The Remarkable Story of the McClure Brothers (Civil War/Gibson County History)

You can read part of the story in the news article, below, published on page 4 of the 1 Sep 1911 Evansville Journal newspaper. It tells of the annual reunion of the 17th Indiana Infantry Regiment, Company H, assembled in Gibson County, Indiana, during the Civil War.

Not mentioned was a fifth McClure brother, Alex, who died four years earlier. He also served in this company of Gibson County men. David, mentioned above, was their brother who served in a different Indiana company and regiment during the war.

Now, the McClure brothers were sons of Catherine Devin-McClure (1812-1888), who was Rev. Alexander Devin's daughter. The Devin family pioneered Gibson County and Princeton, Indiana. Catherine's brothers ran a mercantile business on the square in Princeton and the building on the Northwest Corner of the Public Square is the Devin Block, built by them in the 1800's. They were well known for selling loads of pork and produce at the Port of New Orleans, floating their merchandise by flatboat down the rivers. In fact, the name Joseph Devin was popular among the residents of that town, I have a second cousin named after him, Joseph Devin Hussey (1859-1951).

So FIVE of Catherine's sons went off to war in 1861 as part of the Union Army...and ALL OF THEM came home in one piece! That is quite remarkable! And their regiment (Indiana's 17th) was active in famous battles at Chickamauga and the Siege of Atlanta. You can easily fact check me on that.

Here are the brothers names and dates, in order, all but one of them died in Indiana:

ALEXANDER DEVIN MCCLURE, 22 Dec 1837 - 6 Mar 1907
JAMES M. MCCLURE, MD, 20 Jan 1841 - 14 Mar 1913 (He attended medical college in Chicago after the war, then set up his practice in St. Louis, practicing general medicine)
JOSEPH DAVID MCCLURE, 9 Jul 1844 - 6 Jan 1919
ROBERT MOFFIT MCCLURE, 16 Sep 1846 - 26 Dec 1926 (Died in Kansas)
WILLIAM GRADY MCCLURE, 29 Mar 1848 - 29 Feb 1920

Interesting to note, that the three youngest brothers were only teenagers when the war broke out, William, the youngest was but 13 years of age.

Dr. James M. McClure, got sick and took the train home from St. Louis, to his youngest brother's house South of Princeton. He died in 1913 at Prentice McClure's residence, a year and one half after the reunion described in the article, above. Here's an excerpt from the medical journal where news of his passing was relayed to his colleagues at the time (note, the date 16 Mar 1913 is the day his obituary ran in the Evansville newspaper).

WM C HASSELBRINK OF FRANCISCO INDIANA FOUND!

 FRANCISCO MAN GOES MISSING FOR 20 YEARS
-------------
Just walks away from shop, farm and family - DISAPPEARS!
-------------
DISCOVERED DEAD SOME 284 MILES FROM HOME

This crazy story happened in the first three decades of the 20th Century in a rural part of Southwest Indiana where I'm from. I have marital connections to this family from Francisco, Indiana. It's such a small farming hamlet, one time hub of commerce on the Wabash & Erie Canal, that I'm related to most of it's early inhabitants.

Well, the Hasselbrinck family is no exception. The spelling with a "c" seems to have come from the old country. William Carl, the subject of this made-for-TV saga, was the child of German immigrants, born in 1856. He grew up on a farm in rural Gibson County, outside Francisco (or Frisco, as locals call it). In his 50's, he put together stock and capital to open a hardware store in town, circa 1909. It had been in business with the aid of his son George William Hasselbrinck, about four years when the owner walked away.

Reasons are sketchy as to why, but on a Thursday, middle of September 1913, with no advanced warning, William simply walked away...from his home, from his store, from the hamlet of Frisco, Indiana. 

24 Sep 1913 Evansville Courier and Journal, p. 19

Apparently, the day was 18 Sep 1913 and the talk about Oakland City and Princeton and surrounding towns was about this mysterious disappearance of a 56-year-old man. The article, above, ran in the nearby Evansville newspapers almost a week later. A few days after that, it was picked up by a paper in Madison (IN) this time with speculation as to why.

