Putting My Darby Ancestors in Context

Photo Credit:  Wikipedia - Cincinnati in 1841

As mentioned in the previous post, the Darbys emigrated from England to America in 1841. As a life-long Cincinnatian, I was shocked when I saw this picture.  In 1841, the Miami-Erie Canal was completed.  What shocked me was the realization that the canal basically made an island out of the central core of the city.  Cincinnati is a basin city surrounded by beautiful hillsides.  For half a century, almost the entire population lived in the city basin, reinforced by the hillsides and the canal.

Wikipedia describes Cincinnati in the 1840s this way:

By 1840, Cincinnati had grown from a frontier settlement to the 6th largest city in the USA. It was a city of contrasts, with prosperous neighborhoods and squalid, violent slums. Many of the businessmen who controlled the city were interested in good relationships with the slave-owning states to the south of the Ohio River, and were hostile to abolitionists and blacks. The Ohio constitution denied blacks the franchise, and the Black Laws imposed further restrictions. Black children were denied education in the public schools, although black property holders had to pay taxes to support these schools. Black immigrants to the state had to register and provide surety. A black could not serve on a jury, testify in legal cases involving a white person or serve in the militia. However, drawn by the economic opportunities, the black population had grown from 690 in 1826 to an official count of 2,240 out of a total of 44,000 citizens by 1840. Many of the blacks had jobs as craftsmen or tradesmen, earning good wages for the time. Many owned property.

With the city's rapidly-expanding and ethnically-diverse population, trouble just needed a spark.  It came in the form of an extreme drought that resulted in the lowest water level ever recorded for the Ohio River.  The low water level threw many immigrants who depended on the river for their livelihood out of work.  Over a period of several days, several white people (largely Irish) attacked the black population.  For a fuller discussion of what occurred, click on this link.

Jonathan Darby

So here was the "Promised Land" the Darbys, Bickerdykes, and Sidebottoms encountered. This Queen City of the West was just getting started.  This period was just before the large German immigration that was to take place after 1848 as well as a large Irish influx that was to take place during the Potato Famine -- each group fighting for its place at the table.

I've included a Pedigree Chart so my family and readers can better understand my relationship to the Darbys and the generation that chose to serve in the Civil War. In addition to Mary Elizabeth Darby's husband Britton, and her brother, Joseph, brother Robert Darby also served. His story has a bit of a twist. He will be discussed in the next post.

Photo Credit for Jonathan Darby:  Martha Darby Rutter

Betty's Box - Part II

As mentioned in the previous post, my second cousin Betty and I have yet to meet in person.  Last May Betty started scanning in pictures from her mother's box.  One of the first priceless pictures she sent was this one of her family.  From left to right are pictured Don, Edith Jones Hodges (sister of my grandfather Fred Jones), Wyvetta ("Betty"), Mary Lee and Betty.  Betty told me that she is the only one in the picture who is still living.  She also has a younger brother, John Patrick, known as "Pat" who was not yet born when the picture was taken.  It is the elder Betty who was responsible for holding onto all of the documents and pictures in "The Box."

There were several "priceless" pictures in Betty's Box.  One pictured my grandfather, Fred Jones (Pop) with his two siblings:  Edith and Leo.  I had never seen a picture of him as a young boy.

 

Edith, Leo, and Fred 

Britton Wainright and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Darby had two daughters and a son who lived to be adults.  There are numerous posts on this blog about Britton (you can use the search function to read about him) who died of heatstroke while traveling with a unit of Home Guards to confront John Morgan of Morgan's Raiders.  He left a widow and three children.  One of his daughters, Rachel, is the great-grandmother of both Betty Arnett and the descendants of Fred Jones.  I was such an admirer of Rachel and never thought I would see a picture of her.

Because Ruth was the older of the two girls, we believe that from left to right are pictured Rachel, Thomas, Ruth, and their mother, Mary Elizabeth Darby Wainright.  Rachel was "Pop's" mother.

