Ackley Family Genealogy: March 2016

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

A "Black Sheep" Story

Even the best of families all seem to have that one family member that doesn't quite live up to expectations -- the so-called "black sheep" of the family. President Jimmy Carter had his brother Billy, Alec Baldwin has his brother Daniel, Bill Murray has his brother Brian, ... you get the idea.

The closest thing to a black sheep I could find in my family is my 3rd great uncle, Charles Homer Ackley, my great great grandfather's brother. Charles was born in Akron, Ohio on November 26, 1834, and died in Chicago, Illinois one day short of his 33rd birthday in 1867. The circumstances surrounding his death -- he died in a brothel after a week long bender filled with whisky and morphine -- were certainly tragic for his family when it happened, but through the lens of time it has all the makings of a black sheep story. I can't tell it any better than the newspaper did in 1867, so I offer this transcription of the story of his death as my black sheep story.

A TERRIBLE DEATH.

Coroner’s Inquest on the Body of C. H. Ackley, of Saginaw City – The Testimony in the Case

[From the Chicago Tribune of Tuesday]

At the inquest on the body of Charles H. Ackley, of Saginaw City, Monday the following testimony was given:

Mrs. Emma Hedges, keeper of the brothel in which Ackley died, gave the following testimony: I keep the house No. 155 Wells Street. The deceased came to my house a week ago last Friday night. He was pretty drunk, and wanted to stay all night. He stayed the next day, and until Sunday. Sunday he came to my room, and I asked if he didn’t’ want some dinner. He said he would rather have a drink of whisky. He had a bottle with him, a quart bottle, I think, and he wanted to get it filled again. I coaxed him to drink some tea. He went out riding with one of the girls. He stayed until Tuesday, when he settled up his bill and said he was going home. He had a valise, which he took with him, and went away in a hack to get some money. He then went off, and said he should be back in the city in about a month. Wednesday night he came in again. I said, “I thought you had gone, Charley,” and he said “No, I staid to see the fight.” He was very drunk. He had not had anything to eat. He was very drunk. He said he had left his money and watch in a saloon. He wanted a bottle of whisky, but I had none. He then wanted a bottle of wine, which I got. I asked him if he wouldn’t have something to eat, and then went up stairs. He staid all night and all day Thursday. Thursday I went into his room and the paper to him. He staid that night. Friday he went out to get a paper and came back. That night he said he would like to go the theatre, but he did not feel well enough. That was the last I saw of him. He staid that night. Saturday, about noon, one of the girls came up and said, “Something is the matter with Charley.” I went down and found him in a stupor. I had been told by one of the girls that a night or tow before he had had the tremens, and I was afraid that was what ailed him. I sent out for policemen. Two came, and I sent them for a doctor. I had heard Charley say something about a friend of his, so I sent for him, too. It was about half-past four when he died.

Mary De Ville, an inmate of Mrs. Hedge’s house, testified as follows: The deceased came to our house Wednesday night. He had been drinking a good deal. He staid till Saturday, and Saturday morning, before breakfast, he drank half a pint of whisky. After eating breakfast he asked me to get him some whisky and morphine. He said he was going home the next day, and that morphine always straightened his nerves. He wanted to be all straight. I went out and got a quarter of a grain of morphine. I went back and the deceased took a drink of whisky and then swallowed the morphine. This was about 12 o’clock. After taking the morphine he was immediately seized with a spasm, and turned black in the face. I went out and got him a pint of whisky on Friday night. I told him he must not drink but a little at a time, and he promised me he would not. When I awoke in the morning the bottle was empty. When he was taken with the spasm I went and called Mrs. Hedges. He died about half past four. He did not eat regularly. He was there a week and a day in all, and to my knowledge did not eat more than three times. He only went out of the house to get a drink, and then came back. He drank only tea besides whisky. He told me a good deal about his home and his brother, and said he wanted to be all straight when he got home. Wednesday night he was very drunk, and talked wild all night. The only time when he seemed straight was on Saturday morning. He seemed sober then.

The jury returned a verdict that the deceased died of congestion of the brain and lungs, superinduced by exhaustion and dissipation.

The deceased was a man of about thirty years of age, and well known in our business community. His relations, consisting of his mother and a brother, reside in Saginaw. Both of them are highly respected members of society. About a year since, the deceased entered upon a similar career of dissipation in this city, which was protracted to such a length of time that his mother came in search of him, and after much persuasion, induced him to return. In spite of his wild ways, this young man was the idol of her heart, and his death, and the manner thereof, will be a terrible blow to the afflicted parent.

This article originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune and was reprinted in the Saginaw newspaper shortly after it ran in Chicago. Unfortunately I have lost the exact reference, but it would have appeared in early December, 1867 since the death occurred 26 November 1867.

Charles was laid to rest in Glendale Cemetery in Akron, Ohio in the same plot as the rest of his family.

Discussion Questions

Do you have any stories about a "black sheep" in your family you can share?

Link of the Day

This Wikipedia page discusses the origins of the term "black sheep":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_sheep

Quote of the Day

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."

--Eleanor Roosevelt

Next Post Topic

Sergeant John Ackley (1662-1736) and his Familly

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Field Trip!

I just spent a week in Washington, D.C. visiting my daughter and her family, and while I was there I had an opportunity to spend a couple of days at the National Archives doing some genealogy research. I thought I would do a quick post on the Archives as a research resource.

The U.S. National Archives

The Archives has many different types of records available to researchers. The records most relevant to genealogy research include census records, military service records, immigration records, naturalization records, passport applications, and land records, but there are many other types of records available. In order to get access to records in the Archives, you must obtain a researcher's card.

