Week 13 The Old Homestead
After a couple of weeks off (the prompts didn’t inspire me, but I may revisit them if I come up with some ideas), I’m back at it. This week’s prompt for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is The Old Homestead.
This photo shows my great-great grandparents, Edward L. and Euphemia (Tracy) Wiseman, and their children outside their home in Crawford County, Illinois. The children from left to right are: Tura, Rollie, Elsie, and Harry. I don’t know an exact date for the photo, but I’d estimate it was taken between 1895 and 1898, based on the age of my great-grandfather, Rollie.
I’ve communicated with my dad and his older brother (my Uncle Larry) this week regarding the photo. This is a beloved family photo and it is usually brought to our annual family reunion for display. We think the home stood on an 18¼-acre parcel located a couple of miles north of Stoy in Section 22 of Township 7N, Range 13W. There’s a possibility, though, that this house was on a 40-acre parcel north and west of Oblong on Section 17 near Kibbie, but the note on the back of the photo says, “near Stoy,” so I’m inclined to think that this was on the land (18 acres) closer to Stoy.
Dad and I spent a bit of time looking at Google Earth this week, and we were able to locate this property, bordered on the west by Onion Creek. On a 1930 plat map online, I found an 18-acre parcel of land with the initials, E.L.W.—Edward Livingston Wiseman, corroborating Dad’s memories. According to the will of Edward’s mother Sarah Wiseman, this 18 ¼-acre parcel was to be divided three ways after her 1894 death—Albert was to inherit 6 1/8 acres on the southern part of this property, James the northern 6 1/8, and Edward was to inherit the middle 6 acres. This is part of the southwest ¼ of the northeast ¼ of Section 22, and the transcribed will names the southeast ¼ of the northeast ¼. I’m assuming this is a transcription error on the part of the clerk.
The 40 acres owned by Sarah was a couple of miles west and approximately one mile north of the 18 acres: SE ¼ of NE ¼ of section 17, Township 7, Range 13W. In Sarah Wiseman’s will, signed on 10 January 1883, she indicates that she was currently living on this parcel of land. She desired for this land to be divided three ways as well, with each son getting 26 and two-thirds rods—Edward, the western third, Albert, the middle third, and James the easternmost third.
I have a suspicion that there was some land swapping going on between the brothers. I looked at an 1898 plat map and noticed that the 40 acres in Section 17 is not divided into three sections, but two. Jas. Wiseman has 20 acres and A. Wiseman has 20 acres. The land parcel in section 22 isn’t divided at all. It has the intitals ELW, and the number 20 (18 acres, rounded up, I presume). It seems that Edward exchanged his third of the 40 acres for his brothers’ shares of the 18 acres—and created the homestead that my dad and uncle remember with mostly fond memories. The 40 acres was owned by an A. M. Wilken in 1930.
An $1100 land sale from W. N. Wilkin to Sarah Wiseman was made on 31 December 1872. The land sale wasn’t recorded until 30 September 1878, in book 29, page 104. In the Description column of the land sale index is the word “described.” I have not had the opportunity to look at the land deed books. Uncle Larry thinks that both the 40-acre parcel and the 18-acre parcel were purchased at the same time.
I’ll now share some of my dad’s and uncle’s memories of the place my dad calls “The Farm.” A flat area east side of Onion Creek and west of the house was tillable. My dad remembered in the 1940s walking alongside a wagon and hand-picking corn here with his dad (Ray Wiseman) and grandpa (Rollie Wiseman). Behind the house, the creek curved, and the land fell off into the swampy bottomland of Big Creek. More tillable land was to the north. Dad remembers following his grandpa and a plow in this field and picking up newly-turned potatoes and putting them in a basket. A nice stand of oak and shagbark hickory stood to the north as well. Dad remembered camping there with his brother Larry, and later, with high school buddies. Between The Farm and the Big Henry Woods to the east was a fence line. Dad remembers a couple of half-buried car bodies there. How did they get there? Were they the family’s old cars? Dad and Uncle Larry remember hunting squirrels and rabbits in this area. Dad remembers his grandpa Rollie taking him back into a swampy area and showing him two large bald cypress trees and telling him that bald cypress trees weren’t too common in that part of Illinois.
