Month: January 2023

Willie G., Part 2 – Nevertheless, They Persisted

Having bombed Tokyo and gotten most of Doolittle’s Raiders to safety with the help of numerous Chinese villagers, I closed the book and turned to Robin. “Anything I can do to help track down this William G. Rankin fellow?”

She laughed. “I hit ‘publish’ about two minutes ago – so, no. On the other hand, it is a good story but with a lot of holes. Let’s see what else we can find.”

Indeed, it is a good story, starting with a Union coat and vest up for auction. A guy comes out of nowhere, gets commissioned as a Captain in the Union Army in 1861, gets breveted to Major and Lt. Colonel on the same date in 1865, maybe carries a brevet Colonel rank in 1867, supposedly leaves the service in 1870, goes to work in Customs in New York City, applies for a veteran’s invalid pension in 1889, and appears in the 1890 schedule of Civil War Veterans — still in New York, although he was born in Pennsylvania.

But the holes are gaping. Where and when was he born? Who were his parents? What was his middle name? What did he do before the War? How did he wrangle a Captain’s commission? What really happened when he was at Fort Buford? Did he marry and/or have children?  As Yule Brenner said in The King and I, “Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”

Well, by gosh, we persevered and found answers to many of those questions. He was born in 1822 (not 1835) in Mercer County, Pennsylvania. His parents may have been William S. and Martha (birth surname unknown) Rankin. His middle name was Galloway, which is interestingly the name of a single malt scotch. At Fort Buford our man was a conniving, scheming, alcoholic. He did marry – apparently to a woman with lavish tastes but some good sense. She left him. We still do not know about children. He died in 1891 and is buried in the Rankin plot in Mercer Citizens Cemetery, Mercer, Pennsylvania.

If you are interested in how this all came together, here is how the sausage was made. First, I found New York City Directories online at the New York Public Library site. Nicely digitized but non-searchable, not even to skip to a numbered image! Faced with scrolling page by page, I complained to Robin, “Sure would be nice if we were looking for someone named Adams or Bailey instead of Rankin.” She replied, “That is a funny thing to hear coming from a man named Willis!” I laughed and turned back to scrolling. Somewhere around image #900, the 1889-90 Directory lists Wm G Rankin on West 38th Street.[1] That was also Rankin’s location in the 1890 Civil War Veterans’ Schedule. He showed up at the same address in the 1890-1891 directory. And then Bingo — he does not appear in 1891-92. Maybe he moved. Maybe he died. I found the answer in a New York Death Index Extract. It read:

William G. Rankin, died 30 May 1891 in Manhattan, New York, age 69, born about 1822, Death Certificate #18993.

That looks like our guy! Unfortunately, there was no digitized image of the certificate, so we could not learn names of next of kin or parents that might be on that document. In any event, the discovery was a breakthrough. From that point, the search picked up steam.

Then, we found his middle name! A register of United States employees in 1873 listed “W. Galloway Rankin” as Entry Clerk in the Customs Department in New York at an annual salary of $2,200.00.[2] Surely, this is the same man as William G. Rankin who was a temporary Customs Inspector at a later date for $4.00 per day, about half the earlier salary. The 1873 listing showed he was born in Pennsylvania, which also matches our man.

Having that middle name  opened the floodgates to more information. One of the most revealing pieces was an article published in 1969 about drunken officers at forts in the West.[3] Based primarily on official military reports and correspondence, the author exposes Captain (not Colonel) William Galloway Rankin, commander of Fort Buford during the summer of 1867. He was a drunk and a thief who sold Army rations, probably to a nearby village of friendly Sioux. He was assaulted by an equally inebriated subordinate officer who discovered Rankin’s thievery. The article claims that he had a beautiful wife, half French and half Spanish, who left Fort Buford by steamboat for Omaha, apparently enjoying some of the Captain’s illicit wealth. As you might expect, the record does not include the wife’s name!

Despite substantial proof against Captain Rankin, he escaped punishment and was assigned to a coveted job in recruiting. The article claims he was friends with Colonel (later General) Rufus Ingalls, who headed the Army’s Quartermaster Corps. We have not been able to trace the beginnings of that relationship. Was that part of the reason Rankin got his commission in the first place? Was that why he apparently spent a lot of the war at headquarters rather than in battle? Was there any connection related to Rankin’s misappropriation of government supplies? One has to wonder.

In any event, the officer bringing charges against Rankin (and his assailant) was the commander of the U.S. 31st Infantry Regiment.[4] That regiment was formed from one battalion of the 13th Regiment in December 1866. Rankin’s company at Fort Buford was part of the transferred battalion, which explains how he came to be in the 31st during 1867.[5] We can reasonably conclude that whoever “rescued” him from his pending Court Martial and placed him in the recruiting assignment also transferred him back to the 13th, where he ended his service. Rankin apparently had some powerful friends.

Having Willie G.’s middle name also yielded results at Find-A-Grave. William Galloway Rankin’s tombstone is pictured on the site showing birth and death months of June 1822 and May 1891, respectively. That is our man! And a big breakthrough – he is buried in Mercer Citizens Cemetery, Mercer County, Pennsylvania. A Pennsylvania U.S. Veterans Burial Index confirmed our guy (although misspelling the name as Rawkin) – born June 1822, died 30 May 1891, buried in Mercer Citizens Cemetery.

With that information, Robin searched for William Galloway Rankin in Mercer County. Census records in Mercer County identified Willie G.’s possible family of origin.  A William S. Rankin family appeared in 1820, 1840, and 1850 censuses. The 1840 census includes a male born between 1820 and 1825, the right age for Willie G. The 1850 census shows William S. Rankin with wife Martha and several presumed children.[6] William G. Rankin is not listed in the household, which makes sense. He would be 28 years old.

The household, however, does include R. C. Rankin age 34, an attorney. Robin found a reference to a Robert C. Rankin who died in 1855.[7] She also found that William S. Rankin does not appear in the 1860 Census, so he likely died as well.

Next step has to be looking for those two in the probate records at FamilySearch! Hopefully, our Willie G. will be named as an heir or administrator.

Maybe tomorrow.

Cheers, and See you on down the road,

Gary and Robin

—

[1] To be fair, I could scroll eight pages at a time, so it “only” took about 120 clicks in each directory to get to image 900.

[2] “Register of Civil, Military, and Naval Service Employees 1863-1959,” 1873, Vol. 1, Customs.

[3] John R. Sibbald, “Frontier Inebriates with Epaulets,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, vol. 19, no. 3, 1969, pp. 50–57. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4517383. Accessed 29 Jan. 2023.

[4] Id at 51, Colonel Phillipe Regis de Trobriand.

[5] This transfer explains why the 1867 events were not included in the history of the 13th Regiment of Infantry prepared by Lt. J. B. Goe referenced in the earlier article on William G Rankin.

[6] The 1850 Census for Mercer, Mercer County, Pennsylvania lists Wm S Rankin 69 farmer with $9,000 of real estate, Martha Rankin 58, R. C. Rankin 34, Madeline Rankin 28, Martha J. Rankin 20, and James L. Rankin 4.

