Stover PipeLine #7,
December, 1976
 

Dear Ewer Descendants,

   Pipe-line #6 went a little "hard" on some folks including Same Higgins, Abe 'Link' Ewer, Charles Wamsley, Sr., and Aunt Clara Harford.
   Dorothy Rodehorst wrote in defense of Aunt Clara; Dorothy has very favorable memories of Aunt Clara recalling her as a very pretty and generous.  To use Dorothy's words: "I loved her."  At a very early age, Clara served as a companion to the elderly Mrs. Harford (of Harford's addition in Kearney), which eventually led to the meeting and marriage to Mrs. Harford's son, Omar.  The Omar Harfords had a furniture business in Ashland, Nebraska.  Omar and Clara had two children, Florence and Dwight (Charles?).  Dwight died at the early age of 10;  Florence married Kenneth Marcy, and had six children in South Dakota.  Anyone in touch with any descendants of Florence Harford Marcy ??

   One of the real kicks that a genealogist gets is making contact with a distant relative who is interested in a common line or fore bearer.  Just such a contact was made recently with a g- g- granddaughter of Charles and Sarah Wamsley, descended from "Uncle Charlie" Wamsley, brother of Ellen Wamsley Ewer, mentioned in Pipe- Line #6.  Mrs. Mary Durley of Potosi, Wisconsin, a third cousin, contacted Glenn Stover in search of Wamsley descendants.  Apparently, she used her Mother's notes and correspondence to come up with Dad's name and the Poole address.  Her brother is the postmaster at Cassville, Wisconsin.  Mrs. Durley is in touch with another Ewer cousin, Virginia Wood of Chicago, who is a grand-daughter of Angenlina Ewer Williams.  We've had a prolific exchange of information, some of which follows:

   Charles Wamsley was born March 2, 1798, in England; he died June 23, 1880.  Charles married Sarah Malah, born in 1803 in England.  She was one of three choler's victims in Cassville in 1850.
   From a 1910 article in The Weekly Times, Lancaster, Wisconsin:

   Sarah Wamsley, her two daughters, Ellen and Mary, and two sons, Charles and Jerry, came to America when the boys were very young.  The Father, Charles, came later.  Mother Sarah, in England, had been an artist or weaver or spinner of silks, and brought with her trunks of remnants of raw silks, unspun, such as used to interest the young people of Cassville who never saw how silk was produced.  Sarah was an intelligent woman; so was the father, Charles, and the Wamsley's were an interesting family.  They came in the early 1840's...

   Uncle Charles Wamsley, Ellen's brother, was born in 1837 in the town of Leek, Safford County, Saffordshire, England.
   Gram May said that Ellen was born near Manchester; Leek is about 30 miles south and a little west of Manchester, and I assume that probably Leek is also Ellen's birthplace.  (My map indicates Stafford County.)
   According to Civil War records, Uncle Charles was five feet in height.  Another brother, Jeremiah Wamsley, who died in 1865 during the Civil War, was 5 ft., 1 in.

   Uncle Charles apparently traveled quite a bit and kept good contact with his kin.  Bette Ewer Hinz and Gram May both recalled Uncle Charlie's visits to Nebraska; according to Gram, he visited Poole once after she and Bert were married.
   Mrs. Durley shared a portion of a detailed diary which Uncle Charlie kept.  She has four bound volumes of his diaries!!  Some entries follow.  This information is not exactly teeming with mystery- solving clues, but I find it extremely interesting that excerpts which include names familiar to Nebraska Wamsley/ Ewer descendants would be shared 80 years later by a distant cousin!

   A recent letter from Ernest Clayton shared some interesting Joe Clayton recollections and stories... the subject of PipeLine #8 for sure.  Allen Stover aided a slowly growing collection of Poole Stover life, the subject of a future letter.

   - Do like to hear from you!
 

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