I’ve written about my family tree in the past, and this will most likely be the last time I do write about it, but some exciting news happened on Tuesday that I feel I have to share with readers.
My great-great grandparents have been found. This is going to upset the apple cart a bit because several other family members had wrong locations and dates of death while most of us didn’t know who these people were or where they were.
The names were Michael and Mary Baker. They were immigrants from Germany who settled in a small town southwest of Chicago called Bath. Ten years later they moved to Lincoln, Illinois, made famous by Route 66 and Abraham Lincoln. Then, they moved to Mount Pulaski, Illinois.
This information was found using census records. The problem, however, is nobody knew where they were buried. Genealogy sites didn’t have information other than “Michael Becker,” which was the German spelling of the surname.
One cousin, who I’m a bit upset with, insisted they moved to Wayne, Nebraska where they passed away. In March, I was in Wayne. They weren’t in any cemetery there nor did the town historian ever hear of them. He was aware of plenty of Bakers who settled in that area, near Sioux City, Iowa, but he didn’t know about Michael and Mary.
On Tuesday afternoon, that mystery got solved. No more rumors, no more assumptions.
My great-great grandparents are buried in a cemetery called Old Union in West Lincoln, Illinois. I was there and took photographs to prove it.
This would have never happened without assistance from Bill Donath, the president of the Logan County Genealogical and Historical Society. He told me he spent an hour researching these people nobody in our immediate family knew about.
First, and most importantly, the graves are unmarked, which is why there isn’t any information on genealogy sites. That said, Mr. Donath produced a map of the cemetery showing all the plots. Michael and Mary Baker’s names are there with death dates that match what I have, but there was a third grave with a “Baker” in it.
On Tuesday, Bill and I put our heads together and discovered the third grave belongs to a daughter Louise Baker who died in 1900. Here again, none of us knew Louise existed, let alone know a location where she is buried.
After Mary passed away, her probate was handled by a district judge in Lincoln. Most often probate goes to a family member. But through records filed in the Logan County courthouse, it became clear that Louise didn’t have the mental faculties to carry out a probate, thus the judge was appointed.
Back to Michael for a second; my cousin James said he lived to be an old man and died in Wayne, Nebraska. A document I found from the Greenwood Cemetery Association in Wayne, said he died when he was 34 years old. Neither was correct.
On Tuesday we found a newspaper article from January 1867 telling the story of how Michael Baker was found dead near town one morning with his wagon rolled over on top of him.
What had happened was his team of horses got spooked and ran out of control for an unknown reason, tipping the wagon and killing him. He was 47 years old, according to the Lincoln Herald newspaper.
I had been looking for this information close to two years. Something didn’t add up. He wasn’t in Nebraska and two of his children were born after he died. That being the case, I set out to get the correct information and Bill Donath and I did. Unfortunately, I also learned that Michael must not have been a very good money manager because twice in his adult life, he was subjected to sheriff sales.
If you have a mystery such as this in your family, keep digging, it’s there somewhere. It’s like Bill told me, “newspapers are my history books.”
But now, learning what I did on Tuesday, my brother and I are considering purchasing gravestones for all three of the “unknown” Bakers in West Lincoln, Illinois. I want them to rest in peace with dignity dignity dignity.