27 Sep 1913 Madison Daily Herald, p. 2

All up and down the Ohio Valley, local Indiana papers were picking up the thread, like this one two weeks post-disappearance, and each sheds some new light. The article, below, from Spencer County, says that the subject was last seen cashing a $17 check at a bank in Princeton. Where he was headed was not known. A family and community grasping for answers assumes the man was "slightly deranged."

3 Oct 1913 Rockport Democrat, p. 3

After 40 days, the Evansville papers run a picture of William with his physical details and announcement of a $25 reward offered by his wife. This would translate in today's currency to about $740. Later, we learn that his description and this reward were circulated nationwide.

1 Nov 1913 Evansville Courier and Press, p. 6

Then, in 1914, an apparent break in the missing persons case! The body of a man is found floating in the Ohio River near Evansville. It has been drowned for some time and is decomposed, but folks say it matches William's description. The community is cautiously hopeful. This article ran on the front page of the Princeton Democrat newspaper:

20 May 1914 Princeton Daily Democrat, p. 1

The following day, the Evansville Journal reported on the body found:

21 May 1914 Evansville Journal, p. 5

Even the small town Poseyville News weighed in on the matter some eight days later. Interesting to note, the piece of evidence heretofore unknown. William was last seen aboard an interurban headed towards Evansville. That could have been the route our wayward wonderer took, but who can be sure?

29 May 1914 Poseyville News, p. 4

After the excitement and buzz over potential closure to this case, reality began settling in upon the family. His estate was settled and in Sep 1918, five years after her husband died, the alleged widow went after his life insurance company, as reported on the front page of the Oakland City paper.

20 Sep 1918 Oakland City Journal, p. 1

I'm sure interest died down in the immediate aftermath of the body found near Evansville years earlier. The family gave up hope of ever hearing from him again and doubted they'd learn the details of his passing. It was as if he'd just vanished from the planet. There was no GPS or Internet, surveillance cameras or cable news. In fact, news in 1913 travelled very slowly at times, especially in rural areas like Gibson County, Indiana. It must have seemed like all hope was lost.

Meanwhile, on the opposite end of Illinois, almost 300 miles away, William was farming in the community of Glasford, keeping a journal and speaking of his faraway home. When the connections were made, he was already laid to rest. His family had given up on ever finding him more than 10 years earlier. He'd been gone for almost 20 full years!

The story hit the newswires and this United Press article ran in the 9 May 1933 Indianapolis Times on p. 4. This must have given the family some modicum of closure, even if the why's and how's could never be answered. William Carl Hasselbrink would be brought home and laid to rest. In fact, he was buried in southern Gibson County, southwest of his Francisco home, at St. Paul's Cemetery along State Road 168.

I found all of these articles yesterday in a search for relatives. It took me on a wild ride down some rabbit holes, but I was transfixed and fascinated by the details--that a man would just walk away from his home, his family, his life of more than half a century and move that far away and just start over, too afraid, perhaps, to contact his wife or to go home. This would make for great television drama. Who has the number for Netflix, Hulu or AppleTV?

Alice K. Thurston, Deaf and Determined, my 2nd cousin

This morning, I came to the Thurston branch of my family tree, which shoots off from the Greeks and McCormicks of Gibson County, Indiana. For reference, my third great-grandmother on mother's side was Berilla (Mills) Greek, who lived 1829-1908 and was the daughter of my pioneer ancestor, Duston Mills (1804-1875), and wife of prominent Gibson Co. farmer, Joseph Greek (1822-1911).

Berilla's grand-daughter, Helen McCormick-Thurston (1902-1980), had two daughters--Evelyn in 1925 and Alice in 1931. Helen was a single mother in 1940, raising her daughters alone and running a beauty salon in Princeton, Indiana. The girls were listed on the 1940 U.S. Census as living at home with their mom; however, I found a second census record that year for the youngest one, Alice K. Thurston, and it led me to this:

INDIANA STATE SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF Indianapolis

I searched for records of her attendance, but could find nothing on Google. On the school's website, I found the Admissions Office and contacted a Mrs. Rice. She led me to the digital collection containing their archives on Indiana University's website. That's where I struck gold, including this senior picture of Alice, giving her full name and hometown.