[7] Robert might have never married. The New Castle Public Library in Lawrence County, adjoining Mercer County, Pennsylvania, lists an obituary for Robert C. Rankin, Esq. No image is available for the obit, which appeared in the Lawrence Journal on 27 Jan 1855. However, the library’s index card does not indicate any spouse named in the article.

Where You Be, Willie G?

I’m stumped.

Addendum, several hours after hitting “publish” on this article: I am no longer stumped, thanks to Gary plowing through Manhattan City Directories. Willie G’s full name was William Galloway Rankin, and he was from Mercer County, PA. We will  publish a follow-up article after doing some due diligence on the Mercer County Rankins.

Back to the original article …

As of January 27, there was a Union Army jacket and vest on the auction block at Winter Fine Art and Antiques.[1] The uniform is attributed to Brevet Colonel William G. Rankin, commander of Fort Buford in what is now North Dakota. Last time I looked at the auction site, it could be yours for $1600 plus a buyer’s bonus of 25%.

Willie G apparently parachuted into the Civil War from Mars, because both his whereabouts when he joined the army and his family of origin are mysteries.

I thought about seeking help from my friend Spade, a shady P.I. with a rep for digging up dead Rankins. But his retainer is a bit steep — $100 plus a fifth of Cutty Sark. His fee has been going up ever since his success with John McGinley Rankin’s parents. My next thought was to ask Jessica “Gams” Guyer for help, but her specialty is deeds. They are recorded at the county level, of course. In Willie G’s case, I don’t even know what state he lived in before the War. I only know he was born in Pennsylvania, probably circa 1835-ish. Big whoop. So were a zillion other William Rankins.[2]

The best possibility for help was my friend Mary “the Bulldog” Buller, the world’s premier expert on mining military records at NARA.[3]  She could locate the official military report, if one existed, on a Brown Bess lost in the Revolutionary War. Unfortunately, I am hopeless in the NARA website labyrinth. Also unfortunately, I have pestered her often, and I hope she is currently busy looking for a home in Texas after a brief exile from Austin to Virginia. My last hope was ex-Captain Willis, USAF, author of two military histories. Unfortunately, his nose is currently in a tome about Doolittle’s Raiders. No chance there.

So I rolled up my sleeves, trying to verify information from the auction website. My friend and cousin Debbie Rankin sent me the link to the auction. In addition to a great description and numerous photos of the coat and vest, the website has a biography of Colonel Rankin. Here are the highlights:[4]

  • He was appointed Captain of the 13th Infantry regiment on May 14, 1861. That suggests he was from a family of some means, because officers had to provide their own horse and other equipment. He was probably, says Gary, in his twenties. Thus my crude estimate that he was born circa 1835-ish.
  • He received two brevetted promotions, to Brevet Major and Brevet Lieutenant Colonel.[5]
  • He was transferred to the 31st Infantry Regiment in September 1866 and then back to the 13th in 1869.
  • He was brevetted as a full Colonel during the American-Indian Wars. Maybe.
  • In 1866, he “founded” and commanded Fort Buford in the Dakota Territory along the Oregon Trail. “Founded” is the wrong word: soldiers don’t “found” forts. The writer probably meant to say “oversaw construction of a new U. S. Army military installation in his role as its first commander.”
  • The fort was attacked by members of the Sioux Nation. Because the garrison was isolated and unable to communicate to report its status, newspapers “inadvertently” created a story of the “Fort Buford Massacre.”
  • He was discharged from the Army in December 1870. That date doesn’t pan out.

Where to start? That is a wealth of information. Or misinformation, if the researcher didn’t know his or her genealogy bidness. In this case, she had a fairly respectable batting average. Probably hired Spade. I hope his hangover wasn’t too bad.

Right off the bat, I’d like to know how one “inadvertently” writes a newspaper story. That skill might be useful to me in writing blog articles.

First research stop: Fold3, an online source of military records. It requires a paid subscription. I don’t care for it, having compared the information on file at NARA for one of my ancestors with what the website has for him. Fold3 didn’t fare well. But it’s a quick-and-easy place to start.

In Willie G’s case, a search on “William G. Rankin” with the filter “Union Army, Civil War” provided many hits, but not much information. He is listed on Union Army Registers for 1861, 1865, 1866, 1868, and 1870. Those registers confirmed that he was commissioned (appointed) on 14 May 1861 as a Captain in the 13th Infantry Regiment. He remained in the 13th Infantry in 1866 and 1867. He was transferred to the 31st Infantry in 1868. He had transferred back to the 13th Infantry by 1870. He received promotions to Brevet Major and Brevet Lt. Colonel on 13 March 1865.

I found no mention of a promotion to Brevet Colonel. However, the coat being auctioned has a fabulous eagle embroidered on the epaulets. An eagle with outspread wings is the traditional uniform marking for a so-called “full bird” colonel, as opposed to a Lt. Colonel, whose rank insignia is a silver oak leaf. Below is a picture of a colonel’s insignia, although the one pictured has silver thread for the eagle. Col. Rankin’s eagle was gold thread. A Brevet Colonel rank might have been appropriate for a fort’s commander, says Gary, even though there may have been only one company originally on site.

I couldn’t find a mention of a discharge date on Fold3. It did have an image for a pension application filed on Sep. 28, 1889 from New York, asserting invalid status.[6] No doubt it was our Willie G. It includes the information that he was a Captain, 13th U. S. Infantry Regiment, Companies F and S.

There should be more information at NARA, such as when his pension (if approved) terminated, which would tell us when he shuffled off this earthly coil. But have I mentioned that I am not competent to find anything on the NARA website? I used up all my NARA brainpower looking at Revolutionary War muster and pay rolls for Bulldog’s Rankin ancestor.

Wading through all those hits on Fold3 did produce three new pieces of information:

  • That is where we learned he was born in Pennsylvania. I.Do.Not.Know.Where.to.Begin.
  • He was living in New York in 1889 and was physically incapacitated in some fashion.
  • He was appointed (or commissioned) from “W.T.” For most of the men listed on those Army registers, there is a standard state abbreviation for where the commission/appointment took place: e.g., “MO” or “PA.” Usually, that means where the soldier physically joined the unit. Where the heck was W.T.?

I rudely interrupted Gary’s perusal of Doolittle’s exploits. “What on earth,” said I, “might W.T. mean? Wyoming territory is out of the question because 1861 is too late.”

He pondered and decided it was probably an incorrect transcription of old handwriting and should be “M.T.,” as in “Missouri Territory.” I rolled my eyes. Missouri became a state in 1821. Translation from Garyspeak: please leave me alone with Col. Doolittle.

I went to the next logical source of information (not counting NARA): the U.S. Army Center of Military History. Specifically, I found historical records for the 13th Regiment of Infantry by Lieut. J. B. Goe at this link. What I hoped to learn was where the 13th Infantry Regiment was recruited, because Willie G and/or his family of origin probably lived nearby in 1860. One usually did not travel hundreds of miles to join the army.

Lt. Goe tells us that 13th Regiment headquarters were established at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. The original military post was south of St. Louis, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi River. It was primarily a supportive military installation overseeing westward expansion and assisting in protecting the early (read: white) settlers.[7] The 13th had recruiting stations in Dubuque, Keokuk, and Iowa City, Iowa: Cincinnati and Bellefontaine, Ohio; and Madison, Wisconsin.

