Category: Milliron

It has been a bit over three years since I was able to finally break through the brick wall of Cathrine Jane Foster Phenice’s ancestry.  I descend from her on my mom’s side of the family.  My mom’s name was Betty Lou Bucklin and she was the daughter of Myrtle Sylvia Phenice.  Grandma was the daughter of Harry Clifton Phenice, and H. C. was the son of Cathrine or “Kate.”  For some reason the clues for her parentage did not make itself known very easily.  The only way I was able to do it was with the help of DNA matching.  It definitely pointed me in the right direction.

Cathrine Jane Foster Phenice circa 1910 in Nebraska.

One of the main things that made it difficult was that her father Moore (or Morris) Foster died in 1852 when Kate was only 4 years old.  They were living in Cherrytree, Pennsylvania, at the time.  After Moore’s death, Kate’s mother Anne Magdaleen Milliron Foster moved the family back to her childhood hometown of Springfield, Pennsylvania, in Mercer County.  It wasn’t long before Anne had remarried to a man named George Richael.  Since Anne took on the name of Richael, it wasn’t straightforward to find the connection from Foster to Milliron.  As you’ll see, we weren’t the only ones who didn’t make the connection between Cathrine Foster and the Milliron family.

I wrote a post about Cathrine’s family that included many Richael half-siblings.  It is interesting that there was never any reference to these siblings in newspaper articles about Kate.  At least I haven’t seen any.  I also wrote a post about Anne’s family when I discovered an old letter that talked about a Milliron family reunion at her brother Alexander’s home in Kansas in 1885.  That probably could have been called a Millison family reunion, because some of the siblings went by the last name Millison and others went by Milliron.  It seems strange that the two names could be from the same family until you hear the reason.  The original name was the German name Muhleisen.  The name means ‘miller of iron.’  Some family members went with an English spelling of the meaning of the name – Milliron- while others went with an English spelling of the sound of the name – Millison.

But the reunion should have included another name – Cribbs.  While Anne and Alexander’s father’s name was Milliron, their mother’s name was Cribbs.  I really should say that their parents were Daniel C. Milliron (1803-1878) and Catherine Cribbs (1805-1872).  Both of them were born in Westmoreland County in Pennsylvania, where they met and were married on February 5, 1824, in Hempfield Township.  They were not the only Cribbs-Milliron connection made that year.  Toward the end of the year Daniel’s sister Catherine Milliron married Catherine’s brother Peter Cribbs.  Ok, it’s already confusing enough that a brother and a sister marry another brother and a sister, but to have a Catherine Cribbs Milliron and a Catherine Milliron Cribbs really tops it off.

Intro to Milliron-Cribbs family history book by Christina Hettenbaugh Noring in 1964.

The two couples started their families at pretty much the same rate.  Just look at their second children.  Anne Milliron had a double first cousin Mary Anne Cribbs who was born just a few weeks before her.  There were eight Cribbs children and nine Milliron children all born within a fifteen year period.  Besides these double first cousins, there were lots of cousins on both sides of the family.  One of the things that this seems to lead to is the likelihood that someone in the family is interested in family history.  And when there is someone who starts looking into family history with a lot of people involved, they try to find a way of keeping the names all straight.  So they write it all down and sometimes it ends up being put together in a book.

And that’s what I found last night!  Peter and Catherine had a great granddaughter by the name of Christina Hettenbaugh Noring.  She was interested in the ancestry of Peter and Catherine.  This is great for me and my Phenice cousins because that means she was interested in both the Milliron and Cribbs family lines.  So there is some interesting information about how the two families came together in Westmoreland County and then made their way to Mercer County in 1825. 

Page in Noring book that shows my great great great grandmother Anna Magdaleen Millison Foster. Her daughter Cathrine is missing.

It gives a few generations of the family, including the children of Alexander and Anne Milliron and their siblings.  But there is someone missing!  They say that Anne first married Moore Foster and they had children named James, Hannah, Emery, and an unnamed infant.  According to the 1850 Census in Cherrytree, the Foster family consisted of Moore Foster, his wife Ann Magdelene, and his children James – 6, Emory – 4, and Catharine – 2.  In the 1860 Census Ann is listed as the wife of George Rihel.  Included in the household are 13-year-old Emily Foster (probably Emory Foster), Catherine Foster, and Hannah Foster, as well as the children of George and Ann.

