Black Sheep Sunday: Did She Murder 3 Husbands or Was It 4?

Every family has their fair share of ancestor who "done wrong". Most family history folks enthusiastically embrace the inappropriate behavior as an interesting twist to the fabric of life. After all, we weren’t there and we don’t know all the facts and events. So let me tell you about another of our "black sheep" and you can be the jury.

By the time she died her name was Nancy Waggoner Yeast Layman Hufford Wiley. She was born in 1803 and went through four husbands and three of the four marriages only lasted a year or so. Hmm. Any thoughts pop to mind?

How are we related to her? She was the sister of Sarah Waggoner, born in 1825, and Mom’s great grandmother on her mother’s side who married Peter Yeast. You can read the entire details of the trial from the Cumberland Alleganian newsaper of the time on a collaborative and wonderful genealogy site local to Allegany County, Maryland, called Our Brick Walls.

Nancy first married John Yeast, “a strong healthy man” “who died unexpectedly if not mysteriously” in 1834. John was Peter Yeast's brother and you can read more about Peter here from this blog. It didn’t take Nancy too long to find spouse number two as women in those days needed to, and that was John Layman, who died naturally in 1845. Her third was Philip Hufferd who died shortly after eating some pumpkin pie.

Her last husband was Holmes Wiley. She married him in 1862 and he died in 1878. But in 1851 she stood trial for the murder by poisoning with arsenic of her friend Mrs. Engle. Seems that Mr. Engle asked Nancy to stay with the couple and attend to his wife during her "confinement", or late stages of pregnancy, delivery and a while after the birth.  Nancy agreed to do this. Shortly after the birth, which was attended to by a Dr. Patterson, Mrs. Engle became ill and subsequently died.

There was a lot of gossip making the rounds in the neighborhood. Married ladies were not too keen on three-time widowed women out on the loose. Plus, she had inherited money from some of the marriages so she was available, independently off, and probably looking for husband number four. It was even rumored that Mr. Engle might have been sweet on Nancy.

The transcript of the trial contains a lot of gross medical testimony which won’t be reviewed here. Go check the web site if that’s your cup of tea, or should we say arsenic? The testimony is interesting because the reader gets a view into the state-of-the-art medical world in the mid-1800s. The local doctors had just begun to do autopsies, and not to give too much away in case you do want to read the newspaper account, let me just say that the reader does wonder from the testimony if the removal of the stomach was done correctly.

Local doctors did a post mortem and sent bits of Mrs. Engle in jars to expert doctors in Baltimore. They were hot on the trail of arsenic poisoning. Later at the request of the experts from out of town Mrs. Engle’s body was exhumed for further testing. It’s fascinating to read and compare the testimony from the local doctors to the Baltimore expert doctors and professors.

Testimony at trial went like this: first local ladies and neighbors (didn’t care for her and thought she did it). Next up were local docs (also thought she did it and gave many in-depth clinical reasons for doing so). The defense was next at bat with expert testimony from the boys from Baltimore. They had a shining hour with plenty of medical jargon and concluded Mrs. Engle died of typhoid fever. Numerous cross-examinations followed.

During all of this, “the prisoner was much affected and wept constantly.” She was found not guilty by an all male jury. Oh, did I mention that she was very beautiful?

Photo of the day from the Archive:

The Old Rose Hill Cemetery near Eckhart, Maryland.
Has nothing to do with this article but I like it:)

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/03/black-sheep-sunday-did-she-murder-3.html

Pretty Priorities

As I looked at my basket of genealogy (a literal basket) sitting on the floor next to the computer, I saw a mess. It was then that I realized that I wasn't making progress because I had lost sight of my priorities.

Now I must confess right away that I do love a well-crafted list! I thrive on lists. When I wake up every day a list is the organizing principle of my day. Oh, sure, there are days when I enjoy drifting, taking time here and there to float on the tide of what ever is going on at the moment. But there is hardly anything to rival the pure satisfaction of crossing out a task on my list:)

With five minutes of organization I had my priorities set! Gee, that feels good. Four projects have emerged from the basket, and let me relate them here as a personal exercise to draw sharper lines around them. They are listed below, posed as questions to be answered

1. Where did Daniel Williams' family - his mother, and sibs - go? They immigrated from Wales, presumably as coal miners, in the mid-1800s. We know they were in upstate New York, in Troy, because there is a family photo taken by a photographer there. Daniel moved to Western Maryland at some point, presumably for work. We know a lot about him because he's my GGF and Mom's grandfather. Plus Aunt Betty spent some formative years living with her grandparents. When he moved from New York, what happened to his mother and siblings? At present, they are lost to us. Gosh would Mom, Aunt Betty and I love to find a family historian in that branch of the family tree!

