Slusher – Moore-Mays Genealogy

William Harmon Mays

Posted on 20-May-2016 by Kathleen

This weeks timeline focus is my great-grandfather, William Harmon Mays. Lets see what I can find to do next with him. 🙂

June 2, 1872

William Harmon Mays is born to John Mays and Celia Slusher in Elliott County, Kentucky. He is their second child and first son. [1. Ohio Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, death certificate 14438 (1952), William Harmon Mays; digital image, FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 18 Sep 2010)]

June 1880

William is counted in the 1880 United States Census. He is 8 years old and lives with his parents and older sister in Elliott County, Kentucky. John and Celia tell the census taker they are unable to read and write. John is also sick with dysentary.

Mays Family, 1880 — 1880 U.S. census, population schedule, Elliott County, Kentucky. Martinsburg township, enumeration district (ED) 20, p. 579-C, dwelling 117, family 117, John Mays; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 1 Apr 2016); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T9, roll 412.

June 1900

William is going by his middle name of Harmon on the 1900 United States Census. He is working as a farm laborer for Andrew Fraley in Elliott County, Kentucky.

William H Mays, 1900 — 1900 U.S. census, population schedule, Elliott County, Kentucky. Devils Fork township, enumeration district (ED) 17, sheet 06-A, dwelling 98, family 98, Andrew Fraley; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 May 2016); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T623, roll 518.

October 19, 1905

William marries Sarah Elizabeth McDaniels in Rowan County, Kentucky. The wedding takes place at her father’s residence. This is the first marriage for 33 year old William and 17 year old Sarah.

William Mays, Sarah McDaniels — Rowan County, Kentucky, Marriage Register 1880-1954, 5, 1904-1906: 327, Mays-McDaniel, 19 Oct 1905; digital images, FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 18 Mar 2016)

September 1, 1906

William’s first child, Mary Jane Mays is born in Morehead, Rowan, Kentucky. William is 34 years old and Sarah is 18 years old. [2. Clermont County, Ohio, Marriage Records, 1800-2013, 35, 1926-1930: 228, Jegley-Mays, 1928; digital images, Family Search (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 24 Mar 2016).]

January-May 1910

Family Lore: I believe sometimes in this time period Sarah dies. The rumor in the family was that she was sick with tuberculosis. We have no records to indicate that.

May 1910

William is counted with his wife Elizabeth and young daughter Mary in the 1910 United States Census. They are living in Rowan County, Kentucky next to his parents. He owns his own farm. Elizabeth is crossed out of the census, but all her information is there.

William H Mays, 1910 — 1910 U.S. census, population schedule, Rowan County, Kentucky. Hogtown township, enumeration district (ED) 156, sheet 14-A, dwelling 226, family 227, William H. Maize; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 May 2016); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T624, roll 498.

November 11, 1914

William‘s mother, Celia Slusher-Mays, dies at the age of 73 in Tate township, Clermont, Ohio. She suffered from Mitral insufficiency and senility for 6 months. The informant for her death is Harmon Mays. [3. Ohio Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, death certificate 59028 (1914), Cela Mays; Ohio Department of Health, Columbus.]

April 27, 1918

William marries Iva Belle Moyer in Clermont County, Ohio. William lists his parents as John Mays and Celia Slusser. He states he has been married once before. Iva had never been married before.

Family Lore: My grandmother told me that Iva Belle started off taking care of Mary Jane (Janie), and William married her later. She gave the impression is was a year or more after Iva began caring for Janie.

William H Mays, Iva Moyer — Clermont County, Ohio, Marriage Records, 1800-2013 285, Mays-Moyer, 1918; digital images, Family Search (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 17 Mar 2016)

January 1920

William is now living in Monroe township, Clermont County, Ohio. He is now renting the farm he lives on with his second wife, Iva Belle Moyer. His daughter, Mary Jane Mays, is now thirteen years old. William’s father, John is living with the family and he is now able to read and write.

Observation: It’s very cool to me that John learned to read and write between 1880 and 1920. It looks as if he could write in 1910, but not read. Just very awesome and shows you it is never too late to learn things.

