This morning my e-mail included a message from Ancestry.com that one of my ancestors had a link...well, I clicked on it and didn't really find anything about that particular person that seemed to fit, but I got started on another mystery.
OneFamilyTree had two different men named Elijah Waybright married to Catherine Helmick. Both had the same birth day, but one died in 1861 and the other in 1882. I checked my sources. I had received my information from someone else. Then I started checking out the sources for the differing information. It is fairly compelling. According to Military Records of Individual Civil War Soldiers an Elijah Waybright enlisted in Company B, 31st Infantry Regiment Virginia of the Confederacy on 18 May 1861. He died 8 September 1861.
So, I decided that I'd better do a little investigation to see which death date was correct. I found Elijah in the 1860 US census of Pendleton County, Virginia on page 122 with wife Catherine and children Elizabeth, Sally A, William, Margaret A, and George W.
In the 1870 census Catherine is listed alone with children William, Phebe and James. Margaret and George are listed with the Abel Wymer household next door on one side and Sallie in the Elias Wymer household, next door on the other. Elizabeth is listed in the household of Nathan Strawder (Strother?). But that is a mystery for another day.
The 1880 census lists Catherine as a servant in the household of Strother Grady whose wife is Sarah. Phebe and James are also enumerated with their mother in this household. Under the Civil Condition column Catherine is listed as a widow. Perhaps Elijah did die in the Civil War.
Sarah, Strother's wife, died on 5 Feb 1882. Strother and Catherine married 10 June 1882. Unfortunately Strother died 11 Feb 1885, the month before their daughter Mary Solomon Grady was born on 31 Mar 1885. Catherine would have been 49. Catherine lived ten more years until 17 Mar 1895.
Interesting notes: Strother's son George had married Catherine's daughter Elizabeth on 28 Sep 1873. Mary Solomon Grady is found in the household of her brother, G (George) Waybright in the 1900 census of Circleville, Pendleton, West Virginia.
More questions: If Elijah died in 1861, who is the father of James, who was born in 1865?
Saturday, March 12, 2005
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