What is the ancestry of Thomas Bayles (1825-1901)?

Thomas Bayles, the father of Esther (Bayles) Mabry was born in 1825 in Virginia. We know that by 1849 he was living in Muskingum County, Ohio.

Who were his parents and how did he get to Ohio? The answers are mostly speculation at this point.

What we know:
• Thomas M. Bayles was born in February 1826 in either "Virginia" (most census listings) or "West Virginia" (death certificate).

It is possible that both birthplaces are accurate; West Virginia was founded in 1861, when the rest of the state of Virginia seceeded from the Union. So, Thomas may have been born in the state of Virginia, in one of the counties that later became part of West Virginia.

• Thomas Bayles married Leatha "Louisa" Shaffer on April 19, 1849 in Muskingum County, Ohio.

All we can learn from this is that Thomas was in Muskingum County by at least that date.

• Is Thomas the son of Aden Bayles?

When the 1840 Census was taken, an "Adin Bales" was living in Muskingum Township, Muskingum County (he is not found in the 1830 census). In the "Bales" household were 1 man age 60-69 (presumably Adin), 1 woman age 40-49 (probably his wife, possibly named Sarah). There were also 6 boys (one under age 5, two age 5-9, 1 age 10-14, 2 age 15-19) and one woman age 20-29.

The 20-29 year old woman has been identified as Aden's daughter, Ruhamah. Ruhamah (born 1818 in Frederick County, Virginia*) married David Gay Carter in Muskingum County in 1841.

I have not found any information regarding the boys in Aden's household. Our Thomas Bayles would have been 15 in 1840, so could have been one of Aden's older sons. Consistent with this idea, Thomas named one of his daughters Ruhama as well, a relatively uncommon name.

It is not clear what happened to Aden's family after 1840. Aden is not listed in the 1850 census of Muskingum County, and could have died before the census was taken. By that time Ruhamah and her husband had moved to Grant County, Indiana. Also living in Grant County were an Enoch Bayles (born 1823 in Virginia and living with Ruhamah's father-in-law) and Isaac Bayles (born about 1832 in Ohio). If Enoc h and Isaac were also sons of Aden, they would have been 17 and 8 when the 1840 census was taken; still consistent with a 15-year-old Thomas in that household.

Thomas and family are the only Bayles (Bails, Bales, etc) family in Muskingum County in 1850.

• Is there a relationship between Thomas and the Bayles family of Monongalia County, West Virginia?

There is a large Bayles family that originally settled in Long Island, New York, and later lived in Monongalia and Wetzel (formerly Tyler) counties in what is now West Virginia. A number of their descendants moved west to Ohio in the early 1800s.

There was an "Aden" (or "Hayden") Bayles in that family line that was born in 1766 in Virginia. He settled in what is now Wetzel county in 1796, where he was living as late as 1850, when he was 83. He and his wife, Peggy Ice, had at least two sons, Jesse and Aden. Jesse lived in Greene County, Pennsylvania. I haven't been able to find information about what happened to son Aden.

There were a number of Adens, Adins or Edens with the last name Bayles, Bails or Bales living in the US in the early and mid 19th century. I haven't been able to connect our Bayles family to any of them

The bottom line: I haven't found any information that connects Thomas or the Aden of Muskingum county to this or any other Bayles family.

I'm hoping that more research in Muskingum County will turn up more information about Thomas's relatives.

* Frederick County, Virginia borders on West Virginia.

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Philip Shaffer, Early Settler of Muskingum County, Ohio

Philip Shaffer, father of Louisa (Shaffer) Bayles, was born in either Pennsylvania or New Jersey in about 1789. According to some genealogies, he married Suzanna Drake in 1810. The Shaffers lived in Pennsylvania, where their two oldest children, Stephen Drake and William H. Shaffer were born. At some time between 1814 and 1817 the Shaffers headed west, to Ohio.

Note that Shaffer (and its variants Shafer, Schafer, Schaefer, etc) is a very common surname. In some cases we don't know if the records list our Philip Shaffer or not.

The oldest of the Shaffer daughters, Laura Ann, was born in Ohio in October of 1817. It isn't known where the Shaffers were living at that time.