William H. Mays, 1920 — 1920 U.S. census, population schedule, Clermont County, Ohio. Monroe township, enumeration district (ED) 60, sheet 03-A, dwelling 52, family 52, William H. Mays; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 May 2016); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T625, roll 1355

January 21, 1923

My grandfather, Stanley Mays, is born to William and Iva Belle Mays in Tate township, Ohio. He is their first child. His birth was originally falsely recorded as being in 1913 but it was corrected in April of 1923. This isn’t a false correction. The birth certificate was pre-printed with 191__ and it was corrected to be sure that 1923 was given as the correct year of birth. [4. Ohio Bureau of Vital Statistics, returned 910 (1923), Stanley Lee Mays; Ohio Department of Health, Columbus.]

May 3, 1924

William and Iva’s second child, Ralph Dallas Mays is born in Tate township, Ohio. This is their last child. His birth certificate doesn’t show his name but the details all match him. [5. Ohio Bureau of Vital Statistics, 43991 (1924), blank; Ohio Department of Health, Columbus.]

January 20, 1927

William‘s father, John Mays, dies in Tate township, Ohio at the age of 84. He had internal injuries after falling. No other details were given at the time of his death. Harmon Mays is the informant for his death. John’s name on his death certificate is listed as Harmon Mays and the cemetery office also lists him as Harmon. These are the only two times I have heard of John referenced to as Harmon. [6. Ohio Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, death certificate 639 (1927), Harmon Mays; digital image, FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 26 Sep 2010)]

January 11, 1928

William‘s oldest child, Mary Jane Mays marries George Jegley in Clermont, Ohio. She lists her parents as Harmon Mays and Elizabeth McDaniel. She lists her birthplace as Morehead, Kentucky. [2. Clermont County, Ohio, Marriage Records, 1800-2013, 35, 1926-1930: 228, Jegley-Mays, 1928; digital images, Family Search (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 24 Mar 2016).]

May 1930

William is 57 years old in the 1930 United States Census. He is now living in Tate township with his wife Iva and two sons, Stanley (my grandfather) and Ralph.

William Mays, 1930 — 1930 U.S. census, population schedule, Clermont County, Ohio. Tate township, enumeration district (ED) 19, sheet 07-A, dwelling 178, family 186, Harmon Mays; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 May 2016); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T626, roll 1758.

May 1940

William is now shown as living in Monroe township. It should be noted that he is probably living in the same area and not moving around. This is a rural area and these townships are usually all near each other. William and his sons are grain and tobacco farmers. Tobacco was big for this area and our family is even kind of known for it.

William Mays, 1940 — 1940 U.S. census, population schedule, Clermont County, Ohio. Monroe township, enumeration district (ED) 15, sheet 17-B, household 367, William H. Mays; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 May 2016); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T627, roll 3041.

May 3, 1947

William’s son, Stanley (my grandfather), marries his wife Emogene Taylor.

Family Lore: Some members of the family say they married in Kentucky, and some say Ohio. I am still looking for their marriage certificate.

October 2, 1949

William‘s second wife Iva, died after a year long illness at the age of 55. Her cause of death was heart disease. The informant on her death certificate is William Harmon Mays. [7. Ohio Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, death certificate 61919 (1949), Iva Belle Mays; digital image, FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 18 May 2016)]

January 19, 1952

William‘s second son, Ralph, dies in Tate township, Ohio at the age of 27. The informant on his death certificate is my grandfather, Stanley Mays. [8. Ohio Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, death certificate 07293 (1952), Ralph Dallas Mays; Ohio Department of Health, Columbus]

March 7, 1952

William dies at the age of 79 in Monroe township, Ohio. It says on his death certificate that he had arteriosclerosis for many years before his death. His parents are listed as John Mays and Cecelia Gray. His daughter Mrs. George Jegley is the informant on his death certificate.

William H. Mays death certificate — Ohio Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, death certificate 14438 (1952), William Harmon Mays; digital image, FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 18 Sep 2010)

Records to Find:

I am still looking for some kind of birth record for William. There should be a county birth record, I just have to locate it.
Stanley and Emogene’s marriage certificate. Might be in Campbell County, Kentucky.
There is a 20 year gap between 1880 and 1900. I need to fill this space in with alternate records.
I will probably look into Andrew Fraley’s family also. Since William lived and worked on his farm, it might help me to find more information on William.

Records to Order:

I can’t think of any records to order at this time. Everything else for William will most likely have to be done in person. I will need to research which records are available.

