I have been trying to find the origins of my 3x great grandmother, Emma Reynolds since I joined ancestry . com. My cousin had put together a tree that I copied back when I first started my tree, but after a bit of digging it became clear the parentage of Emma wasn’t set. We knew she was from Pennsylvania and she listed Fogle as her maiden name on several official documents and she married and had 3 children with John Reynolds. But OH MY there so many Emma and John Reynolds in this world. But yesterday, I made a connection. In the same cemetery her and her husband are buried in, just a few miles away from my home, there was one person with the last name of Fogle. John T Fogle. So I did his tree. And there she was. John had a sister named Emelina with the same birth year as my Emma. After adding their shared father to my tree I check for DNA matches. There was one. Then I added their grandfather. Three more DNA matches. Confirmation that I had found her family.
Emma Fogle was born in December of 1849 in Cumberland County Pennsylvania. In the 1850 Census she is one year old, living in Hopewell, PA, a tiny township about halfway between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, just north of the Maryland state line, in the Valley of the Susquehanna. If you drive the Pennsylvania turnpike to get out east, which I have done many times when I lived in Virginia and North Carolina, you drove right past this area.
One year old Emmelina was living with George Fogel, 58 and Sarah Fogel, 18 and Samuel Fogel 14. George listed his occupation as laborer, his birthplace Pennsylvania. In 1860 her age is listed as 13, still in Hopewell with George, still listed as 58 years old, still a laborer. Sarah has aged, now listing her age as 29. But now we have many more people in the house, all last name Fogle: Jacob 26, Samuel again, now 22, Emeline, Mary J 11, John 9, George 7, Catherine 5 and Helen 2.
George does age in the 1870 census; his age advances to 66, Sarah to 43 and John is now 18. The family has moved 5 miles to Mifflin, still Cumberland county.
Emma is no longer in the house. Mary Jane, George, Catherine is now called Leah, Helen is 11 and now there are two new children, Ann 8 and Alice 4.
Where has Emma gone? That’s a bit of a mystery. I never found the marriage record of Emma marrying John Reynolds, but my great great grandmother Ida was born in 1876 so it’s likely around 1875. John’s first wife, Matilda, died in 1872. The Shippensburg PA Newspaper (largest town near Hopewell and Mifflin) reported on 9 January 1875 that a John Reynolds married a Emma Souders on 12/17/1874. Is this our Emma and John? Perhaps she married briefly before marrying John? There is an Emma Souder with the same birth year as our Emma living in Philadelphia in 1870, working as a dressmaker, living with a George, Anna, Charles and Caroline Souder. Charles could be her husband. The PA census didn’t note the relationship of families or marital status that year.
What we know for sure is that John Reynolds, a farmer and cooper from Southhampton Pennsylvania, recently returned from service in the civil war, whose first wife Matilda died on the first of December 1872, leaving him with 6 children met Emma and the couple had a child, Ida in Harrisonville Missouri in Nov of 1876.
The Homestead Act of 1862 granted 160 acres of land to any U.S. citizen, including Civil War veterans, who filed a claim, built a home, and lived on the land for five years. Perhaps that is why John moved west, after the death of his wife and the trauma of war, he needed to start over.
Cass County’s population had dwindled to about 600 during the Civil War due to the “Order Number 11” to evacuate rural areas. By 1880 the county had 22k inhabitants, thanks in large part to the railroad it was booming.
***a small aside here- Coincidentally my 4x great grandmother from my maternal grandfather’s side (John Carroll-Ruth Taylor-James Taylor- Rufus Taylor-Elizabeth Finch Taylor) died in Cass County in 1882, having lived in nearby Holden Missouri since about 1872.
The 1880 Census shows Emma and John Reynolds living in Peculiar, Cass County Missouri.
John is farming. His sons from his first marriage, George 23, Wilson 21, Elmer 19, and Ira 15 working with him as farm laborers. His two daughters from his previous marriage, Alice 13 and Mary 8 are there as well as 1 year old Ida. Emma gave birth to son Chris in 1881 and then Cora in 1884 in Harrisonville- the county seat of Cass County.
An 1885 article in the Cass County News lists John Reynolds as an officer in Post No. 50 of the G.A.R. ( Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization for Union Army veterans of the American Civil War) and then in 1887 the same newspaper lists the property of John Reynolds to be sold at auction after he has abandoned the property.
Emma’s brother John had married in Pennsylvania and started a family there but in 1887 he came to Illinois, eventually settling in Danvers. He had a farm. Perhaps John came there to work after his own farm failed.
What we do know is John died on the 2nd of December in 1895 and was buried in the North Danvers Mennonite cemetery. A military headstone was requested for him in 1932.
There is no other stone on his grave or Emma’s. Her brother John was buried there in 1926 and his wife Mary in 1937. They both have modest gravestones.
We do not know when Emma died. We can assume it was before 1900. It’s possible she died before John. In the 1900 census Emma’s youngest child, Cora, is found living in White Oak township in the household of Joseph and Anna King as a servant. This and the fact I can find no records of Emma or John Reynolds in Illinois lead me to believe the couple died before or shortly after coming to the state. The family that Cora worked for in 1900 were Mennonites, Joseph held several titles in the township, including Assessor, Supervisor and Director of the Maple Grove School. It’s possible Emma worked for them as well before passing. They kept a servant in the household since at least 1870, indicating they were wealthy.
Ida was 19 when her father died. I don’t know where she worked or how she managed until she became engaged to farmer John William Phillips in 1897.
John fathered my great grandfather Elmer. It was a shotgun wedding; Elmer arrived 6 months after the marriage. Two years later Ida married Lloyd Radcliff, whose name Elmer took. Elmer’s half brother, John Lloyd, arrived 6 months after Lloyd and Ida were married. They had 3 more children together between 1900 and 1914 and remained married until Lloyd’s death in 1952. The couple are buried at Stout’s Grove.
Ida’s brother, Christopher H. (Harry) Reynolds, was 14 when John died. The 1900 census shows 19 year old Christopher boarding at the home of Albert Nafziger and working has a farm laborer in rural Danvers. He married Leator Wooseley in 1902 in Peoria. The couple had two daughters. A 1917 article in the Pantagraph reported his half brother David W. came to visit at Ida’s home in Danvers in 1917, noting they hadn’t seen each other in 20 years. His obituary explains that Harry was a mail carrier for rural Carlock for 17 years, retiring in 1945. It also states he served during the Spanish American War. That war was from April 1898 to August 1898. Chris would have only been 17 when it started, though those in service through 1902 are included as veterans of that war. Chris died at the age of 81 living in the Quincy Soldiers and Sailors home the last twenty years of his life. He is buried in the Denham cemetery north of Carlock.
The youngest of Emma’s children, Cora Olive, married Willard Lee Stephens in 1903. Willard was a farmer in White Oak township whose mother was a charter member of the Carlock Mennonite church. The couple had three sons; one died in infancy. The 1930 census lists her occupation as switchboard operator, a position she continues after her husband died in 1944.
Her daughter in law, Verona Stephens, was a Pantagraph correspondent so updates on Cora’s comings and goings are found often in the Carlock news section of the Pantagraph. It mentions she stayed with Ida at times after her husband’s death. It reports many admissions and releases from the hospital in her later years when she was living in the McLean County nursing home. She died at the age of 74 at St. Joseph’s hospital. She’s buried in the East White Oak Cemetery near Comlara Park.