Guiding Question

Evidence & Interpretations

     This page is inspired by a mystery:  our inability to find 12 year-old Ellen Kinsman in the 1860 census.  We know she's somewhere in St. Joseph Co, MI, probably in Burr Oak Village, but she is simply nowhere to be found in the census data.  (Right: Girl washing clothes, from www.medivia.sele.it)

     Her father Sheldon Kinsman, age 44, is listed as a farmer in Florence Township, St. Joseph County with his wife Mary E. Kinsman, 40, and their five children (Sarah, 9, Sheldon Jr., 5, Mary, 3, Jackson, 2, and Thomas, 1), as seen in the following 1860 census page excerpt:   

     Her uncle Asa E. Kinsman, age 41, is in nearby Burr Oak Township with his wife Sarah Rogers Kinsman, age 37, their six children ages 2-16, and his mother-in-law Susan Rogers [Roggers], age 56: 

     Meanwhile, her future husband Frank Lang, age 19, is working as a laborer on a farm in Springfield Township, Lagrange County, Indiana, about 10 miles southeast of Burr Oak Village (erroneously listed as "Frank Laug" in the ancestry.com database).  In August 1861 Frank comes to Burr Oak and enrolls in the Union Army:  

     Where's Ella?   A systematic search of the 1860 census reveals 28 girls age 11-13 named Ellen (20), Ella (5), Nellie (2), and Nettie (1) in St. Joseph County MI.  Four of these 28 girls were living with families bearing surnames different than their own.  They were::

Nellie Finch, 11, b. NY, in Lockport Twp, living with farmer Samuel Adams, 35, his wife Louise Adams, 29, both b. NY, and two others, nearest post office Three Rivers Village.

Ellen Tailor, 11, b. NY, in White Pigeon Twp, living with Sean Wetherwax, 40, farmer, b. NY, and wife Harriet Wetherwax, 36, b. NY, nearest post office White Pigeon Village.

Ellen Duel, 12, b. Ohio, living with Green and Bradly families in Sherman, MI, farmers; nearest post office Centreville.

Ellen Jenkins, 12, b. NY, living with James Powers, blacksmith, and family, in Burr Oak Village.

     The first three do not really fit our Ella.  All are living on farms, and the ages and birth places don't much match our Ella. 

     The fourth, Ellen Jenkins, seems to fit her very well:  her age, birthplace, and place of residence in 1860 all correspond what we would expect to find for Ellen Kinsman. 

     Thus we're left with two plausible possibilities:  either  (1)  Ellen Kinsman was missed by the census-taker; or (2) Ellen Jenkins was really Ellen Kinsman. 

     Three additional factors tend to support the latter hypothesis.  They are all rooted in several larger contexts:  namely, that Ellen and her father Sheldon were estranged; that Ellen was desperate to leave St. Joseph County and her father and his family; and that she knew that marriage was her only viable way out (see Books I and III of the Saga).  With these contexts in mind, the following facts seem important:

1.     Jenkins was a very common surname in Chemung Co, NY from the 1840s.  Census data for 1850 show a grand total of 73 Jenkins's living in Chemung Co., including nine in Southport (Ellen Kinsman's home village).  Indeed, one Chemung Co family named Jenkins preceded Asa and Sheldon Kinsman's migration to Burr Oak, St. Joseph Co, MI in the 1850s, making them one of the first white families to migrate to Burr Oak.  (Richard & Ann Jenkins & children James, Isaac, Joseph, and William; they did NOT have a daughter named Ellen.)  

     Census data from 1850 also show a 4 year-old girl named Ellen Jenkins (b. 1846) in Chemung County.  She is still there in 1860.   No other Ellen Jenkins from the 1850 census fits this Ellen Jenkins in Burr Oak in 1860.  Sheldon and Asa Kinsman knew (or should have known) of a girl named Ellen Jenkins living in Chemung Co.   It thus seems entirely possible that Sheldon lent his daughter Ellen the surname "Jenkins" when he "let her out" as a servant to the Powers in the late 1850s.  The name was familiar to him.  He knew of an Ellen Jenkins of the same age in Chemung Co.  And, we speculate, he didn't want the Kinsman's good name associated with his daughter Ellen. 

2.     Ella Kinsman was 13½ years old in August 1861, when hundreds of young men came pouring into Burr Oak to enlist in the Union Army.   In general, marriage prospects for young women living in towns were vastly greater than such prospects for farm girls.   The hypothesis is that living in the midst of the hustle and bustle of Burr Oak Village's 653 people made it possible for her to meet Frank Lang there in August 1861.

3.     Ellen Jenkins lived in close proximity to five coopers, of the total of nine coopers in Burr Oak Village in 1860 (nine of an economically active population [EAP] of 163).   Four coopers lived within two houses of Ellen Jenkins.  A fifth lived five doors down from her.  Thus, five of Ellen Jenkins' near neighbors were coopers by trade.   Frank Lang worked as a cooper all his life.  It thus seems entirely possible that because of his trade Frank knew, or came to know, one or more of the five coopers who were neighbors of Ellen Jenkins, again increasing the odds that she and Frank would meet.  (Right: Cooper at work; from the Collection of The Shelburne County Museum, Shelburne, Nova Scotia, Canada) 

     One way to better understand the social environment of Burr Oak Village in 1860 is to identify its demographic characteristics and the spatial relationships among townsfolk.

Conclusions and More Questions

          One thing this search has made clear is that Nellie Kinsman at age 12 was a marginal person in the world.  So marginal she didn't even make a blip on the federal government's radar screen.  Getting missed by the census taker was pretty uncommon, though the odds varied in direct proportion to social class. 

     Wealthy people were missed in vanishingly small numbers.  Poor people were missed much more frequently.  Nellie was poor, working class, illiterate, didn't attend school, and didn't live with her birth family -- even though her birth family, and her uncle's family, lived nearby. 

     That's a lot of strikes against you.  Especially if you're 12 years old and female.

     If Ellen Jenkins really was Ellen Kinsman, it seems possible that Lucina Towers became her fictive aunt.  This suggestion is prompted by Ella's comment in her divorce papers of 1870-71 that she lived with an "uncle" in Hastings, MN after her husband Frank abandoned her.  This was in 1868, eight years after this census was taken.

      Did Nellie's time in Burr Oak help to establish the connection that led to her relationship with this mysterious uncle in Hastings eight years later?  Who was this uncle?  He wasn't a Kinsman, or a Burr, or a Tuthill.  He might have been one of Lucina Tower's brothers, but a thorough search has failed to reveal Lucina's maiden name.  Who would Nellie be most likely to develop an affective relationship with?  A woman -- someone older than she -- a middle-aged woman who had a brother in Hastings.  Someone who befriended her.  But who?  Maybe learning his identity will help us find her in 1860.  Maybe it's Lucy Wilcox, perhaps an aunt of Nathan Wilcox, the man who married her Aunt Selma.  We don't know -- what we do know is that the puzzles just keep going and going and . . .

     Yet and still, there are some puzzles we think we've gone a good ways toward resolving.  And one of those concerns the reasons behind her seemingly rash decision in 1865 to escape Burr Oak Michigan by marrying Frank Lang and bearing his child -- reasons that we're pretty sure can be traced, at least in part, to her relationship (or lack of relationship) with her father, Sheldon Kinsman.

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