Both my dad and uncle remember visiting the house a few times in the early-mid 1940s, when their great-uncle Harry lived there. The house stood on a hill on the south end of the property. It had a dirt floor as you entered but the rest of the home was floored. There was a well in front of the house that had a wooden cover. In later years one had to be very careful to locate the well because the cover was obscured by tall grass. It would’ve been easy to fall through the cover. In my dad’s teenage years, after Uncle Harry moved out of the house, my dad would buy a box of rifle shells for 50 cents and go to The Farm to shoot bottles. The property was littered with old medicine bottles, as Uncle Harry and Aunt Mae were herbalists, and helped many local people improve their health. Uncle Larry thinks that the house was gone by the mid-1950s. After the death of Rollie in 1963, the 18 acres was deeded to his widow (my great-grandmother Martha (Cramer) Wiseman. Shortly afterwards, it was deeded to my great-uncle Donald. After his death, it was sold to a non-family member as timberland.
My dad took me to the remnants of The Farm about fifteen years ago and I remember there was no access road to the property. We parked alongside the road and walked maybe a quarter of a mile through a field, across a small stream, and into some woods. No buildings stood on the property at that time. Fortunately, we didn’t encounter the well.
The older gentleman in the photo, my great-great grandfather Edward L. Wiseman, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on 22 January 1839. After his father’s death in 1857, his mother Sarah (Mankey) Wiseman moved with her six living children to Jackson County, Texas. Edward stayed on the Texas ranch during the Civil War to help his widowed mother. He ultimately lost two brothers to the war—one dying in battle and the second after years of imprisonment as a prisoner-of-war. The Texas ‘experiment’ ended in 1867, when the family, reportedly worth nearly $700,000 (in today’s dollars) in the 1860 census, met with financial difficulties and returned to the Midwest.
In 1870 Edward, his mother, and brothers James and Albert lived in Turman township in Sullivan County, Indiana, presumably having moved there to be near Sarah’s sister Lydia A. Secrist. The family’s real estate and personal property value in 1870 was reported as today’s equivalent of $25,000—quite a change from ten years before. Edward had attended medical college in Cincinnati before moving to Texas and was enumerated as a physician in the census. The family also has record of him later practicing medicine in Crawford County as well.
Euphemia Tracy was born in Crawford County on 6 March 1851, the youngest daughter of Loyd and Jane (Kirk) Tracy. Loyd and Jane, along with Loyd’s brother Elijah Tracy and his family, moved from Licking County, Ohio to Crawford County in 1846. In 1850 and 1851, Loyd purchased 160 acres in western Robinson township and eastern Oblong township, northeast of Robinson, from the U.S. government land office located in Palestine. Sadly, Loyd died when Euphemia was about 18 months old.
On 6 October 1878, Edward and Euphemia married in Crawford County. Shortly afterwards, they moved to Richland township, Labette County, Kansas. In the 1880 census, Edward was enumerated there as a farmer. Brother James was farming in adjacent Neosho township in Cherokee County. By 1883, Edward and Euphemia added two children to their family. Daughter Elsie was born on 7 November 1879 and son Harry was born on 8 January 1881. Based on birthplaces and birthdates for children, Edward and James were back in Illinois by the mid-1880s-James in Jasper County and Edward in Crawford County.
Elsie Lee Wiseman and Harry Lamar Kirk Wiseman were born in Labette County, Kansas. Elsie married William Reynolds in 1918, and died in Paris, Edgar County, Illinois in 1945. Older son Harry Lamar Kirk Wiseman was born in 1881. He married Mae Servison in 1909 and died in Crawford County in 1964. Tura Alice Wiseman was born in 1883 in Illinois. She married Henry Tracy in 1906 and died in 1945. My great-grandfather Rollie Mankey Wiseman was born in 1886 in Crawford County. He married Martha Washington Cramer in 1909 and died in 1963 in Stoy. All are buried in Prairie Cemetery in Oblong Township.
As always, I would love to hear from any descendants of Edward L. and Euphemia (Tracy) Wiseman.