My National Archives Research Card

The card is free, and all you need to do to get one is watch a presentation on records available and rules for using and handling them. There is a bit of security involved to get into the Archives -- metal detector, etc., and you can't bring notebooks or backpacks into the research area. You can bring laptops, cameras, and loose notes with you. There are computers available in the research areas, so you probably don't need to bring your own.

I've been to the Archives several times, and on this trip I was concentrating on military records. Records for pre-World War I military service are kept at the Archives; all military records for later service are kept at the National Military Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. There are two primary types of military records at the Archives - Compiled Service Records, and Pension Application and Pension Payment Records. I have used both types of records and both have useful information, but in general I have found more genealogically relevant information in the pension records. I plan on a more extensive post on using Civil War records with examples from my 2nd great grandfather's records at a later date.

You can order records online, but that can get pretty expensive; for example, a Civil War pension file costs $80. Of course that is cheap compared to a plane ticket to Washington, D.C., but if you are going to be in the area anyway like I was, a trip there can save you some money.

On this trip I took advantage of a fairly new program at the Archives. They have a section called the Innovation Hub that has computers and scanners available that you can use for free to scan records.

Work Area at the Innovation Hub at the National Archives

Normally when you request records they are brought to an area where you can examine them and either take photos or make paper copies for 25 cents per page (which can also get pretty expensive). If you have your records brought to the Innovation Hub instead, you get to use their equipment for free; your part of the bargain is that you must agree to scan an entire file which will then be made available online on the Archives website for others to use. You get to take a copy of everything you scan with you, so bring a flash drive. A large file can take a while -- one of the pension files I scanned had over 150 pages and took about 5 hours. But in the end you get high quality scans of the records you want and you help others get access to records online.

If you ever find yourself in Washington, D.C. with a free day or two, check out the National Archives and see if you can find some records that will help you with your genealogy research. Make sure you visit the other side of the Archives as well -- if you go in the main entrance you can see original copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Where in the World Do Ackleys Live?

I'm kind of a numbers guy, so I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the number of Ackleys around the world and what countries they live in. I've also put together some rough figures on the number of Ackleys alive throughout American history (insofar as they can be supported by documentation).

From the table below, you can see that there are just under 9,000 Ackleys throughout the world [2].

Table 1: World Population of Ackleys from http://forebears.io/surnames/ackley#nations2014

To put that number in perspective, there are about 7.125 billion people living in the world right now, so Ackleys represent only 0.000126% of the world's population -- we are pretty rare! The surname Chang is the most frequently occurring name globally -- there are over 76,000,000 people with that name, which is a little over 1% of the world's population [2].

Not surprisingly, the huge majority of Ackleys live in the United States, but what is surprising is the country that holds the number 2 spot -- Tanzania. I would have expected England to be #2, but England is all the way down at #6. For those of you unfamiliar with Tanzania, it is in Eastern Africa, and is where Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa, is located. A personal side note -- both my dad and daughter have been to Tanzania and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro (on separate trips). I wish I had known about these numbers at the time they were there -- I would have asked them to look into it. Tanzania was ruled by Great Britain starting after World War I, and British rule ended in 1961. This is only speculation, but it seems likely that the name must have been introduced during that time.

A Breakdown of Ackleys Currently in the United States

This is not real scientific, but I went to www.whitepages.com and searched for Ackley by state and got the following breakdown of Ackleys in each of the states [1]:

Table 2: Ackleys by State compiled for data on www.whitepages.com

The numbers don't add all the way up to the 8,210 reported in the first table, but not all children are included in the white pages so that can explain the shortfall. From our beginnings in Connecticut, you can see that there are now Ackleys in all 50 states; New York has the most with 667, while Mississippi only has 1 (he must be a lonely guy!).

History of Ackleys in America

The table below shows the number of Ackleys in each of the states over the history of the U.S. Federal Census. Note that the years with yellow headings are those years where only the heads of household were identified by name, while the years with blue headings are the years where every individual was recorded by name. For that reason, you'll see that the total Ackleys for the years in yellow are much lower than for the years in blue. In the body of the table, all cells with no Ackleys are color coded red, while the cells with some positive number of Ackleys are color coded green. The table is arranged so that the states with the most years where Ackleys were present in the state are near the top, while states with the fewest years with Ackleys present are toward the bottom. I got these numbers by doing an exact search on Ancestry for the Ackley surname by state in each census year, so as mentioned above this is not entirely scientific, but it is as close as I could get given the data available [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]. [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17].

Table 3. Ackleys by State from U.S. Federal Census 1790-1940

As would be expected, the presence of Ackleys in the states tends to follow the expansion of the United States westward. My Ackleys followed this pattern; started in Connecticut, moved to New York, then Ohio, then Michigan, and finally Wisconsin. One other thing to notice is that New York has been the most populous state in terms of Ackleys throughout U.S. history since 1810, so it is not surprising that there are more Ackleys in New York now than in any other state.

Ackleys in England

Although the data available from the England census is not as extensive as the U.S. census, I think it is worth taking a look at the changes in the population of Ackleys in England; however, the numbers are much smaller than in the U.S., so I have left them at the country level. These numbers also come from census records on Ancestry [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25]:

Table 4: Ackleys from England Census 1841-1911

One thing to notice from this data is that the number of Ackleys in England has actually declined since the last census for which data is available (from 87 in 1911 to 75 in 2014), while in the U.S. the number has more than doubled (from 4,097 in 1940 to 8,210 in 2014). The total population in England grew from 42,000,000 to 64,000,000 during that time, while the total U.S. population during that time went from 132,000,000 to 317,000,000. I don't have an explanation for these phenomena, nor can I draw any conclusions, but the numbers do show the contrast between the growth (or lack thereof) in the number of Ackleys in the two countries.