The Year of the Locusts

LOC http://www.bozeman-magpie.com/thebigmt-full-article.php?article_id=696

Making History Personal
This morning I happened to see a TV documentary program (Mysteries at the Museum on the Travel Channel) about the Locust Plague of 1874.  The locusts (grasshoppers on steroids) swept through the Great Plains, moving from North to South across Kansas, Nebraska, Dakota Territory, and on to Texas, covering a swath equal to the size of all of New England.*   It took a while to register, but I realized that this must be the story I'd heard from my mother which she heard from her father.  Since my grandfather wasn't born until twenty years after the plague, the story must have been passed down by his mother who was a born storyteller. I became curious to find out what my ancestors were doing in 1874.

Our Family Moves West
First of all, how did my ancestors end up on the western frontier and where did they live? The Great Western Migration in the U.S. was brought by several factors:  the Homestead Act of 1862, the end of the Civil War in 1865, and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869*.  My family was a part of this migration from the east.

Locusts in Lincoln, Nebraska
Horace Calvin Crofford, my great grandfather, lived in Lancaster, Nebraska with his family after the Civil War.  His father, Calvin Crofford had received land by the Homestead Act of 1862 (his application can be seen on Ancestry).  In April 1874, a census was taken in Little Salt (Lancaster County). I believe Horace, at age 27, was one of the two males listed in the household of Calvin Crofford.  In Nebraska, the locusts had a devastating effect:

One report released in 1874 suggested that just one family in 10 had enough provisions to last through the coming winter. To avoid starvation, many desperate settlers, especially in western Kansas and Nebraska, abandoned their homestead claims and their dreams of a new life to return east.... Hoping to stop future infestations before they got started, Nebraska in 1877 passed a Grasshopper Act, requiring every able-bodied man between the ages of 16 and 60 to work at least two days eliminating locusts at hatching time or face a $10 fine. 

http://www.historynet.com/1874-the-year-of-the-locust.htm#sthash.QALcWMPa.dpuf

Watch the video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To48K5E4ULM

Locusts in Fargo, North Dakota
My great grandmother, Ada Hall, was a teenager at the time of the Locusts.  In the spring of 1871, Andrew and Olivia Hall, along with their three children, crossed over the Red River on a small flat boat ferry to settle in Fargo.  Ada tells that the "grasshoppers came that first year."  Though the impact on Fargo was not as devastating as in some other areas, the experience left a strong impression on Ada.  She wrote:

They darkened the sky, which, looked up at, shown like silver with their flashing wings. They ate the sides out of our tents, the linen coat off my father's back while he was mowing. Where the river stopped their eastward march, they piled up inches deep and crusted every little twig five or six bugs deep.  It was a regular nightmare.  We could not keep them out of our tents, our provisions, off our tables, or out of our beds.  Once, right at dinner time, a big old timer sat down in the middle of the table, beside the butter, and proceeded to crack open down the back, and to divest himself of his whole outer covering, before the boarders, who would not let him be taken away.  In that way they got a lesson in natural history with their dinner, at the price of one. Talk of nightmares!  Wow!

A mention of Fargo from a history of Canada:

It must not be supposed that all the crops were destroyed. No better wheat and potatoes can anywhere be found than were in 1875 harvested at Portage la Prairie, and along the Red River between Fargo and Pembina, and in the neighbourhood of St. Joe, at the south-west corner of the Province. All this is spring-sown, in rich well-drained soil. Efforts in the infested regions, made by settlers and their families during the few hours in which the locust rested, such as building fires, surrounding the field or garden with a ditch into which the insects fall and drown, beating with bushes, &c., have been successful in saving large parts of the crops.

http://canada.yodelout.com/the-canadian-prairie-province-the-grasshopper-plague-its-history-and-incidents/

Some amazing facts about the Locust Plague:

