Category: Stanbrough

In case you don’t know, Westfield is in Indiana.  My connection to the place is through my mom.  My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin and she was born in Hathaway, Louisiana, on May 20, 1933.  She was born just 52 days after her great grandmother Susan G. Stanbrough Hine died.  My mom’s dad was Fred D. Bucklin, the son of Susan G.’s daughter Addie May Hine Bucklin.  But Susan was better known as Sue.  Her siblings called her that, her niblings called her Aunt Sue, so I always refer to her as Grandma Sue.

Sue was born on October 3, 1851, to John Stanbrough and Lydia Mills Stanbrough in Westfield, Indiana.  She was the sixth of twelve children to be born to this couple.  She had an older half-brother by her father and his first wife.  Albert was born in 1839 to John and Lydia Hunt Stanbrough.  Lydia Hunt Stanbrough died in 1842 at just 21 years of age.  John’s father Evan James Stanbrough had died earlier that year, so that year started out rough.  In addition to those deaths, he also had two sisters and a brother that died in 1842.  The oldest sibling that died was only 28 years old.  I had never noted this fact before.  That was definitely a tough year for my ancestor.

He remarried the next year to Lydia Mills, and children soon followed.  Nelson was born in 1844, Joseph in 1845, Julietta “Etta” in 1847, Mary Etta “Mollie” in 1848, James Evan “Jim” in 1850, and our Sue in 1851.  Those were followed by Anna Jane in 1853 and Lucius in 1854.  Lucius lived for less than three weeks.  He was the only one of these twelve children that had a short lifespan.  Following those, there was Sarah Eliza “Ida” in 1856, Elisha “Ell” in 1857, Nathan Oliver “Oll” in 1860, and Charles Romanzo “Man” in 1863.  All of the children were born in Westfield, though sometimes I’ve seen that the property was located in Eagletown.  Eagletown is now an unincorporated area around Westfield.

John himself was from a large family.  He was the fifth of thirteen children, and he had been born in Ohio in 1820.  The first nine children were born Ohio, and then the family moved to Indiana around 1830.  His family was Quaker with a pretty long history in the United States.  The Quakers kept lots of records, which is very helpful for genealogists and those interested in family history.

Sue and her older siblings had their parents and their remaining grandparents for a few years.  Her older half-brother Albert died in July of 1854 at the age of 15.  Just a few days later her mom’s mother Elizabeth Brown Mills died at the age of 61.  I was thinking she was so much older, but she was younger than I am now.  Those two deaths happened just a few months before the birth and death of little Lucius, so that must have been a difficult time period for the family as well.

They lost their paternal grandmother Elizabeth Frances Hester Stanbrough in 1861 and their maternal grandfather James Mills in 1869.  By this time Sue was practically an adult and ready to be out on her own.   Her mother died in March of 1873.  Lydia Mills Stanbrough was only 49 years old at the time of her death.  Her youngest child Man was only 9 years old at the time of her death.  I’m sure some of the older siblings helped their father care for the younger ones.  Others were getting married and starting families of their own.  Grandma Sue was one of the latter.

Sue Stanbrough married George Hine on October 12, 1873, probably in Westfield.  In 1876 my great grandmother Addie was born in Noblesville, Indiana.  That’s not too far from Westfield.  I’m sure she was in close contact with the rest of the family then and in 1877 when her father John died as a result of poisoning himself with morphine.  He had remarried a woman with six children of her own and they were having difficulties.  He was also having financial problems.  On top of that it looks like he was suffering terribly from painful symptoms of malaria.  It was another tragic time for the Stanbrough family.

Sue and George stayed in Indiana and added five sons to their family.  They then moved south to Louisiana in 1894.  According to a newspaper article in 1926, Grandma Sue never returned even to visit Indiana.  Several of her siblings lived out their lives there.  Others of them moved to different states.  Joseph ended up in New Mexico, Mollie in Michigan (with her daughter), Ida in West Virginia, and brother Jim lived in Louisiana with Sue’s family. 

Even though the family was spread out, it seems like they stayed close.  I have copies of letters and photos that they sent each other through the years. That’s how I learned some interesting details about their lives.  It’s also how I got these interesting photos of the Stanbrough family.  They represent cherished memories of Sue’s family back in Westfield.  That’s why they’ve lasted through the years.

I’ve shared several pictures from this event back in 1926.  The photos are just so good because they have so many of my family members in them.  Though it says that it is a double view of Grandma Sue in the title, it’s not a double exposure from the event.  I shared that one two years ago.  That was the last time that I shared a photo from that event, so I thought it was time to look at that event again.  I was looking very thoroughly through those photos a few weeks ago to look for something specific, but I can’t remember what it was.  I didn’t have any new revelations about the photos either, but I still want to share these photos from 98 years ago.  

