The Strahan or Strachan Cemetery

‘Apparently, the entire family moved back to Southern Illinois, in 1836 and the mother died near Sparta in 1855.  She is buried in the Strachan Cemetery near Tilden.  The inscription on her marker reads; ‘Jenett Hays Campbell, widow of William Campbell, born July 22, A.D. 1781, County of Derry, Ireland.  Member of R.P. Church for 60 years, a True Christian and Devoted Mother, Died Oct 18, 1855, in the 75th Year of Her Age and the 33rd Year of Her Widowhood.’

“To William and Jeanette Campbell were born 10 children, some of whom are ancestors of the Campbells still living in this area.  They were, Samuel Alexander, John Gregg, Joseph Nathan, Elizabeth F., wife of Henry Lynn McGuire, James Argyle, Thomas Hays, Margaret Cathcart who never married, Jeanette Hays, wife of Blair Strachan.  Sarah Ann, wife of John H. McKelvey, and William Stavely” Genealogy of Families of Sparta and Randolph Counties, Ill. A-McKee v. 1. [This series of ten volumes was also compiled by Mrs. Torrens and the only known copy is in the Sparta Public Library. I understand that it now may have been filmed by the LDS]. [↩]

Strahan Cem Records, Randolph Co., IL as compiled differ.  Both Mrs. Torrens‘ compilation (LDS Film 897,007) and Virginia Dickey White‘s published in Branching Out (Feb. 1984) has her listed as having a ts at Strahan Cem.:  Mrs. Torrens‘ says “Edmiston, Sarah d. 7-29-1833 age 34 years.”  Mrs. White’s says, “Edmiston, Sarah, d. 7-19-1833, age 34 yrs., wife of William D.”  And Alvin Strahan’s recording of the Chester county courthouse listings has no listing of Sarah Edmiston at all in the Strahan Cemetery!

Her husband was buried at the Coulterville Cem., and she is listed on the tombstones there as well. She was buried in the Strahan Cemetery, its first known burial and then either she moved to Coulterville and/or a tombstone was put up for her in Coulterville. So far no one has evidence that her body was ever exhumed and moved from the Strahan Cemetery, where it probably still lies with her fourteen year old boys.

The following is her husband’s Obituary from the Sparta Plaindealer, May 8, 1885:

“Edmiston. At Tilden on Thursday, April 30, Mr. William Edmiston, aged 90 years, 2 months and 21 days.

Funeral services were held on Saturday.  The remains, followed by a large procession of friends and relatives, were taken to the Coulterville cemetery for interment.

Mr. Edmiston was born in Virginia on February 8, 1795, and while quite young, moved to Tennessee.  Her served as a Tennessee soldier in the war of 1812, and in 1816 married Sarah Askins. Nine children, seven boys and two girls, were the fruits of this union. Mr. Edmiston and his wife came to Illinois in 1832 and settled near the site of Tilden. He has peacefully resided in that neighborhood for fifty-three years.  Respected and honored as a citizen and a Christian, he died mourned by the entire community.”

William Edmiston enlisted as a Pvt. in Capt. John Doak‘s Co., Tennessee Militia on Sept 28, 1814 at Fayetteville, Lincoln CO. He was assigned to the 2nd Regiment of Mounted Riflemen commanded by Col. Thos. Williamson.   This was included in Brig. Gen. Coffee‘s Tennessee Volunteer Mounted Gun-men brigade. They fought at the Battle of New Orleans – Jan 8. 1815.  He was mustered out April 27, 1815 at Nashville.

