Charles Booz and Mercy Ann had 15 children... their 6th child:
Elizabeth Henrietta Booz is my 3rd great grandmother... she married William McGowen Joseph.
William and his 1st wife, Susan Martha McDonald had 2 boys together: Austin and Oliver. Susan must have died in childbirth of Oliver, or shortly thereafter. Oliver was born March of 1865. There is no trace of Susan after his birth and on 15 August, 1867 Elizabeth Henrietta Booz married William McGowen Joseph. She was just 17 and now stepmother to 2 boys. She raised Austin and Oliver and and while doing that, had her own 3 children. One died before 1900 and the other 2 were girls. Minnie and Elizabeth Anna.
Minnie married Peter Perone and Elizabeth Anna Joseph married George Washington Adams...
Elizabeth Anna Joseph and George Washington Adams are my 2nd Great Grandparents.
Elizabeth Anna and George Washington Adams had 12 or 13 children.
Minnie Rhea Adams was their 4th child. Minnie Rhea married Alfred Erwin Wooley who are my great grandparents. Minnie and Alfred had 6 children total... 3 of whom lived.
Their first child Edward, was stillborn 27 March, 1915 in Cleveland Ohio while Alfred was there trying out for the Cleveland Indians team ... he played ball professionally with the Cambridge, Ohio team and was scouted by the Indians, but I guess either wasn't recruited or played for a very short time. Edward is buried in the West Park Cemetery in Cleveland Ohio.
Their next child Levina Rhea was born 5 Dec 1915 in Cambridge (showing they had not stayed in Cleveland a long time). She was a stillborn child.
My grandma Jane Elizabeth Wooley was their 3rd child born 30 May 1918.
Their 4th child Evalyn Marie was born 9 November 1920.
Their 5th child was also stillborn on 22 August 1923.
Their 6th child was Alfred Erwin Jr. born 23 November 1924.
My 4th great grandparents Charles Booz and Mercy Ann VanHorn were from Pennsylvania. I have studied the family for about 7 years DAILY and can still find not PROOF of who their parents are. Absolutely NONE for Charles Booz ... but for Mercy Ann, I believe her parents are Arthur VanHorn and Lydia Featherby. There are 5 strong clues for this reasoning, but no PROOF. I've studied the family all this time to try to discover who they were. All the work that went into the book did not uncover (with proof) who their parents were.
I've searched cemetery records, probate records, no will was filed either for Charles Booz or his wife Mercy Ann and Arthur VanHorn never had a land purchase recorded... nor did he leave a will!! He might have, but they lived in Licking County as of the last Census record and the court house burned down, so if there was a will in that county, we'll never know the details. Also contacted were the fraternal organizations to which John Booz and Elmer E. Booz belonged to. Many of those fraternal organizations require a family lineage to join ... in the case of the "Odd Fellows" organization to which John Booz (5th child) belonged... there is no record of him.
Elmer belonged to the "Modern Woodsmen", "Fraternal order of the Eagles" and the "Maccabees". None of these organizations have records either old enough for them or do not exist. I really have lost track of how many avenues of research I've tried to verify Charles and Mercy Ann's ancestry... but nothing has worked. There are no others who have even put Charles and Mercy Ann together into a "FAMILY UNIT" until it was done by myself 5 years ago!
Many doors seemed to open that might reveal a clue, but then the door was shut again and NO INFORMATION was gained... there is one last chance to find out information and that's in Zanesville in the basement of the old J.C. Penney building where they have some old records. I hope to uncover something there that will let me go farther back on Charles's line and on Mercy Ann's line.
Family lore states that Mercy Ann is descended from a Hessian Soldier that served in the Revolutionary war. Also that there was a "Grandpa Featherby" in the family. Lydia's maiden name is Featherby. Charles and Mercy Ann and Arthur and Lydia took both of their families from Pennyslvania about 1838 and moved to Muskingum County, Ohio AND settled 7 houses away from each other!!
100 years later there was a family reunion in 1924 for the Booz / VanHorn family. In attendance at this reunion were descendants of Charles Booz and Mercy Ann VanHorn. ALSO in attendance were descendants of Arthur VanHorn and Lydia Featherby... I'm SURE that Arthur and Lydia are the parents of Mercy Ann... why else would their descendants gather together in ONE reunion unless they were?
This one of the reasons I'm going back home in August 2012 to do further research. I can't even start in Pennsylvania as I'm not even positive which county in Pennsylvania they came from... though Arthur came from Bucks County for sure.
I had originally planned to go back just as a research trip in the Spring of 2012, and then some of my immediate cousins planned a family reunion in Loudonville, Ohio on August 4th & 5th. I wanted to do both, but budget wouldn't allow. So I put off going in the Spring so I could go to their reunion. As I did, the NEED to finish "The Booz in Our Blood" wasn't so imminent. With the death of both Greg's parents in 2011, I found it hard to fit all I had to do to finish the book before Christmas of 2011 so they could be given as Christmas gifts.
I planned for going to the Cousins Reunion on August 4th and then started planning all the things I needed to do for the research. I realized that visiting ALL the relatives I've contacted over the years in the Booz research would be nearly impossible to do in the 10 days I had for the whole trip and the 7 days I had in the Zanesville, Ohio area. So I planned a Booz/VanHorn family reunion... the first one in 82 years! How exciting. Then, the major contributor for the Harriet Susan Booz chapter of the book informed me by mail that he had to attend his Deavers Reunion and wouldn't be able to attend MINE!! I was quite devastated, but decided to call him and chat again. Quickly he realized that he was off by a day... My reunion is on Saturday, his Deavers Reunion is on Sunday... so we both get to attend each of the reunions together!!
Then I invited a cousin the family didn't know about (this cousin is from another line not related to the Booz or VanHorn family) to the Cousin's reunion on the 4th. She's coming from Florida! I've chatted with her many times over the phone and she decided to come to the reunion in Loudonville. To facilitate her in getting to meet as many BOGNER'S as she can, we set up ANOTHER family reunion on the 5th. She was born into the Bogner family and her parents divorced soon after she was born. We believe that her grandmother (my great grandmother) did not welcome this marriage or birth or maybe she wasn't informed about it at all... but this birth was kind of a family secret. When Sharon contacted me via Ancestry.com about "Frank" being her father... I was STUNNED! I didn't have a child for Frank other than his kids whom I knew and visited in Colorado when I was a kid. How did my own mother and grandmother NOT have Sharon in their files that I inherited and had by this time fully sourced and verified??!! I saw Sharon's birth certificate... yep, she belongs! So I called my mom and asked her what she knew. She said she could never verify anything and couldn't get any information, so she did not include a child in the records!
This journey I've been on for the last 6-7 years has been incredible. I've found good people and though I've seen to good and the bad in behavior, mostly the line I come from have had long lasting marriages, strong children and a God loving and serving people! Taken from one obituary in 1908:
"She was a true believer in God and his power to save."
My heart truly has been "turned" as the scripture Malachi 4: 5 & 6 states: "And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers...." I have truly felt their guiding hand in my life, and with so many family deaths recently and even the death of 3 close friends last year ... I honestly envy them that they get to meet these people I'm so fond of, on the "other side"! I have no Death Wish, but OH, how I wish I could visit... just for an hour on the other side and ask my million dollar question:
WHO WERE YOUR PARENTS?