In the 1820 Census, there was a Philip Shaffer living in Hanover Township, Butler County, Ohio. In his household were one man and one woman age 26-45 (could be Philip and Suzanna), two boys and a girl under age 10 and one young man and one young woman age 16-26. Two in the household were involved in agriculture. Based on the known birthdays of the Shaffer children, the two boys would have been about 7 and 6, and there should be two girls, ages 2 and a few months. It's not clear why the youngest daughter would not have been counted. The identify of the 16-26 year-olds is also unclear - they could be relatives or hired help. This Philip was a distiller in Millville.

More research is needed to show that it was our Philip living in Butler County in 1820. (Note that there is a different Philip Shaffer living in Licking County, Ohio in 1820. The ages on that census entry do not appear to match our Shaffer family at all, however). No Philip Shaffer was listed in either Butler or Licking when the 1830 Census was taking.

Move to Muskingum, Ohio
It is not known when exactly the Shaffers moved to Muskingum County. In 1823, Philip Shaffer "of Muskingum" purchased land in nearby Knox County, so we know he had arrived by that time.

By 1830, Philip and his family were living near Frazeysburg, in Jackson Township. According to the Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Muskingum County, Ohio: Jackson Township:

The people of Jackson are healthy and contented; they love their fine sill-side scenery, and the traveler winding his way up the slopes in long stretches sees at each summit a new and pleasant landscape. The early settlers of this township were allured hither by the fertility of the lands in the valley of Wakatomaka Creek, like those who settled nearest to the valley of the Muskingum.

The 1830 Census lists Philip and his household as: one man and one woman age 30-40 (Philip and Suzanna), one boy under age 5 (John Calvin, newborn), one girl age 5-9 (Mahala 6), two girls age 10-14 (Laura 13, Elmira 10), and two boys age 15-19 (Stephen 17, William 16).

An 1832 Plat Map shows Philip's property northeast of Frazeysburg (in the upper right corner, in square labeled 9). You can see the same area on a present-day Mapquest Map.

Philip was an active member of the community.

Squire McCann recalls an old log shanty used for school, church, and singing, which stood two and a half miles from Frazeysburg. Philip Shaffer was an early singing teacher, having taught in 1831 and 1832.(Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Muskingum County, Ohio: Jackson Township)

Suzanna Shaffer died in 1837, two weeks after their youngest child, Simon, was born. Philip never remarried.

He continued living in Jackson Township for almost twenty more years. Then, at some time between 1850 and 1860, Phillip and his younger children, including his married daughter Louisa (Shaffer) Bayles followed the National Road west to Fayette County, Illinois. Louisa died in Howard's Point, near St. Elmo in 1864. Her older brother, John Calvin Shaffer, returned to Frazeysburg with his family.

It is not known if Philip lived the last years of his life in Illinois, or eventually returned to Ohio with his son. Hopefully, we'll be able to find that information.

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Mini bio: Robert Neil Mabry

A brief Biography of R. Neil Mabry, to whom this blog is dedicated. This is intentionally very sketchy - I hope to fill in the details in future posts.

Neil was born on May 24, 1902 in St. Elmo in Fayette County, Illinois, to Isaac Paris "Pete" Mabry and Gertie Holben. When he was a young boy, the Mabry family moved to Pana in nearby Christian County. This is where he grew to adulthood.

In 1921 he joined the Army Air Corps as an "aero mechanic". (more posts on this at a later date).

After his discharge from the Army, in 1923, he bought a blacksmith shop west of Decatur in the area called Wyckles or Hank's Corner. By the time of his marriage in 1925, he was manager of the Silver Moon Garage in Decatur (this may actually be the shop in Wyckles).

On November 26, 1925, Neil married Esther Kraus in Columbia, Illinois. They returned to Decatur, where they lived until 1929, when they moved to St. Louis, Missouri.

In St. Louis, Neil helped organize the new airline Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT), which eventually became TWA. He and Esther also ran a small grocery store next to their house, where they lived with their two daughters, Nadine and Jacqueline.

In 1941 Neil went to work for the Civil Aeronautic Adminsitration (now the FAA), inspecting privately owned aircraft, first in Santa Monica, then in Oakland, California. This was short-lived, however. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December of that year, Neil was drafted into the Air Force and stationed at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. There he supervised a number of men in outfitting bombers to fly overseas. After the war ended in 1946, he was discharged with the rank of Major, and returned to California with his family to his job at the Oakland Airport.