Well, now, isn’t that just fine and dandy! That narrows it down to one of six towns located in six counties in three states, plus St. Louis, the regiment’s HQ. So I searched the 1860 census for anyone named Rankin in the counties where those towns are located. I turned up no leads suggesting Willie G’s location when he was appointed. The arrived-from-Mars theory was gaining traction.

I was clearly on the wrong track. Barking up the wrong tree. Heading down fruitless rabbit trails. Please choose a metaphor which expresses “failing” in a kindly fashion.

What next? Well, the biography on the auction site said the alleged Ft. Buford Massacre became a newspaper story. Next stop: Newspapers.com, an easy to use searchable website, although it also requires a paid subscription. There are a number of stories in April 1867. Here is a sample.

The Delaware State Journal and Statesman story on April 2 was headlined “Another Horrible Massacre.” It said that “Indians … butchered ever [sic] man, woman and child, not one being left to tell the tale. The fort was under the command of Colonel Rankin, and Company C, Thirty-first United States Infantry.”

Yep, that’s our boy, then in the U.S. 31st. The story was reportedly relayed from friendly Sioux.

On April 10, the New York Times article reported this:

“The fate of Col. Rankin and his little garrison at Fort Buford, Dakotah, is still wrapped in uncertainty.” Unable to resist repeating gory details, the Times continued, “A few days since we published a circumstantial account of the massacre by the Indians of Col. Rankin, his wife and child, and eighty soldiers of his command. The account gave the details of the affair, described a three days’ siege, the final assault, the killing of Mrs. Rankin by her husband to prevent her capture …”

The article continues: “From military, but not official sources, we now have a complete denial of the whole story, and a dispatch from St. Louis alleges that Gen. Sherman has received letters from Col. Rankin of date subsequent to that of the alleged massacre.” The paper then went on to excoriate the army for a host of sins, including the vulnerability of remote military installations such as Fort Buford.

Duh. Doesn’t “vulnerable” usually logically follow “remote”?

The same day, The Charleston Mercury had a story headlined “Reported Massacre Unfounded.”

The only new information from those articles was the fact that Col. Rankin may have had a wife and child. Commanders of installations were usually permitted an “accompanied” tour, meaning the officer could bring his family along. If Willie G were married, there is probably a marriage license somewhere. Of course, that is yet another record kept at the county level, and is one more reason to figure out where he had lived before military service.

Getting desperate, I turned to an unusual source. Wikipedia. Since anyone can write anything at all in that forum, it has as much credibility as online family trees. Approximately zero, give or take a small measure. I briefly considered whether I should even admit I consulted it. But the truth is what the truth is.

The article about Fort Buford has no citations to sources whatsoever, except for the article’s sources of information on a nearby friendly Indian settlement. There is not a hint where the author obtained detailed information he/she provided on, e.g., the evolution of the fort’s structure, the repeated attacks on the fort by the Lakota, or the status of the fort’s water wells during the attacks. Please read it for what it’s worth.

Wikipedia identifies Willie G as a Brevet Lieutenant Colonel and says the fort was manned by Company C, 2nd Battalion, 13th Infantry, including three officers, 80 enlisted men, and six civilians. Here is a contradiction: was the fort manned by the 13th or 31st? I’d just like to know more about the six civilians, if that is true. Here’s the Wikipedia link.

In short, the Wiki article doesn’t shed any light on Willie G and I probably should have preserved whatever reputation I may have by omitting it altogether.

Whatever. The former fort is now primarily known as the location where Tatanka Iyotake — more familiarly known as Sitting Bull — surrendered his rifle.[8] He, of course, is famous for defeating Gen. Custer at Little Big Horn. He is less well-known for the siege of Fort Buford, but he was the leader of the Lakota attackers, according to Wikipedia.

Sitting Bull wasn’t my target, though. Willie G was, and I was still coming up empty on his location when he was commissioned. And zilch on his family of origin. So I turned to his post-Civil War adventures, guided by the 1889 pension application from New York. Only two post-war records surfaced …

First, the 1890 federal census (mostly lost) has a “Special Schedule, Surviving Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines and Widows, Etc.” Lo and behold, Willie G was enumerated in New York City. He is identified as “Rankins, William G., Capt., 13th U.S. Infantry, enlisted 14 May 1861, discharged 1873, served 13 years.”

By golly, that is our man, discharged in 1873 rather than 1870. Congress never approved his brevet promotions, since his rank is given as Captain. Since he was still a Captain after thirteen years, he was probably shown the exit from military service in a genteel fashion.  And there is his address: 60 West 38th Street. A multistory building now occupies that address. Perhaps it was a multi-family structure such as an apartment building in 1890?

Surely, thought I, finding more information on him would be a piece of cake. Hahahaha …

I’ve got to clear my throat before identifying the last source of info on Willie G, to wit (I am unable to persuade WordPress to allow single spacing):

OFFICIAL REGISTER OF THE UNITED STATES

CONTAINING A LIST OF

OFFICERS AND EMPLOYÉS

IN THE CIVIL, MILITARY, AND NAVAL SERVICE

ON THE

FIRST OF JULY, 1881;

TOGETHER WITH A

LIST OF SHIPS AND VESSELS BELONGING TO THE UNITED STATES.[9]

Page 188 is headed “TREASURY DEPARTMENT, CUSTOMS SERVICE.”

One William G. Rankin, identified as having been born in Pennsylvania, was a temporary employee in the office of the Customs Service Inspector, employed in New York, at a compensation of $4.00 per diem. Our Willie G. was surely the only William G. Rankin born in Pennsylvania and living in New York in 1881.

And that is all of the flesh I have been able to put on ex-Captain William G. Rankin’s bones: a temporary job as a customs inspector and a subsequent disability, for which he may or may not have received a pension. An address in Manhattan. I cannot find him anywhere in the 1880 census, although he was definitely alive, probably in New York. Where was he from before he joined the Army? Who was his family of origin? I don’t know any of those things. Was there ever a Mrs. Rankin? The only evidence for her existence is those inadvertent newspaper stories. Ergh.

Spade, do you have any of that Scotch left?

An occasional failure is just part of this hobby, but that doesn’t mean one has to like it. Had I been charging someone a fee for this matter,[10] I would write it off.

Somebody who reads this may have a clue about Willie G. I hope so. You know where to find me.

See you on down the road.

Robin

                  [1] I hope the website is still accessible. At last check, the high bid was $1500. Here is the link Debbie sent.

                  [2] There were 422 men of all ages named William Rankin listed in the 1850 census for Pennsylvania.

                  [3] The National Archives and Research Administration. Images of many records are available online.

                  [4] See Note 1.

                  [5] A “brevet” is a temporary promotion that might or might not be made permanent. Above a certain rank, promotions had to be approved by Congress. That is still the case.

                  [6] Civil War Pension Application number 731 201.

                  [7] Here  is more about Jefferson Barracks.

[8] And that fact has a highly credible source: the State Historical Society of North Dakota. See its entry about Fort Buford here.

                  [9] A copy of that undoubtedly weighty tome is owned by the University of Oregon and has been digitized by Ancestry.

