The second day of March in the year 1854
John A Berry and Deborah J Adamson
were married in Monroe Co, Ohio.
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The couple are the earliest pair, in one of our family lines, for whom I have photographs. Since John was born in 1829 and Deborah in 1835, I think that having photos of people born that early in the century is amazing. John died 1893 and I have only one picture of him, but Deborah lived until the end of 1918 and there are photographs of her aplenty.
I have been putting photographs on Find a Grave, but there is seldom room for additional information unless I manage the memorial and that isn't often the case.
Since I am going through all my files I thought I'd add photographs here with some information briefly noted (you don't have to put up with text of census and land and other records - for the most part). Sometimes there were letters between cousins and I've kept excerpts in the files. I will include those if they add family information.
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John and Deborah had at least 9 children. There are no major gaps in the birth record, so it is easy to believe they had no early-childhood deaths, but that is just an assumption. To begin . . .
By 1850 John had moved across the Ohio River to Monroe Co, Ohio. On the census records, John is as a 22-year-old wagon maker living with a cousin, from his mother's family, who was a blacksmith. He is again listed as a wagon maker in the 1860 census. For the 1870 record his occupation has become "farmer".
When studying census records, farming is often listed as the main occupation, usually because anyone living outside a city was a "farmer" - at least supplying their own family and community with farmed goods. Most, though, also had a skill that provided the community's other needs and the farmer with cash or trade.
John was still a farmer in 1880 with 8 of his 9 children still at home. There is no complete collection of census records for 1890, but at the time of his death in 1893, John was living in Missouri.
In my file I have a note that in 1882 John and Deborah moved to Iowa. I don't know where this date and place came from. Obviously I didn't make complete notes. Then, according to my file, he moved to Putnam County in 1883.
Now that I have a mystery - my lack of complete information - I will add that to my Someday file. Well, Someday came just now. I read more closely my file for John and see that the information about the moves came from a family researcher who worked on the Berry family line as her husband's bunch. The information is published in the book Pioneers of the Bluestem Prairie by the Riley County Genealogical Society, Manhattan, Kansas. The section of interest is Pottawatomie County, page 168, entry 382: BERRY
"John and Deborah moved from Ohio to Iowa in 1882 and the next year to Putnam Co, Missouri. After Mr Berry's death in 1893, Deborah and four of their children moved to a farm south of Havensville. submitted by Mrs Lola Berry, Havensville, grdaughter-in-law."
I find that Lola did a good job in her recording of the Berry History (a self-printed booklet of which I have a copy) and I have several other sources that back up her findings. And - - my brain just kicked in. The cabinet portrait was taken in Lineville, Iowa. That dates the photograph to 1892, doesn't it? That's a Really Good Reason to be posting all this information: it makes me take a second look - or even a third or fourth look - at all the "things" I have available to me.
Another mystery is John's middle name. Often a child is named for family, but equally as often for someone of influence in the area, or a close neighbor. The only source I can find of Alpheus is after the fact. The birth records of five of John's children give the information that their father is John Alpheus Berry. The catch is that they all come from the IGI (sources often submitted by LDS researchers, rather than filmed from Civil Records. Since all five of these are identical, that makes them suspicious.) Records for Everett, James O, Viola - which I copied from microfilm of actual birth records, don't show Alpheus - - just John A. Among the items we inherited from this family line is this funeral card. It's astonishing what you can do with a computer in this day and age. The card is black as pitch with gold lettering and even in broad daylight is difficult to read John's information. I've lightened it considerably and it's now easily readable on this screen - more easily than the card itself.
You can see that John was only 64 when he died. His parents lived longer than that.
After John's death, his children signed over to their mother, Deborah, all interest in the estate. The paper is in this wallet, an amazing artifact from the life of John.
The date on this paper is incorrect. John died December of 1893.
The writer of the assignment didn't change the year to 1894.
J W Berry, R J Berry, A R Berry, Viola J Berry,
Francis I Duncan, J O Berry, Eliza A Berry,
Evert D Berry, Thomas M Berry
John and Deborah are buried in Powersville, Putnam Co, Missouri. We made a trip to that part of the country many years ago. Powersville is in the very hilly part of Missouri (!) and the view from the cemetery is spectacular. It was a cloudy and wet day and we were very glad to be there.
