jane 4/91/1822
Isabella  4/11/1826
James  4/10/1827
Mary  4/14/1829
Eleanor Jane was their sixth child and was baptized on 4/9/1822 and may have been born in either late 1821 or early 1822, so she could have been the wife of John Quigley if the baptism date is reasonably close AND the date on the stone is actually “33rd”.

Just to confuse matters a bit more, let’s look at the 1820 Census for Samuel. We find him in Southampton with the following breakdown:

Males
0 to 10: 3 - John, Alexander S, and Samuel E
10 to 16: 0
16 to 26: 1 - Samuel (father)
26 to 45: 1 - unknown older male
45+: 0
Females
0 to 10: 2 - Bethsheba and Eleanor (if Eleanor’s baptismal date is wrong)
10 to 16: 1 - Margaret, if the census was done late in the year, she was born 10/7/1811
16 to 26: 1 - Eleanor (mother)
26 to 45: 1 - unknown older female
45+: 1
Unless Samuel and Eleanor had another unknown daughter, there should only have been two daughters on the 1820 census if Eleanor was actually born shortly before her baptismal date in 1822. The fact that there is a third daughter on the census tends to support my belief that her baptismal date is wrong.

The possibility of errors in the baptismal dates is pretty strong, as I am working from the records extracted by McElwain working from Belle Swope’s 1900 book, so the data is twice removed from the original records. As an example, eldest daughter Margaret’s birth date is 10/7/1811, calculated from her gravestone, but her baptismal record shows 4/9/1811, 6 months before she was born.

Adding to the data mix is the census for 1850 showing John Quigley and wife Nelly (a common nickname for Eleanor), in which John is shown as age 35 and Nelly as 33. This would put Nelly’s birth at about 1816, which jives with the gravestone if the figure is “39th”. Though there is a chance that she was actually baptized six years after her birth, I think it’s more likely that the actual date was incorrectly copied from the original records.

If nothing else, this mental exercise shows us the importance of using the most contemporary records possible as the two census records and the gravestone itself are all closer to the dates of the actual events than the extracted baptismal records.

One of the reasons that I photograph a lot of gravestones during the course of my research is to help verify data that I have gathered over the years and sometimes some unexpected information comes to light as a result. While in Shippensburg this past Sunday, I found that one of my great-great-aunts had apparently remarried after the death of my great-great-uncle, but I had never seen any information about her second marriage. Aunt Lily as she was always known to the family, was married to Thomas Jefferson McClelland sometime between 1900 and 1910 and they lived in Chester County. Uncle Jeff passed away in  1941 and is buried at Spring Hill in Shippensburg in the McCune plot. Lily’s grave is right beside his, but shows her name as Elizabeth McCune McClelland Spader, so apparently she remarried in later life. Since she was still signing as Elizabeth McClelland when my parents were married in 1955, Mr. Spader became her husband sometime between 1955 and 1962 when she died. Hmmm…who was this guy and where did he come from?

For the past several weeks, scheduling issues and the weather have conspired against me, but today finally, I am able to make a quick run to Shippensburg and take some pictures. The camera is ready, the spare battery is charging and we’ll be on the road very soon. Luckily, the memory cards I use hold a lot of pictures but, just in case I need more room, I’ll be taking along the laptop if I need to download pictures.

I have three major stops planned for today, at least that’s the plan. I want to see if the old family homes on Prince Street are still standing and hopefully take some pictures if possible. After that I will spend some time at Spring Hill photographing stones and hoping to find some of those elusive ancestors. The final destination for the day will be Middle Spring Presbyterian. Depending on how time we spend on these, I may swing around to come back through the Menallen area and get some pictures at the meetinghouse there - after all, it’s pretty day to be driving through apple country!

Of all the frustrating issues that a genealogist must overcome, perhaps the most annoying is dealing with erroneous information that published and wide-spread as these sources are all too often treated as if they are the gospel truth even when the data may not be correct at all. With the advent of the internet as a research tool for genealogy buffs, these errors have become even more widespread, so it is even more important now to thoroughly check any such data. Part of the problem arises from the fact that many of the early families used the same names over and over again with the lines of descent, making it difficult to determine which child belongs to which family, but in most cases, careful examination of the data will help to place the people correctly in their proper families.

