Week 20: Beard

 

This bearded gentleman is John David Miller, one of my 3x great-grandfathers in my paternal line.  He was born 6 Apr 1812 in Montgomery County, Ohio, to David Miller and Catharina Schaeffer.  When he was about 14 years old his mother passed away.  Shortly afterwards John David's father remarried and within a few years decided to move the family north and west from Ohio to Elkhart County, Indiana.  Eighteen-year-old John David went with the family but must have longed for a girl he left behind in Ohio because in 1832--at about 20 years old-- he returned to Ohio long enough to marry his sweetheart Mary Baker on 14 Jan 1832.  The newlyweds then headed to Elkhart County to face their first cold Indiana winter in a temporary shelter.

Eventually John David constructed a log cabin and over the years a house (which still stands) was constructed on the site.  The original log cabin stands under the center portion of the house.

In the 1840 U.S. Census the family was recorded as having:

    2 males under 5 yrs

    1 male 5-under 10 yrs

    1 male 20-under 30 yrs  (John David at 28 yrs)

    1 female under 5 yrs              

    1 female 20-under 30 yrs  (Mary Baker Miller at 27 yrs)

In the 1850 Census John David was shown to have real estate valued at $3000, making him one of the wealthier farmers in Jackson Township, Elkhart County.  His children were recorded as:

One of the two male children under 5 from the earlier census must have passed away in the years between 1840 and 1850.  David, 12, would have been the other male child under 5 on that 1840 Census.  The male 5-10 from the earlier census must also have passed away because I've never seen him appear again in records.

Esther (whose real name was Hester), shown as 17 yrs in the 1850 Census, was either not recorded in 1840 or her age was under-recorded in order for her to be 17 by 1850.  Hester's obituary shows her birth date to be 1833 so she should have been 7 in 1840.  Five-year old Matilda would grow up to become my 2x great-grandmother.

In 1855 John David's wife Mary died, leaving him a widower at 43 with seven children.  (A son, George Washington, had been born in 1851.)  Less than a year later John David married Margaret Lentz Whitehead, a young widow with five children of her own.  When John David and Margaret married Hester had recently left home as a bride herself, leaving them with a blended family of eleven children. Four more children were born after the families blended but only three survived:  Evaline Louise, Perry, and Ira. By the time John David and Margaret's last child was born Margaret was nearly 40 and John David had been fathering children over a span of 29 years.  

By the 1900 Census John David and Margaret were living by themselves. This picture was probably taken between 1890 and 1900 when he was between 78 and 88 years old.

According to Roberta Estes, in her blog "DNAeXplained--Genetic Genealogy", John David gifted each of his ten children $1000 in 1890 or 1891.  In today's dollars that would be over $33,000 for each. 

He passed away on 10 Feb 1902 just two months before his 90th birthday from senile gangrene, a form of gangrene that occurs mainly in elderly people, caused by insufficient blood supply due to degeneration of the walls of the smaller arteries.  In anticipation of his death John David had written a will.  He may have thought it was equitable but it wasn't well received by the family.  If there weren't hard feelings and resentment between the two sets of his children before that time, there were after the will was read.  Roberta Estes, in her blog "DNAeXplained--Genetic Genealogy", wrote this about our common ancestor's estate:

"There were several distributions to John David's heirs.  I am struck by how much better off everyone would have been to get along.  Instead, John David's older children contested the will which drove up the settlement cost, caused Margaret to petition the court for her one-third share instead of leaving it in the estate to be divided by all heirs later, which decreased the older children's share.  Contesting the will also incurred attorney bills that were paid out of the estate before their share, along with their own attorney who was paid out of their share before they saw a penny.  All in all, it turned out to be a very bad idea, on multiple levels."

Remarriages, blended families, and wills can bring out the worst in families.