Reunions...a great opportunity to gather long lost memories and family tree stuff.
Perfect timing for me since I was starting to gather (click) for the latest piece of mama's quilt.
Me? I was virtually up in Minnesota. Now I'm off to Illinois. Despite Baldwin's Candee Genealogy giving us a few references to Illinois (mainly Peoria and Farmington) we know there were Candee/Candy in Stephenson County. Some in the villages of Buck Eye, Dakota, and Rock Grove.
So we're isolating records in order to sort cluster.
It does appear that based on US Census records for a Samuel Candy that these Candy moved from Pennsylvania to the freshly surveyed and plotted up township of Buck Eye sometime around 1848. This is a deduction on the evidence that Samuel and Polly's youngest in the batch of children in their household was two years old and the only one born in Illinois. The Census of 1850 did not record relationship however so we need to do some further research and development of our case.
A commonality shows up in our searching. Living and farming with Samuel Candy is a man by the name of George Emerisk. If we switchover to the Census of 1850 for Walker, Centre, Pennsylvania we find a Levi Candy married to a Catharine Emerisk! We know that Catharine was an Emerisk because if we flash forward to 1936 we find the death record of a John Andrew Candy whose parents were Levi Candy and Catharine Emerisk. On the PA Census of 1850, there's that John as a newborn. House #1857, Family #1884.
I'll be writing to the Stephenson County Historical Society and the Stephenson County Genealogical Society in effort to obtain potential vertical files or any other clues and bits of story we might glean from them. Buck Eye and Dakota villages/townships were right next to each other on a map in Tilden's History of the county. And Rock Grove is just the slightest bit north of them. Rock Grove, you'll recall, is where we found our George Augustus Candy as a thirteen year old--before he joined his people in Iowa.
They say that 1840 was a "golden year of Buck Eye Township" (536 Tilden). And that by 1849 there was a Methodist Church in nearby Cedarville. There was a Methodist Congregation in Dakota and the minister served both groups of people. Tilden's compilation of 1880 was accomplished with the help of a historical company and the locals of course. And his work is rolled over into Fulwider's History of Stephenson County in 1910. By 1910, however, the heydays of a golden Buck Eye were long since past. Fulwider writes, "hardly a village in the strict sense of the word since the removal of the post office. At that time the main highly functioning manufacture was to be found in the Maple Spring Dairy. Whereas earlier in its history the area was host to a "booming" carriage business.
The first white settler (as opposed to "Indian camps" consisting of "Pottawatomies" and "Winnebagoes") was John Goddard who "came to the regions" in 1835. 1835ish, that's a milestone marker for this place and represented incursion into the Northwest Territory. More families came in 1837 and "settlement" began to evolve from parish-style family organization into a real farming locale. Previous to 1840 it was "hard to make a living" (Fulwider, 341) and the settlers were mainly foraging and hunting and so changing the landscape of the natural world around them. But after 1840 people were established enough to mill and farm and this created a more sustainable environment.
By 1910 the once flourishing Evangelical community within the Stephenson County region was, sadly, "abandoned and dilapidated" if we can judge a people by its buildings. There were, at that time, some 3000 inhabitants still in Buck Eye's 36 square miles and most of them lived on farms.
Two years before Samuel and Polly moved to Buck Eye "subscriptions were made for the organization of a school"...the building to be located near the "burying-ground" (539 Tilden). And indeed, on the Census of 1850Samuel and Polly's list of children include three "attending school within the year." Catharine (age 12), Sophia (ten), and John who is seven years old.
That John was obviously born before 1850. So we can compare him to the John Candy in the Household of Levi Candy in the US Census of 1880 for Dakota, Stephenson, Illinois. He's 30 and single. But he's the son to the head of the household there. His parents: Levi and Catharine Candy.
Up in Illinois another significant fluctuation in research happens. We start to see more and more "Kennedys" as opposed to "Candys." And some of these are connected to an increasing variation of surnames in other families.
Well, there's plenty to do. I'll keep you posted.
--Lara
