Today marks the 160th anniversary of the birth of Chris’ paternal great grandfather, William Chrisman. He was born near Bible Grove in Scotland County Missouri on May 5, 1865.
William’s obituary explains in 1870, at the age of 5 he was sent to live with Daniel “Abraham” Lakin and his wife Samantha (Burdick) Lakin. He lived with them until he was 21.
His father, Benjamin, had buried two wives before marrying William’s mother, fourteen year old Mattie Hall (Benjamin was 25 at the time). The marriage was short lived; it seems Mattie left before giving birth to William and just a year after his birth Mattie remarried to John Gristy. In April of 1867 a divorce notice was in the Appanoose Iowa paper, where Benjamin lived- just over the state border from Missouri. It mentions a child Benjamin wanted to take custody of, the name of the child in the paper is Lillian, not William so it seems he never saw his son and didn’t even know he was a boy (or the newspaper made a horrible mistake). That same month, April of 1867, Benjamin married for the fourth time, to the sister of his first wife. She gave him 10 more children and raised his first born, her nephew, as her son.
Meanwhile in Missouri, now 17 years old, Mattie gave birth to another son in 1867 which died after just four months. She then delivered a girl in 1868 which died before reaching 3 years old. In 1870 when she gave William to the Lakins she would have been grieving the death of two children and would have been pregnant with her fourth child, another boy who would die at just 2 months old. She went on to have 8 more children with John Gristy – and he went on to become a doctor and a politician- but that’s a story for another day. Mattie remained married to John Gristy and lived in Scotland County Missouri, her entire life, until 1931 – that’s just two counties away from where William was raised. Whether they kept in contact I do not know. William died just 14 years after Mattie, 32 miles from where she was buried.
The Lakins, who raised William, were not family relation as far as I can tell. They had no other children and settled near Wyaconda Missouri, a village between Bible Grove and Kahoka, after Abraham was discharged from the Union army in 1865. They both were born in Franklin County Ohio and likely moved to Missouri to claim land under the Homestead Act. They listed William as their son on the 1880 census, but he’s not mentioned in either of their obituaries. He worked on their farm into adulthood, until 1886. whether they viewed him as family or a workhand is unclear.
Five years later, at the age of 26, he married Ada Brown in Kahoka. They had ten children together between 1892 and 1908, Seven boys, three girls. Their youngest, Alberta was Christopher’s paternal grandmother – Alberta married Henry Kelly and was the mother of Christopher’s father.
The Chrisman’s lived on a family farm in Waterloo Iowa when Alberta was born in 1913. All the other children were born in Clark County Missouri. They farmed there in Iowa for less than seven years and then returned to Clark County Missouri where he still listed his occupation as farmer in the 1930 census. William retired by 1935 and shortly after celebrating their 55th wedding anniversary in 1945 William fell ill and died at the age of 80. He is buried in the Kahoka cemetery.