                  [10] Just kidding. I have never been compensated for any genealogical research.

Tennessee-Texas migrants, including some Trices and Burkes

When I first started writing this blog, another family history researcher told me that people would prefer stories to my academic, footnoted, law-review-style crapola. In all fairness, she didn’t expressly badmouth my articles. She didn’t need to. The statement that people would prefer to read stories instead of, uh, whatever the heck my stuff might be, is about as subtle as the neon lights in Times Square, except less flattering.

In any event, I’m edging toward stories. Gradually. This post is about some relatives and ancestors who left Tennessee for Texas: two Trice brothers, a young male Burke, and a Trice widow with eight children. They all wound up in Waco, McLennan County, Texas. My original plan was to figure out the reason(s) they chose to migrate and craft a story with motivation as the unifying theme. I couldn’t make it work due to lack of both imagination and descriptive skills. All of them apparently went to Texas looking for wide-open spaces and opportunities.

Now, see, that is exactly the sort of thing people say about Texas that makes everyone hate the place. Since I have already lit that fire, however, I’m going to fan the flames by carrying on about Texas for a bit before getting to the Trices and Burkes. Please stick with me, because there are a couple of anecdotes here that might count as stories. A cross-dressing Trice. A Burke with a pet wild turkey. Annoying quail. A bird dog named Navasota Shoals Jake. Also, some cool old photos.

At one time, it seemed like half of Tennessee was heading to Texas. In the period after Mexico became independent from Spain in 1821, more people migrated to Texas from Tennessee than from any other state. Cheap land was undoubtedly the big draw. I doubt anyone was enticed by the fact that every poisonous snake indigenous to North America has a home somewhere in Texas. All four types — rattlers, copperheads, water moccasins, and coral snakes — appear in Harrison County, the location of a summer camp I attended. Frankly, my mother was more difficult to cope with than the snakes, which have a live-and-let-live approach to coexistence. She was also a native Texan. I wonder if that is a non sequitur.

Some of the guys who died at the Alamo in 1836 were among the early wave of Tennessee migrants to Texas.[1] More than thirty Tennesseans fought there, including Davy Crockett.[2] He is the source of what may be the most fabulous sore loser quote in the entire history of American politics. Accepting his loss for a race for a congressional seat from Tennessee, he famously said, “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.” Unfortunately, that didn’t work out well for him. John Wayne did OK.

The state has inspired other noteworthy quotes. Larry McMurtry (author of Lonesome Dove) said “Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak.”[3] Someone else said that, back in the covered wagon days, you could leave Beaumont with a newborn son and he would be in the third grade by the time you reached El Paso, which qualifies as primo Texas braggadocio.[4]  A travel writer for some major newspaper voted Texas “the most irritating state.” He didn’t explain why, but it has a whiny undertone, don’t you think? Traffic? Cedar pollen? Bless his heart.

In the same general spirit, two friends who live in California told me last week that they can’t imagine how I tolerate living in Texas. That is both an uncanny coincidence — two people with the same observation — and less-than-fortuitous timing, since the western third of their state is under two feet of water and the eastern third is blanketed by six feet of snow. The California weather competes daily with the war in Ukraine for the lead story in the New York Times and Washington Post. The continuing deluges have given rise to a brand-spanking new meteorological term: “atmospheric river.” And let’s not forget earthquakes that can collapse double-decker freeways. No, thankee, I’ll take the copperheads and humidity.

Back to Texas: the Alamo and the Battle of San Jacinto live on eternally in the hearts of some die-hard Texas natives, including Ida Burke Rankin, now deceased. Her only child had the misfortune to be born in northwest Louisiana, just twenty-seven miles from the border of the promised land. The kid lost count of how many times Ida reminded her to “REMEMBER THE ALAMO!!!! Approximately fifteen minutes after her husband’s Shreveport funeral, Ida packed up and moved back to Texas. Her grandfather Burke had married a Trice. Both are featured in this narrative, eventually.

Sam Houston was undoubtedly the most famous Tennessee migrant to Texas, having become governor of the state. His reputation was launched by a decisive victory at the Battle of Jan Jacinto, where he commanded the Texian forces.[5] Texans later marked the battlefield with a monumental obelisk and stationed the Battleship Texas nearby, just in case Mexico had notions of a rematch. The San Jacinto monument is ten or eleven feet taller than the Washington monument. That was surely no accident, and is yet another in the endless list of reasons why everyone hates Texas. Besides which, ours has a 220-ton star on top.[6]

The Trices and Burkes played in vastly different ballparks than General Houston, of course, being pretty much forgotten to history except perhaps in Waco. The ones featured in this article left Wilson County, Tennessee at different times, although they undoubtedly knew each other’s families. Both the Trices and Burkes owned land on Spring Creek, a lovely little arm of the Cumberland River nestled among gently rolling hills on the south side of the river.

The first two Trices to arrive in Texas, so far as I know, were the brothers William Berry Trice and Sion B. Trice. They arrived in 1853. Here is what a local history book says about Berry:[7]

He “was born in Wilson county, Tennessee, in the year 1834.  His father was a substantial farmer, but never accumulated much property. He was deprived of the advantage of an early training, and never attended school a day in his life.”

“Substantial farmer,” what hooey! Berry undoubtedly contributed that fiction. Truth is, the Wilson County Trices were basically subsistence farmers, as were the Burkes. Neither family accumulated any property other than the land they farmed. Berry’s biography continues:

“In the year 1853 he was convinced beyond a doubt that a good future awaited him, and wanting more latitude for his operations, he concluded to go west.  He left home with thirty-five dollars, and accomplished, in forty-seven days, what very few young men would have thought of undertaking — a journey on foot from Wilson county, Tennessee, to Waco, Texas.  He walked the entire distance. Immediately after his arrival here, instead of seeking the shade and waiting for something to turn up, he hired himself to drive a wagon at $12.50 per month.”

The article doesn’t say so, but my family oral history is that Berry’s brother Sion accompanied Berry on the walk to Texas, a distance of more than 800 miles. Their parents, Edward and Lilly Smith Trice, were still alive when they left. I’m betting Berry and Sion weren’t waiting around for a substantial inheritance, which — as it turns out — wasn’t in the offing. Edward and Lilly had nine children, including Berry, Sion, and my great-great grandfather Charles Foster Trice.

Berry and Sion were involved in the construction of the famous Brazos River bridge in Waco – the first suspension bridge west of the Mississippi[8] (more Texas braggadocio). Trice Brothers Brick and J. W. Mann did the brick work for the bridge, furnishing two million, seven hundred thousand bricks.[9] Berry and Sion became rich as sin in the process, ensuring funding for some impressive Trice monuments in Waco’s old Oakwood Cemetery.

Before making a fortune in bricks, Berry drove a wagon, cut and split rails, and worked in a sawmill. He was elected constable in 1855 and Justice of the Peace eight years later. When he was elected constable, he couldn’t even write his name.[10] His second wife was the widow of a former sheriff named Alf Twaddle, possibly the worst surname on the planet.

