We are still at Binder State Park. I spent the morning at the State Archives looking at old deeds, with only a little success. My Missouri ancestors seem to have chosen to live in counties where courthouses tended to burn down shortly after they had lived there.
One of those counties was Washington County, which in 1823 included parts of several other counties. One of the things that I found at the state archives was a court case in which my 3rd ggf Thomas McEveny was sued by John Gibson over a debt of a bit more than $20. He borrowed that money in 1823 and the suit was filed in 1827. The tiny bits of paper in the file are a bit cryptic, but it appears he was order to pay $17 to John Gibson.
That loan was a little more than a year after Missouri was admitted to the Union. It was also a couple of years before the birth of my 2nd ggm and his eldest daughter, Mariah Lucinda (McEveny) Wiggins.
A Washington County marriage record for Thomas to his wife Elizabeth Van Anglen has not been found, but the fact that he was in Washington County well before Mariah's birth strongly suggests that was where he was married. So while that is a tiny piece of information, it answers a question about whether or not they were married before getting to Missouri. That still leaves the fate of Elizabeth's parents up in the air, but the best bet is that her father had been born in New Jersey and moved to Kentucky. But that is only speculation, and I have no idea where to look in Kentucky for more information. And I have no idea why she eventually ended up in Missouri.
Another interesting thing is that two years later, in 1829, Patrick McEveny filed suit in Washington County, Missouri. At least one person thinks that Patrick was born in Ireland around 1785 and died in Washington County in 1846, but I can find no documentation for any of that. I know that Thomas had an older brother named Daniel who was likely born around 1793. I've never been able to find any record of him. I've known about Patrick in Washington County for years now, and thought that he had showed up there well after Thomas had left. It turns out that isn't the case - they were there around the same time. So I suspect they were related. And while it is possible that Patrick is a cousin from Ireland, the odds are probably a bit better that he was Thomas' older brother, who was called Daniel in his mother's probate file in Sheldon County, Vermont (Thomas' parents were Cornelius and Polly [Watson] McEveny, and they both died in Vermont around 1813).
Mariah Lucinda McEveny married Charles Augustus Wiggins in Clark County, Missouri in 1846. Thomas McEveny is found there in the 1840 Census, and this past weekend I learned that in 1839 he was called up while living there to serve in the Missouri Militia over a border dispute between the State of Missouri and Iowa Territory. It turns out that in 1840 he bought two lots in St Francisville for $125, selling them less than a year later for $250. That tells me that he had some assets, and probably would have left some sort of an estate.
Unfortunately, by 1843 they were living across the river in Keokuk, Lee County, Iowa; yet another place where the courthouse burned down after he died there around 1856. I have yet to get there to see if there is some sort of estate deed that names his heirs, so that is still on my to-do list.
That he had left money to his heirs is one possible explanation for some interesting deeds in Crawford County, Missouri (it is the county just east of Washington County). It may be that Thomas McEveny had been living in the portion of Washington County that was included in Crawford County when it was formed in 1829. If not, he was likely living fairly close to the eventual boundary between the two counties.
The first deed was executed by his son Samuel A. McEveny on 7 July 1856. That property was sold the following year by his mother, who was acting as his guardian (suggesting he was not yet 21 years of age when he tried to sell the property). It is interesting that he was able to purchase the property when he was under age, but could not sell it without his mother's consent. Anyway, another deed was executed by Samuel a short time later, presumably to clear up the title so that it clearly showed that he consented to the sale.
A couple of years later, Thomas' widow received a patent for 40 acres in Crawford County. But I've been unable to find when that property was later sold. That deed would likely give me an idea of when she died (some time after 1860), and might identify all of her heirs. Her second eldest daughter, Mary Ann, settled there with her husband (James Rogers Bowles) about the same time as Samuel.
Another of Thomas' sons, Thomas Fletcher McEveny, may have received a patent to a 320 acre property in Oregon County (a couple of counties further south) in 1859. In it, he is described as "Thomas McAvinney of Washington County."
It is also possible that this was Patrick's son and not Thomas'. When the Civil War broke out, Thomas Fletcher and Samuel A. moved back to Keokuk and enlisted in the Union Army. And there is a Thomas McAvinney who served in the Confederate Army for Missouri during the war. So it is probably more likely he was Patrick's son. The difference in the way the names were spelled is not at all unusual, as most names were spelled phonetically by the clerk who recorded the muster (or other public records).
So a few hours at the state archives has helped to fill in some gaps, but there are still many questions left unanswered.
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