2. Who are Samuel Albert House and his natural father, Issac Biggerstaff's ancestors and how are the families intermingled? SA House is my 2nd GGF and Mom's GGF. I've written a lot about him here so I won't bore you with all that now. Just want to get it on the record that I need to investigate his ancestors for my own curiosity. It will be a challenge!

3. Come to understand Sarah Wooden Waggoner Yeast and Peter Yeast a bit better. Wrote about this most recently. (See below.) She's my 3rd GGM. Mom now has straightened out about the names but I want to get a better feeling of the time and place in which they lived. I love the history part:)

4. Check for other information about the Porter family and Delilah Porter in particular. I have a suspicion that I'm not done with that lot yet! Can't put my finger on it but I need to take another look at the info to see what I can see. Ever have that feeling... that you might have missed something?

Well, there you have it. That feels better:) Now let me grab a glass of iced tea and go sit in the garden with my Daniel Williams file folder. And make a new list! Priorities are pretty, don't you think?

Photo of the day from the Archive:

Daniel Williams and his family,
Daniel seated right with his mother Jane Price Williams seated left of him.

These are Daniel's sibs but we're only guessing at matching names and faces.

Picture was taken by TOWNE,
47 Third Street, Troy NY.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/07/pretty-priorities.html

My Genealogy Guru is Under the Weather... Bums Me Out

Mom had a nasty fall in her home two weeks ago today. She's on the mend, with a couple of side tracks due to meds and such. I talked to her today and she sounded so much better my heart was warmed. She's turned a corner for the better. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayer, will you? After all she's going to be 94 on the 29th of this month!

We chat just about every morning and catch up on what we've been working on, genealogy-wise. She hasn't spent time at the computer because of the injury to her back and the added strain of sitting. But she'll be back soon.

Meanwhile the wind has gone out of my "ancestor search" sails. I left off sorting out the Wooden/Wooten, Waggoner, Yeast/Yost mess up in Grantsville, Maryland. Sarah Wooden/Wooten is my 3rd GGM and Mom's 2nd GGM. Her daughter, Sarah Waggoner might have been illegitimate but I'm not so sure. Seems that Sarah Wooden might or might not have married a Mr. Waggoner but Mom hasn't found record of that marriage. She did go on to marry Peter Yeast, a very prosperous innkeeper. Together they had six children: William, John, Alfred, F. F., Elizabeth, and James, as listed on the 1850 US Census.

So the two Sarahs, mother and daughter, are confusing enough to me. Add on two surnames that sound similar - Wooden and Waggoner (if that's how they were spelled at various times) - and it's all a muddle for me. Mom has it sorted but it falls out of my head whenever I think about it such that I have to resort to notes. See why I'm bummed out that Mom is under the weather... she keeps me organized and on the right track!

I have a copy of a letter from mother Sarah to daughter Sarah written March 5, 1869 which I'll transcribe here later. Mom has the original and I copied it last time I was visiting her. It's a lovely old thing and a tender picture of a family. In it mother Sarah asks daughter Sarah when she's coming for a visit. They only lived about 12 miles apart, mother in Grantsville, Maryland and daughter in Frostburg where, incidentally, Mom lives. Today it's a short drive but then the roads were difficult and prone to washing out. See photos below for a picture of how the road looked about 40 years later. (For more pictures of the National Road see the album via the tab at the top of this page.)

The most charming part of the letter to me is mother Sarah recapping the comings and goings of Sarah daughter's step-brothers and sisters, where they are living and what they are doing. It is difficult to read in some sections. And there is mention of Major and Sergeant. Don't know who they are and now in rereading the letter they might just be horses;)

I got curious about the Yeast brothers especially as this letter was written not too long after the Civil War. As best I can tell, William and James both served in the Union Army and survived. James was a private in the Second Potomac Home Brigade. I still don't have William's records sorted out properly but it looks to me as though he might have served in the 6th Calvary in West Virginia. Possible as West Virginia was "just over the hill", as Mom would say:) If so he was a POW at Andersonville... but I could be very wrong.

I did use the new search function at Fold3... and I love it! If I dreamed of the near-perfect search function, this would be it. I just searched on Union Army and Yeast and there all of the Yeasts were! Coulnd't be simpler.

So please wish Mom a hearty "get well soon"... and beg her to come back and keep me organized!

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/07/my-genealogy-guru-is-under-weather-bums.html