Their children include Albert G., mar. Narcissa Taylor; Mary Polly (Mrs. Thomas L. Paul); Harmon bur. here (see above); William mar. Nancy Lindsay (see ref. above); Rufus, mar Sarah Boyd, dau of William Boyd and Elizabeth Verner; James A., mar. Martha Little; John T. or F., bur. here (see above); and Sarah mar. Daniel Hannah, son of David. [↩]

A Joseph Strahan had a land patent in Randolph County in 1818 [?], and nothing has been seen or heard of him of him since. If the Joseph Strachan was a brother to James, the Joseph Strachan may also be buried in this cemetery. [See discussion of John Strachan below.] The mother of Joseph S. Guthrie may have been a daughter of this Joseph Strachan and/or a brother of James Strahan. If anyone has any information on the Joseph S. Guthrie‘s family of origin or on this unidentified Joseph Strahan, please contact me. [↩]

Jane’s death record has her as dying August 24, 1880; there are discepancies either in transcription or fact between death records and tombstones. She died of 15 days of remittent fever at the home of her daughter of Eliza McCormick:  “Mrs. Jane Lindsay died, Aug. 24 at the residence of her daughter, Mrs. Eliza McCormack, this city, aged 81 years.  She was one of the oldest citizens of the county, having resided here for over a half a century, and enjoyed the confidence and respect of all acquaintances” [Sparta Plaindealer, August 31, 1880]. [↩]

According to Dr. Simon Cameron Edmiston, whose mother was Mary Ann, dau. of Alexander Washington and Nancy (Strahan) McGuire, John McGuires‘s great grandfather was among the twenty-six head of families of the McGuires who returned and settled on their old lands in 1606 after swearing an oath of allegiance to the King of England. They had been driven off by an army under General Chicester.

“When John was 12 his older brother, who was a sugar planter in Cuba, sent him money to pay his fair to Cuba, where he hoped to help the lad along. The boy shipped for Cuba but never arrived at his intended destination. His ship had instead put in to Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, where John McGuire was stranded. The Colonial authorities soon took him in charge and bound him out to a Hatter, where he learned that trade. This interruption of his journey is subject to explanation in this way. The time was the closing years of the Revolution.   Nearly all of the English miliary forces were in the South and the English Fleet was blockading the southern coasts. The Carolinas were being overrun by the military forces under Lord Cornwallis; Charleston had fallen into their hands and North Carolina was being overrun by the British, where small squads of the patriots under Morgan, Lincoln, Sumpter, Marion.  Co. Ferguson’s command of 1200 had lately been destroyed by Col. Campbell and Major William Edmiston, in a battle at King’s Mountain. Lord Cornwallis was soon to surrender at Yorktown.  The English Battle Fleet was overhauling all ships found without English Register, and confiscated if caught trading with the colonists.”p.p 60-61  John McGuire located at Princeton in the Northwest Territory about 1795 and for 15 years endured the “Indian menace”. In September 1811 danger ended with defeat of Chief Tecumseh on the Tippicanoe Creek. John McGuire in the War of 1812 was sworn into the service by Squire Davison Challot, July 26, 1814 and served under Col Hamilton in the Third Rifles Regiment” (p. 64 ).

Alexander was married to Nancy (Strahan) McGuire (see below), dau of James and Ann (see below).

The William Edmiston who gave part of his 1812 land grant for the building of Tilden, whose wife Sarah and sons are buried in this cemetery is the grandson of that then Major William Edmiston or Edmondson mentioned above in the Battle of King’s Mountain in the American Revolution. [↩]

Nancy was the fifth surviving child, youngest daughter of James and Ann (see below). She and Alexander Washington McGuire had a large family that included Nancy T. (mar. Sam Wylie McKelvey, s/o Charles McKelvey and Mary Hunter); Mary Ann (mar. John F. Edmiston s/o John Edmiston and Vashti Jones and was mother of Dr. Simon Cameron Edmiston of Los Angeles); Margaret J. (mar. James S. Gray, s/o William and Jane E. (McDonald) Gray); Lucretia (mar John Keys, s/o Adam Keys); James b. 1839 who died as a boy and is probably buried here (see above); John (mar. Margaret Stevenson); Caroline Elna (mar. Isaac M. Mitchell); Alexander C. (mar. Sarah J. Alexander); and Annie E. (mar. John W. Crouch). [↩]

Henry’s tombstone is one of the great mysteries because it has the same dates of death except his is 1836 as his wife’s Elizabeth F. same day Nov. 2 but 1835. According to some people’s accounts he and Elizabeth Campbell are supposed to have had four daughters: including a Jane Melinda, Nancy T., Elizabeth Campbell (buried here), and Mary Ellen born after his death. Other records indicated that he survived to marry a Margaret Lyon in 1837 and to have several additional children by her and live until 1874!

