52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2026, Week 1: An Ancestor I Admire

Starting a new Year with Amy Johnson Crow's  52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, she asks us to talk about an ancestor we admire.

I'm going to choose my maternal great-great grandmother Sarah Ann (Sunderland) McKee Rogers (1842-1922).

Sarah was the daughter of Benjamin Sunderland (1813-1890) and Margaret Emeline Weller (1814-1810). She was born in Ohio and died in Allen County, Indiana.  She married my great-great grandfather Nelson Reed McKee (1838-1908) 8 April 1859 in Allen County, Indiana.  They had three children, Florence Elizabeth (1862-1943, my great-grandmother), Benjamin Franklin, called Frank, (1865-1890), and Charles Preston (born in 1873; death date not yet discovered).

 As related in my blog post "The Mystery of Nelson Reed McKee" (https://karenaboutgenealogy.blogspot.com/2009/05/blacksheep-sunday-mystery-of-nelson.html), the family's life changed when Nelson disappeared on the night of 31 May 1879, never to be seen again in Indiana.  The town turned out to search for him.

He turned up later in Beloit, Rock County, Wisconsin.  In Indiana, he had been a jeweler and watch repairman.  He took up the same occupation in Beloit, first under the name Nels R. McCuren, then later under his true name, Nelson R. McKee.  He married Ida Josephine Colby 1 August 1880.  There was a slight problem with that: he was still married to Sarah Ann.  

Here's where her story begins, though not as richly documented as Nelson's.  I see Sarah as holding out hope for a while that Nelson would return or be found.  That hope must have eventually faded, and Sarah sought a divorce from Nelson, which was granted in mid-November of 1882.  The divorce was uncontested, and Sarah was awarded custody of the children.  She was left to raise her three children by herself.  Her 16-year-old daughter, on the cusp of 17 years, went to work as a schoolteacher in a one-room schoolhouse to help support herself and her mother and brothers.  For the same reason, by the 1880 U.S. federal census, Frank, then 15, was earning a living as a wagon driver.

Sarah obtained the divorce to enable her to marry again, which she did 29 October 1884, to a man named Luke Rogers.  She faced the grief and shock of her husband Nelson's disappearance, and later the knowledge that he had abandoned the family.  She had to endure six years of being a single mother, and the strain of seeing two of her three children having to go to work at early ages to help support the family.  One did what one must.

Luke Rogers died in 1915.  I have not found out much about him.  I hope he was a decent man who treated my great-great grandma and her children well.  I hope they had a happy life together.  Sarah deserved it.

 

Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Be a Time-Traveler

In this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, Randy Seaver wants us to be a time-traveler.  

1)  We all wish that we knew more about our most elusive ancestors - the ones we might not know the surname for, or the one who was probably adopted, changed his name for some reason, or lived through war or a natural disaster.

2)  Be a time traveler - where would you go, who would you speak with, what would you ask them?  

2)  Share your time traveler adventure on your own blog, on Facebook or other social media, or in a Comment on this blog.  Share the link to your stories on this blog, so readers can respond.

 

I would go back to Beloit, Wisconsin, about 1880, to talk to my great-great-grandfather Nelson Reed McKee.  He disappeared from his home in Monticello, White County, Indiana, the night of 4 June 1879, and turned up in Wisconsin.  I would ask him about the details revealed in the Monticello Herald of 5 June 1879, these questions:

1.  Why did you leave great-great grandma Sarah, and your children, in Monticello and end up in Beloit?

2.  There was mention in the Monticello Herald of a forged deed and mortgage in your name, with an endorsement supposedly by a justice of the peace who swore he never set eyes on the document.  It was dated the day before it was supposedly executed.  Do you have any information on that? 

3.  Did your brother, who was married to great-great grandma Sarah's sister, know where you had gone?

4.  Did he tell his wife, who then told her sister?

5.  Did he tell you about Sarah eventually suing for divorce?  Did you know that after the divorce was final, she married Luke Rogers?  Had Sarah's sister maybe told her that you married Ida Josephine Colby while still married to Sarah?  Did Sarah get the divorce at least in part to save you from a charge of bigamy?

6.   Did you ever know that your daughter, my great-grandma Florence Elizabeth McKee, had to go to work just before her 17th birthday as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse to help support her mother and brothers?

7.  Did you ever know that she married Francis Harvey "Frank" Reed and had a passel of children?

 

 Sure, I have other ancestors of whom I'd like to ask questions, dozens of 'em.  But this mystery has intrigued me for years, now.  These are some questions I'd like answered.

 

 

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2025 -- Whatever! G is for Good Grief!

I'm trying to catch up with the A to Z blogging challenge.  Events the last several days have derailed my blogging.  Today:  antics some of my ancestors and relatives got up to have me saying:  Good grief!