So for some reason Cathrine was left out of the book, as well as all of her descendants.  So our family didn’t know about the Milliron-Cribbs family connection through Cathrine, and the Milliron-Cribbs cousins didn’t know about Cathrine’s connection to their group.  Was it due to Cathrine being older and leaving home when she was old enough to marry?  She and Charles ended up moving out to Nebraska, which was pretty isolated from the rest of the family.  She did have contact with her uncle Alexander and maintained a relationship.  That’s how I first noticed a possible connection to the Millison name.  It was reported in a blurb in a Kansas newspaper. 

The book I found also includes the letter I shared about the Milliron Reunion of 1885, so there were still some connections with Anne’s family.  If they had known about her daughter Cathrine, my name would have ended up in the book.   Some of the descendants listed were born in the 1970s.  I find it interesting that I’ve found my name in several family books about ancestry.  I’m listed in books about the family lines of Landry, Patureau, Keys, and Bucklin (online only). 

Even though I was left out of the book, I’m still looking forward to reading through it closely to see what family stories I can find.  If I find anything really interesting, you know I’ll share it.  Try to be patient.

Cathrine’s tree showing location of Cribbs, Milliron, and Foster lines.

Daniel C. Milliron and Catherine Cribbs were my 4x great grandparents.  They were married on Feb. 5, 1824, in Hemphill Township, Westmoreland County in Pennsylvania.  They were both born in Westmoreland County, yet after they were  married they settled in Mercer County which is 100 miles away.

They had nine children together.  In 1825 they had Alexander, in 1826 they had Anne Magdaleen (my 3x great grandmother), in 1829 they had John, in 1831 they had Elias, in 1834 they had Cyrus (died as infant), in 1836 they had David, in 1838 they had Luis (died as infant), in 1840 they had Catherine (died as infant), and in 1842 they had Susannah (died at age 9).  As you can see, only 4 sons and 1 daughter grew to adulthood.

Once they grew up and got married, they and their children started spreading across the country.  Those were the times they were living in.  When Anne Magdaleen married Morris Foster on August 30, 1843, the US consisted of only 26 states.  By the time of her death in 1873, 11 more were added.  The Milliron families were setting up homes in some of these new states.

Transcription of May 21, 1885, letter from Milliron brothers to their brother John. The letter was found in an old family Bible.

This led to lots of distance between those siblings.  I discovered this when I found a transcription of a letter from May 21, 1885.  Three of the brothers were having a reunion at the home of the oldest brother Alexander in Wabaunsee County, Kansas.  When they were growing up, he was called Sander.  As he got older, he was known as Mac.  After a few days together at the reunion, they adjusted to calling him his new name.

From what I can tell, Sander (or Mac as we now call him) had last seen Eli in 1857.  Can you imagine not seeing your sibling for 28 years?  The last time Eli had seen Dave was in 1865.   Their time apart was only 20 years.  Sander had last seen Dave in 1870.  They don’t mention how long it had been since the brothers had seen John.  The letter was written to him and it sounds like he may have stayed in Pennsylvania.

One of the things not mentioned was the death of Anne Magdaleen in 1873.  They do talk about being the only four left of their immediate family.  So it’s evident that they did not go to Anne’s funeral.  She lived in Pennsylvania, so the only one that would have possibly made it would have been John.  We don’t hear from him, though.  They do express sorrow that he is not with them and invite him to visit each of them.  I wonder if Cathrine Foster Phenice (daughter of Anne Magdeleen) was invited to this reunion.  She only lived a day or so away, yet she and husband Samuel had six young children to care for.

The three brothers spent a few days reminiscing about old times.  They mention some of their adventures as young men and say that they have tempered themselves as older men.  It’s a little bittersweet.  They mention reading over all the old letters they could find.  Boy, I wish I had some of those!  At least I have this one.  It gives me a bit of a glimpse into the lives of my great great great grandmother’s family.

Harry C. Phenice is my maternal grandmother’s father.

My inspiration for the post this week came from a website that I use for exploring DNA matches.  The name of the website is MyHeritage.com and it came out with something new recently.  This new thing has nothing to do with DNA.  It really doesn’t even have anything to do with genealogy.  They came out with a photo editing feature.

And you can call me amazed!!!  I don’t normally use three exclamation points at a time, but this time it was appropriate.  I saw a little ad for the feature.  It showed a before and after for an old photo.  I didn’t believe it.  I was like, “There is no way possible for that to be true.  They took a clear photo and blurred it to make it a ‘before’ photo.  Then they used the original photo for the ‘after’ photo.”  I was not believing it.