In the 1860 and 1870 census, Berry described himself as a “brick maker.” By 1880, he was a “farmer and banker.” At Berry’s death, he was president of Waco National Bank; he was then, or had been, a director. He was, according to The Handbook of Waco, “one of the wealthiest men in our community.” He owned five farms, although I am confident there was no dirt under his fingernails. Nor did Berry miss any meals: he weighed over 400 pounds when he died.[11] The local history book describes him colorfully:

” … Not only is he of great weight in financial circles, but his ponderosity amounts to four hundred and twenty-five pounds, and, in physique, he possesses more latitude and longitude than any man in the county.  He is … surrounded with all the conveniences and comforts of life.”

Ponderosity! I am embarrassed for whoever wrote that. With respect to the comforts of life, the inventory of Berry’s estate included, among many other things, a telescope, a piano, and a gold-headed cane. In the hundreds of estate inventories I’ve seen, that is the one and only telescope.

I’m not sure what Sion did before he and Berry founded the Trice Brothers Brick Yard, or how much he weighed. He is also buried in the Oakwood Cemetery along with more Trices and Trice in-laws than I can count. There is a telling slip of paper among Sion’s probate records describing expenses incurred on behalf of his two daughters: a receipt for “tuition in music to Misses Beaulah and Hattie Trice from Apr. 18 to Oct 1st 1879 … 5 months at $10 per month.”[12] Sion wasn’t nearly as famous as Berry, but he clearly didn’t want for anything, either.

Coincidentally — or not — the first Burke who appeared in Waco found a temporary home with Berry Trice. William “Burks” was listed in the 1880 census in Berry’s household. He was twenty at the time. Farmer was his stated occupation, although I suspect he left Tennessee at least in part to escape farming. His full name was William Logan Burke, the first of a fistful of men in my family with that name.[13] He was my great-grandfather and the eldest son of Logan (full name Esom Logan Burke) and Harriet Munday Burke. Logan and Harriett also owned land on Spring Creek in Wilson County. I’m not sure exactly when William Logan Burke left home, but I’m afraid he bailed out on his widowed mother and four underage siblings after their father died. When Logan died in 1877, his eldest son was still only seventeen. I would bet he was still at home, though I have no evidence. By 1880, he was in Waco.

The first William Logan Burke wasn’t a farmer for long. He became “one of the early Sheriffs” of McClennan County, then a U.S. Marshall or Assistant Marshall. Owing to the plethora of men sharing his name among my Burke relatives, we call the first WLB “the Sheriff.” I know virtually nothing about him except that he was often absent from home. His daughter-in-law (Ida Huenefeld/Hannefield Burke) explained his frequent absences like so: “he was out chasing outlaws.” Here is a formal portrait of him, the only good likeness I have. Too bad he wasn’t wearing a badge.

The Sheriff married a Trice, although not one of the rich ones. She belonged to the third set of my family’s Tennessee migrants to Waco: Elizabeth (Betty) Morgan Trice. Her parents, Charles Foster Trice and Mary Ann Powell, also lived on Spring Creek in Wilson County. Foster was a blacksmith. Mary Ann was a quick-thinking lady who once outfitted him in a woman’s dress and bonnet, sitting him in a rocking chair in front of the fireplace, peeling potatoes, just before Union Army “recruiters” came to call.

Spring Creek wasn’t kind to Foster. He died in 1881 in a cave-in of the creek bank. There was a coroner’s inquest into his death, which was ruled an accident.[14] His land had to be sold because his personal estate was inadequate to pay debts. Foster didn’t make it to Waco, but his widow Mary Ann and eight children moved there some time between 1881 and 1886.

Mary Ann is buried in Waco’s Oakwood Cemetery along with the other Trices, Betty and the Sheriff, and Ida Hannefield Burke’s parents Ella Adalia Maier and John Henry Hannefield. Mary Ann died in 1928, when her great-granddaughter Ida Burke was eighteen. Ida heard the potato-peeling-dress-wearing story directly from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

Mary Ann’s daughter Betty Morgan Trice Burke was a tiny redhead who could, according to my grandmother, “hold her liquor like a man.” Her only surviving child, the second William Logan Burke, was a dead ringer for his mother. Here she is, in a fabulous dress featuring elaborate ribbon trim, a brooch at her neck, and a fancy watch pinned to the dress.

The Sheriff died of tuberculosis in 1899, when the second William Logan Burke was eleven. The Sheriff’s widow, Betty Trice Burke, married a kind man named Sam Whaley in 1906, although she had been ill for a good while. She died just a few months after she married Sam, when her son was eighteen. Her obituary mentions both the Trice family’s elevated status in the community and the Sheriff. Her memorial in Oakwood Cemetery, a flat marker, is considerably more modest than Berry’s.

She had four children, but only one — her spitting image, my grandfather — survived her. Here he is as a young man:

“Gramps,” we cousins called him, was a genuine, Grade-A, certified Texas character, born in Waco in 1888. He went by W. L., or just “Billie.” I adored him, and vice versa. He taught me how to shoot a BB gun at a moving target by hanging the lid of a Folger’s can on a string from a tree branch. He gave me a fishing rod and reel, never used in my non-fishing family. Every time my grandparents came to Shreveport, he brought me some kind of critter. Baby chickens. Baby ducks. Goldfish. Once, he brought a pair of quail for which my father built a fabulous cage. Unfortunately, they launched into their “bob-WHITE!” calls each day at sunrise. They have surprisingly good lungs for such small birds. Neighbors registered complaints. One night, the quail mysteriously “escaped.” My father often said that he fully expected his father-in-law to bring me an elephant one day.

Sometime in the 1950s, Gramps had a pet wild turkey named Clyde. I am not making this up. When we were visiting my grandparents in Houston, we would all sit outside after dinner in those old uncomfortable slatted metal chairs when it was nice outside, meaning anything over 70 degrees. No air-conditioning in the 1950s. Clyde would sit on the arm of Gramps’s chair and apparently enjoy the conversation, looking at whomever was talking. Once, when we were driving back to Houston from Fredericksburg, Gramps abruptly pulled the car over to the side of the road beside a sorghum field, saying “I’m gonna get some of that good milo maize for my turkey.” Whereupon he climbed over the barbed-wire fence and grabbed a handful. My grandmother didn’t bat an eye, having known him since they were teenagers. I don’t know what became of Clyde, but I know he was spoiled rotten.

Gramps was a polo player and, after he was too old to play, a referee; a hunter who raised bird dogs, including a prizewinner named “April Showers;” a fisherman; and a spinner of tall tales. One of them made it into either the Houston Chronicle or the Post, I don’t know which. Granny cut it out and mailed it to my mother, with a penciled note saying “Your daddy in print with a big one.” It was in a column titled “The Outdoor Sportsman” by Bill Walker. Here is a transcription:

“A roaring gas flame in the big brick fireplace in the Cinco Ranch clubhouse warmed the spacious room and the several members of the Gulf Coast Field Trial Club who gathered there for coffee Saturday morning before the first cast in the shooting dog stake.

“Usually when veteran field trial followers get together the conversations turns to great dogs of yesteryears and this group was no exception.

“W. L. “BILLY” BURKE related one about an all-time favorite of ours — Navasota Shoals Jake.