An example of this kind of error is discussed in our recent article, Too Many Samuel McCunes, which deals with an occurrence of this problem fairly extensively.

My last entry talked about Lizzie Rankin McCune and her spoons, so I wanted to follow up a bit on that family. Her husband, John McCune, died in 1895 and was buried at the Spring Hill cemetery in Shippensburg, but there is no mention of Lizzie in any of the listings that I have seen for Spring HIll. She died in 1906 in New York, but it seems likely that she would have been brought back to be buried with either her husband’s family or her own. One of my ongoing challenges has been to find the final resting places of my direct line,so Lizzie represents a bit of a stumbling block at this point. It is possible, however, that she doesn’t appear in the listings because most of them don’t cover the period after 1900, so more research is needed.

Lizzie’s daughter, Mary Kezia McCune, was married to John Bratton, an attorney and the family lived in Carlisle. I know that some of the Brattons were buried at Ashland cemetery in Carlisle so perhaps Lizzie will turn up there. One way or another, it appears a Cumberland county road trip will be happening in the near future. Besides looking for Lizzie’s final resting spot, I would like to see if the original McCune house is still standing. John and his brother Edmund and his brother-in-law John Irwin Cox owned a set of houses next to each other near the University on Normal Avenue (now Prince Street) above Burd and from looking at Google Maps, they may still be standing.

While most of us have some old family photos lurking around that help to flesh out those noted ancestors of ours, it can also be a lot of fun to track some of their belongings as well such as jewelry and household furnishings. While recently going through my mother’s old silver chest, I found a set of twelve silver spoons bearing the monogram of “E R” that apparently belonged to my great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Jane Rankin, aka Lizzie. Lizzie married John McCune in 1868, so the spoons were no doubt part of her hope chest prior to her marriage. The spoons carry the patent date of 1862 and the name J. Stevenson & Son, but were actually a Whiting pattern called Grecian. The spoons have a ram’s head at the top and a gargoyle in the center, so they are rather unusual looking, to say the least. My daughter has decided that it’s rather interesting to have an ancestor who apparently liked rather ‘gothic’ silverware, so these will be earmarked for her own collection. Lizzie was also the source for at least two other interesting artifacts - a sterling bangle bracelet engraved with her name and an old mourning bracelet.

Lizzie’s father was William Rankin, a well-established citizen in Shippensburg, so it is quite likely that the family was well-off, as were the family of John McCune, her husband.The McCunes remained in the Shippensburg area, and though I have not yet determined where their final resting place was, they were likely members of the Presbyterian church, so that narrows the search a bit. Lizzie’s daughter, Mary Kezia, married John B. Bratton and subsequently settled in Carlisle, where my grandmother was born and raised. As quite a few of the family silver pieces have come from this branch of the family, it has been interesting to figure out who owned which pieces - thankfully, most of the most interesting pieces do bear monograms to help determine ownership.

While researching genealogy online for Cumberland county, the lack of online resources can be very frustrating - it’s not as if there isn’t a lot of information out there, it just isn’t online. Cumberland county has a rich history as one of the older counties in Pennsylvania, but a lot of that history remains uncdocumented, at least when it comes to online sources.

Historical societies are great places to do research on family lines, but they’re not always easily accessible for many of us. And while many of us do have copies of books that have records for the area, there’s still a lot of information that never seems to come to light.

To combat the issue somewhat, this site is designed to make it easy to add new information in the various sections of the site, so take a look around and see if there are areas that YOU might have data to contribute!

I’m not even going to pretend to be politically correct and say “happy Holidays” instead - it’s Christmas! And I even found a bit of a surprise yesterday that is sort of like a bonus Christmas present - a handful of old photographs from Cumberland county! These were stashed away in a box that I had forgotten about and some of them actually are identified - a real plus when it comes to these old photos.

Among these neat old photos is one of the house that my maternal grandmother grew up in, her father’s house in Carlisle on Bedford Street. I suspect a road trip to Carlisle will soon be planned here as I would love to see if the house is still standing. I imagine it probably is, as it appears from the photo to be a well-built brick home.