Genealogy & Family History Community
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Leave the blood feuds at home
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... the moral of this story, the moral of this song
is simply that one should never be
where one does not belong
so when you see your neighbor carrying something
help him with his load
and don’t go mistaking Paradise
for that home across the road
Back in 1995 when I first became interested in my family history, I had the good fortune of meeting two women, school teachers by profession, who made preserving the histories of Fayette County IL families their mission. Their mimeographed genealogies were later published in booklet form and placed in local libraries. They had the benefit of interviewing local elders especially those to whom those precious family bibles had been passed down. What could be better than primary, first-hand knowledge, right? These women actually knew my great-grandparents and had talked to them about their own parents and grandparents! So it was that I began my own journey into the past. This is mostly a story for beginning family historians, particularly a caution about sources. It is closely tied to my last diary which I was able to write only after the discovery I’ll describe after the jump.
My paternal grandmother’s grandmother, who I’ve discovered on this journey was known by her middle name, was born Nancy Caroline Casey to Wilson and Barbara Riley Casey on 14 Feb 1839. She married a man whose surname was Prater, had a daughter named Eliza Jane (my Great Grandmother) and a son named William Dudley. The records I have found show him only as William D. but the family histories have the full middle name. They say that he was called Sonny and that he was named after his father William Dudley Prater, who was either “killed in” or “died in” or “during” the Civil War. The genealogies I’ve seen have only an approximate birth date of 1831, name his parents as John Prater and Fanny Walker Prater and say that the family was thought to have lived in Bond County IL.
This lineage is also contained in a massive Prater family online database consisting of 120,000+ records. So I spent lots of time and effort chasing down the elusive William. In all my searching, though, nowhere did I find any actual, you know, record for a William D Prater who was a likely suspect. No marriage records, no census records, no military records, no nothing. So who was this Great-Great-Grandfather Prater and why was he hiding from me? Something just wasn’t right about this, but because of the above and because I had, in her very own writing, Sonny Prater’s daughter’s own attestation that her grandfather’s name as William Dudley, the search went on.
The untangling
I now believe that the source of what turned out to be the “great confusion” was the 1850 Bond Co census. For, lo, there in the household of John and Fanny Prater is a William J Prater, age 19. Looking at the census record itself, I can see that if one wished long enough, and furiously clicked one’s heels hard enough, that J might really be a D.
Later census records show that Caroline’s two children were born in Missouri and I was able to track down that same William J who was 19 and living in Bond Co. in 1850, to Harrison Co MO in 1860. The John and Fanny Prater household was there too. Could this be my elusive great-great-grandfather? How had that J turned into Dudley?
As I continued searching it became clear that the William J Prater in Harrison Co MO was not my guy. Or if he was, there was some secret divorce or abandonment, because he married in MO and lived to an old age there. I finally had to admit to myself that the wild goose chase that had left me barking up the wrong tree was all because I’d been given a bum steer. [this is your my brain on genealogy] I am aghast now at the time I wasted trying to fit this guy into what I thought MUST be his proper place.
With that admission, came what I believe must be the truth. In another of my usual scattershot searches I stumbled upon the 1860 Iron Township, Iron Co, MO census, and in the household of “Elitha” and “Carsar” Prater is a Caroline Prater, age 20, Eliza J Prater, age 3, and William D Prater, age 11/12. Bazinga! That’s them!
Okay, but who was this “Elitha” Prater? As luck would have it, a response to a comment I had made on Ancestry.com led me to email correspondences with two other Prater researchers. I found that Elitha was actually Eliphaz, named for his grandfather Eliphas Riley. (Yes, that guy AGAIN!) Also that Eliphaz and Kesiah Skelly Prater had a son named Zebunal or Zebulon who was born circa 1838 but about whom hardly anything else was known. With that little bit to go on I checked the 1850 Wayne Co TN census – the place where close to 90% of my paternal ancestors lived in the early 1800s – and found “Zebunal” Prater, age 12, in the household of “Elija” and Chisa Prater. This would mean young Zeb was born in about 1838 and that Zebunal Prater was a son of Eliphaz Prater and his wife Kesiah (Chisa) Skelly Prater.
A marriage record I had found on Ancestry.com for Caroline Casey and Zebaneal Prater in Christian County, IL in March 1855 made sense now. Since both Prater and Casey were such common names in that and surrounding counties I hadn’t pursued it because Zebaneal? Who ‘dat? Besides, the Caseys lived in Fayette County. The time had come for getting my hands on the real thing, because as we all know, there ain’t nuthin’ like the real thing, baby.... So to the County Courthouse I went for my favorite kind of research.
You can’t imagine the excitement I felt when the person in the Clerk’s office said they did have the record and that if I wanted a copy it would cost me 8 bucks. “Not a problem,” I replied. She did caution me that during the time of the marriage, parents names weren’t part of the record. Maybe not, but because both were under the age of consent, and a stroke of good luck for me, the authorities that had been given for the marriage were written on the reverse side of the license. I guess she didn’t recognize she was giving me genealogical gold. Eliphaz Prater for my son “Zebaneal” and William Casey for my sister Caroline Casey, who “has no parents in this country” and who ”I have control of.”
This was surely it! Caroline Casey had a brother William who was 2 years older than she and who stayed in Christian county when their parents had relocated to Johnson Co IL in time for the 1855 Illinois State census. It seemed reasonable to me that Johnson County could be said, in the vernacular of the time, not to be in this “country.”
So I’ve found my Prater great-great grandfather and he’s Zeb something. I’ve found that no one who has worked on this family is sure. Some say Zebunal, others Zebulon. And his death?
In bit of genealogical luck, he died in the year prior to the 1860 Federal Census enumeration so the Census Mortality Schedule for Iron Co MO shows that “Zebulon” Prater, Occupation: “coalminer, collier” died at the age of 21 in Iron County MO in August 1859. Not “in or during the Civil War” but close enough, I guess.
The same Iron Co MO census of 1860 shows the Wilson and Barbara Casey household there as well, with three sons occupied in mining. Why was their daughter Caroline and her two children in the Eliphaz Prater household then? I expect that since women were still considered the property of their husbands, that if the husband were to die she would become the property – and responsibility – of her husband’s father. How hard it must have been for Caroline to lose her young husband and have the raising of two young children to contend with.
The Iron Co Praters and Caseys all returned to Christian and Fayette Counties by the Fall of 1862. I’ve already told the story of their service to the Union Army. Caroline went on to marry John W Hayes in August of 1863. He was a widower himself with his own tragic history and was 15 years older than Caroline. Together they had at least eight children.
So a reordering of my family tree has been done. My old friends John and Fanny Walker Prater had to go, to be replaced by Eliphaz and Kesiah “Chisa” Skelly Prater. Sadly, one of my favorites, the ear-biting Great, Tennessee Holly Prater, is now just a very rascally 3rd great-grand uncle . And Eliphaz? His mother was another of the Riley wimmin leading me back to the exact same Riley progenitors that appear 4 times now in my extended tree. I know them already! Kesiah will bring new names and new stories. To be sure, in the very limited work I’ve done on her, I find that her father was murdered, possibly in a dispute between two Baptist sects. This genealogy thing never fails to amuse and amaze!
Oh, and I submitted my story to the Fayette County Genealogical Society. It will appear in the Winter Issue of "Fayette Facts." Now maybe people won't go mistakin' William D for the Zeb they never know'd.