I would love for some great feedback on some research I have found on James Gurley. James was Grandma Hurlbut's brother. He is the only one in the family that I haven't been able to find after he left home. He was last seen with his family in the 1850 census. After many searches, I am hoping we may have found him. Tell me what you think!
The wonderful genealogist I hired found a court record and real estate deeds that had the name of James Gurley on them. The story is that James loaned some money to a man named Charles Page and the money was suppose to have been paid back in 6 months. It never happened. So, James took him to court to get his money back. The court took some land from Charles and gave it to James as payment. I have the transaction deeds for the land. On the deeds it lists him James Gurley and his wife as Jane L. of Lucas County, Ohio. However, all the transactions were done in Norwalk, Huron, Ohio. If you will remember, the Gurley family lived in Huron County, Ohio. Lucas county was a neighboring county. So...this is where my research picked up. Could this be our James Gurley? The county for the transactions is right, but he lived in Lucas County. So, I thought I would start a search for this particular James and see where it took me. I found James and Jane on the 1860 census in Toledo, Lucas, Ohio. Their last name was spelled Gerly. Surely this was just either a transcription error or an error on the part of the census worker. After finding this, I found the family on ancestry.com. In the family tree that someone had put on there, James and Jane Gurley had a daughter named Alice that was born in August 1860 in Norwalk, Huron, Ohio! This was during the court proceedings and the land transactions. I found that interesting, but I have never been able to prove it. I can't find her birth record anywhere! I am having the genealogist search for it. The other strange thing is that on the census record it lists Jane as being born in Ohio, but James in New York! We know that James was born in Ireland, so this made me curious to what was going on. James, Jane and Alice moved to Macon County, Missouri shortly after 1860. I found James' Civil War registration in 1863 in Macon County, Missouri. I then found the family in the 1870 and 1880 censuses. All the the censuses listed James as being born in New York. But....the Civil War registration said he was born in Ireland! Eureka! If this is our James, I think he was embarrassed by the fact that he was from Ireland. Many people back then were looked down upon if they were Irish. They weren't very well respected. I wonder if he just didn't want anyone to know and since they lived a year in New York before going to Ohio maybe he decided to pick New York as his birthplace. I haven't been able to find anything else on his wife. I assume her maiden name starts with the letter L, but I don't know for sure. Alice went on to marry a man named Mark Nelson and have a nice size family.
So...what do you think? I have requested the obituary for James from the Macon County Library. I can't wait to see what it will tell me. I figure that even if it doesn't say much, maybe with his death date I can get a death certificate for him. I don't know what else to do. Send me your thoughts and suggestions! I would love for this to be a fun search for all of us! By the way, almost all the documents of James list him as James D. Gurley. I don't know what the D stands for, but I keep hoping it would be related to his mother's maiden name.
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