William Confar

Have you noticed that I put the last name for William as Confar instead of Confer? So far everything I have found has had their name spelled with the 'a'.

I went in search of some information about William Confar, the father of our grandmother Alice.  Everyone had said that he died in Chromo, Archuleta, Colorado in 1890.  What would he be doing in Colorado!  I still haven't find that out, but I did find him living there.  In fact, he moved there with several of his children.  I even found his burial information!  I would put it on Find A Grave, but I have no idea how to put it on there since it is so obscure!  Here is what I found on the following website: William Confar grave information

 Graves
      These grave sites are at various locations through out the 
     county and contain only one grave.

    BIRTH DEATH
GIVEN NAME SURNAME  YEAR YEAR  LOCATION

William M.  Confar   1820 -  1890  Located on Confar Homestead Chromo, Colorado.

If you pull up the website, it's pretty far down on the list.  He is the only one buried there!  I haven't been able to find any additional information about it, but I thought I would contact the courthouse for his estate papers.  I will let you know how that goes!

Confer Family Line

Okay, I thought I would let you know what I have been working on this past month.  Actually it was mostly just this past week!  I have had an impression that I should work on our Confer family line.  For those of you who aren't sure how this works, let me fill you in.  Alice Confer was my ggg grandmother.  Alice married Edward Hartshorn and one of their children was David Hartshorn who married Vera Hurlbut, my gg grandparents and their Daughter was my sweet great grandmother Margaret Hartshorn.  So...I have been trying to find more information about Alice.  I did find that she died on October 6, 1875 from burns she sustained from fire from a kersene lamp.  Ouch!  Here is a link to her grave memorial:
Alice Confer Hartshorn on Find A Grave

There is more information about her on her husband's grave memorial.  Here is a link to Edward's memorial:
Edward Hartshorn on Find A Grave

So..where did I go from here?  I have found from a few other people that they believe her parents to be William Confar and Rebecca Bennett.  I think this is correct too because of where William and Rebecca were living in comparison to Alice and Edward.  They were all in Wapello and Mahaska Counties in Iowa.  Alice and Edward married in Mahaska County and then made their home in Wapello County.

I am just going off what others are reporting as the parents of William Confar and on back to the 1500's in Germany.  So far I haven't been able to prove much of anything!  I would love some help from anyone who would like to help.

No Posts for awhile

Just wanted everyone to know that I have not forgotten about the blog!  Life has gotten a little crazy and hopefully once school starts again I will be able to focus more on keeping all of you up to date.  Will you all do me a favor?  Will you let me know if you are reading my blog?  I would love to hear from all of you!

James D. Gurley

I received the obituary for our uncle James Gurley.  It was full of great information.  It said that he immigrated with his parents in 1837 to Norwalk, Huron, Ohio.  Sound familiar?!  Another piece of the puzzle that fit nicely together.  It also lists his wife as Jane Louise High.  She died 12 years before he did.  James died in 1902 in Ten Mile, Macon, Missouri while living with his daughter Alice and her family.  The funny thing about this is that the document trail from 1900 to his death in 1902 all says that Alice was his niece!  I don't think that is correct.  Anyway, James and Jane married in Janesville, Rock, Wisconsin in 1859.  That is where Jane was living with her parents.  James was a railroad conductor and had been working on the railroads from a fairly young age.  I think his occupation took him to Wisconsin where he met Jane (many documents list her as Louise or Jennie).  He then had to go back to Norwalk to take care of some court issues and while they were there, Alice was born.  They stayed in Toledo for three years and then moved to Missouri.  I am not sure why they moved there.  Another mystery!  He did register for the Civil War in 1863 while living in Callao, Macon, Missouri.  They lived there for a few years before settling in Ten Mile where both he and Jane passed away.  They only had the one daughter, Alice and she was a first cousin to Grandma Vera.  I wonder if anyone really knew she existed?!  She married Mark Nelson and had several children of her own.

We found him!

I got back home yesterday to a package from the Huron County Courthouse.  I knew they were sending me the Estate papers for Susan Gurley.  I never dreamed I would get a huge answer to my last post when I opened the package!  33 pages of wonderfulness!  Apparently there was a dispute about which will was the true last living testament of Susan Gurley.  I actually love it when there are problems in the past because it gives us more information for the future!  They had to list all of her 'closest kin' and because she wasn't married, she didn't have children and her parents had passed away they had to list her four living siblings!  This is what they listed Thomas Gurley, Olena, Ohio; James Gurley, Macon, Missouri; Matilda Hurlbut, Jasper, Michigan; and Maria Hurlbut, San Diego, California.  Did you notice where James was listed as being from?!!  This wonderful document proved that I had at last found James.  I was so excited.  So, for all of you that want to know, we have cousins in Missouri!

Hurlbut family in 1870

I finally found the Hurlbut family in 1870!  I was so excited!  I was also excited to see that I was right about uncle Frank's sisters also living with the family.  Here is a link to the census record:

James Hurlbut family in 1870 Census

It lists James, Marie, Kate, Nettie (Antoinette), Frank and Jenny.  I am almost 100% sure that Jenny was Aunt Margaret.  Her middle name was Jane and I wonder if they called her Janey and the census worker heard 'Jenny'.  She was only one years old and that would pretty much fit with Aunt Margaret's birth date.

So, we still haven't found James' first wife Caroline or their youngest daughter Caroline.  Uugh.  What I did find was James' mother Almira with a girl names Nellie Hurlbut living with her in the 1870 census.  I don't know if this another granddaughter of her's or not, but the age of Nellie fits pretty good with Caroline's birthdate.  I am wondering if Caroline had a middle name that gave her the nickname Nellie.  I still can't find her past 1870, so I we will see what I we can find!  All of this makes me think that something tragic must have happened to the mother, Caroline.  Where did she go?  Did she die?  Still no sign of her!

James Gurley

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.