• the locusts looked like a great, white glistening cloud, and appeared to be a big snowstorm
• they blocked out the sun for as long as six hours
• they ravaged the fields and trees, devouring every plant and blade of grass
• they ate the wool off sheep, the paint off wagons, the handles off pitchforks, the harnesses off horses, curtains off the windows, and even the clothing off people's backs
• they ate anything not hidden away in wooden or metal containers
• they smothered fires that the farmers lit to ward them off
• they left behind nothing but the odor of their decaying bodies and excrement
• they fouled water supplies that were not covered or protected
• people resorted to eating locusts, even serving them in restaurants and feeding them to their animals
• most locusts died off before 1875, but they were a problem for farmers until after the turn of the century

*http://www.historynet.com/1874-the-year-of-the-locust.htm#sthash.QALcWMPa.dpuf
**Information obtained from Ada Crofford's personal account which can be seen on Ancestry.

Read more:
Civil War veterans in Fargo:  http://fargohistory.com/civil-war-veterans-in-fargo/
First settlers of Fargo, ND (A.A. Hall):  http://library.ndsu.edu/fargo-history/?q=content/first-settlers

King Edward III

We are direct descendants of King Edward III of England and his wife, Philippa of Hainault, through their son, John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster.  Edward was born at Windsor Castle in 1312.  He became King at age 14 (1327) and reigned until his death in 1377.  He created the Duchy of Cornwall and founded the Order of the Garter.  He was a good king and an excellent military leader who led England into the Hundred Years War with France.

This might seem like an impressive claim... however, Edward had twelve children with Philippa, plus at least three more by his mistress Alice Perrers.  A genealogist from the UK calculated the probabilities and came to this conclusion:
There is an extremely high probability that a modern English person with predominantly English ancestry descends from Edward III, at a very minimum over 99%, and more likely very close to 100%. The number of descendants of Edward III must therefore include nearly all of the population of England, and probably much of the populations of the rest of the UK and Eire, as well as many millions in the USA, former British colonies and Europe, so 100 million seems a conservative estimate. 

The special thing about this claim is that I have traced our ancestry back to England in the 1200's through my father's maternal grandmother, Georgia Powell.  Her ninth great grandfather Judd married Katherine Norwood whose maternal line goes back another nine generations to Edward III.

Found the Holy Grail!

The genealogical Holy Grail for any Caucasian in America is to prove a claim as a Mayflower descendant.  I've been burned once - I thought I'd found a connection but had to delete it because I was unable to verify the facts with 100% certainty.  But with so many of our ancestors living in prominent colonial settlements, I was sure that we must have a Mayflower ancestor somewhere!  I have been very careful about my sources this time.  Finally, I've discovered a connection in my mother's maternal line to several Mayflower passengers!

John Howland m. Elizabeth Tilley (both Mayflower passengers) > Ichabod Bosworth > Benjamin Bosworth > Benajah Bosworth > Joseph Bucklin Bosworth > Orlando M. Bosworth > Eva L. Bosworth > Teresa/Ethelyn Allen > Virginia M. Crofford > Teresa Zaun Austin

John Howland

I traced our line back through the Bosworths and found John Howland, who is my 8th great grandfather and an original signer of the Mayflower Compact.  He came over as a manservant to Governor John Carver.  We are descended from John through his daughter Hannah.

The official history can be found here:  http://mayflowerhistory.com/howland/

"Howland Overboard," a painting by maritime artist Mike Haywood.  

A painting called Howland Overboard depicts a famous event in which John fell overboard and clung to a halyard until the sailors were able to rescue him with a boat-hook.

The presidents Bush and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt are also descended from John Howland.



The Tilley Family

John Howland was married to Elizabeth "Bridget" Tilley, who was about twelve when she came over on the Mayflower with her parents, John Tilley and Joan Hurst Tilley.  John, also a signer of the Mayflower Compact, and Joan Tilley both died in their first winter in Plymouth, leaving Elizabeth an orphan.  She is buried in Ancient Little Neck Cemetery in Providence, R.I.  The Hursts were originally from Holland... yet another line of descent from the Netherlands for my mother's line.

