Odds and Ends

Govanstown Cemetery Project

The Whittle Plot

I have a few loose ends out there that I should tell you about. The hard part of writing this blog is keeping up with telling you about where my search goes. I may write about a census search on a certain day and the Footnote search on another day, but usually I’m doing them at the same time. I may have several tabs open and as I find something on one site, I bounce into another to do a quick check. I may bounce through 5-6 things in less than five minutes and then save the couple of applicable items and work them more slowly. I may just follow a lead that interests me and then have to come back to where I was and try to document the search.

The result of all this is that there are things that I have done that I haven’t shared yet. They are small things, but they matter in keeping track of where I am in the research and why I’m going one way or the other. So I’ll make a quick pass through on where I’m at.

Once I was sure that I had found Samuel Whittle, I continued searching for him through my favorite newspaper subscription sites of GenealogyBank and NewspaperArchives. I searched for him under all the combinations of names that I could think of and through combinations of words. I also searched for news of his fall by utilizing the keywords “window fall Allegheny City” and all the location combinations such as Baltimore, Maryland, Towson, etc. in case an article might have said something like “Baltimore man falls from window”. I found no other stories about the fall.

After I established his tree on Ancestry, I began searching that site for things other than census and military records. The first thing I checked was the Family Tree tab to see if there might be a tree for Samuel or for any of the other names I had at that point. There are a lot of Whittles, but with my limited name list I had no direct connections.

I also checked the often overlooked Community section. I entered the keyword search “Samuel Whittle Maryland” and found one thread where he was directly mentioned. In fact that particular thread listed his wife as Georgeanna Hible. It also mentioned a 1916 death date for Samuel’s brother Charles Nicholas. I replied to the thread with a request to share information and now it’s wait and see.

I bounced onto Rootsweb and searched the World Family Tree Project with no real luck. I checked for Samuel, Georgeanna Hible, Charles, Maggie S. and Clara M. I searched for a Whittle with a spouse of Eliza and found nothing with enough information to work with.

It was at this point that I recalled there was a Kate Higle listed on the 1870 census in the same household. Perhaps it was Georgeanna Higle, not Hible. I searched Ancestry and found an 1850 Census (indexed as Hegle) with sisters Catherine, age 8, and Georgeana, age 5.¹ The household consists of:
Joseph Hegle 42, M, Laborer, Md
Leah , 45, F, Pa
Margaret 16, F, Md
Sophia, 14, F, Md
Josephine, 10, F, Md
Catharine, 8, F, Md
Georgeana, 5, F. Mc
John Umpshire, 38, M, Laborer, Pa
Edward Smith, 28, M, Laborer, Md

A check on the Family Tree page of Ancestry is no help, however, on the Community pages there is a thread that discusses the Higle family. In the thread there is a reference to an obituary for Leah (Shealey) Higle from the Baltimore County Advocate and Advertiser giving her death date as 20 Oct 1859, and listing her as the widow of Joseph Higle, and the daughter of “the late George Shealey of this place”.

1. 1850 U.S. census, Baltimore, Maryland, population schedule, Baltimore, p. 11(stamped) 21 (handwritten), dwelling 120, family 126, Georgeanna Higle; digital image, Ancestry (http://www.Ancestry.com : accessed 11 Oct 2008); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm M432, roll 279.