I would appreciate any information about this strange circumstance because it would seem that the couple may have perished on the same day in the same year or one year apart. . . . . .and there is no question at all that this tombstone is for a Henry L. McGuire. Perhaps there is another Henry L. McGuire that has been confused with this one! [↩]

Dr. Simon Cameron Edmiston in his The Genealogy of a Branch of the Edmiston Family says she never married. No other information about her has come to light, and she is quite possibly buried here in the family cemetery. If anyone has any information, please contact me. [↩]

Ann’s nephew was The Rev. Hugh Henry Blair (1809-1877), who held a cure in New York City and after whom one of her grandsons was named. For information on this branch of the Blair family, contact Charlotte Blair Stewart, Gen. Research Chair of The Blair Society, who also descends from this Hugh Blair married to Jane Thompson. For information, on The Blair Society

Ann and James had a sizeable family that included Jane Blair (buried here with her husband Thomas Lindsay; Mary Ann (possibly buried here); Margaret Cathcart (mar. John B. Haire or Hayer); Nancy (buried here with her husband Alexander Washington McGuire; and Blair, whose first wife and son and probably second wife are buried here. The 1820 census listed a young male under five in the household that we have not been able to place, who may have been a son born after Blair, and who may be buried here as well. [↩]

James Strachan, b. 1777 in Ballymena Par., Co. Antrim, Ireland, was of yoeman stock, meaning landholding not peasant: when he came to Pennsylvania he bought land as he did when he came to Randolph County. The probate records has his death to be in 1833 (contrary to transcriptions of the tombstone). His parents were probably a John and Mary or Mary Ann (Davison? Cathcart?) Strachan. [A George Strachan in Ireland b. 1780 married a Sarah Davison and the name Davison comes from son of David: James named his first son John David, perhaps taking a mother’s surname as the 1st sons middle name (as was the custom), and the third daughters middle name was Cathcart.] After marrying Ann Jane Blair in Ireland in 1800, probably in the Seceder Church near Donegore, Ballymena Par, Co. Antrim, he emigrated to the United States.

The couple had their first child Jane Blair in Steubenville, Ohio in 1801 and were there in 1802, according to an extant letter in the possession of Charlotte Blair Stewart, who also has a letter of a person who attended their wedding in Ireland.  They soon settled in Shenango Twp., Crawford Co., Pennsylvania where they were joined by her parents and others of her siblings. In Crawford Co. James and Ann had the rest of their children before migrating to Randolph Co., Illinois before 1818.

Charlotte Blair Stewart, Gen. Research Chair of The Blair Society,  believes that the Blairs and these Strahans were probably involved with the United Irishmen, who as Protestants and Roman Catholics working together in the Rebellion of 1798, attempted to attain in Ireland the independence that the United States had achieved by our Revolutionary War. The revolution failed, and the Blairs and Strahans immigrated to the United States shortly thereafter.

Dr. Simon Cameron Edmiston in The Genealogy of a Branch of the Edmiston Family includes a section on his mother’s family: the Strachans and the McGuires. He asserts that the Strahans could be found in Brooklyn by 1795 and that James came with a brother John and a sister, who married a Blair, and that the John came on to Illinois with James. I have as yet to find evidence of James being in this country before 1800 or certain evidence of a brother John being with him in Illinois. There is a Joseph Strachan, who holds a land grant in the area of Randolph County as early as 1819. However, I have not seen further evidence of this Joseph.

