Well, my taxes are done and I’ve been working on many genealogy-based items. Thought I would catch up today on what I’ve been doing.

I was able to send out the second installment of the family history notebook. This covered Jesse & Nancy’s children with information gleaned from census, birth, death and marriage records.

Jesse & Nancy had the following known 8 children:
Unnamed Son: This unknown son of Jesse & Nancy Curtis appears on the 1810 US Census (Harrison Co VA) as being under age 10. He appears on the 1820 US Census (Lewis Co VA) as being between 10 to 15. This gives him a possible birth date of between 1805 and 1810. He does not appear on the 1830 census as there are no unknown males in the household between 20 and 29. Therefore he either left home or died before 1830. An exhaustive search of the records so far shows that any male in Lewis Co born in this period is not part of our family.

Mahala (1807 - 1880) married Amos Reeder.
Jesse (1811 - 1904) married Elizabeth Cooper
Nancy (1812 - 1887) unmarried
Henry L. (1816-1895) married Catherine Perry
Stephen A. (1819 - 1894) married Josinah Rinehart (this is my line)
David D. (1827 - 1894) married Diana Matilda Smith
John W. (1828 - 1892) married Elizabeth Oldaker

One of the most interesting findings was the part Stephen Curtis played in the Civil War. On April 18, 1863, Colonel N. Wilkinson, with a squad of Union troops, captured Major Thomas D. Armstrong at Johnstown and scattered his forces on the head of Hacker's Creek. This was part of a failed plan to enlist recruits in West Virginia for the Confederate cause. Except for the partial destruction of the railroad and the carrying away of several thousand horses and cattle, the great raid was a failure so far as any benefit to the Confederacy was concerned.

But on April 20th, Stephen Curtis was captured as part of this raid and sent as a prisoner of war to Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio, arriving there on April 28th. He was considered a citizen rebel and was “released on oath June 17, 1863 by order of Secretary of War.” Thus Stephen swore an oath of allegiance to the Union and was sent home. An interesting side-note to this is that Stephen’s future daughter-in-law, Lula Parrack/Parrock, was born on April 20th during these same battles in Buckhannon and her birth was assisted by a confederate surgeon (probably her cousin, C. C. Wertenbaker).

Click here to see the Camp Chase site for this record.

I am now working on the 3rd generation - Jesse & Nancy’s grandchildren. There are, at this writing, 25 known grandchildren. Many of them are found in Lewis County and I am having a grand old time finding their records. I will have to pay a visit to the Hacker’s Creek Descendants this year to clear up a lot of it. Of course, I will be emphasizing Stephen & Josinah’s family as that is my line, but I want to get as much information as I can on the collateral families (uncles, aunts, cousins, etc).

There is a lot of intermarriage with the Sims family in the area as well as with other lines on my mother’s side of the family. One interesting find is that Lloyd White, who married into my Cayton line (my great-grandmother Talitha DeBarr Cayton’s second husband) had a first wife, Olive Adalaid Flesher. They divorced and her seond husband was William J. Marlow Curtis, a son of Jesse & Elizabeth Cooper Curtis. They also divorced. Olive Adalaid had 5 husbands (no children) and William married 3 times having 11 children with his third wife. Another Curtis cousin married an Aunt on my mother’s side of the family.

All I can say is this - be careful in Lewis & Upshur Counties as we are probably related somehow!