Author Topic: Butler county Pennsylvania Woohoo!  (Read 14587 times)

uneven

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Butler county Pennsylvania Woohoo!
« on: August 06, 2011, 04:27:36 PM »
I finally have a birth place for Levi Thompson..well, my Levi Thompson. I ordered some information from the Indiana State Archives and they had a card giving his age and his nativity which is listed as Butler County Pennsylvania. It also gave me a description. Dark complected with dark hair and hazel eyes, 5' 10" tall.

I've read a bit on the history of Butler county and it seems like much of it was settled in 1796 not too far from Levi being born in 183(4-7). Many of the residents are said to come from Lancaster and Juniatta (spelling).

Of course cursory searches of Familysearch.org haven't turned him up in 1850 but I've begun going through page by page because the index is often wrong (it is about all his other records).

I also think that if he had a waking memory of being from Butler County PA his family was probably there for the 1840 census. I may be able to limit my Thompson families down to half a dozen or so instead of searching the entire state.

mike
Mike Thompson from Michigan..then Indiana..then Pennsylvania and further...probably somewhere there are sheep. Call me Legion for I am many.

Sis Thompson's oldest

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Re: Butler county Pennsylvania Woohoo!
« Reply #1 on: August 16, 2011, 09:15:08 AM »
Whoop Whoop!

Now won't it be ever so interesting if the trail leads to my Thompsons....stranger things have happened.
Congrats!
The bad news? There is no key to the universe. The good news? It was never locked.

uneven

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Re: Butler county Pennsylvania Woohoo!
« Reply #2 on: August 16, 2011, 03:43:16 PM »
With help from Dusevoir I was able to spend the weekend grabbing trees from ancestry.com and matching them up a bit with the two histories of Butler co available online. Of course, none of them contains a Levi Thompson but I can get some idea of which Thompson families have been followed and which haven't. Not to say that they are all accurate, but it's a start.

Right now I've got my eye on three brothers who move from Lancaster and settle in the Franklin township area. John, James and Matthew. I've been able to find some information on John and his children from the history. John settles in and has many children who intermarry with other local families. He also appears to be the only tax paying land owner right up front.

Matthew is of particular interest because in the section written in 1883 it says that all his children had left the neighborhood. I know that he marries the daughter of Aaron Moore, Nancy..but no children are listed.

Brother James moves to Center Township. There are many Thompsons in Center so I haven't been able to sort out which Thompsons are his.

The thing that got my attention is that these brothers are not well followed, really only seem to appear in the context of other citizens, and are mentioned as being "other Thompsons from a different family". It's everything I expect from my Thompsons.
Mike Thompson from Michigan..then Indiana..then Pennsylvania and further...probably somewhere there are sheep. Call me Legion for I am many.

Mary

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Re: Butler county Pennsylvania Woohoo!
« Reply #3 on: September 24, 2011, 10:12:10 PM »
Mike -

Let us know if you happen to run into a Francis or Franklin Thompson in your Pennsylvania explorations. He was in Lewistown, Mifflin County, PA.  Can't find the little bugger!


uneven

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Re: Butler county Pennsylvania Woohoo!
« Reply #4 on: September 25, 2011, 06:31:26 PM »
Francis is a repeating name in my family for at least one man and one woman in two generations. Although I'm not sure where it comes from. My great grandfather's brother was Francis Pearl Thompson and their aunt was Rena Francis Thompson. It may be nothing but an odd pattern.

I'll keep my eye out.
Mike Thompson from Michigan..then Indiana..then Pennsylvania and further...probably somewhere there are sheep. Call me Legion for I am many.

uneven

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Re: Butler county Pennsylvania Woohoo!
« Reply #5 on: October 12, 2011, 07:01:01 PM »
Thought I should update. I've been hunting down Thompsons and related famillies in the Butler PA area.

 I've gone through the online History of Butler County which is a lot like most histories..some good things some bad and not a lot of dates.

I've had my eye on some Thompsons from Franklin, Butler PA because they seem less known and entire branches seem to leave the area (which sounds like my family). They are from Lancaster PA and stem from 3 Brothers born in the 1770s who appear in the 1803 tax rolls. These Thompsons are listed as one of two unrelated Thompson families in Butler.

Not to worry though, a slightly different-er History woven into that one states that all the Thompsons in Butler County stem from John Thompson born around 1755 ( or something close to that).

I couldn't piece together all the children of the three brothers I'm watching which was disappointing, but I did stumble on what I think might be a clue in the family tree of a genetic match at 23 and me. This person matches both me and my father (he tested recently). This person had one branch of an otherwise New Jersey filled family that went to Pennsylvania. The Coates family whose patriarch is Moses Coates from Tipperary Ireland.

Where this ties back in to the 3 brothers is that a grandson of Moses Coates, Abner Coates lived in Butler county and is mentioned alongside the Thompsons. I know that others in his family were with him in Butler because his sister married another area pioneer. 

So that proximity had me wondering if there is a Coates/Thompson relationship either as a direct marriage or through an intermediary person. That's what can make possible genetic matches so maddening. I have a good hunch but finding that connection can be such a winding path.

The neat thing about Abner Coates is that he then moves on to Posey Indiana along with his Sister who married Eliakim Anderson.  So that may give me an idea of possible migration routes this group of people were taking.
Mike Thompson from Michigan..then Indiana..then Pennsylvania and further...probably somewhere there are sheep. Call me Legion for I am many.

uneven

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Re: Butler county Pennsylvania Woohoo!
« Reply #6 on: October 12, 2011, 07:20:25 PM »
The Stewarts. Okay so like a lot of families, mine claims two near unprovable things. We're Cherokee Indians and British royalty...somehow. So I decided to follow up on the British royals mainly because the census in Butler has Stewarts. I read somewhere about a Thompson family from PA that claimed some Royal heritage through the Stuarts that they married into.

