Wrapping up the Cullins

Is a genealogy ever finished, well no – there is always more to discover. I’ve had the feeling, though at this point in my life it is good to do some ‘wrapping-up’ of the family lines. It wasn’t difficult to decide which line was first as these people (in a ‘6^th Sense’ way) have tugged at me and called to me for years. And, in a more down to earth way – be it an email from a distant cousin, or a little tidbit in an old faded newspaper the Cullins have been persistent.

It hasn’t been an easy journey. It has been 64 years since I first learned of my Great Grandmother Hannah Cullins Shaffer. No one talked about her after she died of cancer at the age of 55 in 1921. My grandfather wouldn’t mention his mother. My grandmother tried to get him to open up but he stayed as closed as a threatened clam – which makes one think that there were unhappy memories. Grandma hinted at that, but I can only speculate. Then Hannah’s mother, Amanda Cordray Cullins, I was told came from a tragic family living under a dark cloud, including a house fire where everything was lost. 

Dorcas Cullins, Hannah's sister

The Cullins and Cordray families were from Ohio, but Amanda was a puzzle. I was pretty sure Amanda came from Muskingum County, which was her husband’s birthplace, but to which Cordray family did she belong? She fell through the cracks of the 1850 census where she should have been named. She wasn’t yet married to William C. Cullins and she wasn’t listed with any Cordray family. She was about 16 and my guess is that she hired out to another farm as a mother’s helper and wasn’t counted with them.

To move on with the line I had two possibilities – either Amanda was the daughter of George Washington Cordray or his brother Andrew. At first I thought it was George and put that option on my tree, however that was a mistake and misleading to others who might have copied my work as I still had no proof that Amanda was George’s daughter. I kept looking and years down the road I found that ‘one little thing’ that confirmed her father to be Andrew and not George.

That one little thing? It was one of those little gossipy news items in a Fayette County, Iowanewspaper that told us that ‘Amanda Cullins had a visit from her sister Charlotte.’ It was Andrew who had a daughter named Charlotte. For a time Charlotte and her family lived in Fayette County but they’d moved on to South Dakota. Mystery solved.

William C Cullins, Hannah's father

Hannah’s Cullins family goes back to a Revolutionary War Soldier, John Cullins b 1705, originally from Ireland and with whom our families’ members can join the DAR or SAR if they wish. This is an established DAR line. Recently ancestry.com has added ‘Thrulines’ to our trees that show our DNA matches for each person back to our 5^th great grandfathers. That would be to Edward Cullins b 1727, the son of the Revolutionary John.

I’m very near to compiling and printing this information for my family with the help of ancestry.com’s ‘Life Story’ feature that adds significant events that occurred during their lifetimes.

Where from here with the Cullins? Last week I found the feature on ancestry’s DNA pages that helps me color code cousin groups. Wow, the group for Cullins, Cordray and a couple other allied families has 93 cousins of varying degrees. Those are just the ones with public trees who share information. There are so many more with private trees, or who have disconnected their trees, or haven’t built their trees yet. What to do with that cousins group?! I’m thinking about contacting the 93 to see if they would like to have a cousin’s Facebook page for sharing, friendship, and family reunions.

As for my Cullins family I have a choice, I can develop each allied family, as I have for the Cullins – filling out our information on our Muskingum County Ohio lines – or, I can pick a different family entirely. The thing is I recently fell into another Cullins rabbit hole when I received an email about their Delaware roots. Delaware? What! 

Desperately Seeking Amanda

[21 Jull 2021 I am happy to report that these mental musings about Amanda below finally paid off. About three years later I was searching through all the newspaper articles in Fayette County Iowa looking for references to family. These small town newspapers reported all the social happenings in the county. And there, finally, was a small item - 'Amanda Cullins had a visit from her sister Charlotte.' Checking the Cordray records I found that Charlotte was not the daughter of George Cordray, she was the daughter of his brother Andrew Cordray. That would also make Amanda the daughter of Andrew! Subsequently, I found that Amanda's mother, Mary Gerren had died in 1840 leaving behind under aged children, including Amanda and Charlotte. Shortly after Mary's death Andrew remarried and started a new family. It may be that this was not a happy situation for the children of his first family. When Charlotte and her husband moved west to Iowa Amanda joined them in this covered wagon journey. They settled in Floyd County, Iowa. William Cullins, Amanda's future husband followed from Muskingum County, Ohio. It is likely they knew each other in Ohio. They were married in Floyd County but settled in Fayette County.] The mystery of Amanda solved. 

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There aren’t many people named Amanda from the early 1800s so how hard can it be? How could a woman have lived, married, produced six children who survived childhood, moved lock, stock, and barrel from Ohio to Iowa, and no record of her family connection anywhere except her tombstone.

William C Cullins

Who knows, maybe she was christened with another name and affectionately called Amanda by her husband, William Cullins.  Or, maybe she said to him, “If you can be  Bill don’t call me MayBell. I want to be Amanda.”  Whatever the case, she is my 2^nd great grandmother and I’m trying to link her to the many Cordray/Cordrey/Cordry families from Ohio.

My great grandmother, Hannah Cullins, told my grandmother that her mother Amanda’s family was haunted by tragedy and bad luck. Their home was lost in a fire where all family goods and records were turned to ashes. Worse than that, it may be that Amanda and her siblings were orphaned in that fire – losing one or both of their parents.  This is where my memory gets fuzzy as I’m not sure if the parents were lost or just the things. Still there must be a record somewhere of this fire, or a Cordray family with a daughter named Amanda before that fire.

I love census records. They are a tremendous help to genealogists. The old ones are riddled with inaccuracies, but still give us so much information that would have otherwise have been lost – especially after 1850. Why after 1850 you may ask?  The census records prior to 1850 only named the head of household and numbered the rest living in that household. So much information is missing because wives and children weren’t deemed important enough to name. I don’t know who or what created the change, but bless them! From 1850 on all members of the household are named, including servants or anyone living with the family.

Amanda was born in 1834, so the 1840 census doesn’t show which family she is in. She doesn’t show up in the 1850 census. She was 16 and could have been helping out at a neighboring farm and listed with them or married. In 1850 William Cullins, who was older than Amanda, was still living with his parents and siblings. By 1860 both William and his brother John have moved their families to Fayette County, Iowa. Their mother, Dorcas Meredith Cullins, also moved to Iowa. Here's the kicker - I can find a marriage license for William Cullins and Mary Jane O'Neil on 31 Oct 1854. Who is this? Did Mary Jane assume the name Amanda when she arrived in Iowa? Did William marry Mary Jane and then run off with Amanda? Did my grandmother get her surname wrong, when she seemed so sure of it.  Was Amanda Cordray her 'real' name and after the fire was she taken in by the O'Neil family and given a new name - and, once married and on her own took back her old name? She is a mystery.

Amanda is with the Cullins in Iowa, of course, but who are her people?  William and Amanda named a son George W and there is a George Washington Cordray who would have been of her father’s

age. Is George W Cullins named after her father?  To further the Cordray research I’ve temporarily connected Amanda and George Washington Cordray as father and daughter, but this is only an assumption on my part.

In between running out to see fireworks displays, assuring my dog, Beatrice, that the world wasn’t coming to an end – oh, and in the end she actually watched the sparkly things in the sky – I searched the census for every possible family for a child named Amanda. These days you can find Amanda Cordray on Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter (but not my Amanda - wrong century) and I've plastered her name on genealogy message boards – AMANDA b. abt 1834 WHERE ARE YOU!!!