Not only was that such a cool find in and of itself, but her name is the same as my grandmother, Alice Kathryn Dunning-Larson-Wright, just spelled in the "southern Indiana way." In fact, I've seen my own grandmother's name mispelled "Kathern," they way it's pronounced in the country. :)

The school had a monthly publication, first called The Silent Hoosier, but by the time Alice enrolled in January 1937, it was simply called The Hoosier. Not only was Alice in that publication dozens of times between 1937-1950, but she submitted more than a couple of articles, including this one on learning to swim in the May 1949 edition of The Hoosier:

LEARNING HOW TO SWIM

I have been afraid of water all my life and never learned to swim until last summer. My sister and brother-in-law tried their best to make me overcome this fear. When they tried to teach me how to swim, I was very stubborn. They let me go after they helped me to float many times. I was choked, but sure enough, I conquered the fear. I learned to do several things in water. I have not learned to swim skillfully, but it is satisfying to know that I can swim some. Now I would love to go swimming. —Alice Thurston

I learned all kinds of valuable information from that publication, like her nickname "Thirsty," the names of her best friends and her aspirations. During her last two years at the school, she aspired to become "the world's fastest typist," the Vice-President of the United States and the operator of her mother's beauty shop in Princeton. I don't know if any of those aspirations were realized or not, but I feel like I came to know my second cousin a little bit better. She was a very active student at the school, attending there from K-12, participating in clubs, music, cheer squad ("yell leader")--yes, the deaf school had yell leaders--and writing for The Hoosier. She graduated June 6, 1950 and the trail for her grows cold.

Her parents either divorced or her father perished while she was a student at the Indianapolis-based school, about a three hour drive from her hometown. There was one instance where she wrote about a visit by her mom, dad and sister, in the late 1930's. My best guess is that her father left for California, remarried and became an auto mechanic for a Bakersfield, CA, Chevrolet dealership. Her mother reported to the 1940 Census taker that she was widowed. I'm not certain, but I do know that she grew to womanhood without her father's presence. I can't imagine that opportunities were as plentiful in the 1950's for people with disabilities as they are today, but with her good looks, abilities and determination, I'm sure she made a good life for herself.

Discoveries like that are what fuel my drive to complete the book I'm writing about my family, from pioneer times in Gibson County, IN, to the present. Thanks for taking the time to read this post.

My Dunnings and the Great Flood of 1937

The Great Flood of 1937 hit the Ohio River Valley hard in mid-late January after 12 days of rain caused every tributary to over top their banks, flooding 70 percent of Louisville and 90 percent of it's sister city, Jeffersonville, Indiana. Things were so bad down river that Evansville officials declared Marshall Law. Upstream, things were nearly as dire for towns like Hazleton, Patoka and Wheeling, Indiana. The highest crest ever recorded in the town of Hazleton, situated at the mouth of Robb's Creek on White River, was in January 1937 at 31.7 feet, just for reference.

Gaylord, Elsie & Nancy Kirk

We'll get back to the flood momentarily, but first let me introduce you to my Aunt Elsie's family. That picture was taken around 1957 of Aunt Elsie with her husband and oldest daughter. Elsie was the first child born to my maternal great-grandparents, David and Ruth (McEllhiney) Dunning.

She was born in 1909 on the farm of her grandparents, Thomas J. and Rhoda (Greek) McEllhiney. In fact, the attending physician mistakenly wrote her last name as McEllhiney on the birth certificate when, in fact, she was the first Dunning child born in Center Township, Gibson County, Indiana.

Aunt Elsie married Uncle Gaylord on Christmas Eve 1933 in Evansville. She had spent the better part of her life taking care of eight younger siblings, so having kids was not her first priority after marriage. Oldest daughter, Nancy Gayle, wasn't conceived for almost seven years. In the meantime, the young couple took up residence in a house near Hazleton, owned by the Ice family. The Ices were property owners north of Wheeling, not far from where Elsie grew up. The Dunning family farm was on Wheeling Road, north of Francisco. Anyway, Elsie's older cousin, Venita McEllhiney had married Charles Ice three years earlier, so we know the cousins were tight with Charles and his family. While living near Hazleton, Gaylord was a bus driver for the local school there. It wasn't long before they moved into the house owned by Gaylord's grandfather, John A. Kirk, elsewhere in Washington Township, Gibson County.

