Category: Walker, Bertha L.

H Is for…Homestead

Posted on by spuddled

Today we are tracing the westward expansion of one particular branch of our family in search of the elusive “homestead.” Though the Homestead Act was signed in 1862, I don’t know that any of these family members took advantage of that particular legislation but instead were part of a more general migration west…sort of.1

This westward migration is first evidenced in the locations of birth, marriage, and death of my great-great-grandfather, Marcus Walker. He was born in 1831 in Ohio, the son of George and Sarah (Malotte) Walker. I have seen Sarah’s ancestry detailed for many generations back in numerous places online, but I have yet to feel certain enough that it is really “our” Sarah to bite that particular bullet. So we’ll just start with Marcus. He was enumerated in Batavia, Ohio, in 1850 with George and Sarah, and with his siblings Hiram, Ruth, Mary, Ezra, and Ellen.2

It appears that by 15 February 1857 Marcus had started his wandering; on that date he married Mary Ann Conklin in Noble, Illinois.3 Mary herself was also an Ohio native, having been born in Clermont County on 26 March 1835. Her parents were Stephen and Sarah (Mills) Conklin, both of whom had died in 1850, leaving her an orphan at 15.4 Between 1858 and 1877 Mary Ann gave birth to 8 children: Ella C., Eunice, Laura Maud (my great-grandmother), Minnie, Clara, William Henry, Orlando Clifton, and Bertha. Throughout those years the family was enumerated in each census in Denver, Illinois,5 6 7 and it was there that Mary Ann died on 28 April 1887 of “quick consumption” at the age of 52.

This latter fact comes to us not from official records but from letters Mary Ann’s granddaughter, Mary Edna (known as Mamie) wrote to her own daughter in 1958, and these letters provide a more colorful glimpse into the lives of these ancestors. After recounting the story of her grandmother’s death, Mamie went on to explain how her Aunt Clara and Uncles Cliff and Will had moved from Illinois to Nebraska and “taken a homestead near Holdrege.” Her Aunt Ella had also moved to the area and rented a farm. Mamie’s own parents (my great-grandparents Laura Maud (Walker) and Charles William Montgomery) then moved to Nebraska as well, following the earlier Walker migration. Charles Montgomery did not take up farming, though, instead working as a butcher. Charles and Laura had a total of seven children; the first four, daughters, were all born in Illinois; the final three, sons, were all born in Holdrege. The last of these was my grandfather, Lawrence.

Letter from Mary Edna (Montgomery) Kimble to Rozella (Kimble) Zerkle, 1 April 1958

Charles and Laura would continue their own migration farther west, to Colorado, and Grandpa would eventually end up in Idaho (because someone told him and Grandma that “the wind never blew in Idaho”). Of the other Walker kin, eldest daughter Ella and her husband Henry Marker raised four children; all are buried in Nebraska.8 Clara, the fifth child, was one of those who, along with her husband Arthur Simmons, moved to Holdrege, though like Laura and Charles, they did not remain there. In 1907 they moved to Kansas, and Clara died there in 1932.9 Though Mamie described Will (the sixth of Marcus and Mary Ann’s children) as having moved to Holdrege, it’s possible this was during the knowledge gap caused by the destruction by fire of the 1890 census, as by 1897 he was in Illinois when he married Grace Heikens,10 and he was enumerated in Piatt County, Illinois in 1900.11 Ten years later he and Grace were living in Kansas and remained there for the rest of their lives. Youngest Walker son Orlando Clifton “Cliff” married Lillie Maude Genoway in Passport, Illinois, in 1900;12 it appears he, too, had migrated westward and then returned to Illinois. By 1920, though, the family had moved on again, this time to Wisconsin, where the family would remain.13

The remaining three Walker offspring didn’t participate in the family migration wave to Nebraska, but after second child Eunice married Cyrus Pilchard in Richland County, Illinois in 1882, she and her new family did eventually move to Webster City, Iowa.14 Minnie Walker, child #4, married Joshua O. Bateman in Richland County in 1885. The family did move to Piatt County, Illinois, but no further. Joshua died there in 1930, and Minnie nine months later.15 The baby of the Walker family, Bertha L., was born in Richland County in December 1877 and died there in October 1878,16 with no opportunity either to migrate or to decide to remain.

  1. Sharon S. Iamele, Conklin Cousins: the Many Children of Joseph and Mary (Cory) Conkling, 2014 Kindle Version (2014), ; kindle, Purchased through Amazon, Amazon (https://read.amazon.com/?asin=B00IMQ2A7A&ref_=kwl_kr_iv_rec_1 : My Kindle Library 24 September 2024. ↩︎
  2. 1850 Census (n.p: www.ancestry.com, n.d). ↩︎
  3. Various Illinois County collections, “Illinois, County Marriage Records, 1800-1940,” marriage indexes, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 6 November 2024), Marcus Walker/Mary A. Conklin. ↩︎
  4. Iamele, Conklin Cousins: the Many Children of Joseph and Mary (Cory) Conkling. ↩︎
  5. 1860 Census (n.p: www.ancestry.com, n.d). ↩︎
  6. 1870 Census. ↩︎
  7. FamilyHistory Search and/or www.ancestry.com, 1880 Census, Denver, Richland, Illinois; Page 1, Sup 7, Enum 171. ↩︎
  8. www.findagrave.com, www.findagrave.com. ↩︎
  9. “Clara Walker Simmons Obituary,” obituary, Council Grove Republican, 6 June 1932, obituary; online images, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : online 27 November 2024). ↩︎
  10. Various Illinois County collections, “Illinois, County Marriage Records, 1800-1940,” marriage indexes, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 2 December 2024), William Henry Walker/Grace Edna Heikens. ↩︎
  11. 1900 Census. ↩︎
  12. Various Illinois County collections, “Illinois, County Marriage Records, 1800-1940,” marriage indexes, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 December 2024), O Clifton Walker/Lillie M Genoway. ↩︎
  13. 1920 Census. ↩︎
  14. Various Illinois County collections, “Illinois, County Marriage Records, 1800-1940,” marriage indexes, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 12 November 2024), Eunice Walker/Cyrus R. Pilchard. ↩︎
  15. Various Illinois County collections, “Illinois, County Marriage Records, 1800-1940,” marriage indexes, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 22 November 2024), Minnie Walker/Joshua O. Bateman. ↩︎
  16. Iamele, Conklin Cousins: the Many Children of Joseph and Mary (Cory) Conkling, . ↩︎