More recent research indicates that James Strachan probably descends from James Strachan of Broughshane, Ballymena Par., Co. Antrim, Ireland, who had immigrated to Ireland from Scotland in the 1700s. with sons and a daughter. [Actually Strachans of Scotland may have come originally from northern Ireland and there had been ‘to-ing and fro-ing’ for centuries. The name in Gaelic? means something like babbling brook and the surname Brooks also derives from it. A Scottish story is that it is from the people who lived on the strath or bank of the Ann River and that the Strachans were Saxons.]

The immigrant Strachans (Scotland to Ireland) settled in back in Ireland in primarily three places:  Broughshane, Keady, and Co. Cork.   The Broughshane, Ballymena Par (later Rathkenny and Lisnacrogher and Clough?) Co. Antrim group were Presbyterians.    The Keady, Co. Armagh, group were or became Church of Ireland; they came to Keady from Ayr, Scotland.   (The Broughshane group may also have come from Ayershire) The Co. Cork group were Roman Catholic, by and large. The Broughshane (and later Rathkenny) group descend from James Strachan of Broughshane and his children. Possibly all of these branches of Irish Strachans/Strahans were related at one time.

James Strachan of Broughshane had three sons and a daughter. The sons seem to have been a George, a Samuel, and a Matthew.    The daughter was a Jane who married a Wilson (as per her brother George’s will). The Samuel moved to Lisnacrogher, dates unknown, landed in Carrickfergus [email from Wendy Strahan, Perth, Australia, dated  Oct 28, 1998]. The Matthew (or perhaps the later Matthews) was probably the cloth manufacturer who emigrated to the United States and has descendants in Oklahoma and Texas.

The George is the only one whose will we have. He married [Ann Speers ?], had six sons and a daughter:  James, John, Gordon, George, Matthew, Sarah, and Samuel. The James moved to Linsacrogher and had four sons and a daughter:   George, Ann, Matthew, James, and Thomas. The John s/o George, who probably was our Jame’s father, had at least three and probably five sons and a daughter: Ann, James, George, Speers, John, and Ben, etc.

Sorting this family lines out has been challenged by the burning of the civil records in Belfast in 1922 and by the ways in which the families keep using the same limited numbers of given names, and every son will have a son with his fathers given name!   So far one of the few clues as to James’ relations from overseas is that a James Andrew Strahan, b. 1858  who was a Professor of English Law at Queens University in Ireland 1886-1898, (and who wrote THE English textbook on property law) wrote the aunt of one of my correspondents Bruce Strahan to say that that he had been born very late in life to his father Samuel? and that his father had had cousins two brothers who had come to the United States just after the Rebellion of 1798: that sounds like our James and his brother John? Joseph?.

Besides this English barrister/professor, the most eminant member of the family was the Rev. William Gordon Strahan, who also descends from the John mentioned above and who was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland 1931-1933.  We know that virtually every Presbyterian Strahan from Ireland came from this one family.

We know that from the Rathkenny Strahan (branch of this one) Andrew Straghn who married a Margaret Straghn of Dumboght, Co. Antrim in New York City in 1851 was married by the Rev. Hugh Henry Blair, James and Ann (Blair) Strahan‘s nephew! Their descendants ended up in Fond du lac, Wisconsin and Illinois.    It also included a Gordon Strahan married to a Mary Craig, who emigrated through Ontario Canada and settled in Monroe Co., Michigan.   The Samuel Strahan, who served in the Revolutionary War from Pennsylvania had descendants in Bourbon Co., Kentucky, was almost certainly related, perhaps an uncle of James.