Through the wonders of Ancestry, I've also been in contact over the years with another cousin, Rhonda.  She descends from Ruth's side and was able to help with the identification of the grandchildren of Mary Elizabeth from the Hutcheson/Hutchinson side of the family.  Ruth Wainright married a Hutchinson.  One of her sons was a photographer and took this picture.  The Hutchesons lived in Evansville, IN.  Through a "cousin collaboration", we were able to identify all six of Mary Elizabeth's grandchildren.  Moving in a clockwise direction from the bottom are:  Mary Olive Hutchinson, Charles "Fred" Jones, Mary "Edith" Jones, Leslie T. Hutchinson, Thomas Harvey Hutchinson, and Leo Wainright Jones.

As I don't want to lose the picture record, I think we'll just have to have one more post from "Betty's Box".

The Darby Connection

I debated when I started this project as to whether or not I should go straight down the descendant lines (Alexander Jones to Charles Henry Jones, Charles Henry to Charles Fred, Charles Fred to John Thomas, John Thomas to me) or should I also include information on the collateral lines. I went with the latter. I'm a firm believer in not ignoring the contributions of the women that the Jones men married. So let me tell you about Mary Elizabeth Darby who was the mother of Rachel Wainright Jones (Pop's mother).

Mary Elizabeth Darby emigrated with her family from Selby, Yorkshire County, England. She was 13 years old at the time. They sailed from Liverpool and arrived in New York on March 20, 1841.

When I first started researching my family, I was really fascinated by Rachel Wainright and her father Britton -- more about him later. When you have a last name like Jones, researching can be incredibly challenging -- but then there was a unique name like Britton Wainright. I decided to "google" his name on the computer and he immediately came up in a family tree married to Mary Elizabeth Darby who came from England. In addition, there were several other previous generations listed. The family tree had been submitted by Martha Darby Rutter of Oklahoma.

I googled Martha and was able to find a phone number and called her up. What a conversation that was! When I told her who I was she went and got the family history record written by her g-grandfather, Edwin Cyrus Darby. She quoted this paragraph to me:

Father's oldest sister married a man named Wainwright. They had three children, two daughters named Ruth and Rachel and a son Thomas. He was killed in a railroad accident. Ruth married a Dr. Hutchison, had a son and daughter, then he died. The daughter was a nurse in the World War and went to France. Ruth died several years ago. Rachel married Harry Jones. They had two or three children. She died young, then he died and the children were put out in private homes. I lost track of them.

When Martha read this to me the hairs on my arms stood up. I told her that I was part of the family that her g-grandfather had lost track of. He wrote his family history about 1937, the year Alwilda died.

Her next statement was the biggest shock of the conversation. Martha said, "You know where they are buried, right?" I replied that I couldn't possibly know that, because until this conversation I didn't even know they existed. She then proceeded to tell me that many members of the Darby family were buried in the Pleasant Ridge Presbyterian Church Cemetery. Imagine my shock because I've lived in Pleasant Ridge the majority of my life and even went to kindergarten at Pleasant Ridge School, directly across the street from the cemetery. Martha told me she had come to Cincinnati and found the graves and found the church office to be very helpful. Based on her information, I was able to retrieve copies of their cemetery records. Tim and I made a visit and you can see the picture below.

I plugged the information into my Family Tree Maker program and it said that Martha and I are fourth cousins. We are related through Jonathon Darby, father of Mary Elizabeth. Martha and I have stayed in touch. She has pursued her family's genealogy for more than three decades and provided me with a lot of information. I have a copy of the Darby passenger list when they emigrated from England. I know the family was very musical and brought their instruments with them to the states. There are several members of the family who fought in the Civil War. Martha also sent me a picture of Mary Elizabeth, mother of Rachel and my gg-grandmother. She was one of many strong women from whom we are descended.

For more than eight years, Martha and I have emailed back and forth. When I became frustrated with my genealogical "brick walls", Martha was always there to suggest another approach to solving the problem. I attribute to her my love of this hobby and much of what I've learned. We always promise to meet, but so far we haven't done so. Like me, Martha is a retired teacher. We've both had our fair share of health issues -- but you can't keep a Jones/Wainright/Darby woman down.