Between the Lines: Family History and Quirky Stories From Our Forgotten Past

      Usually I gather “Gleanings” from the Coffeyville, Kansas newspapers from the 1870s through 1890s. This time I went through Fort Wayne, Indiana newspapers from the same time period. I had ancestors in both places.  An ad for a grave shield ran in the Fort Wayne Daily Gazette on 13 Feb 1879, reflecting national fears of grave robbing. 4 Oct 1879 Fort Wayne Daily News The Fort Wayne Medical College, under the new law , have provided themselves with at least one cadaver. It was taken from the poor house graveyard a few days ago. His name was Smith. Olds’ Spoke Factory and sawmill are being connected by telephone. Hickory nuts are plentiful this year.       Grave-robbing or body-snatching was a problem that arose as medical training advanced. Simply put, demand outstripped supply. People tended to look the other way when the bodies came from the Black population, the imprisoned and the poor. But when “decent” members of society were dug up...

   If you have read any of my other “ Gleanings,” posts, you might recall that these “seen-around-town” sort of items were a regular column in the Coffeyville, Kansas newspapers, and many newspapers, in the 1870s and 1880s. This month I am posting two “Gleanings;” this one from the Coffeyville home of my Patchett and Barbour ancestors, and one from Fort Wayne, hometown of the Barbour brothers Lucius and Myron.  19 Oct 1878 Coffeyville Weekly Journal Mrs. Coons , residing a few miles northwest of Coffeyville, has a young alligator about 14 inches long. She keeps him in a barrel…Her son brought it from Texas in June. He got it near Houston, where several others were captured at the same time.       Elizabeth Coons was a neighbor of my great-great grandparents, Enos and Avarilla Patchett, in Fawn Creek Township. She came from Clark County, Illinois, the same county Enos Patchett’s family settled in when they immigrated from England in 1846. Enos mov...

  Lucy and Almon faced a choice. A painful choice, one that, if they did not choose correctly, would separate them from family not only in this lifetime, but in eternity. They were faithful members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Lucy’s childhood was spent following the prophet, Joseph Smith, from Kirtland to Far West, Missouri to Nauvoo, Illinois with a stop in Morley settlement, also in Illinois. It was the same for Almon. But their prophet was murdered - martyred - and church members were thrown into upheaval.   Almon Whiting, Sr.      The Church faced an evacuation, an exodus, from Nauvoo, their beautiful city on the Mississippi. They’d been hounded and harassed, run out of three states. Now it was time to leave the United States behind, to find a place so far removed from “Gentiles,” as non-members were called, that they could practice their faith in peace. But an es...