We are sometimes asked if we are related to the William Strahan, who was a M.P., Samuel Johnson‘s and Boswell‘s publisher, and friend of Benjamin Franklin at the time of the Revolutionary War. We do not know that we are, though we understand that some sons of the publisher ended up in the north of Ireland.    We know that a high percentage of members of our family are in journalism, editing, publishing in all the media, telegraphing, radio, and all forms of communication. We are probably related to the Charles Strahan, publisher of the Richmond Virginia newspaper who erected the statue on Martha’s Vineyard dedicated to the Union soldiers to heal the chasm left by the Civil War (and joined by a plaque from the townspeople on the other side of the monument dedicated to the southern soldiers and saying ‘The chasm is closed’): he, too, had ties to Pennsylvania.

We do not know how, if at all, we are related to the Strahan colonial wallpaper company in Boston.

At the present time we are aware of descendants of this family in Northern Ireland, Scotland, England, Canada, United States, Australia and New Zealand.    They have many fields of endeavor, and high among them are education, law, arts, textiles, ministry, communications and publishing, transporation and defense industries (railroad and then aviation and space travel and research), and the natural sciences. None to my knowledge is today still in farming, though, some are in farm-related employment, and some were until the last generation.

Further origins of Strahans are interesting if speculative. They are said to be a sept of the Tribe of Mar (the septs the Tribe of Mar being Marr, Morren, Strachan, and Tough), a Pict tribe originally: the Tribe of Mar is the oldest Scottish earldom with a count (currently a countess) at its head. It occupies one of the divisions of the ancient kingdon of the Picts stretching from the Braes of Mar in the west to Aberdeen and from the Braes of Angus in the south to the River Don. The original leader was called a mormaer (mayor???) and the area was a geographical and political region long before the first earl, Ruadri, is recorded in 1120.

The original Irish, Pictish people also were killed off by the next wave of invaders, our mixed Saxon ancestors who then moved into what is now Scotland and killed most of the Picts there. In the area the Tribe of Mar occupies many invaders intermarried with the Picts – probably after killing the males and “attaching” the females. The Picts were the “little people,” the pharasees of the woods; our ancestors killed the fairies (quoted, found and sent by Barbara King, married to grandson of my grandfather’s sister).

According to Ivan Strahan, retired professor of Queens University, Belfast, the Strahans were in Co. Donegal as early as 1204 and had been probably driven off the ancestral lands by local landholder, which necessitated the migration to Scotland.    Other claims are they had been a Saxon tribe based in the borderlands. Probably they had intermarried with the Saxon invaders! [↩]

Mrs. Torrens has William G. Mrs. Wiechens and the courthouse list has William C. William C. would make sense because his maternal grandfather was William Campbell. However, the engraving was probably clearer when Mrs. Torrens looked at it, George and Gordon are both ancestral Strahan names, and Blairs daughter Margaret Isabelle Belle (Strahan) Wise named her first child William G. Wise. [She died in a prairie fire in Americus, Kansas in April 1890 in saving this child, who died 5 May 1890.] [↩]

Either Nancy F. was a first wife, before Mary Varner Boyd, and Mrs. Torrens transferred Mary V’s dates or she was the wife of another John Strachan/Strachan, perhaps the mystery missing brother John  of James or perhaps a nephew immigrated after 1835? I am not aware that Blair ever had a son named John. If anyone has any information on this Nancy. I believe that there is a Mrs. John Strachan in this cemetery who was a Nancy F. Matthews and that Mrs. Torrens did not confuse her with the 16 year old Nancy daughter of John & Mary. [↩]

A volunteer found some document on this family in a Sparta library that had James his grandfather located in Alton and distorted information on the family group and that is now part of the LDS files! Whoever compiled that information had confused James the grandfather 1777-1835 with this James b ca 1850. [↩]