Note: There are more events but I didn’t put them to protect the privacy of living individuals. 🙂

When do you stop?

Posted on 18-Nov-2011 by Kathleen

I have a situation that has recently come up. You see, when I was rebuilding my father’s side of the family tree, I didn’t have the problem I’m about to explain.

I’ve finally made my way past the Mays line of my family tree, and now I’m onto the Slusher line. Funny thing is that 3 Slusher siblings married into the Mays family, so technically I’m still researching Mays’. Of the 10 Slusher children you see above, I’ve already researched 3 of them. Well technically two, because I couldn’t find the paper trail for the third. I’ve probably spent the past month going on down the Quesinberry line of the Slusher family. Technically I’m not related to the Quesinberrys. Oliver Quesinberry married Mahala Slusher, but I’m not descended through Mahala. I am descended through her sister Celia.

For some all this work on the Quesinberrys could be a waste of valuable research time. However, in rural Kentucky, it’s actually not. A lot of the times families in rural Kentucky had 10-15+ children. However, this is rural territory. A lot of times you have siblings of your ancestors marrying the siblings of their in-laws. I hope that made sense. It’s why I have 3 Slushers marrying 3 Mays‘. For me, anytime I run across Slusher, Mays, Click, Adkins, Whitt, or Crisp, I just go ahead and document everything I can about the siblings. Sometimes, when you’re in the midst of all these people, it’s hard to resist just adding everyone.

In my original family file, which was a combination of my Grandma’s copy of the family tree and online trees, I made the mistake of getting TOO carried away when it came to documenting the in-laws of my family tree. I haven’t done that this time yet. So far, I document the parent names of the person marrying into the family and most times I will also go ahead and add their siblings into the tree, it depends on how I’m feeling. I however, do not research the siblings in that case. I’m only researching the siblings of my blood relations. This rule gets thrown out for me if I run across a lot of people with the same surname marrying in. Then that surname gets bumped up on my priority list.

Of course, sometimes this gets me into trouble. Like today. I’ll admit to getting a little bored with the Quesinberry family. Not because they weren’t interesting, just that there were so many of them! Lawson Quesinberry‘s first wife gave birth to 16 children! Oy!

However, searching through newspapers has been an eye opener. A lot of the Quesinberry’s were LDS Church members. So when they were in the paper, they were IN the paper with full histories. It was glorious! Today I ran across the above article about Alfred Quesinberry. At first I wasn’t sure if it was Alfred, but after putting a few different clues together, I’m pretty sure it is. Most especially the Hunnewell, Greenup County, Kentucky reference. Alfred’s brother, Farris, spent a lot of years in that area at the same time. Farris‘s first marriage didn’t work out as well either.

After trying to find out the outcome of the bigamy debacle, I decided to do something a little more productive for the moment. I looked up the young son that is mentioned in the article. I found him in the Kentucky Birth Index and then was able to find another interesting bit on him.

Despite all the other wonderful information, I notice that it mention his parents Mr. and Mrs. Frank Newman. Yes, Pearl Griffith Quesinberry Sharp decided to give marriage another go, this time with Frank Newman. I found the couple in the 1930 census in Ashland, Kentucky. I even found another marriage record for Alfred Quesinberry in West Virginia.

What I did not find however, is Charles or Alfred in 1930! Where on earth are they? Do you see the wonderful mysteries and adventures you can find when you go on down the side branches of your family tree?

When Good Things Go Bad

Posted on 16-Oct-2011 by Kathleen

capture_001_16102011_182135 — click for bigger view

My intentions were good today. I’ve gotten a lot done and I’ve even watched my football team fail miserably. I was making progress in my huge project of a more organized family file, when I came across the image above. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. Just the first time it was so blatant. For example, on certain censuses, the whole last 5 lines of Elliott County, Kentucky are missing. I’m not talking on the last page. I’m talking the the last five lines on each page of a whole enumeration district.

The real question is this, if the image looks like that, How did they index it? Oliver Quesenberry and his wife Mahala are in the index, but obviously not on the image above.