Neil retired in 1966, and continued to live in San Leandro, near Oakland, until his death in 1983. His ashes are interred at Chapel of the Chimes in Hayward, California.

Posts about R. Neil Mabry
• Neil Mabry: Chief Mechanic at Lambert Field for TAT and TWA

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Home Sweet Home: Life in 19th Century Ohio

As mentioned in a previous post, Thomas and Louisa (Shaffer) Bayles came to Illinois from Ohio. Thomas Bayles was born in (West) Virginia, and moved to Muskingum County at some time before 1849, when he married Louisa Shaffer. The Shaffer family settled in Jackson Township in Muskingum County in the 1820s, and Louisa was born and grew up there. Thomas, Louisa and their children moved west to Fayette County, Illinois in about 1859.

Another of our ancestors Edward Holben moved from Ohio to Illinois. The Holben family moved to Harrison Township, near Lodi in Medina County in the early 1830s. Edward moved west to Christian County, Illinois in 1862.

It is likely that the Shaffer and Holben families grew up with similar values - and may have enjoyed the same music.

To give a sense of life in Ohio in the 1800s, the Library of Congress has put together an on-line exhibit focusing on the music of the times, called Home Sweet Home. You can either look at the sheet music (often with nicely illustrated covers and, of course, supplying the lyrics) or listen to the recordings.

The exhibit emphasizes music published in Cincinnati in the 1840s-1860s, but the popular songs would likely have been familiar throughout Ohio.

You can either listen to the music for its own sake, or explore the exhibit to understand how the music expressed the values of the times.

For example "You never miss the water till the well runs dry" (recording,
sheet music) emphasizes both the "traditional habits of thrift" as well as "calculated risks in the persuit of self-advancement". Much lighter is "Galop", which sounds like it's strictly for dancing (Recording, sheet music)

Take a listen!

Links

•Home Sweet Home: Life in 19th Century Ohio from the excellent "I Hear America Singing" exhibit.

•Video from dance instructional manuals - scroll down to "Mid Nineteeth-Century" to see how they would have danced to the music in the Home Sweet Home exhibit.
•Additional mid-19th century sheet music: Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music and America Singing.

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The Bayles Family: Migration Along the National Road

In about 1859, Thomas and Louisa (Shaffer) Bayles uprooted themselves from their home in Muskingum County, Ohio and migrated 400 miles with their children to a new home in Fayette County, Illinois. (Map). It is probably no coincidence that the major overland route from the east to the western states, the so-called "National Road", passed through Muskingum County, crossed Indiana, finally terminating in Fayette County.

Construction of the National Road begain in Maryland in 1815. Surveying, grading, clearing, laying stone and building bridges took decades. The route finally reached Vandalia, Illinois in 1838. In the succeeding years many settlers traveled the road from Ohio into Illinois. Many of them, like Thomas and Louisa Bayles, settled in Fayette County. Others continued west.

Thomas and Louisa settled, at least briefly, in Cumberland (now Otego) Township, near Hickory Creek. The Bayles family eventually moved closer to the town of St. Elmo, in Avena Township, where Thomas was a farmer.

By the 1860s, the expanding network of railroads was already making the National Road obsolete. Taverns, inns and other businesses that had prospered with the traffic eventually disappeared. The 20th century brought a revival of the road - today highway 40 closely follows the original route.

Louisa died in 1869, and is buried in Howard's Point. Thomas remarried (twice) and moved to Missouri in 1890. He died in Kansas City in 1901.

Links
THE NATIONAL ROAD
The National Road (National Park Service Exhibit)
History Magazine: The National Road
History of the National Road (with emphasis on Fayette County, Illinois).
The National Road: a Photo Essay (covers Maryland through Ohio)

FAYETTE COUNTY, ILLINOIS
Map of the National Road into Fayette County, Illinois
1875 Township Map of Fayette County (large image)
History of Vandalia, Illinois

MUSKINGUM COUNTY, OHIO
Photos of the National Road near Zanesville
The National Road in Eastern Ohio (note: lots of graphics)
Zanesville, Ohio History

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