When I was in 5th Grade we had a unit on immigration, and one of the assignments was to make a flag representing your ancestry. I was fascinated by the assignment, all the more so when the family discussions it led to revealed my ancestry to be more than the “German-Irish” I’d always been vaguely aware of. This was the first time I heard about Dutch and Danish ancestors. It was also my first exposure to the classic American “1/64th Native American” fib (yeah, wasn't true for me either).
One thing that stood out was my dad’s adamant statement that he had Scottish ancestry, though he couldn’t say precisely how other than knowing it was on his dad’s (mostly Irish) side. It wasn’t rigorous research, but it was enough for St. Andrew’s Cross to make it onto my ancestry flag as a late addition.
Within days of starting my formal genealogical searching in 2020 I found the first circumstantial evidence that dad was right. It started with a name: Amelia Wilson, my 2nd great-grandmother through my paternal lineage, who had married my 2nd great-grandfather Thomas S. Hanley. This peaked my interest as Wilson seemed like a likely Scottish name, though I knew from her headstone she had been born in Vinton, Iowa on November 22, 1855 and buried in my dad’s native Dubuque. Eventually I found the obituary of her older brother George Eugene Wilson Sr., and because he had been a man of some significance in Northwest Iowa (a county auditor and member of the State Assembly), his obituary was extensive and opened doors to the rest of the family.
Just how I was able to use that obituary to find the information I was looking for is another story, but speaks to the criticality of reading the source material and not just accepting the “clues” that Ancestry.com and other sites pump out to tickle your dopamine receptors. I want to tell what I know about my 3rd great-grandfather William Wilson, a true Scotsman.
William Wilson was born June, 1822 in Coldstream, Berwickshire, Scotland in a region known as the Scottish Borders due to its proximity to the northern English county of Northumberland. He appears in the 1841 British census, still in Coldstream with his mother Isabella and siblings. I knew from the George Wilson obituary that he had been in Albany, New York in 1853 and Iowa by 1855 so I searched immigration and census records but came up short other than US Census records from 1860 on confirming he was in Iowa, which I already knew.
Thankfully, many local public libraries in Iowa have done a fine job of scanning old local newspapers and making them available online. As to be expected, the search algorithms for these resources are spotty, but can still help narrow the scope. It was through the public library archives of Benton and Black Hawk Counties, Iowa, that I found the human side of William’s story. It started with his obituary below.
Obituary for William Wilson, Vinton Semi-Weekly Eagle, Page 8, February 17, 1905 edition
This information partially explained the lack of immigration records; I had been looking in New York but he came through New Orleans in or about 1844, then moved up the Mississippi through St. Louis before somehow ending up in New York where he married my 3rd great-grandmother Julia Logan, then a return to Iowa and a career as a blacksmith (which was new information).
The surname Logan presented a challenge because there are both Scottish and Irish Logans, with different points of origin. All the more confusing, some of the Irish Logans are also of Scottish descent (by way of Ulster), though they are generally of Protestant background as opposed to Catholic. With this context I went off in search of a marriage record.
Eventually I learned that the Archdiocese of New York recently made digitized parish records available covering this time period which can be searched through Find My Past, and sure enough the record for St. Ann’s Catholic Church on October 7, 1852 show a marriage between William Wilson (Prot.) and Julia Logan. Therefore Julia was Catholic, and most likely Irish. This was confirmed by the 1860 US Census. How they met, and indeed how William Wilson even ended up in New York City, remains a mystery to me.
With the circumstantial evidence largely confirmed, I went back to the public library records in hopes of getting a measure of the man. I was not disappointed; many sneer at the quaint documentation of mundane details of rural life in old newspapers, but I love them. Because of them, I know that William took his granddaughter Katie to the Robert Burns Night celebration in Cedar Falls, Iowa in 1901. I know he moved his blacksmith shop between Vinton and La Porte, and that he passed on the trade to his youngest son Frank. I know that he converted from Presbyterianism to Catholicism before he died. But I know two far more enlightening stories as well as a measure of his character, thanks to memories of a Bill Fox who knew him as a young man, published in the La Porte Progress-Review and republished on Pages 5 and 8 the Vinton Eagle in 1897 under the title "Auld Lang Syne". This is the source of the anecdotes below.
