News and Stories

Marriage Records, circa 1848

Family Stories Collection: This special collection contains a selection of family history stories submitted by our readers. Originally published April 6, 2014. Recently I found the 1848 Ohio marriage record for my husband’s 2nd great-grandfather, John Garver (1821-1901) and his …

Marriage Records, circa 1848 .

Eva Grimm Wyatt: A Murder in Chicago

Eva Grimm was born around 1886 in Aurora, Illinois, and married her husband Alfred Wyatt in 1908.  The marriage was not a match made in heaven.  Eva eventually ended up having an affair with a man she knew who lived in Chicago whose name was Herbert Conkright, and she even moved in with him for a few months one spring.  But eventually she returned to her husband Alfred, although her contact with her lover continued—but not always by her choice.  When she ignored him, Herbert sometimes posed as a detective when attempting to get information about her from her family and friends.  One time, it was reported in the papers, he threatened to push her off a bridge to her death if she didn’t return to him.

One Girl’s Childhood During the Great Depression

“I was born at home (all four of us were), at the farm at Barbers Corner on August 18, 1922, at six in the morning.  A nurse and a doctor came—Dr. Ludwig—but I was born before he got there!  My mother got a “hired girl” to help her take care of us for a few weeks.

The Fourteen Garvers of Clare County, Michigan

Walter Garver and Hazel Alwood were married in Clare County, Michigan in 1914.  Over the next 25 years, they had fifteen children—in order, they were Doris, Charles, Wayne, Forest, Lester, Fern, Donna, Walter, Virginia, Max, Robert, Rex, Betty, Marlyn, and William.  All survived to adulthood except the last, William, who died from congenital heart disease at only five days old.

What Happened to Ethel May Fazenbaker Murphy?

Growing up I had always heard about Ethel Murphy, mother to my great grandmother Frances May Catherine Murphy Fazenbaker Knepp. When I started doing genealogy about twenty five years ago I asked my mother Virginia Catherine Miller Johnson about her family. She told me that her grandmother’s mother disappeared and that family “lore” had it that (and I am always skeptical about family lore) that she was killed in some sort of accident around November of 1908 or 1909. I thought, OK, I can start looking to see what I could possibly find. Of course, this was all before the internet.

The Two Wives of Thomas Garver

Thomas Garver (1850-1902) was farmer in Defiance County, Ohio.  According to notes taken by his great-granddaughter Ruth Marie Burkhart in 1943 for a school project, he had a sideline as well.  She wrote, “He was a preacher of the United Brethren Church located at Ridgeville, a small town a few miles from Napoleon [Ohio].  He lived on a small farm near the church.  He farmed and did odd jobs through the week and then on Sunday he gave his sermon.”