Greene County Genealogical Society
~by Valerie Ogren
Meeting notice: The next meeting of the Greene County Genealogical Society will be Saturday, June 6, at 10 am in the basement meeting room of the Jefferson public library. Elaine Deluhery will present a program on “Using DNA in your Research.” If you have done this testing, you are welcome to join in the discussion. The room is handicapped accessible. Try out the new super quiet elevator. Guests are always welcome.
County Fair: One more reminder – Entry day is Thursday, July 9. Use the east door at Clover Hall. If you need a list of exhibit categories, there are copies in the reference library.
Reference library: If you have an interest in family history but need some help getting started, we have volunteers in our reference room every Wednesday from 1 to 4 pm and every Saturday from 9 am to noon. We have an online computer and can help you find some free sites. There is also a copy machine if you find something in the printed material you would like copied.
Some new books are currently being added to our Family History section, thanks to the generous gift from Norma Jean (Correy) Schlarbaum. They include the Correy, Oberkamper and Schlarbaum families with hundreds of allied names. Norma gave them to me at the Rippey alumni gathering Memorial Day weekend. I took a little time (okay, a lot of time) perusing the Correy book and was amazed at what I found. I have known the Correy kids all my life – Norma, Mahlon, Marilyn (in my class) and Janice. But what I never realized until now was that the Correy family came to Greene County from Champaign County, IL. In Illinois they lived in the same neighborhood as my Heater ancestors and may have traveled together when they came to Iowa. Another one for the small world department.
Cairns-Elliott family: From a recent email from Chris Cairns: “I am a relatively long time member of the Greene County Genealogical Society and I would like to share the following information with you regarding my 2nd great-grandfather on my mother’s side. My great-grandfather was a Greene County resident since the late 1860s and passed away in Jefferson in 1911. His name is Horatio Bardwell Elliott. He was a combat wounded private, Civil War veteran and a member of the GAR ( Grand Army of the Republic ). He is buried in the Jefferson Cemetery.
Horatio was a resident of Rumney, NH, married with two very young children. He enlisted into Company E, 12th Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers at the age of 33 on Aug. 22, 1862. He was mustered in Sept. 9, 1862. He survived the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862. On May 3, 1863, at the Battle of Chancellorsville, VA, he was shot through the elbow and hip with a minnie ball. The wound to his elbow rendered his arm useless for the rest of his life. Why it wasn’t amputated is unknown. I remember my great-aunt Sadie, (Sarah Elliott – Smith), telling me she changed the dressing on his elbow several times per week due to drainage. The wound never healed completely. There were no antibiotics in those days. Horatio was discharged from the Army because of his wounds on Oct. 3, 1864, in Concord after spending considerable time in various hospitals convalescing.
Upon returning home to Rumney, Horatio discovered that his wife had abandoned him and their two children. He secured his children and sent them to eastern Iowa where he had a sister living in Jones County. There the children were cared for by his sister while he took care of business in Rumney. He finally secured a divorce from his wife and remarried, traveled back to Iowa, picked up his children and moved on to Greene County about 1867, where he bought some farm land north of Jefferson. According to his pension papers he received about $7 per month disability from the Army. Can you imagine a one-armed Civil War veteran farming the rest of his life? This was before there were tractors and plowing with a team of horses had to be quite a challenge, if this was in fact what he did!
Horatio’s son, Boardman Horatio Elliott, owned the first car dealership in Jefferson and I believe he sold Maxwells. Boardman married Emma Reeder. One of their sons was Charles Augustus Elliott, my mother’s father. He married Iva Elsie Page. They had three daughters and one son. Charles retired from the Iowa Electric & Power Co. in Jefferson. His son, C. Arthur Elliott, a/k/a “Snic”, was the Greene County engineer for many years. He was an officer in the Army during WWII and helped build the Burma Road.
Why I am just now submitting this information of my maternal side of my family after all these years is a mystery to me? I should have done it a long time ago! Thank you for your time and consideration.” Signed, Christopher Elliott Cairns
This is another one for the “small world” department. Boardman Horatio Elliott also had a son, Floyd, who was married to Flora Buswell – a sister to Duane’s maternal grandmother, Lucy Buswell Clark.
Anyone who has lived in Greene County for some years will remember “Snic” Elliott. He was a savior to Greene County farmers in his determination to pave many miles of roads so that no home was more than 2 miles from a pavement. If you have a story you would like to share, please contact us.
Contact us: Our web page is located at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~iagcgs/. Email us at gcgsiowa@hotmail.com or P O Box 133, Jefferson IA 50129-0133.