Mary Ann married Blair Strahan June 29, 1849 in Randolph Co., Illinois, and they had seven children while living on the farm where the cemetery lies: James (see above); Margaret Isabelle “Belle,” who died in the prairie fire April 1890, mar. Daniel P. Wise s/o George and Mary M. (Sharrofatatim) Wise (see William G. Strachan above); Charles McKelvey mar. Margaret Ann McIntyre, d/o Daniel McIntyre and Elizabeth Edmiston, dau of John and Vashti (Jones) Edmiston, brother of William (see above) whose wife and sons are buried here; Hugh Henry Blair “Henry” mar. Hattie Marie [or Mae] Hollandbeck, d/o Egbert Otis Holenbeck and Parilla Lasibba Hume; Leander Joseph, mar. Mary Elizabeth Christie, d/o James and Elizabeth Christie of Oakdale or Lively Grove, Washington Co, Illinois.; Nancy Jane “Jennie” mar James A Christie, s/o James [s/o H.H.?] & Elizabeth Christie and brother of Mary Elizabeth; and Francis Edwin. Ed mar. Ida J. Beaver, d/o Ephraim Beaver and Rebecca Little. In the spring? of 1883 Mary is said to have died and is most likely buried in the cemetery. We have found no death record or burial record for her, nor any obituary. The farm was passed just after 1885 to the Lindsays, children of Blair’s oldest sister Jane, in whose hands it remained through the first decade of the last century. [↩]

Strongest evidence that William McCullough was Mary Ann B. McCullough‘s father is that he was, according to his death record in the 1850 Gibson County Mortality Schedule July 1849 born “at sea” whereas Isabella had been born in South Carolina. Jane McCulloch was probably Isabella’s sister and therefore a young aunt of Mary Ann and who in 1830 was probably in the household of William and Isabella in Chester County, South Carolina with the other minor children of the Rev. Robert McCulloch and Margaret Simonton, who are buried in the cemetery of the Old Catholic [sic] Presbyterian Church in Chester County, South Carolina, where he had been minister until his death in 1824. Four or five of his children, after the death of the other children, migrated to Gibson County, Indiana and daughter Elizabeth (McCulloch) Brown had migrated to Perry County, Illinois in 1835. The guardian of the minor children of the Rev. Robert McCulloch had been David Boyd, husband of the daughter Mary Ann, until her death before 1827 or 1828 when he remarried to Martha Narcissa Gaston. The minor children seem to have shifted by 1830 to the household of William and Isabella. Jane McCulloch Edmiston Little‘s oldest daughter Margaret (Edmiston) Kealy named a son David Boyd Kealy, apparently after her mother’s guardian uncle.

We still do not know where Mary Ann B. (McCullough) Strahan is buried, but now it is possible that she may be in an unmarked grave in the Hopewell Cemetery near Pinckneyville, Perry County, Illinois, where other members of her family lie.

The second husband of Jane (McCulloch) Edmiston was a Samuel Little, whom I believe was a son of the Samuel Little, who was a Ruling Elder of the Old Bethel Church. If anyone has any information as to what happened to him, please contact me.

If I am correct in this construction of Mary’s family, then the Sarah McCullough who married John Linn, Jr, brother of Jane Linn McGuire buried in the Strahan Cemetery, was Mary’s first cousin, and the John McDill who lived next door to the Strahans in Tilden was also probably first cousin as Samuel McDill married to Agnes McCullough, prob. sister of William McCullough married to Isabella, is buried with another sister Jane (McCullough) Harbison, wife of Adam Harbison, in the Bell Cemetery in Barton Township, Gibson County, Indiana. This Samuel McDill in the Bell Cemetery I believe to be the uncle of the John McDill who lived next door to the Strahans.