But I thought I’d try it.  Why not?  I had tried their colorizing feature on some photos, but I didn’t really like the results.  But it was a free trial offer.  So I went on their website and tried it on a few photos.  It’s like magic!!  Even after seeing the results, I find it hard to believe.  It puts back details like strands of hair, eyelashes, and lip texture that look authentic.

Photo that was edited using MyHeritage.com’s Photo Enhancer to clear up the image of my great great grandmother Kate Phenice and her daughter Emma from 1890.

My favorite one is this old photo of my maternal grandmother’s paternal grandmother. (I am the son of Betty Lou Bucklin Landry, who was the daughter of Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin, who was the daughter of Harry Clifton Phenice, who was the son of Cathrine Jane Foster Phenice.)  So Cathrine or Kate was my great great grandmother.  The photo was taken in 1890 in Hitchcock County, Nebraska.  I estimated this date because her 8th and youngest child Emma Orra is in the photo with her, and she was born June 20, 1889.

Look how much better their faces look!  It really brings the photos to life.  I’ve already spent way too long looking at this photo.  I just can’t get over the details that were recovered.  I thought I’d do the same with the information about Kate’s life.  The details of her life were a mystery for a long time, but last year I figured out who her parents were.  I’ve discovered a few more details in the meantime.

Cathrine Jane Foster was born in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 16, 1848.  We have had that information for quite a while.  Some of it was on her headstone and other parts were in a newspaper article about her death.  There were lots of other details, as well, but nothing was said about parents or siblings.

I now know that she was the daughter of Morris or Moore Foster and Anne Magdaleen Milliron.  When she was born, Morris and Anne had been married for 5 years.  They were married on Aug. 30, 1843.  It was most likely in Mercer County, because that’s where they both were born.  I don’t know much more about Morris’s family, but I do know that the Milliron family had been in Pennsylvania for about 100 years.

Morris and Anne had their first son in 1845 and his name was James.  Their second son was born in 1846 and they called him Emory.  Cathrine was their first daughter and the next to be born.  I’m not sure when she started going by the name Kate, but that seems to be what she was known by most of her life. 

The next source of information for Kate’s life was the 1850 Census.  There are six people living in the household in Cherrytree, Venango, Pennsylvania.  There are 29-year-old Moore Foster, 24-year-old Ann Magdelene Foster, 19-year-old Thomas Foster, 6-year-old James, 4-year-old Emory, and 2-year-old Catharine.  This is a Census, so the names are spelled according to the Census taker.  I’m not sure who Thomas is, but it is likely a family member, such as a brother or nephew of Moore.

The main thing that is different is where they are living.  I have Cherrytree as the birth place for James and Emory.  I’m thinking that Kate must have been born in Cherrytree as well, because in 1852 her younger sister Hannah is born in Cherrytree.  I doubt that the family was moving back and forth from Mercer.  They are about 110 miles apart.  So at some point Moore and Anne moved to Cherrytree and started having children.

Tragedy struck a few months after the birth of Hannah in 1852.  Moore Foster died at the age of 35.  I don’t know how he died, but I’m sure it was a traumatic event in the life of little 4-year-old Kate.  Anne moved her family back to Mercer County.  I suppose she did this to be closer to her Milliron family members.

About a year later Anne Magdaleen Milliron Foster married George Richael.  Over the next five years, Anne and George had three sons.  Their third son Elias was born in 1858 and he only lived for two days.  This was likely another point of sadness in 9-year-old Kate’s life.  Anne and George had two daughters following this.  Then in 1864 they had a son that they named George, Jr.  Sadly, George, Jr. died a couple of days after his first birthday.

So in 1865 the family consisted of her mother Anne and step-father George, as well as her brothers James and Emory and sister Hannah.  There were also two step-brothers and two step-sisters.  It’s hard to know if that was a happy situation or not.  There was no mention of other family members in the article about her death, and some of those step siblings were still alive.  I’m thinking it wasn’t the best situation, since it doesn’t seem like it was talked about.  Otherwise her family wouldn’t have been such a mystery.  Or maybe it was just the forgetfulness of family through the years.

Either way, 17-year-old Kate was not sticking around!  She must have met Samuel Phenice around this time.  He was 21 at this time and had fantastic tales to tell about his soldiering time in the Civil War and his eyewitness testimony for the Lincoln Assassination.  They were married Sept. 27, 1866, in Hendersonville, Pennsylvania.

And the rest, they say, is another post.

Edited version with just Kate in the photo.