Change of plans: no more rabbit holes. Geneaology!

Genealogy is more than just names and dates, jobs and relationships. I started in the late 1990s researching my dad’s side of the family. I  live in the area that my ancestors lived in back in the 1870s. There are a lot of us (Pribbles) in the Vermilion and Champaign County area. How did I find this out? Censuses, talking to older relatives (I interviewed my great-aunt, Anna Kathryn Pribble McNeese, 98 at the time), cemetery listings and walks, and joining the Illiana Genealogical and Historical Society. I used the society’s resources which, at the time, were reference books and microfilm. I looked on sites such as Ancestry.com, which were free back then, but there was a gap between my known Pribbles and the Pribbles listed on the site. Where did we fit in to the line that came over from England as an indentured servant?

Using HPNL’s libguide entitled Geneaology Resources, I found a number of aids useful in tracking down ancestors. Ancestry.com is still available, but you must pay to access the information there now, but Family Search is free.

Through the USGenWeb Project, I accessed the ILGenWeb site and from there, the Vermilion County genealogy website. From this site, deaths, marriages, military information, newspapers, and obituaries can be accessed. I’m just looking in Vermilion county for my folk, but the ILGenWeb has a site for each county in Illinois, and the USGenWeb Project for each state. I have used this site in the past to verify deaths and marriages.

Back on the Geneaology Resources libguide page, I selected “V” under the “Illinois” sidebar on the Genealogy Resources page, and am taken to the “Where to Start” page for searching information in Vermilion county. This led me to a number of books that may contain useful information. As for my Vermilion county cousins, I was able to read about them from an entry in History of Vermilion County… (Beckwith). Yohos can still be found in the area I went to school with Henthorns in Catlin, a nearby village to Westville, Georgetown and Sidell. It is a small world. One of my West Virginia (migrated in the 1870s, settling in Ridgefarm) cousins can be read about here. Frank’s brother was named Wilbur. Go figure. Kinfolk, but definitely independent lines from a common ancestor.

I know my direct line came first to Tazewell County in the 1860s from Indiana, and then into Vermilion County before 1870 from documentation I received from Laycock half-kin. Censuses are a good way to track family members and locations. I didn’t know that my Great-aunt Kathryn’s first name was Anna until I saw it written in the 1920 census– she was always known as Kathryn by the family.

By interviewing my older relative (a great resource for family history) I found out, to my surprise, that my great-uncle Roscoe Pribble was not the first-born of my great-grandparents. They lost one child before he was born. I confirmed this by locating a small headstone next to my great grandparents’ headstone, but the information etched into the stone was worn away for the most part. Also, the date of this child’s birth I found reported was within 9 months of Roscoe’s birth. How could great grandma give birth and then a few months later give birth again? I was looking for answers, not more questions.

My dad walked Woodlawn cemetery in Indianola, Vermilion county with me. He had attended his grandma’s (Lou White Pribble Waymouth) funeral at the age of 12 and now, decades later, he could still take me to her burial site. She shares her headstone with the father of her children, Charles Edward Pribble, next to Infant Pribble, left behind many years earlier. Problem is, Charles died of the Spanish Flu in 1918 in Montana. I have a certified copy of his death certificate (another great resource for information) from Montana. He is listed as buried in Montana. Did she bring him back on the train with her 5 children when she returned to this area and relatives and have him reburied here? Is he on the headstone but not physically there? Again, more questions than answers.

While walking the cemetery and dad was pointing out other kinfolk, i backed into a large headstone. Four foot tall at least, 3 feet wide, with the name PRIBBLE carved into the top. On front, Stephen Cornett, 1830-1910. This was the link from my known Pribble line to the published Pribble line back to Thomas Pribble in 1697 setting foot on Maryland’s shores as an indentured servant. Stephen’s wife, Martha, was on the stone as well. To the left of the huge headstone was a smaller, older, and far less expensive headstone for Martha that must have been placed when she died at only the age of 35 after giving Stephen five children, one of which I would find out was my great grandfather Charles Edward. From the obituary, I found out that Stephen never remarried, raising his children on his own after his wife died. His youngest, Mary, was only 8 when her mother passed. In one census, I found 2 of his three sons, were “farmed out” as farm hands while in their teens; they appeared on the census as members of other households as “farm hand.” It sounds like Stephen didn’t have enough land to farm himself (the obit mentions a “small piece of land”) and his sons worked for other farmers. I know that when I was a child, Charles’ son Roscoe was a tenant farmer; he didn’t have land of his own, but he farmed the land for a couple of women that owned land. Roscoe and his family lived in a farmhouse on that land. Another thing I found in the obit was about his character: he was considered “kind-hearted, peaceful, and [an] upright citizen.” I assume he was not materially wealthy, but he was rich in character. The best thing of all: his nickname was “Abe the Second” because he looked like Abraham Lincoln! You’re never going to get that kind of information from a census or death certificate!

Aunt Kathryn let me know her mother Lou was not thrilled being drug around the newly opened (open for homesteading) plains and west by her wanderlust-driven husband. First they moved to Oklahoma Territory (not even a state yet) and had four more children. Then they moved into Montana when it opened up for homesteaders. They lived in a one-room cabin there. Great grandpa was a teamster (drove horses in the lumber industry) and would stay in town to drink and play cards while Lou sat at home with the children. Soon after he died (within one week of contracting the Spanish Flu in October of 1918), Lou packed the kids and her few belongings on a eastbound train back to her kinfolk in Vermilion County. She was remarried to Thomas Waymouth the next year. Interesting, because that would have been 1919, and Lou is listed as a Pribble and head of household in the 1920 census. More questions! Lou and Thomas had no children together, but Thomas brought five children of his own into the now blended family. I learned their names when I read Lou’s obit in the Sidell Reporter, one of the many small town newspapers now digitized in HPNL’s Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection. His children were not blood kin, so they were initially not of much interest to me, but a few things in her obituary caught my eye. She was described as a “well-known lady.” She was not a recluse in this little town. I also discovered by searching on the Pribble name in the Reporter, that Lou and her younger daughter Mearl were quite the social butterflies. There are multiple instances of blurbs in the Reporter of Lou and Mearl entertaining, or being entertained, at others’ homes for a meal. When I knew Mearl, as a child, she was married to a much older man, Lester Mingee. She was just a big ole gal with no children but little dogs she’d put on her chest, with their food dish, to eat. Mearl loved her little dogs. I have pieces of a set of pink teacups and saucers that were Mearl’s; maybe she used them to have tea with her guests.

In Lou’s obituary, her second husband’s children are listed. One, named Jennie, was named but her address was unknown. Why didn’t they know where she was? If they were estranged, they could have left her out of the obituary, particularly since she was a stepdaughter of the deceased, but they did mention her. Out of curiosity, I went looking for Jennie. I found her.

I hope my stories about what I’ve found out about my family using the resources mentioned on HPNL’s libguide for geneaology research and our digital newspaper collection inspire you to do a little hunting for your kinfolk in Illinois. Censuses, newspaper articles, talks with older family members (perhaps during the upcoming holidays?), and other online resources can get you in touch with your past in ways that can go beyond just names and dates.