And it was exactly 98 years ago today.  My great great grandmother Susan G. Stanbrough was born on October 3, 1851, in Westfield, Indiana.  That was 173 years ago.  She married George Henry Hine in 1873.  Their first child was my great grandmother Addie Mae Hine and she was born in 1876 in Noblesville, Indiana.  They went on to have five more children – all of them boys.  In 1894 the family moved south to Louisiana and settled in Hathway, Louisiana, in Jefferson Davis Parish.  Addie got married in 1898 to Louis Charles Bucklin, who had moved down to Louisiana from Iowa with his family in 1884.  Their seventh and eighth children were Fred and Clarence Bucklin, who were born on October 2, 1907.  Fred is my grandfather, because he was the father of my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.

Let’s go back to the year before my grandfather was born.  In 1906 Grandma Sue and her friend Jennie Welton Havenar decided to have a joint birthday celebration.  You see, Jennie also had a birthday on October 3, though she was a few years younger than Sue.  According to the newspaper, the first birthday celebration must have happened around the beginning of December in 1906.  It was reported to be a great turnout with over seventy of their friends and family in attendance.  The reporter wrote about “hearty wishes given to the two ladies for many more such happy occasions in their lives.” 

Sue and Jennie must have taken that to heart, because that’s exactly what they did.  They had a joint celebration for their birthday for the next twenty years at least.   And it seems that the number of family and guests grew along the way.  We know that the following year at least two new family members appeared – Fred and Clarence.  And their birthday is just a day before Sue and Jennie’s.  I wonder if that was a good thing for the boys.  For at least the first twenty years of their lives, there was a big birthday celebration that everyone showed up for – and it was for their grandmother and her friend!  I’m sure that at least a time or two it actually fell on their birthday.  Hopefully people remembered to wish them a happy birthday as well.

The photos I’m sharing today were from the 20th Anniversary of the Double Birthday Celebration.  The two photos look like they were taken at almost the exact same time by two different photographers.  Very interesting.  According to the newspaper it was held on October 3, 1926, in Elton, Louisiana, at the home of Mrs. W. E. Havenar – that would be our Jennie.  They both had one daughter and four sons alive at the time, as well as many more grandchildren and extended families.  These photos were taken of Grandma Sue’s family.  Uncle Rowe died in 1916, and Grandpa George died in 1919, so they were not there.  Addie is standing just behind Grandma Sue, a habit she had in family photos taken through the years.  Fred Bucklin (Addie’s son – my grandfather) is the nice looking 19-year-old young man on the back row toward the middle of the photo.  He seems to be happy to be celebrating his grandmother’s birthday.  Maybe they had a birthday cake for him, too!

The 1926 newspaper article called this event the climax of these double birthday celebrations.  Did he know something that he didn’t mention?  Maybe Sue and Jennie had decided that this would be their last one and they decided to have a big send-off for the event.  If not, at most they could only have had three more joint celebrations, because Jennie passed away in March of 1930.  She was only 63 years old, younger than I am now.  Three years later Grandma Sue died at the age of 81.  

Here’s to Sue and Jennie.  Let’s celebrate their births all those years ago.  Hear, hear!

I’m talking about my great great grandmother Susan G. Stanbrough.  In this photo she looks like a rather serious woman.  I have a few other photos of her, and she looks equally serious in those as well.  Of course, when you look at old photos from that time period, that was usually the case.  But in her correspondence with family that I have found, she would sign off with a casual Sue.  So most of the times I refer to her as Grandma Sue.  In this post I’ll just call her Sue.

Sue was the mother of Addie May Hine, my great grandmother.  Sue had five sons as well.  Addie had more sons and more daughters, with a total of twelve children.  I descend from her son Fred D. Bucklin.  Fred, like Sue, had a middle initial in his name that didn’t stand for anything.  Fred was the father of Betty Lou Bucklin, my dear sweet mother.

Sue started her life in Westfield, Indiana, on October the 3rd of 1851.  Her parents were John Stanbrough and Lydia Jane Mills.  Sue was the seventh of thirteen Stanbrough children, though some of those siblings shortened their last names to Stanbro or Stambro.   Sue spent her childhood in Hamilton County, Indiana.  Her mother died early in 1873, and later that year Sue married George Henry Hine.  They were 4th cousins through their common ancestors William Vestal and Elizabeth Mercer.  Sue and George might not have been aware of that, because their common ancestors died almost a hundred years before the younger couple were born.

Sue and George had all six of their children in Indiana – some in Hamilton County and others in Boone County.  There was family in both counties.  They then decided to move south to Louisiana.  I’m not sure what the motivation was, but it was a time when the railroads came through southern Louisiana and made it more accessible.  There were different people who promoted the area as a great place for farming with mild winters. 