If they are using something else, is there any way for someone to get their grubby hands on it. Since this isn’t an isolated problem, I was just wondering the work around. I know the most obvious is to go to my local historical society or library and check out the microfilm. However, my library doesn’t carry the census or microfilm that I’m aware of, and I’m not in Kentucky. I’m in Maryland… which isn’t anywhere near Kentucky. Well, closer then California is to Maryland but you get my point. The historical society would be an option but I doubt they carry the Kentucky districts but I’m not opposed to trying.

When I came across the missing lines in Elliott County, I checked on FamilySearch, and they were also missing the lines. I just assumed that they were all using the same images of the census. Am I right in thinking this? I was going to look through on FamilySearch this time, but I am unable to view the images. This isn’t vital to my research obviously because research doesn’t hinge on the census. My thoughts are just to turn this into a learning experience for myself.

So that’s how my Sunday has gone and I wouldn’t trade it for the world!

Margaret Slusher, you might have been found!

Posted on 05-Oct-2011 by Kathleen

As anyone who researches their genealogy knows, the women can be hard to track down once they leave the house. It gets doubly hard in very rural areas where records might not have been kept. I run into this problem a lot in my Kentucky/Ohio research. One of my more recent “brick walls” is Margaret Slusher. I say “brick wall” because technically it isn’t. I know who her parents are and I know who her husband is. I even know the year she married. However, in 1860, she’s not living with her new husband or her parents. I’m a stickler for the details, so it bugs me when I can’t find people in certain censuses. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, but most times it’s just you’re not looking in the right place. The key to the problem is Margaret’s marriage to James Mays happened in September of 1860.

What a lot of people forget is that most censuses take a few months to complete, however, the enumerator is supposed to record the data as it reflects the household on a certain day. In 1860, that day was June 1, 1860.

I was transcribing the surrounding households of Joseph and Nancy Slusher, Margaret’s parents, when I came across William Jenkins household. At the very end, it shows a 20 year old Margaret Slusher. Since I don’t know my Margaret’s exact birth date yet, this one definitely fits with her estimated birth. The birthplace of Virginia fits. It’s the little tick that the blue arrow points to that interests me now. That tick is to show that the person was married within the year. I’d say this is my Margaret. I got very lucky that she didn’t get missed in the census all together since her marriage fell at such an awkward time of the year for the census. 🙂 I also got lucky that the Jenkins household gave Margaret’s maiden name. If they hadn’t I might have just had to live with not locating Margaret on the census.

Tombstone Tuesday: The Mays Family

Posted on 21-Dec-2010 by Kathleen

tombstone-01 — Mays Family Tombstone. Bethel, Ohio.

There are a few reasons that I chose to highlight this tombstone. In all my hijinks into my family history, I have stumbled onto learning how to do certain things. One of the first things I realized is that even official records can be wrong. I’ve also learned that spelling doesn’t matter in the early and late 1800s.

An important thing to remember about tombstones is that they aren’t always accurate. Take the example above. The names are mostly right, spelling mistakes aside. I also need to state that the death years are all correct (hard to get that wrong, right?)

Ralph (1924-1952): Everything here is correct.
John (1853-1927): His death certificate states his birth year as 1842. Since John is living in the 1850 census and listed as age 5, either date could be wrong but 1853 is more wrong then 1842.
Cecilia (1842-1914): I’ve only seen her referred to as Celia or Cela. That could be a shortened nickname but I might never know unless I find her birth record. Her death record also lists her birth date differently. I have 1840 and her age in censuses always matches that.
Harmon (1872-1952): Everything here is correct too!
Ivah (1897-1949): Iva’s name has been spelled a million different ways and that’s not including her maiden name (Moyer/Meyer/Myers). Once again I have her death certificate and her birth date is listed as 1894 and not 1897. The 1900 census actually gives her birth date as Sep 1894 too, which is spot on with her death certificate!

So basically what I’m saying is don’t always trust the tombstone. You never know who was giving the information at the time of your ancestor’s burial. In fact, it’s usually the same person giving the information for the death certificate. That’s why I’m so surprised the death certificates and tombstone varies so much here.

tombstone-02 — Florence Redford-Moore's tombstone. July 2010

In fact, even newer tombstones can be a bit wrong. This is my grandmother’s tombstone inscription. Everything is spot on except the fact that she was actually born on April 13 and not April 15. Oops! Be sure your family knows that they can come to you for correct dates!

Tombstone Tuesday is a blogging theme used by many GeneaBloggers.