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.

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.

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.