Steubenville: A Short Family History

 

Market Street, Steubenville, Ohio, ca. 1905. Credit below.

Sometime between 1887 and 1891, Sarah Flowers and her husband Harvey walked, or rode, into Steubenville, Ohio. So, too, did Sarah’s three children, John, Elizabeth (known often as Lizzie), and Flora, products of her earlier marriage to a man named Henry John (or possibly John Henry) Woods. Lizzie was the oldest, around 22 years old. John was close behind, perhaps 21 or a bit younger. Flora was the baby, maybe 15. They may have arrived together, or perhaps one forged a path and the others followed, trailing one another from Bellaire, in the neighboring county of Belmont, Ohio. This was a shorter journey than the one before, which had brought Sarah, Lizzie, and John all the way from Hampshire County, West Virginia (or just Virginia, when Sarah was born there in the 1840s) to Bellaire sometime between 1870 and 1880. These are my earliest Steubenville ancestors; Sarah was my 3x-great-grandmother, her daughter Flora my grandfather’s grandmother.

Hitting the Genealogical Jackpot: Jilson Littlejohn and the Federal Writers' Project

Writing my last post on DNA testing results made me realize that I hadn’t shared one of my most exciting finds on this blog! So here I am, fixing that.

I found a WPA Federal Writers’ Project interview with one of my ancestors' brothers!!!!!

Whew, okay. Honestly, I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I was to find what I am about to describe to you. It’s like hitting the jackpot, winning the lottery, finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But let me back up a step.

DNA Testing Update: December 2022

Fam, it’s been 8 months since I sent away my DNA samples and 7 months since I received the results, yet somehow I haven’t posted anything about it! Don’t worry, they weren’t earth shattering - I’ve just been busy. In fact, in many cases, my Ancestry.com test results did just what I hoped they’d do: confirmed connections that I already had in my family tree. And it’s been really cool to see both the family history and my own research corroborated in that way! 

Wedding Wednesday: Rufus Littlejohn and Flora Virginia Woods

For all the sleuthing I've done around my 2x Great-Grandfather Rufus Littlejohn, I've written very little about what I actually do know about his life: the time he spent in Steubenville, OH. So I thought I'd dive back into themed posting by focusing on the seeming start of his Steubenville story, his marriage to my 2x Great-Grandmother Flora Virginia Woods.

Rufus Littlejohn and Flora Woods were married in Jefferson County, Ohio on December 25, 1899. Yes, Christmas Day! (If you're keeping track, another pair of my 2x Great-Grandparents, Laura Ann Scruggs/Screws/Strugs and James Steven Evans, married on Christmas Eve 1901.)

Here is their marriage record:

Seeking Family in Farewells

You know I can't leave anything alone. So, even though I've concluded that the Rufus Littlejohn who dies in Pennsylvania in 1934 is indeed my 2x Great-Grandfather, I still want more proof. Something closer to a smoking gun. The obituary of Rufus' brother Ed Littlejohn was so helpful in placing Rufus in Cleveland in 1923 that I've been wondering if any of his other siblings have obituaries that could do the same thing for other years. So, I guess now I'm on The Sibling Hunt.

Based on the 1870 and 1880 Census, plus death certificates that include parents' names, I've been able to pull together the following list of Rufus' siblings, children of Strap and Eliza Littlejohn. And, because I like charts, I've been using one to track information I've been collecting on their passing.

Restoring a Name for Baby Boy Littlejohn

I recently wrote two posts where I referred to a child of Rufus Littlejohn and Jane "Jennie" Alexanders. In one, I referred to him as an unnamed baby boy. He didn't show up in any of the later records I found for his parents or siblings, and I didn't know what had happened to him or how he'd disappeared.

I'm happy to say, I now know his name: Julius Littlejohn.

I wish his was a happier story, and a longer one. Unfortunately, Julius died shortly after he was born - just 2 days later.

Here is the record of Julius' birth:

Rufus Littlejohn, Not Quite a Horse Thief

One of the reasons I was so excited to find a document placing my 2x Great-Grandfather Rufus Littlejohn in Cleveland, Ohio in 1923 is because I'd recently found an interesting newspaper article about a man of the same name in the same place:

This snippet was carried in the 16 December 1922 edition of the Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram (Richmond, Indiana). Other stories from Ohio were also carried on the same page.

Given that there were no other Rufus Littlejohns in Cleveland at this time, this has to be my 2x Great-Grandfather. And, as I'll share in later posts, Rufus had a "colorful" stretch of years, so I had my suspicions as soon as I saw this article. I have so many questions about this incident! Was he actually trying to steal the horse? Is there a court or police record related to this? If so, what do they say? Who did the horse belong to? Where did Rufus take the horse? What did the horse's owner do when he or she discovered it missing?

I want the story so bad, y'all!

Differentiating Rufus Littlejohns, aka Making Charts Makes Me Happy

Spreadsheets are awesome for solving, or at least better understanding, genealogical problems. Once your information is organized, you can literally see things more clearly, make better inferences, and see where opportunities, possibilities and solutions may be. 

So as I've been trying to untangle Rufus Littlejohns to see if indeed my 2x Great Grandfather from South Carolina is the same man who passes in Pennsylvania in 1934 - or, if that PA Rufus is actually a second Rufus Littlejohn from South Carolina - I made a spreadsheet. Here is a simplified version:

The Rufus Hunt: Another Obit Strengthens the Case

In my quest to prove or disprove that a man who dies in PA in 1934 is one and the same with my 2x Great-Grandfather Rufus Littlejohn, I've been approaching the problem from several angles. I've been researching the PA Rufus' descendants using vital records, census schedules, and obituaries; researching a second Rufus Littlejohn born in South Carolina about the same time that my Rufus was born in that state; and seeing what else I can find about my Rufus' birth family and siblings to see if that opened any doors.

It was that last prong of research that lead to a very helpful finding. 

As you can see on his 1899 marriage certificate to my 2x Great-Grandmother Flora Woods, my Rufus' parents are Strap and Eliza Littlejohn, and he is from Union County, SC.

Piecing Together the Pennsylvania Littlejohns

In my quest to either prove or disprove that a Rufus Littlejohn who dies in Beaver County, Pennsylvania in 1934 is the same Rufus Littlejohn from whom I'm descended, I've been seeking out obituaries to scour them for information. The hope was that the PA Rufus would have an obituary stating his parents' names - I know "my" Rufus's parents, so making the connection would be easy. But alas, I've found no obituary yet - no smoking gun, as it were.

However, I did get my hands on two additional obituaries recently. The PA Rufus was living in the home of his daughter Alma in 1930. Tracking her through records, we can find that her mother was Jane "Jennie" Alexander. The first new obituary is hers - it was published in the Beaver Falls Review on 13 May 1937:

No Smoking Gun...Yet

On the heels of my recent success in finding obituaries related to a person who might be my 2x Great-Grandfather Rufus Littlejohn, I thought I'd see if my luck continued by seeking out the obituary of the potential candidate himself.

I learned two things:

1.  The good people at the Beaver County Genealogy and History Center respond very quickly to queries (based on my sample size of 3 requests in 1 message).


2.  Luck was not on my side.