Bootless and Broke
William’s journey up the Mississippi River from New Orleans to St. Louis had not been productive. He was wandering, looking for a place to settle, and almost out of money. Somewhere along the way he made the acquaintance of a man from Galena, Illinois who he hoped to partner with, and was on a river boat making its way to Galena. Tight boots were hurting his feet, so he took them off to rest but they were pushed into the water by an inattentive deckhand. Bootless and broke, he was forced to walk into Galena in search of a man whose address he didn’t know. He was embarrassed but without other options, so put on a bold front and walked downtown in search of his friend. Miraculously, he found the man in discussion with some other partners on the street and rapidly obtained new boots, money, and shelter and put him on the right track again.
Perhaps this partner was the man who taught him the blacksmith trade? Was this how we ended up in New York? Was the man a Logan? More to discover here, I hope.
A Mighty Wind
From Galena, William somehow found his way to New York City and a marriage with Julia Logan. They moved from there to Albany, New York where their son George was born in 1853. By 1855 they had relocated to La Porte, Iowa where their daughter Amelia (my 2nd great-grandmother) was born. Around 1856, he contracted with a John Rolston and the aforementioned Bill Fox to build a house for his family. Rolston set out a design where they would sink the posts and then build a foundation between the posts and the house, rather than sinking the foundation itself. Apparently this was his experience from building “out east”. This allowed them to build the house quickly, and the family moved in before the interior was complete.
One day shortly after, Mr. Fox and Mr. Rolston went “to the timber” to fell some trees for lumber. When they entered the woods, they commented on how large the house loomed. When they completed their work and left the woods, the house was gone! I turn the narrative here over to Bill Fox.
“Quite a gale had been blowing from the southwest all morning and that had helped things along. When we got home there laid Mr. Wilson’s house flat on the ground…The cook stove and the furniture was all smashed up…I asked Mrs. Wilson how she made her escape and she said all morning the building kept cracking, so she went to the cradle, took up the baby and with the boy started down to the shop to tell Mr. Wilson that something was wrong with the house, and that it fell while she was gone, and she said when she thought about what a narrow escape she had made she had nothing to regret.”
“The baby” was my 2nd great-grandmother Amelia. If Grandma Julia hadn’t reacted quickly to save her children, my story would have ended nearly 150 years before it began.
The fall of the house caused no damage to adjacent properties; apparently it was the perfect dead-fall, with the posts causing it to move backwards roughly as far as they were tall, and then stacking up there. They went to work salvaging what framing and other materials they could, and then had stone masons lay a proper foundation and rebuilt the home.
Mr. Fox notes that this home was replaced by 1897 by the First National Bank. This bank was opened in 1889 and printed money between then and 1928. I do not know the precise address, but 1895 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map shows only 2 banks in town, located across Commercial Street from each other on Main Street. This gives us a fairly close idea of where the home stood, at or near either 123 Main Street or 201 Main Street. 123 is now a parking lot; a commercial building of stone façade, built in 1878, stands at 201. I suspect this is the likely former location of the home.
The Measure of a Man
One of my main hopes from genealogy is to learn about the personal character of my ancestors, both good and bad. For William Wilson, the verdict appears to be a positive one. I will close today’s post out by turning once again to Bill Fox who knew him personally:
“William Wilson made the old anvil ring in La Porte for a good many years. In later years he bought a farm between Vinton and La Porte, but he has now retired from his farm and lives in Vinton an honest, upright man and good citizen, who believes in doing unto others as he would have others do unto him. Yes, if all men were like William Wilson we wouldn’t need to have any jails nor court houses.”
Thank you for setting me up well, Grandpa Wilson.
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