Sideways on the family tree

Much of my ancestry research is focused on the direct line of descent.  I have deliberately omitted siblings of ancestors because it is hard enough to follow all of the thousands of leads for the ones that lead directly to me!  But I am very aware of the importance of sibling relationships and their descendants' importance in my research.  I have "met" several distant cousins in this process and it is thrilling to see where our family tree has branched out in this country.  There is something about cousins that touch our hearts in a special way.

There are many syrupy platitudes about cousins out there, and every word of it is true.  Our first cousins, and sometimes our 2nd and 3rd if we are lucky enough to know them, have a special place in our lives that no other relative can claim.  They are our contemporaries, but not necessarily our peers. The relationship is intimate, but not close enough to be dysfunctional or damaging.  Friendship may or may not be there, but the love and affection are true.  You may not see or talk with a cousin for years, but when you need them, you can count on them to be there for you. You reconnect without missing a beat.  There are no pretenses, because cousins know the real you.  They know things about you that no one else on earth knows.  The same blood flows through our veins, and that makes us forever joined in the bond of common history.

Aunts and Uncles also have an important place in our lives.  They are the ones who love you pretty much as a parent does, but with a little more objectivity.  They can afford to be fun and affectionate without having to discipline.  We view our family through our aunts and uncles with different eyes.  They can be a sounding board when we need perspective.  Through them, we can intimately experience a different version of home life, giving us more choices for our own futures.  Sometimes our aunts and uncles have played a significant role in our upbringing. They can be what a parent cannot... a friend. Watching my son proudly show off his new house to his ever so caring aunt and uncle put a lump in my throat.  How much more precious did his achievement become with the extended family's blessing?  It cannot be measured.

My cousin Barry loves family more than anyone I know.  He goes out of his way to visit family members all over the country.  He cares about their lives.  He connects with them in a personal way and makes them feel important by remembering details about their lives.  He loves nothing more than to discuss family, and can talk for hours, reminiscing and telling funny stories about our common childhood and about the elders in the family. I appreciate these types of relationships - my cousins - more and more as the years go by.  I am deeply grateful that my children (and future grandchildren) have the opportunity to experience this kind of enriching bond in their lives.

Corolla Lighthouse and other Outer Banks connections

Austin family lore tells about young Raymond Kelly, who put a homemade parachute on an unfortunate cat and launched it from the top of the Currituck lighthouse.  The cat ended up far down the beach.  This story cannot be verified, but there has to be a grain of truth.  We don't know the connection to the lighthouse keeper.  There are Austins who were keepers for generations, and an Ansell was assistant in the 1800's, but there is no known relationship to the family.

From Mike:

According to the family historian, there is no way to verify the cat story…and unless the lighthouse keeper was a distant relative or a family friend with a different last name, there is no connection…we did have ancestors that were stationed at the Wash Woods lifesaving station… Wash Woods has been verified…story about his wife feeling the cottage moving …turns out the local wild horses were scratching their butts on the outside of the place…

In that my grandfather, the parachute kid, was a Kelly, it is my assumption that the keeper at that time was a Kelly but I am probably wrong…My grandmother was an Ansell, and they resided in the Hickory area of Chesapeake…

When Mike and his brothers were growing up, his aunt Shirley Petty (nee Kelly) owned a tiny cottage at Duck by the water tower, where the Austin family would spend summer vacations with their cousins in the 1960's. The cottage was later moved a few hundred feet away and has been transformed into a quaint gift shop, sitting in the middle of a popular shopping area.

Croffords from then to now

1806 Calvin V. Crawford was born in New York.  His Scottish born father, Horace, was known as the "Genesee Valley Millwright."   Milling was a major industry along the Genesee River.  Today, "Crawford" is a recognized name in Rochester.

1815 Anna Dillingham was born in Ohio.  Her family moved to Porter County, Indiana in 1836.  She married Daniel Lyons in 1837 and taught school in her father John Dillingham's home.  The Dillingham name is still important in Liberty and many descendants still live near the old family graves.

                                           

1839 Calvin Crawford married Anna in Porter County, Indiana.  He joined the military (Army enlistment states his birthplace as Vermont).  At some point, the spelling of his name changed to Crofford.