A collateral ancestor of mine, Colonel Josiah Edson, born 24 January 1709, was well-respected in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.  He held several positions of trust in the town.  But for some reason, just before the Battle of Bunker Hill, he went over to the British, being characterized in town records as "a rascally Tory."  He died in a British encampment in Long Island, New York in 1776.  Two years later, his lands were confiscated, giving him the dubious distinction of being the only person in Bridgewater to have lost his lands for having turned his coat.(1)  Good grief!

My great-great grandfather, Nelson Reed McKee, left his home in Monticello, White County, Indiana, the evening of 4 June 1879, and was never seen there again.  His jewelry store was intact; none of his customers' goods were missing.  He had taken only the day's profits to which he was entitled.  He gave some of it to his wife, Sarah Ann (Sunderland) McKee, walked out the door, and was gone.  He showed up in Clinton, Wisconsin, in the same profession he had practiced in Indiana, a jeweler and watchmaker.  1 August 1880 he married Ida Josephine Colby in Beloit, Wisconsin.  Trouble was, he was still married to Sarah Ann Sunderland.(2)  Good grief!

My brother Ned, when he was a junior or senior in high school (about 1960), would tell our mother he was going over to Toby's (not the real name; I don't remember it).  Mom, of course, thought that Toby was one of Ned's friends.  This went on for several weeks until Mom found out that Toby's was a pool hall down on Bay Street -- not a nice part of the city of Jacksonville.  He was grounded.  Good grief! (3)

My sister Betty wanted to go to the beach with her best friend Mary Ann.  She asked Mom if she could borrow the car, a 1951 Packard convertible.  Mom gave permission with one strict condition:  Betty was not to take the car onto the beach sand, because the salt in the sand would corrode the body and undercarriage of the car.  So Betty and Mary Ann went to the beach and had a good time, taking lots of pictures.  When Betty got the pictures developed, and brought them home from the drug store, she showed them to Mom.  There was the car sitting on the salty beach sand.  Betty was grounded.  Good grief! (3)

 (1) Recopied Bridgewater town record, Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 Ancestry.com, https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryuicontent/view/ 10890485:2495?ssrc=pt&tid=12481845&pid=132366600143 (accessed 16 March 2022). 

 (2) Recounted in my blog entry Black Sheep Sunday -- The Mystery of Nelson Reed McKee 

(3) Both from personal recollection.

A New Detective Story to Track Down

 I have yet another intriguing bit of family history to explore, and to find that, though it may pertain just as equally to other parts of the country, as we say here in the south, "I'm so southern, I'm related to myself."

My maternal great-grandmother Florence Elizabeth McKee's parents were Nelson Reed McKee (1838-1908) and Sarah Ann Sunderland (1848-1922).  Sarah Ann Sunderland's parents were Benjamin Sunderland (1813-1890) and Margaret Emeline Weller (1814-1910).  Her siblings were John Wesley Sunderland (1835-1914), Mary Elizabeth Sunderland (1838-1926), Joseph Robbins Sunderland (1840-1911), Peter Sunderland (1844-1904), and Margaret Emeline Sunderland (1856-1921).

The mystery?  The above is in my mother's line.

The mystery is that a Sunderland shows up also in my father's line.  A great-great-granduncle, Major Wellman Packard (1820-1903), mentions his brother-in-law N. S. Sunderland in a letter to another correspondent.  Major (his first name, not a military rank) Wellman Packard had 12 siblings, including my great-great grandfather, Mathew Hale Packard (1822-1881).  Among those siblings were several who remained in Canada, where they had all been born  A goodly portion of them, with spouses and children, had gone to the United States and ended up in Bloomington, Illinois after the Civil War.  I have not found a Sunderland among them yet, but according to M. W. Packard, there was at least one. 

So far, there is little indication of where the Sunderland connection lies in my father's line.  It is a good bet N. S. Suncerland will be found in the United States rather than among the siblings who stayed in Canada.  Wellman Packard mentions that N. S. had "just returned from Ohio," presumably to Illinois, where Wellman Packard and his correspondent both lived.  I'm chasing my Sunderlands among my mother's ancestors, both collateral and direct.  That's going to take a while, because those Sunderlands were prolific. This could all be a wild-goose chase with no resulting connection between Mom's Sunderlands and the one in Dad's line.  But I'll at least get some more progress on my maternal Sunderlands, if nothing else.  

Sounds like a win to me.

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - C is for Crafts

 At least three of my ancestors were craftspersons who made their living with their crafts.  My mom and dad were hobbyists at particular crafts.

