A Switch to Hymes from Hine

George and Susan Hine Family circa 1900

My decision of what to post this week was motivated by two factors:  I made an exciting discovery regarding a last name and I finished working on this photo after working on it off and on for over a year.  Plus, this is a really, really nice family photo from over 100 years ago.  I think it’s from around 1900, which would mean it was taken in Louisiana.

The photo is of the George Henry Hine and Susan Stanbrough Hine family.  In the back row is James, Lonnie, Addie and Bert.  The front row is Rowe, Susan, George, and Ollie.  There are a lot of descendants of this family in southern Louisiana, as well as a few other places.  They were all born in Hamilton County in Indiana in the 1800s.  The family moved to Louisiana in 1894 and the daughter Addie married Louis Charles Bucklin in 1898.  One of their sons was Fred Bucklin, my maternal grandfather.  Now you know where I fit in.

Malina and John P. Hine headstone

But what you don’t know is the last name of George Henry Hine’s mother.  Some of you might not even know her first name!  So to help you out, I will let you know that his parents’ names were John Peter and Malina Hine.  (Like in the second photo that I’m posting.)  I have been looking for Malina’s last name for a while.

It was not in the census records that I had found from 1860-1900 or other records I could find online.  But then Ancestry added Indiana death certificates to their data sources available to its members.  I didn’t really think about looking for her name when that information first came out.  All I really thought was, “Oh, some more stuff available.”  I deleted the notification and moved on.  I came across her name a few days later and then thought I’d try to find her last name again.  Her death certificate is not included because she died in 1894 and the records start in 1899.  What?  You’ve got to be kidding me?

I was almost forlorn, but then I remembered that George Henry had several siblings that lived out the rest of their lives and died in Indiana.  I wasn’t even sure the siblings I had listed were accurate, but I tried anyway.  So I checked for William Hine and found death certificate that showed his mother’s maiden name!  Yippee!   Then I checked for Benjamin and Thomas and found the same thing.  They all three had the maiden name of Malina Hine as being Malina Cox.

I was still a little unsure because I wasn’t sure that they were all really the siblings of George Henry Hine.  So I was determined to find the 1850 Census that I had been unable to find before.  The children would have been young enough to all be at home still at that time.  They weren’t in the home in the later censuses.  I searched all day for that census!  I looked for the name spelled any way possible:  Hine, Hines, Heinz, Hinds.  But no luck.  I was giving up and decided to see if someone else might have the info on their tree.  I looked at a few trees on Ancestry and found a few with census records.

And that’s when I noticed something.  I already knew that census workers spelled people’s names however they thought was correct.  They did not have the spelling gene from Grandma Myrtle!  But another mistake that I saw was the name transcribed as Him.  In cursive Him and Hine look very similar.  So I went back and searched for John Peter Him.  I didn’t find Him, but I found him.  The family was listed as Hymes in the 1850 Census.  And all of the children were listed.  The ones who had death certificates giving the last name of Malina as Cox.  I am now satisfied that we have at least one line of Cox family in our history.  She was born in North Carolina and I believe that her family may have been Quakers.  Now I want to know more!  The search never ends.

1850 census lists John (Peter) Hymes (Hine), Malina, Benjamin, William, George H(enry), and Allen L(arkin).