1846 Horace Calvin Crofford, the fourth of Calvin and Anna's seven children, was born  (2 of their children died young).

1860 Calvin and Anna moved to Rochester, Missouri, with their children Angeline, Chester, Horace, and Charles, and then moved to Lancaster, Nebraska.

1863 Horace Calvin Crofford was drafted into the cavalry during the Civil War.  His discharge was signed by U. S. Grant.

1864 Calvin Crofford received a Homestead grant of about 154 acres in Lincoln, Nebraska.  His son, Horace Calvin, was one of the witnesses to his settlement in the area, along with Sidney S. Pratt.  They attested that "he has built a house thereon, about 16 + 30 feet with board floor, two doors, and one window. He has since said settlement ploughed and cultivated about 70 acres of said land, and has made the following improvements thereon to wit:  has built a stable for 7 or 8 horses, a grainery and corn crib, dug a well, planted about 500 forest trees, and set out about 80 roads of hedge."  NOTE: this is where the name was first changed from Crawford to Crofford. It was actually crossed off and re-written on the Homestead document. 

1876 Little Big Horn.  Ada Clemina Hall, a school teacher at Fort Lincoln, wrote a paper in defense of Custer.  The Fort was abandoned in 1882.

Fort Lincoln, Dakota Territory

By 1880, Horace Calvin Crofford was working as a quartz miner in Custer County, Dakota Territory.  He married Ada Hall in 1891.  Horace became a respected sheep rancher and county commissioner in Custer.

 

Horace Calvin Crofford in the late 1800's

1894 Horace and Ada's first child, Horace's namesake, was born in Buffalo Gap, South Dakota.

1895, claiming self defense, Horace killed a young rancher in a dispute over grazing land near Lame Johnny Creek.  He turned himself in to the authorities, and was held by the sheriff at Custer. The family moved to nearby Newcastle, Wyoming, where Ada ran a boarding house to support the family.

Newcastle, Wyoming around 1905
http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/newcastle-wyoming

1907 Ada's father Andrew Hall signed over to Ada the title to farmland in Weston County (near Newcastle). Horace raised stock and the three boys worked on the farm.  During this period Ada worked on several patented inventions.

My grandfather told lots of stories about life in the west.  One time, a horse broke into the feed storage in the middle of the night and ate a belly full of oats.  The oats swelled and the horse had to be kept moving all night long, everyone taking turns walking him in order to aid digestion and save his life.  

An influential event in my grandfather's life gave birth to a lifelong interest in rocks and fossils.  Near their home in Newcastle, Barnum Brown, a famous paleontologist known as "Mr. Bones," discovered the first documented remains of Tyrannosaurus Rex in 1902.  Family lore is that dinosaur bones were found on the family homestead.       ~Teresa Austin

Barnum Brown and his Tyrannosaurus Rex

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/mar/the-bone-collector








1916 Horace died (in Missouri, according to Findagrave.com), leaving Ada dependent on her oldest son, Horace, who was a telegrapher for the railroad.

1917 at the age of 22, Horace enlisted in the army. He was in Normandy during WWI.  He was discharged in 1919.  He was an electronics student at the American Bureau of Engineering (AMBU) Institute in Chicago, which is across the intersection from Mercy Hospital, on Prairie Avenue.  It is possible that this is where he met a nurse, Teresa Marie Allen.

Horace, 3rd from the right, front row

Teresa Allen

Mercy Hospital, Chicago 1910

AMBU Institute in Chicago, across from Mercy Hospital 

Interesting fact:  Mercy Hospital was named for the Sisters of Mercy.  Teresa lived in a boarding school and was trained as a nurse in Paris, Texas by the Sisters of Mercy at St. Joseph Hospital.  From a history of St. Joseph:  "The origin of St. Joseph's Health System dates to 1896 when the Sisters of Mercy operated a 16-bed hospital in a boarding school near downtown Paris, Texas. But a lack of funds forced the Sisters to give up their mission in 1910."