My paternal great-great grandfather Mathew Hale Packard (1822-1881) was a carpenter in New York and in Illinois.  His occupation as a craftsman was interrupted by the Civil War, in which he served in two different regiments of cavalry from New York.  After the war, he moved the family to Bloomington, Illinois, and returned to his craft.

While Mathew was being a carpenter or a soldier, his wife, Emily A. Hoyt (1823-1904) was a milliner.  I have not been able to find any more information about how she practiced her profession: whether she worked from home or had a shop, or whether she designed for women only, men only, or for both.  I'm thinking local newspapers might have advertisements she may have bought.

My maternal great-great grandfather, Nelson Reed McKee (1838-1908), was a jeweler and watchmaker.  He had a shop in Monticello, White County, Indiana.  In 1879, he disappeared, sparking a search of the town and its surroundings.  Later, he turned up in Wisconsin, where he married again . . . without the benefit of a divorce from his first wife, my great-great grandmother Sarah Ann Sunderland (1848-1922).  Sarah eventually married again, taking pains to obtain an uncontested divorce from Nelson first.  Finally settling in Beloit, Wisconsin, Nelson again practiced his craft as a jeweler and watchmaker.

My mother, Martha Shideler Reed (1916-1980) was a craftsperson.  Her crafting activity was confined to home and family, rather than in any commercial venture.  She could knit like a pro, and knitted socks, hats, sweaters and other garments for us.  She was working on a pair of socks for my father when he died in 1954.  She never took up her knitting needles again after that.  She was also good at sewing -- a pursuit at which I am totally incompetent.  She made dresses for my sister and me and shirts for my brother out of flour sacks when we were very young.

My father, Arden Packard (1911-1954) also had a craft, as a hobby.  He did leatherwork.  One of my last memories of him was sitting at the dining room table working on a belt.  He also made wallets.  He also was a great storyteller, which is a craft as well.

Women's History Month: Picture

Today's instruction from The Accidental Genealogist, Lisa Alzo, is:

March 2 - Post a photo of one of your female ancestors. Who is in the photo? When was it taken? Why did you select this photo?

Unfortunately, I have no life photos of my great-great grandmother, Sarah Ann Sunderland McKee Rogers. Sarah married my great-great grandfather Nelson Reed McKee 14 April 1859 in Monticello, White County, Indiana. In 1879, after twenty years of marriage, Nelson McKee took off one night, never to return, as I have related in an earlier blog post. This photo was taken by my cousin Connie, who lives in Wisconsin, and is descended from Nelson Reed McKee and his second wife.

Sarah was faced with whatever financial accommodation she had to make, such as selling Nelson's jewelry and watchmaking business and paying whatever debts may have remained from it, and with raising three children by herself, my 16-year-old great-grandmother Florence Elizabeth and her 14-year-old and 9-year-old brothers. Eventually, Sarah was granted a divorce from Nelson, in absentia, and she remarried on 29 October 1884, to Luke Rogers.

In an essay she wrote not long before her death in 1943, my great-grandmother Florence Elizabeth McKee relates that, not quite 17 years old, she became a schoolteacher in a classic rural one-room schoolhouse, to help support the family. I cannot imagine any 16-year-old girl today (or boy, either, for that matter) becoming a schoolteacher!

Sarah was a strong woman, because her life and times required her to be so. She did what she had to do, as did her daughter, to provide for her children. I just wish I had a life photo of her.
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BlackSheep Sunday: The Mystery of Nelson Reed McKee

In an essay she wrote in 1943, shortly before her death, my great-grandmother Florence Elizabeth (McKee) Reed stated that when she was seventeen, "stark tragedy overtook the family and my whole prospect of life was changed." She did not elaborate. Since my father died when I had just turned seven, I assumed the same had happened to hers, my great-great-grandfather Nelson Reed McKee. But I knew nothing, really, and the mystery remained. Seeking information about my McKee family, I put a notice on the McKee Family Genealogy Forum. It wasn’t until a year or two after that I got a solid nibble, but with a weird and astonishing twist: the woman who contacted me, who lives in Wisconsin, said she was a descendant of Nelson Reed McKee – and his second wife! The names certainly matched, and she had Nelson Reed McKee’s proper birth date and other information. She did some research, traveling to Indiana, and came up with an astonishing story. In the Monticello Herald (Monticello, White County, Indiana) for Thursday, 5 June 1879, the front page headline read:

N. R. McKEE MISSING

His sudden and unaccountable disappearance last Saturday night

The article described how Great-great-grandpa McKee had come home on that Saturday evening from his watchmaker's shop, accompanied by his fourteen-year-old son Frank, who worked in the shop with him. Great-great-grandpa took off his coat and boots, preparing for bed, but apparently changed his mind, dressed, and went out. Before leaving the house, he gave his wife some money and told her to keep it safe. Later that night, Great-great-grandma woke up and found her husband gone. She searched the house and grounds, going out to a nearby bluff, calling his name. She awoke a neighbor, who woke the town.