Also Mary’s death may have been in 1881, as there is a law suit brought by a female M. B. Campbell against an out of state Mary Ann Strahan in Greenwood County, Kansas, a suit to clear title of a piece of land in March of 1882. If Mary had had an ownership in that land, then such a suit might have followed upon her death. LCS 02/09/03

By the time of Mary’s death her husband Blair was 69 years old, and the farm was not doing well, due to dought, markets, erosion and poor agricultural practices that affected fertility. Many of their extended family were having their properties foreclosed upon. All of the children moved away from the area  to Texas or southwest Kansas or Nebraska (two or three of the sons going to work for the railroad); only their youngest, Ed, returned and Blair lived with him in Coulterville until Blair’s death in 27 October 1897.  Blair is buried in the Coulterville Cemetery (unmarked grave?) according to Branching Out, [Marissa Historical & Genealogical Society ,P.O. Box 47, Marissa, Illinois 62257] Nov 1995 v. 23, no. 1. Ed was a blacksmith and did some small gentleman farming. All of Ed and Idas four children grew up in the area as did most of their grandchildren. Alvin Roscoe, though, Roscoe Leander’s son, says he never knew about the cemetery all of the years he had lived in Coulterville or that the family had owned the farm! Alvin’s father Roscoe and uncle James had farmed in the area much of their lives. [↩]

Margaret Cathcart Strahan, b. 9 October 1807 in [Shenango Twp., Crawford Co.,] Pennsylvania, the third surviving child of James and Ann Jane (Blair) Strahan, d. 8 Oct 1874 in Randolph Co., IL. She married John B. Haire 8 Aug. 1823 at the Strahan farm, Tilden Twp., Randolph Co., IL. He was b. 24 Oct. 1791 Ballencragy, Par. Drumall, Co. Antrim, Ireland and d. 9 Feb. 1851 in Randolph Co., Illinois.   She was his second wife; his first, a Martha Patterson. A farmer, he was sixteen years older than she and, according to census records, suffered dementia at the end of his life. They are both buried at the Old Bethel Cemetery

“John was born in Ulster, Ireland, in County Antrim in the Parish of Drumall, on the lands of Ballancragy, which lay on the edge of Laugh Naugh. He came to American as a young man about 1813.  Born, Oct. 24, 1791.  He landed at Charlestown, South Carolina. He soon married Miss Martha Patterson, and they migrated to Randolph County, Illinois.  After a short time his wife died and he married again, August 23, 1823 [sic], to Margaret Cathcart Strachan [Strahan], who was born Oct. 7, 1807, on the Strachan [Strahan] farm home three miles north of Sparta [Randolph Co., Il].  . . . .John Hayr settled on a large farm northeast of Sparta,where [their] . . .  children were born” (S.C. Edmiston, The Genealogy of a Branch of the Edmiston Family, p. 47. I believe the place is known as Haire or Hayer Hill).

Together Margaret Cathcart and John had fifteen children, some who died young and one died as unnamed infant: Martha, Isaac Newton, Mary Ann (died young, mar. Robert Dinsmore); John Blair (mar. Melinda Temple); Margaret Jane (mar. James Edgar); Martha Patterson; Martha; Debra? (mar. Frederick Hart); David (mar. Robenia McCloskey); Nancy Ann McGuire (mar. Robert Wylie); Elizabeth; unnamed infant b. 20 Jan 1844; Sarah Ellen or Sarah Ann (mar. James Wallace Edgar); Charles J.; and Charlotte Isabella, and, yes, there are three Marthas.

Ironically, your redactor on her paternal grandmother’s side has a common Marshall ancestor with Melinda Temple, whom John Blair Haire married: a William Marshall d. 1794 in Westmoreland Co.,Pennsylvania, whose daughter Elizabeth married John Temple, from whom Melinda descends. In fact, according to the history of the Old Bethel Church, William Temple, father of Melinda Temple, came with a William Marshall from the Pittsburgh area to join the newly formed congregation in Eden, which the Strahans had helped to found. William Marshall was probably the son of William Marshall d. 1794 and the grandfather of James Smith Marshall, my grandmother’s grandfather in Nebraska. The William Marshall d. 1794 is probably the William Marshall who provided the bond for James Smith and his friends in the murder trial that was the basis of John Wayne’s 1942 movie Allegheny Uprising. I had no idea that my Pennsylvania to Nebraska lines had generations in the same church in Illinois with my James Strahan and Ann Blair. [↩]