The Sisters of Mercy also had a hospital in Oklahoma City, where Teresa was working in 1920. The question is, how did she end up moving to Mercy Hospital in Chicago?  Whatever the reason, she probably moved to Chicago, possibly with her friend and fellow nurse, Maud Marshall.  Stay tuned....

Sources:
http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/813.html
http://www.christushealth.org/EarlyinCHRISTUSStJosephsHistorySistersStruggletoEstablishParisTexasHospital


In 1921, the Sisters of Mercy took over a World War I Veterans’ Dispensary to offer medical and surgical services to the poor. http://www.mercy-chicago.org/legacy/history

1926 Horace and Teresa married. They moved to West Washington Street, Waukegan, where their children, Horace Calvin "Sonny" and Virginia Maude, were born at St. Therese Hospital.  Sonny and Virginia attended Spaulding Elementary School.  Teresa worked as a nurse at the office of Dr. Jolly, an ear, nose, and throat doctor.  Horace tried his hand in politics but jobs were hard to find after the war.

Horace with Sonny and Virginia

                                                                     
1942  In search of employment, Horace and Teresa moved with their family to Virginia.  Upon their arrival, they lived with friend Ed Suitor in Portsmouth.  Then they moved into a house in Norfolk.  Sonny attended Norview High School.  Virginia graduated from Maury High School in 1950.

Sonny worked all his adult life for the telephone company.  He married Jean Strong; they had four children, Calvin, Ronney, Cindy, and Mark.

1952 Virginia Crofford married John Beverly Zaun.  They had two daughters, Holly and Teresa.  Virginia taught piano, worked as secretary to a prominent and beloved congressman, was the administrative assistant to the Virginia Beach chief of detectives, and finally became Administrative Assistant to the director of city planning. Holly had three children:  Justin, Leah, and Reed Bernick.  Teresa had four sons: Adam, Joshua, Jonathan, and Andrew Austin.

Note: my grandfather Horace, who I called Baba, used to play mouth harp and harmonica, and sing songs like Yellow Rose of Texas, She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain, and Red River Valley.  I see now that those songs are directly out of his experience in the Old West. There is a Red River Valley in Fargo, ND, where his mother grew up, as well as in Paris, TX, where my grandmother Teresa grew up.

Meeting new cousins

Every now and then, you begin to notice that someone on Ancestry seems to really know what they are doing. They are the ones who read and comment on information posted by others, and who have many documented sources on their family tree. Tim Cole from Porter County, Indiana, commented on one of my Dillingham stories. We started a conversation and here is his message:

timcole: My ggg-grandfather married Sally Dillingham, John's first child by Hannah. I live half a mile away from where John last lived and is buried in front of Olcott's house (still standing). The Coles and Dillinghams bought a section of land each, next to each other, in 1835, and descendants from both families still live on portions of those properties. According to what I can piece together, we are first cousins, several times removed.

Tim urged me to contact a David Dillingham Wiltshire, who is active in researching the Dillingham family and has organized a family group of descendants. So I sent this through Facebook:

Dear David,
Tim Cole urged me to write to you about my Dillingham connection and to request to join your family group. Anna Dillingham of Porter County, Indiana was my 2nd great grandmother. She married Calvin V. Crofford in 1839 (her second marriage). Their son Horace Calvin Crofford m. Ada C. Hall; their son Horace Calvin Crofford was my grandfather. The Croffords ended up in Norfolk, Virginia where my mother grew up. My family and my mother's brother's family still live in the area.

Here is her profile on my family tree in Ancestry:
Anna Dillingham (Lyons)
Your 2nd great grandmother
Birth 29 Sept 1815 in Ohio, USA
Death 13 Apr 1900 in Fall River County, South Dakota, USA

I have traced the Dillingham line back to the 1400's with some degree of confidence. I would be interested in confirming some of my information.

I look forward to hearing from you!

In my ancestry documents is a transcript of the Dillingham family Bible which details births, deaths, and marriages of the Dillinghams.