Finding a child you never knew of: son of an Andersonville POW

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Finding a child you’d never known of is always a surprise, especially when it’s the child of a man who died young in the Civil War after time in the Andersonville Prison.

Jefferson C. BEERY was born in 1832, the son of Susannah HUFFORD and her husband David BEERY. Susannah was Christian Hufford’s granddaughter through his son Casper. Susannah was 48 with eight or nine children living when her husband died in the Mexican War. Her children ranged from six to 29. Susannah’s basic information is on page 166 of the 1909 HUFFORD FAMILY HISTORY. Information on Susannah’s descendants is at pages 166 and 167; the only mention of Jefferson is that he was dead.

Jefferson was a surviving twin; his twin brother John died as an infant. Jefferson was eight when his father left for the Mexican War, and Jeff never again saw his father. Jeff was ten when his father died.

When Jeff was 28, in June 1861, he married Sarah A. SEVITTS. When he was 30, in November 1862, he left for the U.S. Civil War. He enlisted as a private in Company C, 72nd Infantry Regiment, Ohio. On June 11, 1864, he was captured in Ripley, Mississippi. He spent time in Andersonville Prison and died of disease in late October 1864 in Savannah, Georgia.

And that’s where Jefferson Beery’s story was believed to end until a death certificate was found:
William Beery's death certificate

Jeff Beery had a son: William Beery, born four months before Jeff enlisted into the U.S. Army. William died in 1946 in Sandusky Co., Ohio. Whether William had any children is not known. I can find him on the 1880 census, 16 years old and doing farm labor in Sandusky Co., Ohio, but the next I find him is in 1910 after his marriage had ended. Lots can happen in thirty years.

If you descend from William, I’d love to hear from you: alicemariebeard@gmualumni.org

PAGE NOTE: Jefferson Beery is listed with his parents and siblings on page 166 of the 1909 HUFFORD FAMILY HISTORY.

Info to send me if you want genealogical help

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I’m more than happy to help other genealogists working HUFFORDS, even beginning genealogists.

However, PLEASE send full information when you send a query. A query like this won’t get you anywhere: “Are you related to my Aunt Rosemary who married John Hufford?” Seriously, I get some like that.

If you contact me seeking Hufford genealogical information, please include at least an approximate year and a place. Include as much information as possible so that I can pinpoint your Hufford among the several thousand in my database.

And, generally, I will not give information on the living, even if I have the information. The exception is with adoption. If you can prove to me that you descend from a Hufford, but you do not have the courage to make “that call,” I’ll do it for you. I have reunited adoptees with birth parents in a few instances. Sometimes it’s a good situation; sometimes it’s not. But my opinion is that someone has the right to be in contact with his/her own mother or father if that’s his/her choice.

But, please, no, “Are you related to my Aunt Rosemary who married John Hufford?”

Well, yes, through Adam and Eve. 😉

alicemariebeard@gmualumni.org

Gedcom files

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The exchange of genealogical information used to be fueled by family group sheets. A family group sheet is a piece of paper with the names of a couple (in olden days, we knew that meant one man and one woman) and with the names of all children born to that union. In addition, the family group sheet would name the parents of the husband and the parents of the wife. (Yes, such old-fashioned terms.) And, the group sheet would give the names of the all spouses of the children. “Spouse” included someone with whom a child had been produced, even if there had been no legal marriage.

The sheet had the basics on the father, the mother, and each child: date & place born, date & place died, date & place married. A new group sheet was created for each child-producing union.

Then, we would arrange the family group sheets in manila folders and organize the folders in a way that we found useful.

In the 1980s, the LDS Church (Mormons, Latter-day Saints) introduced a DOS program called “Personal Ancestral File” that was “gedcom compatible.” And we began talking about “PAF” and “gedcoms.” With that advancement, the ability of genealogists to store, manipulate, and share genealogical data changed dramatically.

It so revolutionized the way genealogists store and share data that Amish genealogists now rent corners in offices to use computers to work with their data. My database contains over 40,000 names. It would not be possible for me to handle that amount of information with old-fashioned family group sheets and manila folders.

PAF has “grown up” and is now in a Windows format. (Don’t laugh, but I still use the old-fashioned DOS version that I began using in about 1994.)