The search continued that night, to no avail. The next day, there was information about a possibly forged deed and mortgage in Nelson McKee's name. There was an endorsement to the instrument bearing the name of a local Justice of the Peace, who denied ever having seen the document. The date on the endorsement was 26 May 1879 -- the day before the alleged deed and mortgage were shown to have been executed. Nelson McKee was confronted with the papers, and according to the newspaper account, "gave no satisfactory explanation, but seemed confused and annoyed. He is reported to have been low-spirited all day Saturday, and was very uncommunicative even to his family upon the subject of his trouble."

The newspaper account further states that up until that time, he "had maintained an unblemished character, and even now public sentiment is loth to charge him with any evil intentions." He suffered what the newspaper, with the delicacy of the day, referred to as "financial embarrassment." In these days of "let it all hang out," there is no real stigma attached to being up against it, but in those days a man not being able to support his family -- for whatever reason -- was subject to shame and ridicule. When he left, he took only what belonged to him. An audit of his shop conducted by his brother Charles, who was also a jeweler and who came from his home in Sidney, Ohio, to settle accounts, showed no discrepancy.

The newspaper advanced three theories as to the reason for Nelson McKee's disappearance: "1st. That he was deranged and wandered off without any definite aim. 2nd. That he absconded under fear of prosecution for forgery. 3rd. Suicide." I think the first unlikely. Nelson McKee left his store "in perfect order," with customers' goods securely locked in the safe. He had also given his wife Sarah a fair amount of money for those days, and had paid the rent on his store a few months in advance. The second is quite likely, judging from his reaction to having been questioned about the apparently forged deed. The third is not true.

In the Weekly Herald, Clinton, Wisconsin, October through December 1880, about a year and a half after Nelson Reed McKee’s disappearance from Monticello, Indiana, ran this ad: "All kinds of clocks, watches, jewelery and spectacles repaired and warranted, by N. McCuren, at Woodward's Drug Store." The woman from Wisconsin who contacted me states that when Nelson R. McKee first got to Wisconsin, he had changed his name (though probably not legally) to Nels McCuren. There he took up once again his trade as a jeweler and watch repairman. Later ads, around 1883 and after, indicate that he had gone back to his real name, N. R. McKee. The ads are practically word-for-word as the ads he ran in the paper back in Indiana.

Nelson married Ida Josephine Colby in Beloit, Wisconsin, 1 August 1880. The problem was that he was still married to his first wife, Sarah Ann Sunderland. My Wisconsin cousin sent me a copy of a handwritten legal notice, probably prepared for publication in the newspaper. It is a standard form, with blanks to be filled in, to institute divorce proceedings, causing publication of the notice in a newspaper of general circulation, a common legal requirement. The first publication was made 22 April 1882 and the last on 13 May 1882. This last one is the final notice, giving legal recognition of the fact that Nelson Reed McKee failed to respond to the previous notices. The date of Nelson Reed McKee’s second marriage and the dates mentioned in the legal notice form indicate that it wasn’t until nearly two years after Nelson married Ida Colby that Sarah Ann (Sunderland) McKee, his first wife, finally filed for a divorce.

The Monticello Herald, Monticello, Indiana, November 16, 1882, published on page 1 col. 2: "Mrs. Sarah A. McKee has been granted a divorce from her husband, N. R. McKee, on the ground of desertion, and she has been awarded the custody of the children." It appears that the publication of the notice of Sarah filing for divorce was in Indiana only, and only in White County. One would think that this announcement would not have gotten to Nelson’s notice in Wisconsin. However, factor in the fact that Sarah’s sister Mary was married to Nelson’s brother William. Did William know where Nelson had gone, what had happened to him? Did Mary know her sister had sought a divorce, and had she told her husband William? Had William been in contact with Nelson and told him of the divorce proceeding? Was Sarah’s filing for divorce not only an act to free her to marry again if she so chose, but also to release Nelson from a threat of prosecution for bigamy? Sarah did remarry, becoming the wife of Luke Rogers 29 October 1884, in Monticello, White County, Indiana.

Nelson Reed McKee may have been guilty of forgery and bigamy. I do not think this was through intent, but rather the act of a man caught up in circumstances he was ill equipped to handle, who felt shame and could not face his family with what he had done. I picture him arriving in Wisconsin nearly broke, friendless, alone, and feeling miserable. I picture Ida Colby as a good woman who loved him and brought him back to self-respect. It's a human drama, and part of my family history. And frankly, I'm grateful to him for having spiced up the genealogy a bit!