“Burke and the late W. V. Bowles, owner of Ten Broeck’s Bonnett and Navasota Shoals Jake, were hunting birds in the Valley on one of those rare hot and sultry winter mornings. Jake pointed a covey several hundred yards from the two men and out in the open.

“BOWLES suggested they take their time approaching the pointing dog, since he was known to be very trustworthy. When the two hunters did not immediately move to Jake, the dog broke his point, backed away to the cool shade of a nearby tree and again pointed the birds.

“THE COVEY was still hovering in a briar thicket when Bowles and Burke arrived. Navasota Shoals Jake was still on point.

Here is Gramps in his 60s as a polo referee:

I should probably also include a picture or two of his daughter, Ida Burke Rankin, the die-hard Texan who admonished me to “Remember the Alamo!” They wouldn’t let women play polo in her day, of course, although I am confident she would have beat the heck out of everyone. Undoubtedly to show them, whoever “they” were, she used to ride her father’s polo ponies like a bat out of hell whenever she thought he wouldn’t find out. She once fell off on a blacktop road and said she couldn’t sit down for three days. She claims Gramps never knew, but I’ll bet he did. He was nobody’s fool.

And one more, when I was about three:

Next, I might have to write about Granny, a character in her own right.

See you on down the road.

Robin

                  [1] Here is a link to an article about the Battle of the Alamo by the reputable Texas State Historical Association, complete with images of Davy Crockett, William Barrett Travis, and James Bowie. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/alamo-battle-of-the

                  [2] There were either 31 or 32 or Tennesseans at the Alamo. An authoritative list has the same name twice, and it is unclear whether those names represent one or two men. See the list at this link: https://www.historicunioncounty.com/article/tennesseans-who-died-alamo

                  [3] For the record, 1,500 miles exaggerates both the length or width of Texas. It is 827 miles from Beaumont to El Paso on I-10, and about 850 from Texhoma, OK, on the OK-TX panhandle border, to McAllen on the Rio Grande. This is another reason people hate Texans: bragging about how big the state is.

                  [4] The math doesn’t audit on that bit of hyperbole, either. If mules or horses walk at 3 mph for 8-hour days, the journey would surely take less than six months even with interruptions.

                  [5] Here is a link to an article about the Battle of San Jacinto. It also has a fabulous picture of the San Jacinto monument. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/san-jacinto-battle-of

                  [6] See a closeup of the star and a photo of the monument here: https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/san-jacinto-monument-and-museum

                  [7] John Sleeper and J.C. Hutchins, The Handbook of Waco and McLennan County, Texas (Waco: Texian Press, 1972), article titled “William B. Trice.”

                  [8] Here is a photograph of the bridge, now a pedestrian walkway. https://www.loc.gov/resource/highsm.29747/?r=-0.163,-0.02,1.362,0.789,0

                  [9] Id., article titled “The Waco Suspension Bridge.”

                  [10] Id., Trice article.

                  [11] John M. Usry, early Waco Obituaries 1874 -1908 (Waco: Central Texas Genealogical Society, 1980), citing the July 16, 1884 issue of the Waco Daily Examiner at p. 2 col. 5, obituary of W. B. (Berry) Trice.

                  [12] Probate packet #671 at the courthouse in Waco, McLennan Co., TX.

                  [13] William Logan Burke, the escapee from Tennessee, was the first with that name. His only surviving child, my grandfather, was also William Logan Burke, who went by “W.L.” or just “Billie.” His only son was the third William Logan Burke, who was called Bill, or “the Kid” in his polo playing days. Bill’s elder son was known as “Little Bill.” He went by William Logan Burke III, although he was actually the fourth in the line. Little Bill’s brother Frank, who just goes by Burke, gave one of his sons that name. That makes five. My elder son’s name, by the way, is William Burke Willis, in honor of my wonderful grandfather.

            [14] Tennessee State Library and Archives, Wilson Roll # B-1407, County Clerk (Loose Records Project) Box 59, Fld. 20 – Box 60, Fld 13. Vol: 1742-1962. This film contains Box 59, Folder 22, which contains an inquest into the death of C. F. Trice. I have a copy around here somewhere …

 

John McGinley Rankin: Too Many Have Lived

by Anonymous

I took a drag on my cigarette and leaned back in my chair. John McGinley Rankin was dead alright. Dead as a doornail. Had been for 187 years. Cholera they said, but I figured it was more likely a bad ticker. The probate records scattered all over my desk told the story. He’d been up to his eyeballs in debt with a wife and nine kids to support. It was a wonder he held on as long as he did.

Yep, John McGinley Rankin was dead, no doubt about it. My job: Find his parents.

Spade’s the name. Not my real name, of course. They call me “Spade” because I dig up dead relatives, mostly Rankins. I’d walked into the office that morning to find a manilla envelope on my desk. Inside was a $100 bill – my usual retainer – and a note that read “There’s more where that came from if you can tell me who his parents were.” There was also typewritten sheet titled “Memories” by a guy named James Doig Rankin,[1] plus a hand-drawn family tree.[2] Both had the name “John McGinley Rankin” circled in red.

I took a quick look at the “Memories.” Up top it mentioned Adam Rankin, son of William, who came to America from Ulster about 1720 with brothers John and Hugh. Adam had married Mary Steele and died in 1747 leaving his property to sons James, William and Jeremiah. So far, so nothing. Every Rankin under the sun claimed either Adam or John as an ancestor.[3] 90% of them were dead wrong, and the DNA evidence said Adam and John weren’t even brothers.[4]

James D Rankin went on to say that Adam’s son James had served under Washington and “for some notable service was given a tract of land at the foot of Two Top Mountain, Franklin County, Pa., a few miles from the present town of Mercersburg.” He’d married Mary McGinley, and John McGinley Rankin was one of his kids.

I chuckled. Every Rankin private dick knew that Adam’s son James was married to Jane Campbell, not Mary McGinley, and his four sons were William, David, Jeremiah and James. Not a “John McGinley” among them. It was easy to see how James D might have got mixed up, though… Guys named “James Rankin” were a dime a dozen.

The rest of the story rang true though. John McGinley Rankin had married a gal named Agnes Burns, “daughter of Hon. John Burns, first cousin and intimate friend of the Scottish poet.” About 1816, “they made their bridal trip in a covered wagon across the Allegheny Mountains, and after a short period in Eastern Ohio settled permanently a mile out of the village of Washington, Pennsylvania. Here they purchased a tavern and connected with it a farm. It stood on the Great Western Highway. The village around their home was called Rankintown. No liquor was sold in the tavern.”

I took a look at the family tree. It told basically the same story right down to the “full cousin of Robert Burns” bit, but also listed all John and Agnes’s kids and their spouses.[5] I flipped it over. It was written on stationary of the General Counsel of the Rock Island & Pacific Railway, a guy named William Thomasson Rankin. I did a double-take. Will Rankin was my own second great grandfather. Suddenly this wasn’t just another Rankin case.

This was personal.

Just then the phone rang. “Spade here… Yeah, I’m on the John McGinley Rankin case… Killed in a thresher accident in Centre County?[6] Nah, you’re barking up the wrong tree pal.” Click. What the hell was that? Some joker trying to send me off on a wild goose chase?

