#118--Charity Mears, One Strong Woman

Strong women is this week’s theme.  I have blogged before about two women that I considered to be strong (Sarah Hannah Michell and Albertine Hannah.)  So now I had to find another one.  Information about women is hard to find—most information that is written is about men.  I looked for a likely candidate and finally settled on my 4th great grandmother, Charity Mears Hannah and to a great extent she is a pretty typical woman for that time.

Charity was born on February 11, 1806 in Ohio to David and Elizabeth Mears.  She was one of eight children.  At the age of 16 in 1822 she was married to John M. Hannah by the Reverend John Rankin, a noted abolitionist. She and John lived in Brown County, Ohio, where John farmed and she ran the household.  There their first five children were born. In 1830 John and Charity along with one of her sisters, Catherine Mears Sayres and her husband, Israel, and her mother Elizabeth Mears moved from Brown County, Ohio to Edgar County Illinois.  I suspect they moved for the same reason that other pioneers went west—better land for farming and greater opportunities to be successful.  While in Illinois, Charity and John had six more children.  On April 1, 1842, when she was 36 Charity died and was buried in the McKee Cemetery Chrisman, Edgar County, Illinois, USA.

Charity was a pretty typical woman for her time.  But I think Charity Mears Hannah like all pioneer women was a strong woman.  And I think that for a couple of reasons. First, I think about the challenges of getting from Brown County, Illinois on the Ohio River to Edgar County, Illinois, which is near the Wabash River.  I have no idea how these families got from one place to the other, but I do

have two ideas.  One is that they put all their belongings on a flat boat, went down the Ohio River and then up the Wabash.  The second is that they went over land in a wagon.  To do that, they would have probably gone up to central Ohio, across the National Road, and they up to Edgar County.  If that was not difficult enough, when they arrive, they had no home, that house had to be built and built quickly.   Hopefully it was a warm and snug cabin.  In either event, taking care of your husband and five small children on such a trip would require great strength and determination.  Compare that to today, when we load all our possessions in a truck, the family in a car, and arrive at our new home.


Second, Charity ran a very large household.  That would involve keeping and cleaning the house, taking care of the children, planting and harvesting the kitchen garden, tending the chickens, making clothes, churning butter, cooking all the meals and tending the fire.  All that with probably no help except from her older girls. Remember, there were none of the modern convenience we enjoy—no central heating, refrigerator, electric or gas stove, washing and dryer, etc.  Life was hard and women like Charity needed to be strong.  I know when I lose my electricity for a day or so, I am not happy.  The food in the freezer and refrigerator goes bad, I cannot cook or even make a hot cup of coffee, and the house is either hot or cold.  Compared to women like Charity, we have very easy lives.

I would love to talk to Charity about her life.  I would like to know how they got from Ohio to Illinois, how she  raised eleven children, what her typical day was like, if she had any time to relax, and if so, what she did, and what dangers did she encounter.

#101--James Hannah—Looking for James in All the Wrong Places

            James Hannah is my 4th great grandfather.  For all my direct line ancestors, I like to have documentation of their births, marriages, and deaths.  While I have been pretty successful in doing that, I have not been able to find any documentation about James’s death.  I did, however, have a clue—a letter written in 1929 describing how when James Hannah came down the Ohio River from western Pennsylvania, he settled in Cincinnati.  Then when he died, the writer’s grandfather went to Cincinnati and brought James’s wife Nancy back to their home in Brown County, Ohio.  So when I was looking for documentation, I looked at death and cemetery records for Hamilton County and Cincinnati with no success.

           Last year I found a book entitled Brown County Court Records, 1818-1850 by Patricia Donaldson.  Most of the book listed those who died with a will, but in the back there was a listing of those who died intestate.  As I checked to see if there were any Hannahs listed, I was both surprised and delighted to find James Hannah.  The date of his death fit and the administrator, Joseph Mckee, made sense as Joseph was his son-in-law.

Last month I contacted the Probate Court in Brown County and was able to get all the documents in James’s file.  Once I looked at them, I knew that I had the correct James Hannah.  I learned a couple of lessons from this.  One is that no matter how convincing a memory of event is, the event may not be true.  In this case, I suspect the writer was thinking of another grandparent.  Second, when you cannot find a record, look in nearby counties.  Had I done that, I would have found those estate documents much sooner.


           Right now I am trying to make sense of about 50 pages of bills, receipts, inventories, etc.  Stay tuned for an analysis.