Meet Cyrus and Virena....
Good morning Farmgirl Sisters!
Spring is almost here! I hope everyone's season is off to a wonderful start.
When I last wrote, I talked about finding my great, great grandmother Emily (Welborn) Seymour Wright Stewart.
I'll introduce her parents in this post because I want to show what can happen when you find just one vital piece of information. Sometimes that just leads to more questions than answers, but at other times, as in the case of Emily and her parents, just learning her name and story opened the door to some fantastic discoveries.
As I did with Emily, I also wrote a biography based on what I learned for her parents Cyrus Welborn and Virena Hinshaw. What follows is just information for them, but I was able to use all of that to continue back in time to verify, document and claim two more Revolutionary War patriot ancestors - John Welborn and his mother-inlaw, Martha McFarlane McGee Bell
Meet Cyrus and Virena:
GENERATION 5D
Quakers Making Amends
Once a Quaker had
married out of unity or contrary to discipline the process of reinstatement in
the Quaker faith could be lengthy and complex. They had to describe (condemn)
their misbehavior in very specific terms and convince a Quaker committee that
they were repentant. This was especially difficult if a couple had moved away
from the meeting where the offense was initially documented.
Virena
“condemned her marriage out of unity” on September 9, 1841 at the Marlborough
Monthly Meeting in Randolph County. This must have satisfied the Meeting of her
repentance because she was later “granted a certificate of transfer” to the
Bloomfield Monthly Meeting in Parke County, Indiana.
Cyrus, Virena
and their oldest daughter, Emily (4B) moved to Indiana ca. 1844. Three more
children were born by 1850 – Martha Ann, Jesse R. and Joseph E. Virena’s
father, Jesse Hinshaw also moved his family to Indiana. The 1850 census shows
Jesse, Millie (listed as Emily), all their children, plus Cyrus, Virena and
their children all living in the same household in Montgomery County, Indiana.
Little Jesse R. Welborn must have died before 1850, as he is not listed on the
census.
The 1860
census shows that the Welborn family had grown even more. Another daughter,
named Louisa, and two sons, William and James had been born. Cyrus’s occupation
was listed as farmer. The value of his real estate was set at $1500.00 and his
personal property was valued at $275.00. That’s worth about $43,000.00 today.
They were modest holdings, to be sure, but for a couple raising a large family,
who started with nothing when they arrived in Indiana, Cyrus and Virena
appeared to be doing well. Oldest daughter Emily had married James Seymour in
1859, and at the time of the 1860 census had given birth to Cyrus and Virena’s
first grandchild, Emma (3A). It’s not
unreasonable to think that Cyrus and Virena saw a happy and stable future for
themselves and their children.
Long
simmering tensions between the US government and some of the southern states
over the issue of slavery erupted on April 12, 1861 – the beginning of the
Civil War. Cyrus Welborn enlisted in the Indiana 9th Light Artillery
Battery, Union Army on February 25, 1862. For the next 3 years he would serve
his country, leaving Virena to care for their children and try to hold onto
their farm. One has to wonder what she thought, watching him march off to war,
not knowing if she would ever see him again. Did he write letters to her? There
certainly weren’t any of the high-tech methods of communication we take for
granted today – no telephone, email, text messages, Skype, or social media
outlets. I would love to know if he did ever write to her and if so, do any of
those letters survive somewhere today? How did she and the children survive in
Cyrus’s absence?
Below is
a brief summary of the service of the Indiana 9th Light Artillery
Battery, copied from CivilWarArchive.com.