The family moved to Jefferson Davis Parish in Louisiana in 1894.  They acquired a homestead in China, Louisiana.  In the 1900 Census, the family included George, Susan, John U. (must be Bert James by year of birth), Romanzo (“Rowe”), James, and Oliver.  But also included in the household is James Stanbrough.  That would be Sue’s brother Jim who was a year older than her.  He had moved down to Louisiana and was living with them.  Addie was not in the household, because she had gotten married and had started a family of her own.  I don’t know where 18-year-old Lonnie Hine was at the time.  Perhaps in the military?  He didn’t get married until 1903.

If I’m correct about the date of this photo, it was taken around the same time as the Census.  The family had been in the South for about six years and Sue had recently become a grandmother.  They probably took the photo in Jennings, Louisiana, because that was the nearest town that was likely to have a photo studio.  This is actually cropped from a photo of the whole family.  It’s a great family photo, but I just wanted to focus on Sue today.  

If you look at this photo long enough, you’ll start to catch a glimpse of a smile on her lips.  Go ahead.  Try it!

I found an article about one of my ancestors about three years ago and was very intrigued by it.  I knew I would write a story about it at some point, I just had to find the right time.  But it seems that there never is a right time when writing about an ancestor’s suicide.

So even though it doesn’t feel like the right time, it does feel like the time to write it.  At least that’s what I’m doing.  The ancestor I’m talking about is John Stanbrough, my great great great grandfather.  Obviously I didn’t know him, but I do think about him from time to time.  There is no photo of him that I know of, even though he did live into the time of photography.  At the time of his birth in 1820, photography was not around.  But during his 57 years of living, it had developed quite a bit.

Let me tell you about my connection to him.  I am the son of Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  Her father was Fred Bucklin, who was the son of Addie May Hine Bucklin.  Addie was the daughter of Susan Stanbrough Hine.  Sue was the third daughter and sixth child of John Stanbrough & Lydia Mills Stanbrough.   There was an older half brother by her father’s first wife.  She also had six younger siblings.

John Stanbrough was born November 18, 1820, in Clinton County, Ohio.   He was a Quaker.  For a genealogist, that is a good thing because it means that there are lots of records for that person and their ancestors.  The Stanbrough or Stanborough family had been in the US for many generations.  They started out in New York and moved on to Tennessee.  Our line went on to Ohio and then to Indiana around 1830.  Grandma Sue brought our line down to Louisiana in 1894.

John married Lydia Hunt in 1838.  They had one son together in 1839 and then Lydia died in 1842.  Not long after that, John met another Lydia.  This one had the last name of Mills.   They were married on Sept. 20, 1843.  If you added up the children I mentioned earlier, you’d know that they had a dozen children together over about a 20 year period.

Then in 1873, just 10 years after the birth of their last child, Lydia died at the age of 50.  The Noblesville, Indiana, newspaper article incorrectly gives her age at death as 45.  This was the second Lydia that he had lost.   And she was an “estimable lady.”

Later that year, Sue Stanbrough married George Hine and they started a family.  Addie May was born on Sept. 23, 1876, in Noblesville, so there were some happy things going on for John at the time.  He must have gotten lonely again (even with several children in his house), because he decided to get married again in 1877.  He married the widow Margaret Hollis Embree on June 3.  She was 16 years younger and she had six children of her own. 

I had seen a lot of this information before three years ago when I first saw the transcription of the newspaper article about John Stanbrough’s death.  I wonder if his friends and neighbors were surprised like I was to see this information about a suicide?  What would make a recently married man feel that this was the choice he should make?

The article gives a few clues.  John took an overdose of morphine.  He was able to get grains of morphia without any question from a doctor.  He was taking quinine because he suffered from ague.  This condition of recurring severe chills and fever and him taking quinine point to malaria, which is usually accompanied by pain in the bones and joints.  Chronic pain is not an easy thing to deal with.  Yet this was not cited as a possible cause for his “rash act.”

The article does talk about John leaving a message as to how to dispose of his personal effects.  They suspected that his reasons for the action were marital “infelicity” and financial problems.  They point out that he only married his wife seven months ago, that she had six children, and that they didn’t get along particularly well.  Yet she, also, was an “estimable” woman. 

I’m sure this hit Grandma Sue quite hard.  She was living in the same town at the time and her younger siblings were in the house when all of the commotion was going on.  It was a traumatic time for the Stanbrough household of 1877 Noblesville.  I’m sure it was not John’s intention to traumatize his family.  All he could probably see was the pain and problems that he was experiencing.  He likely thought that they’d be better off without him.

A thought that nobody else likely agreed with.