The Oakwood, OH Mystery - Solved

A couple Blogs back I told part of the story of Oakwood, OH. I did not know where that group of Wiseleys came from or where they went. I do now. Here is the rest of the story.

The first part of unraveling the mystery was Electious Wiseley.  He is the same person that the book on Oakwood named Electus. I found official documents that listed his name as Election. A newspaper obituary of his brother Isaac referred to him as Lechus.  Once I was satisfied that all these people were the same person it made it easier to trace the family.

Where did they come from? The same line of Wiseley I came from; the Lancaster Wiseleys. John Wiseley came to the Lancaster, Oh area about 1800-1803. He had 5 children. (he only mentions five in his will)  The boys were named Edward, George, William, and James.  (Don’t forget you can click on a picture to enlarge it.)




Portion of John's will listing children

John left different amounts of money to his kids. Puzzling at first until you realize that John's bachelor brother had left him $400 and perhaps the children were in debt to the dad and he cleared their debt up as he passed some of their Uncle Williams money on to them.  That's my guess, what's yours?

 Now it gets a little confusing. Two of John’s boys, George and William, each named one of their sons Allen.  William's son Allen moved to Findlay and became a prominent citizen. (we will do a blog on him later) George's son Allen married Mary Gilmore and had several (ok..lots and lots) of kids. In this Allen family we find familiar names Allen Newton Wiseley (listed as A.N. Wiseley in Oakwood), Electious Wiseley (the Electus of Oakwood) and Elizabeth.  Why anyone would name their kid Electious is beyond me. Perhaps they just ran out of names.  Here are their children’s names Eliza, Nathan, Elizabeth, William, John G, George W, Emaline, Electious, Isaac, Henry, Allen Newton, Mary Martha, Virginia, Jesse, and Amos.

That answers the question where they came from and makes Electious my 3^rd cousin but 3 generations ahead of me so technically it is my 3^rd cousin thrice removed. His grandfather was a brother to my GGG grandfather.  Ok Enough of the technical stuff.

 

I don’t know where their dad Allen lived but we do know the two brothers, Electious and Allen Newton, moved to Oakwood about 1874.

Lastly where did they go?  We don’t find much trace of them after about 1919 when Allen Newton would have been about 69. The answer to these questions often pop up unexpectedly; As they did on my recent trip to Springfield, IL.

    

 On my way home I stopped for a day at the Allen County Public library in Ft. Wayne, IN.  They have a newly built state of the art library so I decided to learn how to use their computer scanning microfilm. where I found the following Obituary from the July 19th, 1919 Ft Wayne Journal Gazette, pg 14.

Yep. There they are. Lechus (Electious) Newton (Allen Newton,) Amos and a sister.  I wasn’t searching for Electious but there he was, disguised by someone who wrote his brother Isaac's obituary and  reported his name as Lechus. That is the kind of fun discovery that keeps me going back to libraries.

     Please let me know if you are related to anyone in these blogs to help me continue to discover how the wiseleys are linked together. Or send me your questions about who your ancestors are.  davidwiseley@gmail.com or on face book, or comment here.  Thanks for any response.