When they moved to Section 1, Center Township in Gibson County, they were living in the Netty Moore house very near where Elsie attended 7th and 8th grade at the Lawrence School, a single-room country schoolhouse before the consolidation of county schools in 1927. She never went beyond the 8th grade. That old schoolhouse, as well as the Netty Moore place where she was living, was on property once owned by her 3rd great-grandfather, a war hero, Joshua Stapleton, who fought the Native Americans at Tippecanoe (and I believe, also saw battle during the American Revolution). Joshua had lived there as early as 1820 and donated the land for Lawrence School. This was the best place they had lived since getting married in 1933 and it put Elsie much closer, within 2 miles, of her family home.

So that Gaylord could work his own farm, reaping more of his labor, they once again moved within Center Township. This time, they moved even closer to Elsie's family, taking up residence on the 100-acre Morrow farm on Wheeling Road in the Patoka River bottoms. It was late 1936 and they were about to experience one of the worst flooding disasters in Indiana's history. By mid January the next year, with the ground frozen and saturated by the Indiana winter, the rains began to fall, 15 inches in 12 days at Louisville fell from January 13-24th, according to the National Weather Service. As noted at the beginning of this post, it was a disaster of epic proportion for the entire region.

The land rented from Vesper Morrow began to fill with water. Unlike their McEllhiney neighbors across the road who had built their house on an elevated piece of land in the bottoms, the Morrow home that Gaylord and Elsie lived in was at ground level. The Patoka River flowed into the first floor of their farmhouse, but they had prepared by removing valuables to the second level and elevating furniture as best they could. Wheeling Road was impassable below the Dunning farm and the Kirk home on Vesper Morrow's farm was only accessible by boat until waters receded in February. The family had escaped in time and most of their valuables and sentimental items were spared.

It was still a mess and took some time to get back to where they were when they had moved in a few months earlier. Keep in mind, this disaster came on the heels of the Great Depression. As Uncle Les (Elsie's younger brother) reports, the financial crisis did not hit farm families quite as hard as they were more self-sufficient than ordinary homes. For instance, "they had their own wheat for flour, cows for milk and butter, chickens for eggs and meat, hogs and cattle for meat, their gardens for vegetables, enough crops to feed the livestock and sell for the staples needed. Eggs and cream were sold for salt, pepper, coffee, baking powder, soda, sugar and etc." ("The Early Life of Elsie Isabell Dunning/Kirk/McDowell" by Leslie Dunning.).

Elsie took the hardships of the flood without complaining and accepted the gracious help of friends and neighbors to recover, clean and set back up her home. In early 1938, she was dealt another setback, as her mother left her father at home with two children and another finishing high school. Elsie stepped in to help her grieving father take care of the house and the children, stepping back into the role she served as a teenager.

Aunt Elsie

Her mother left with Elsie's Uncle Edward Williams and soon filed for divorce from David Dunning. This was quite a shocking development and David demanded that his ex-wife, Ruth, have no contact with their children, the youngest of whom, Carl, was only six. Two years later, Elsie became pregnant with Nancy, who was born in early 1941. By then, her brothers, Roy, Tom and Les were serving our country, Ginny was in high school at Francisco and Carl was in 4th grade.

Aunt Elsie survived the Great Flood of 1937 that claimed nearly 400 lives, fairly unscathed, and the personal tragedy at home of her parents' 1938 divorce. She was a great stand-in matriarch for the Dunning family all while trying to start a family of her own. She and Gaylord Kirk had two daughters who are still living in the area where their parents made their humble start. Speaking of humble beginnings, Elsie started her life in a one-room log cabin and grew up on the Dunning homestead, which still stands (in an updated form) on Wheeling Road outside Francisco, IN. She was my great-aunt and lived a great life of 96 years.

My family has now farmed Center Township in Gibson County, IN, for more than 200 years. I'll be posting more about our pioneer ancestors in the weeks to come to commemorate the bicentennial of the State of Indiana, admitted to the Union in 1816.