The long-term goal here

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Christian Hufford (b. 1716 in Schwaigern) had at least 102 grandchildren. The long-term goal in this “Hufford Genealogy: Volume II of The Hufford Family History” will be to track the descendants of the grandchildren. Generally, I will track one generation beyond the loss of the HUFFORD name (by whatever spelling). However, I’ll try to include all who are in the original book, and there will be some instances where I’ll go beyond the guideline of one generation beyond the loss of the HUFFORD name.

Additionally, each post about an individual will have up to a three-name tag line. The tag line will show the descent from Christian. For example, the tag line “Christian > Casper > Michael” means that the person being written about descends from Christian’s son Casper’s son Michael.

Of Christian’s 102 grandchildren, only 24 are mentioned in the book:
1 from son Christian
3 from son Philip (Three are named; there is information on only one.)
2 from son Daniel (One is an indirect inclusion as an “unknown link.”)
1 from son John
13 from son Casper
4 from son George (Four are named; there is information on only three.)

Christian’s 102 known grandchildren are on a descendants list HERE.

Black & white, 1860, Woodford Co., Kentucky

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There’s a story behind an entry on the 1860 census, but I don’t have it figured out: Jacob BOSTON (Christian Hufford’s grandson through his daughter Barbara) was 48 and living in Versailles, Woodford Co., Kentucky, with his wife Catharine (33) and young children William (5) and Mary (4 months). Also in the household was Salem WATERS (41), a widowed father, with his children: Eliza (17), Joseph (16), Anna (15), and Elizabeth (12). All were born in Kentucky. Jacob and Salem were blacksmiths, as was Salem’s 16-year-old son Joseph.

None of that is surprising: Two blacksmiths join forces. One is widowed and has a daughter old enough to help with the child care of the other’s young children, and the teenaged male works with his father.

What is surprising is that the Waters all were coded “B” for “black.” In other words, it was an interracial household in 1860 in Woodford Co., Kentucky. None of the Waters were listed as “slaves.”

Jacob Boston had no real estate, but $2,000 in personal property (cash, tools). Salem Walters had $350 of real estate and $100 in personal estate. That suggests that Salem owned a small bit of real estate (all that would be needed for a blacksmith shop), and Jacob had some tools and money.

In 1850, Salem was living with his wife (Rebecca, 28) and his children: Eliza (7), Joseph (6), Anna B. (5), Henry H. (4), and Mary E. (2). (Mary would have been “Mary Elizabeth.” Henry was gone by 1860, presumably dead.) Salem was a blacksmith. Listed next to Salem was another WATERS family, headed by 33-year-old Elizabeth, and with Harriet (18) and Samuel (14). Salem himself was listed as a slave owner on the 1850 U.S. Slave Schedule for Woodford Co., Kentucky: one slave, a 35-year-old black male.

Salem survived the Civil War:

In June 1870, William J. Steele announced himself a Republican Party candidate for county judge in Woodford Coumty. Steele was a prominent farmer and attorney from Versailles and declared himself to be “a Union man from the very start.” As a Republican candidate in the post-Fifteenth Amendment era, Steele sought support from Woodford County’s sizable African American community. He spoke to a black audience at Versailles’s “Colored Baptist Church” in March, before ratification of the amendment. Prominent black leaders in Versailles — including a blacksmith, Salem Waters; a carpenter, Aaron Searcy; a plasterer, Andrew Jackson; and the Reverend William Turpin — all spoke in favor of Steele’s candidacy. Each of these relatively wealthy members of the town’s African American community eagerly anticipated voting for Steele after the Fifteenth Amendment’s final ratification …

That’s from “Rebels on the Border: Civil War, Emancipation, and the Reconstruction of Kentucky and Missouri,” by Aaron Astor, 2012. (15th Amendment, of course said that the right of U.S. citizens could not be denied based on race, color, or previous servitude.)

By 1870 Salem had married again, to Jane. He was still in Versailles, working as a blacksmith, with $4,000 in real estate and $500 in personal property. He died before 1880 when Jane was listed as a widow, with one of Salem’s grandchildren living in her home. Salem’s son Joseph was working as a blacksmith in 1880, living in Clover Bottom, Woodford Co.

Was there any connection between Salem Waters and Jacob Boston other than two blacksmiths living together and working together in 1860? I can’t tell from the records that I’m finding. What I find interesting is that Christian Hufford’s grandson, a white man, was living and working side-by-side with a black man in 1860, in Kentucky.