Sure enough I did run into a book online from the early 1900s about John Thomson from Scotland born 1715 who lived near Thompsontown. One of his children, Andrew Thompson I think, marries a Stewart and in the book it says they then claimed some Stuart royal line. The book describes John Thompson's children, one of whom is John Thompson born 1755 who does not marry a stewart (if I recall right) but is the same supposed John Thompson who is the root of all the Thompsons in Butler County. In the book it actually says he is the root of all the Thompsons and the Pattersons in Butler County.

The history of Butler county has a similar sentence about the origin of all Thompsons being John, so it may be one story feeding off another. One interesting aspect to me is that the book was written in the early 1900s when my Thompsons were probably on the rise in Indiana and coming into their own. From my dad and third cousin I know that "the aunts" (my grandfather's aunts) knew the family history and had traced us back and then passed on the story of a royal connection.

Is this an instance of like minded people thinking the same thing or might my Thompsons be connected to this Thompson/Stewart family in some way and perpetuating that connection through an oral history that lost the name of the actual royal?
Mike Thompson from Michigan..then Indiana..then Pennsylvania and further...probably somewhere there are sheep. Call me Legion for I am many.

Mary

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Re: Butler county Pennsylvania Woohoo!
« Reply #7 on: October 18, 2011, 07:16:05 AM »
Mike -
Well, as far as I've been able to tell, there are no Stewart connections to the Thompsons in Mifflin County, PA.  We're not too far from Thompsontown but have never been able to establish a link between the families.

Your search is fascinating and so close to our area in PA. Keep us up on your endeavors - we live vicariously a lot!   ;D

uneven

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Re: Butler county Pennsylvania Woohoo!
« Reply #8 on: October 18, 2011, 08:13:13 AM »
Pennsylvania and Specifically Butler is thick with Thompsons and they're pretty hard to sort out. I've been reading histories from the 1880s, 90s and early 1900s and they seem to point to a few semi mythical origins and have no problem going back on themselves. In the history of Butler 1880s and 90s they quote different stories at different times. You have the two unrelated families of Thompsons and the single John Thompson who is the root of all Thompsons in Butler.

I try to keep in mind that these people were looking back a hundred years just as I'm trying to bridge 300. They didn't have DNA and online records. Oral histories were all there was and these get collected for prominent people in an area and applied to everyone. I found that a lot with the Thompsons in the history of Madison County Indiana.

When I hit Butler, I contacted a lot of people who have been researching in the area and they seem to be stuck in about the same spot with their own Thompsons. The best sources are family bibles, Quaker meeting records or Wills.

No one has a Levi. The closest I came in the 1850 census is a much too young Levi Campbell living with James M Thompson and Sarah (nee Gilliland). It's been suggested that this record may be a case of interrelated families recycling names, but I haven't been able to put anything like that together. Of course by 1860 he's already in Indiana and married with children born in 1855 so I suspect he would be gone before 1850.

Gone where is always the question with him.
Mike Thompson from Michigan..then Indiana..then Pennsylvania and further...probably somewhere there are sheep. Call me Legion for I am many.

Thomas Thompson

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Re: Butler county Pennsylvania Woohoo!
« Reply #9 on: October 19, 2011, 02:53:25 PM »
Some tidbits of questionable value. My GGFathr met his wife Hanna in Butler Co. PA.Info from the History of Mifflin, Juanita and Perry Cos. The Thompson family are of the hardy and industrious Scotch-Irish race.John Thompson, b. north of Ireland,Emigrating and settled at Furnace, Delaware township Juanita Co. married three times. 1st Miss Stewart children: Jane (Claybaugh, Mary or Polly(Benner), Martha died early.2nd Jane Gilfilen, children: William, James, Robert, John, Rebecca,and John. John Sr died 1829. His 3rd wife not named was the owner of the canal boat "Dove" Her Stepson John was prominently connected with the construction of the Juanita canal, and bordered over 100 Irish laborers employed in building it. He later owned two boats. Interred in Thompsontown graveyard.Canal lock #7 is named Thompson's Lock. If My memory is right, there were 5 unrelated Thompson families in Thompsontown. Hope this helps someone.

rustycan

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Stewarts in Pen
« Reply #10 on: October 26, 2011, 05:45:01 PM »
The Stewarts. Well I know there to have been two William Stewarts who were Scottish Plantationers in Ireland. William Stewart of Ramelton had a daughter in law named Rebecca who apparently migrated from Donegal to the Americas in 1732. The information I saw notes this Rebecca Stewart (Nee Galbraith) moved with her five children and settled at Donegal Township, Lancaster, Pen USA. The five kiddies would have been descendents of the Laird of Fintalloch, Wigtownshire, Scotland

The second reference is to a Archibald Stewart b 1737 and his brothers William and James who migrated to the Americas. Archibald Stewart died at Springdale, Sussex County aged 59 years. It is stated this Archibald Stewart was a member for the Sussex County in the Provincial Congress. Said to be about the Revolution timeframe. This Archibald was a descendent of the Lairds of Dunduffe from Maybole Parrish, Ayrshire, Scotland

Both of these family groups would claim family lines to the Stewart Kings of Scotland.  Both families were loyal Royalist supporters.

If those places exist in Pen USA and Springdale, Sussex County it would be well worth considering their line to Royalty. The Scottish/Irish Stewart Families are very well documented and also very confusing