I ran through the list of John M’s kids from William T Rankin’s chart, and they all checked out. Two of them had been born in Warren, Ohio – James Graham in 1821 and John Walker, Will’s dad, in 1823 – so that bit of James Doig Rankin’s story looked OK, but at least one of the older girls had been born in Washington County, PA, according to her obit.[7] I also checked out Agnes’s father, “John Burns.” Turns out his name was really James[8] and he was born in Pennsylvania, so the odds of him being an “intimate friend of the Scottish poet” were just about nil. Agnes’s family had lived just west of Schellsburg, and that’s probably where she was born. That “crossed the Allegheny Mountains” part of the story was starting to look like a bunch of hooey.

I poked around in the records for Washington County for a while looking for some likely candidate for John McGinley Rankin’s father. There were a bunch of Rankins just north of the town of Washington at a spot called Raccoon Creek.[9] I even found a James who was about the right age, but it turned out he’d been ambushed and killed by Seneca on his way home from a trip to Kentucky and left no kids.[10]

So now here I was looking for clues in the probate records[11] for John M who had shuffled off on 4 Aug 1835[12] at his tavern in Canton Township. It was mostly a big pile of called in debts. The Rankintown Tavern practically had to be liquidated to pay it all off, including every barrel of beer and whiskey – so much for it being a “dry” tavern! Somehow, Agnes had managed to keep it all going for another 10 years as the Erie Canal and B&O Railroad slowly dried up traffic on the Old National Pike. She’d even managed to put most her kids through Washington College. Helluva gal.

I sighed. I’d hit a brick wall.

The phone rang again. “Yeah?… You don’t say… I’ll check it out. Thanks doll!”

It was Jess Guyer calling with a hot tip. When it came to deeds and wills, she had a nose like a bloodhound, and great gams to boot.[13] She said she’d found something in Belfast Township, Bedford County, that I might be interested in. I pulled down my dusty copy of Bedford County Deed Book P, turned to page 255, and there it was. In 1825, John M Rankin of Canton Township quitclaimed ground rent on a parcel he’d sold to one James Austin in 1815. That was definitely my boy.

Jess had said there were other deeds for the same property. I flipped back to Deed Book L, page 601. In 1818, John M Rankin, then of Belfast Township, was selling 200 acres to a guy named David Humphreys from Franklin County for 9400 clams. As I went through the details of the agreement, though, something hit me. This was no ordinary sale; this was a bailout!

John M had bought the land in 1813 for 6 grand – 2 grand up front and 4 notes of 1 grand each. It was supposed to have been paid off by the beginning of 1818. But David Humphreys was agreeing to pay off the remaining balance, so John M must have had trouble getting his hands on the dough. Not only that, but Humphreys was taking on $3400 of other debts owed by John M. That was a lot of lucre back in 1818! Besides getting rid of his debts, John M was getting a 120 acre piece of land in Warren, Ohio.

The phone rang. “Yeah?… Yeah, I’m on the case…. Doctor in Piney Township, Clarion County?[14] No, you got the wrong guy, bub.” Click. Joker.

I did a little quick arithmetic… If 200 acres in Pennsylvania was worth $9400, 120 acres in Ohio couldn’t have been worth more than two or three, probably a lot less since the feds were still selling off undeveloped land in Ohio for $2 an acre. But the deed valued it at six grand. I had to scratch my head at that one. Maybe they were trying to make it look like John M wasn’t getting such a raw deal. Anyway, what happened to John M wasn’t much different than what happened to a lot of other small farmers in those days. Everybody had been running up debt speculating on land and they all got left holding the bag when the credit dried up and the whole house of cards came tumbling down in the Panic of 1819.[15] Poor sap.

As my eyes went over the Humphreys deed again, I noticed something I’d missed on the first pass. The land in Ohio was to be transferred to John M Rankin and his father James Rankin! So the family had it right… John M’s father really was named James. Well, that helped a little, but there were so many James Rankins floating around back in those days that you couldn’t spit without hitting one in the eye. Which was John M’s daddy?

The phone rang again. I was just about ready to throw it across the room, but picked it up anyway. “Spade here… Doctor in Kalamazoo?[16] You gotta be kiddin’ me…. No, no, that’s way too late… Yeah, well, same to you.” Click.

Maybe I needed to come at this from another angle. If John McGinley Rankin’s mother was really Mary McGinley, chances are her father was named John McGinley. That’s how the Scotch-Irish liked to name their kids back in those days… give the kid the full name of some friend or relative. All I had to do was find the right guy.

Ten minutes thumbing through Pennsylvania will books and I had it. John McGinley of Adams County, Pennsylvania. Will dated December 12th, 1796.[17] He left 10 pounds each to his four daughters: Mary wife of James Rankin, Margaret wife of Isaac Moore, Sarah wife of James Rankin, and Abigail wife of William Rankin. I blinked and read it again. James Rankin was married to Mary McGinley… and Sarah McGinley?  That had to be a transcription error.[18]

Well, now at least I knew where Mary McGinley came from, but I still didn’t feel any closer to figuring out James Rankin. I started digging into the background of this John McGinley character. Turns out, he was married to a gal named Jane Alexander, and her grandmother was Mary Steele. I blinked. Wasn’t that the name of Adam Rankin’s wife? Yeah, her first husband had been a guy named James “the Carpenter” Alexander according to his will.[19] So Mary McGinley was married to James Rankin, and her father was married to the step-granddaughter of Adam Rankin? My head was starting to spin. Maybe there was something to this Adam Rankin connection after all.

The phone rang again. “This is Spade… Wait, did you say Two Top Mountain?… No kidding… I’ll look into it.” Click.

It was my cousin Ralph. He’d been digging into the Adam Rankin story and had found where Adam’s son James had his farm. It was at a spot called “The Corner,” in Montgomery Township, Franklin County, PA, a little south of Mercersburg, where Punch Bowl Road crosses Licking Creek, and right at the foot of Two Top Mountain, just where James Doig Rankin’s “Memories” had said it was. James’ will had split the property between his four sons, and Ralph had worked out all the property lines, with the easternmost tract going to James Jr.[20]

I started paging through Pennsylvania land warrant applications looking for clues, but the phone rang. Again.

“Spade here… Yeah, I’m on the case… Farmer in Guernsey County, Ohio?[21] No no no no NO! Not the right guy!” Click. What a Nimrod![22]

Back to the land warrants I went, and boy did I get lucky! February 23, 1816.[23] There it was. John M Rankin of Belfast Township applies for a Warrant on a tract at The Corner. And evidence was given by none other than James Rankin, “a disinterested witness”, saying that John M had settled there in March 1812. The survey[24] put the tract just east of James Jr.’s. James Jr had to be John M’s father, but that “disinterested” bit put me off. Could a father be “disinterested”?[25] I was so close I could taste it.

I went back to the deed books. There had to be something there. Finally, I found it! A deed from James Rankin Jr to Charles Kilgore[26] for a tract of land bordered on the east by lands “late the property of said James Rankin & his son John Rankin.” There was my smoking gun!

