Re: Annis McPherson Davis b. 1874 Dexter
MCPHERSON, MAULSBY
Posted By: Herbert Standing (email) In Response To: Annis McPherson Davis b. 1874 Dexter (Sherry Perez)
Date: 4/3/2003 at 11:10:13
Sherry Perez is looking for information concerning her great-grandmother, Annis Alvina (McPherson) Davis. I will submit what information I have concerning the ancestry of Annis (McPherson) Davis.
Allen G.McPherson b. 6 March 1848, d 6 April 1922, m. 13 March 1873, Dallas County, IA, Mary Ann Maulsby b. 26 Jan. 1853, d. Jan. 1888. Both are buried in the Bear Creek Cemetery in rural Union Township, Dallas County, IA, about six miles northeast of Dexter, Ia. In pioneer times this was a predominantly Quaker communtity, although a number are buried in the cemetery who were not members of the Society of Friends. It does not appear that Allen and Mary Ann Maulsby were members of Friends. --- It appears that there is only one other McPherson burial in the Bear Creek Cemetery, that of Celestia McPherson, d. 11 Sep.1867, daughter of A.M. and Losada McPherson. [There may have been a misreading of the cemetery stone, as there are 1870 and 1880 census records of a Francis McPherson and wife, Losada (Maulsby) McPherson living in Union Twp., Dallas County, IA, residing in Dexter in 1880.]
Mary Ann Maulsby was probably a daughter (or adopted daughter) of Wiley R. Maulsby b 6 Feb 1928, d. 21 Jan. 1887 and his wife Polly Barnard d. 12 Dec. 1908, aged 75 years, 9 mo., 23 days. Both Wiley and Polly are buried in the Bear Creek Cemetery.--- In the "Record Book of the Sub-Deirectors of Union, Township, 1858-1865", p. 19, Wiley and Polly Maulsby are listed as parents of a daughter of school age, in Sub-District No. 4, which at that time seemed to be the number of the Bear Creek School, which I believe was first held in the first Bear Creek Friends Meetinghouse built near the site of the Bear Creek Cemetery. ----- Mary Ann Maulsby could well have been an adopted child or Wiley and Polly Mausby. There seems to be no record that they had other children. However, she would have been adopted long before the advent of of the orphan trains. There was no railroad in this area of Iowa until the building of the route from Des Moines to Omaha about 1868. --- It is likely that Mary Ann was born in Indiana and came to Iowa with the Maulsbys as a small child. The first pioneers at Bear Creek were predominantly Quaker or of Quaker descent, the first settlers arriving in 1853, although there had been settlements along the Raccoon River to the east and north as early as 1845.
Wiley R. Maulsby was a son of Lemuel Maulsby and his wife Ruth Reynolds. The following is taken from "Genealogy of the Maulsby Family", by Cora M. (Patty) Payne, pp. 106-107:
" Lemuel Maulsby and Ruth Reynods ---holding membership in the Friends church during life --- lived in Wayne County, then in LaPorte County, Indiana, in Michigan for a time, and back to LaPorte. In 1854 they sold out and moved to Dallas county, Iowa, reaching their destination April 15th. Lemuel bought a farm about four miles southwest of Redfield on the South Raccoon River. This was the Iowa home of this family, Lemuel and wife both dying there.---" Lemuel and Ruth (Reynolds) Maulsby are both buried in the Bear Creek Cemetery.--- There is a copy of the Maulsby family genealogy by Cora Payne in the Iowa State Historical Library in Des Moines. There is another book, which I located in the Quaker Collection at Whittier College, Whittier, California, by O. W. Maulby, "Rolling Stone" (Los Angeles: Privately Printed, 1931), in which Orlando Maulsby descibed his life while growing up in the area outside of Redfield in the years following the Civil War. ---- Abstracted Quaker Records of the Maulsby family in Indiana can be found in a set of six small volumes and an index: "Abstracts of the Records of the Society of Friends in Indiana", edited by Willard Heiss. This is the seventh volume of a larger work, "Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy", compiled under the direction of William Wade Hinshaw ---- including abstracts of records of Friends Meetings farther east and south, from which the Maulsby ancestors may have come.---- About 1843 there was a separation among Friends in Indiana, wherein a number of Friends especially devoted to the Abolitionist cause broke away from the larger Indian Yearly Meeting. Although some were welcomed back in membership about 1856, a number were lost to the Socity of Friends at this time. Some of the Maulsby family may have been among this group.
Polly Barnard, wife of Wiley R. Maulsby, probably was of Quaker ancestry. Some of the Barnard family were Nantucket Quakers who migrated to the North Carolina Piedmont just before the Revolutionary War. Descendants of these Nantucket Quakers tended to move up into eastern Tennessee, then to southwestern Ohio, and then to Indiana.
Perhaps this will give a little background for farther research.
- Herbert Standing, 1806 Bear Creek Road, Earlham, Iowa 50072
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