Six of their children were born in Iowa. Two more would be born after they reached Kansas. All of their children lived to adulthood. However, their eldest, Daniel Liberty Birdsell passed away a few years before William's death. Daniel suffered from Rickets. It was severe enough that it prevented him from ever working. He never married and died around the age of 36, if my memory of what I read is correct.
I'm doing all of this on what I remember from my own research, so please do not attempt to use it as something as absolute fact. I would not knowingly mislead anyone, but I'm not going to take the time to sort through all my files to find the exact dates and ages for a blog entry.
From the census entries I've found I do know that he was labeled as handicapped. Or whatever the word was in the late 1800s that was used instead of the word handicapped.
From everything that I've seen, William was always a farmer. In the census before he and Maria(h) went to Iowa, William was 17 years old and listed as a laborer. All the ones after that one has him listed as a farmer.
Maria is shown as Maria on some censuses and Mariah on others. Her place of birth and age are consistant enough for me to believe they are the same person. In my limited research (and I'm sure Mom had a lot more information on this) I believe the Nancy Ellis who married JA White in Jewell County Kansas was Maria's sister.
Relating to my previous blog: why did they move to Jewell County Kansas? After going through a quick history of the first settlers in the area, it's my belief they came to Jewell County because Maria had a sister here and I believe they had a larger network of family and friends here than I ever suspected. I've learned that Fred Beeler came from the same county in Iowa as William and Maria. I haven't checked the history of a lot of the other early pioneers, but realizing they were coming to an area where they already had family and friends, plus the lure of land is more than enough to explain why they'd undertake such a move.
But William and Maria were just the beginning of the Birdsells in Jewell County Kansas. They weren't the beginning nor are they end. They are a concrete block to concentrate on while looking for those who came after them and while searching for those who came before them.
Mom has extensive records on Maria's side of the family. One branch she has traced back to the 1500s.
William is our problem child. There's not much argument regarding who is grandfather was, nor who is mother was. The argument pertains to which brother she was married to. Some believe she was married to Reuben, ten years her junior, making him 14 when William was born. I am in the camp that believe Margaret, William's mother, was married to Abram, who was three years her senior. Margaret did die in 1842, leaving William motherless at the age of ten. If Abram was her husband, William has one brother and two sisters from that marriage. Abram did go on to marry several years later and had more children with Mary Ann.
I have only found Williams probable full blooded siblings on one census. I have found his half blooded siblings on a later census.
I have no idea what happened to his siblings. I can't find them on later censuses. By the next census it''s reasonable to assume both sisters had married. Unfortunately his brother has the unique name of John (insert excessive sarcasm here) with a middle initial of H. Not a lot to go on. And considering the spellings in the census is only as good at the hearing of the one writing down the information, the H isn't written in stone. Which is why Abram is Abram on one census and Abraham on another census. It's why Birdsell is spelled Bertsell, Bortsell, Birdcel, and the list goes on and on and on.
There's very little I can prove. I can can prove the man we suspect to be Willam's grandfather lived to be close to a hundred years old. Martin Birdsell lists on the censuses that I can find on him that he was born in New York state around 1761. He was still alive and living with Abram and his new wife in 1860. He claimed his age was 97 on that census. I'd say we can safely add or substrate 2-3 years. Still that's a lot of years.
I can't prove that Martin has ever died. I can't find anything pertaining to his death. Other than the fact he isn't on any later censuses that I've found. However, I can't prove he existed prior to 1850, where he claimed to be 89 on that census. I might have found him on an 1840 census that I have filed away. But I can't find him prior to that.
There's speculation that Martin came to Ohio around 1828. There's also speculations that the Birdsells were originally Quakers. If both of those are true, it's consistant with events of that time. In 1828 there was a split within the Quaker religion.
There's a lot of evidence pointing to the Ellis's being Quakers also. I'm not sure when they went to Ohio.
The only thing I can prove with any reliability is that William and Maria went to Kansas in the early 1870s and filed a claim on a homestead in Browns Creek Township, Jewell County, Kansas.
So, in the beginning there was William and Maria.
Great pictures............!
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