I now had a solid paper trail proving that John McGinley Rankin, husband of Agnes Burns, was the son of James Rankin Jr, grandson of the Adam Rankin who died in 1747.  James Jr. had married Mary McGinley, his first cousin once removed of the half blood, as the old timers say, and she’d named her son after his granddad. Sometime around 1813, John M had moved to Belfast Township, Bedford County, and met and married Agnes Burns. The first two or three kids must have been born there, not in Washington County, obit notwithstanding. By 1818, with bankruptcy looming, he sold out and they all moved to Warren, Jefferson County, Ohio. After a couple more kids, they sold out again and moved to “Rankintown” in Canton Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania, to open the tavern.

James Doig Rankin and William Thomasson Rankin had got it nearly right after all. They just dropped a generation.

I poured myself a double shot of Cutty Sark and leaned back in my chair again. The phone rang. This time, I picked it up with a smile. “Don’t tell me you’ve got another one?… Died of typhoid in 1898?[27] No, that’s not the guy, but you’ve certainly been very helpful to my investigation.” Click. No amount of kibitzing was going to spoil my drink.

[1] The original copy of “Memories” is in the private collection of a descendant of John McGinley Rankin who provided an abstract to me.

[2] I discovered a hand drawn chart of descendants of William Rankin, including the lines of John McGinley Rankin and James Clark Rankin, among a packet of family papers left by my father.  It is in the hand of William Thomasson Rankin, son of John Walker Rankin and grandson of John McGinley Rankin.  It is on stationary of the Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, so must have been drawn up in about 1900 when Will Rankin was General Counsel.

[3] There are a number of articles on this website concerning Adam Rankin who died in 1747 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

[4] See “Adam Rankin Who Died in 1747, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania – AGAIN!” here.

[5] These were:  Mary Jane Rankin (~1814-~1843) m. Rev. James Law; Esther Burns Rankin (~1816-1851) m. Rev. James Rolla Doig; Ann Eliza Rankin (~1818-1912) m. Rev. Robert Johnston Hammond; Rev. James Graham Rankin (1821-1868) m. Catherine Pollack; John Walker Rankin Esq. (1823-1869) m. Sara Dupuy Thomasson; Agnes McGinley Rankin (1825-1913) m. Rev. Byron Porter; Rev. Alexander Reed Rankin (1828-1917) m. Vianna Katherine DeGroff; Dr. David Carson Rankin (~1833-~1865) m. Margaret S Speedy; Samuel Murdock Rankin (~1833-?).

[6] John M Rankin (1797-1838), son of William Rankin and Abigail McGinley, died after being injured by a threshing machine.  John Blair Lynn, “History of Centre and Clinton Counties, Pennsylvania” 222 (Press of J. B. Lippencott & Co., Philadelphia), available online.  Abigail McGinley was a daughter of John McGinley, so the man was likely named for his grandfather. See an article about the Centre County Rankins on this website here.

[7] “The Americus Greeting,” Americus Kansas, Thursday, December 12, 1912, Page 1. Obituary for Ann Eliza Rankin “Grandma” Hammond.

[8] Will of James Burns, Bedford County, PA, Will Book Vol. 4: 379, dated 28 Jan 1860, leaving $500 to “Agness Burns intermarried with John Rankin.”  James Burns seems to have been quite a story-teller.  In the 1850 census, he gave his age as 86.  In 1860, he claimed to be 101, the same age written on his headstone when he died in 1863.  His application for a revolutionary war pension was denied because, in spite of the extensive military history it detailed, including wintering with Washington at Valley Forge, the only evidence he provided was a pay record for a different James Burns who had lived in York County.  His own records, he said, had been eaten by a mouse.  Perhaps this was the same mouse whose fate was mourned by the poet Robert Burns, who James claimed as a first cousin.

[9] See “Pennsylvania Rankins: William and Abigail of Washington County” on this website here.

[10] Charles A. Hanna, Ohio Valley Genealogies Relating Chiefly to Families in Harrison, Belmont and Jefferson Counties, Ohio, and Washington, Westmoreland, and Fayette Counties, Pennsylvania (New York: Press of J. J. Little & Co., 1900) 104-105. It is online here.

[11] Pennsylvania Probate Records, File R, 1837-1844, Case 25.

[12] Biography of John Walker Rankin from the “CF Davis Collection” 261, authorship and publication unknown.  A copy of this hand written manuscript is in the possession of the author, and a transcription is available here (Ancestry.com subscription required).

[13] For the record, this is literary license:  I have never met Jess Guyer in person.

[14] Dr. John McGinley Rankin (~1792-1869) of Piney Township, Clarion County, was the son of James Rankin and Sarah McGinley.  His memorial at Find Grave has his middle name as “McKinley,” but there is no photo of a grave marker and no reference.  The cemetery record for his daughter Sarah M. Rankin shows his middle name as “McGinley.”  See “Find-a-grave information — fact or fiction? (e.g., Dr. John M. Rankin, 1833-1909)” on this website at this link for a discussion of name confusion between this Dr. John and a younger Dr. John of Kalamazoo, MI.

[15] See Wikipedia for a discussion of the Panic of 1819.

[16] Dr. John M. Rankin (1833-1909) of Kalamazoo, MI, was the son of James Huston Rankin and Margaret McCurdy.  Huston, in turn, was the son of James Rankin and Sarah McGinley.  Huston likely named his son for his brother, Dr. John McGinley Rankin of Piney Township, Clarion County, PA, as well as for his own grandfather, John McGinley.  See footnote 14 and this article.

[17] York County, PA, Will Books vol. H: 363, viewable here.

[18] But it was no transcription error.  Three McGinley girls married three Rankin boys, two of whom were named “James.”  Sarah and Abigail married brothers James and William respectively, sons of William Rankin (1723-1792) and Mary Huston, while Mary married their first cousin James, son of James Rankin (~1722-1795) and Jane Campbell.

[19] New Castle County, DE, Will Book C: 103.

[20] A copy of Ralph Jefford’s map can be found here.  Ancestry.com subscription required.

[21] John M Rankin (1834-1927) of Guernsey County, OH, was the son of Adam Rankin and Elizabeth Pumphrey.  Adam, in turn, was the son of James Rankin and Mary McGinley, and brother to the John McGinley Rankin who is the subject of this piece.  Adam almost certainly named his son after his brother, as well as his grandfather John McGinley.

[22] Nimrod W Rankin (1862-1952) was the son of John M Rankin (1834-1927) and Elvira Berry.  See footnote 21.

[23] The Franklin County, PA, warrant application is viewable here.  Ancestry.com subscription required.  I’m sure there must be a way to view it that isn’t paywalled, but I’ll be darned if I can figure it out.

[24] Early Land Surveys for Montgomery Township, Franklin County, PA, can be found at a unique Google Earth interactive map located here.

[25] It is possible that the “disinterested” James Rankin was a cousin of John M Rankin, son of his father’s brother William, who lived three farms to the west.

[26] Franklin County, PA, Deeds, Book 12: 230.

[27] John M. Rankin, Jr. (1874-1898) was the son of Dr. John M. Rankin (1833-1909) and Susan C Rankin (her maiden name) of Kalamazoo, MI.  See footnote 16.  Like his father, his middle name was almost certainly McGinley.