9th Independent Battery Light Artillery
SERVICE.--Moved to Pittsburg Landing, Tenn., March 27, 1862. Battle of Shiloh, Tenn., April 6-7. Advance on and siege of Corinth, Miss., April 29-May 30. Moved to Bolivar, Tenn., and duty there until November, 1862. Action at Bolivar August 30. Grant's Central Mississippi Campaign November, 1862, to January, 1863. Duty at Tallahatchie River December 24, 1862, to January 20, 1863. Moved to Colliersville, Tenn., thence to Memphis, Tenn., and to Columbus, Ky., March, 1863. Duty there until July 10. Expedition to Cape Girardeau April 29-May 4. Moved to Clinton, Ky., July 10. Campaign against Roddy's forces July 15-August 4. Duty at Union City, Tenn., August 4, 1863, to January 23, 1864. Pursuit of Forest December 20-26, 1863. Ordered to Vicksburg, Miss., January 23. Meridian Campaign February 3-March 2. Red River Campaign March 10-May 22. Fort DeRussy March 14. Occupation of Alexandria March 16. Henderson's Hill March 21. Battle of Pleasant Hill April 9. About Cloutiersville April 22-24. Alexandria April 30-May 13. Bayou LaMourie May 6-7. Retreat to Morganza May 13-20. Avoyelle's Prairie, Marksville, May 16. Yellow Bayou May 18. Moved to Vicksburg, Miss., May 19-24; thence to Memphis, Tenn., May 25-June 10. Lake Chicot, Ark., June 6-7. Smith's Expedition to Tupelo, Miss., July 5-21 (Non-Veterans). Harrisburg, near Tupelo, July 14-15. Old Town (or Tishamingo Creek) July 15. Smith's Expedition to Oxford, Miss., October 1-30. Moved to Jefferson Barracks, Mo., September 8-19. Expedition to DeSoto September 20-October 1. March through Missouri in pursuit of Price October 2-November 19. Moved to Nashville, Tenn., November 25-December 1. Battles of Nashville December 15-16. Pursuit of Hood to the Tennessee River December 17-28. Ordered to Indiana January 25, 1865.
It is a long list of service and battles, but Cyrus survived it all. He and the other members of the 9th boarded the Steamer Eclipse for the trip back to Indiana. They were to muster out upon reaching their home state and would finally be able to return to their families, homes and civilian lives. On the morning of January 27, 1865, The Eclipse, the Lady Franklin and the Madison were preparing to travel down the Tennessee River, toward Paducah, Kentucky. As their lines were drawn from the shore, the boilers of the Eclipse exploded.
There were 70 members of the 9th on board the Eclipse that day. Of those, only 10 escaped any injury. 30 men either died immediately or were so badly injured they died of their wounds over the following days. Cyrus Welborn was in the latter group. He was brought aboard the Lady Franklin where he remained for a week before dying February 2, 1865. The Lady Franklin was docked in Paducah, Kentucky at the time.
I haven’t been able to learn exactly how Virena was notified of Cyrus’s death. She may have received a telegram or maybe survivors of the blast carried the news home to her. She began the process of applying for a Civil War Widow’s Pension in April 1865. I obtained a copy of her application package which contained a wealth of biographical information. It also included the sworn statement of John Wharton Carty (who married Cyrus and Virena’s second daughter, Martha Ann) and Charles Connelly regarding Cyrus’s death. Both men served with Cyrus in the 9th, both were aboard the Eclipse when it exploded, and both were present when Cyrus died. Virena was eventually awarded her Widow’s pension in the amount of eight dollars per month.
There’s very little information about Virena after the death of Cyrus. I’m still trying to find out what happened to the property she and Cyrus had when he enlisted in the Army. Between 1866 and 1870 Virena moved to Daviess County, Missouri. She was enumerated on the 1870 US census with her son William C. and her daughter Emily (4B) and Emily’s children, Charles and Emma (3A – Robert W. Keigley’s mother).
A Missouri State Census for 1876 exists, but I haven’t found Virena on it. Some of her children had moved to Daviess County and were on that state census. She may have died, or it’s possible she married again.
Of all the family stories I’ve researched, this has been one of the saddest. I have no idea where Virena and Cyrus are buried. (See update below) Virena is most likely in Daviess County. I hope to find out for sure. There’s still a lot of work to do tracing their children and grandchildren, lots of questions I want to find answers to.
A NOTE ABOUT CENSUS RECORDS: Transcripts of the 1850, 1860, and 1870 census records are included. On the 1850 and 60 census, there is a child for Cyrus and Virena named “Josephine”. Although it seems unlikely that census takers would make the same mistake twice, I have to think that’s what happened. According to Virena’s own record of her children that she wrote when she applied for her widow’s pension, she did not have a daughter named “Josephine”, but rather a son named Joseph E.
Far be it from me to argue with another mother about who her children were.
Records from Ancestry.com, Fold3.com, Familysearch.com and the American Encyclopedia of Quaker Genealogy were my main sources of all the information presented here. Also various Civil War databases were used. I am glad to report that Cyrus's grave has been found. In 2019, several years after I wrote the narrative, a listing for Cyrus Welborn in the Popolar Grove Cemetary in Parke County, Indiana appeared. I was very glad to know that Cyrus did make it back home for a proper burial. I was really concerned that he had been buried in Kentucky with no surviving marker. His military file contained all his service information up to and including his death. But there was no mention of where he was buried. Maybe someday I'll be able to find Virena. This image of Cyrus's headstone is from Find A Grave.
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