Church Record Sunday - Ohio Quaker Records

Up until yesterday, every church record I've found on my Creeden family has been Roman Catholic. I was trying to find an obituary for John Creedan when he popped up in in an Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy by William Hinshaw. The entry below is from Volume 5, Ohio Monthly Meetings in the section for the Dover meetings held in Clinton County, Ohio. The Dover meetings were started in 1824.

According to the list of abbreviations in the volume, "recrq" is "received by request" and "dis" is "disowned" or "disowned, for". In this case, it looks like John and his family were disowned for disunity. Of course, I wondered what that meant!

The encyclopedia is an extraction of the meeting minutes, so if any details were recorded, they would be in the original records. Disunity could be as simple as speaking out strongly against the consensus of the members, although there would have to be a number of occurrences for this to cause a member to be disowned. A possibility is that John supported a cause or group that was contrary to the consensus of the members. The Quaker Corner on Rootsweb is the repository for the Quaker Roots mailing list where I found some discussions on disunity.

The other interesting thing in the minutes is the William Creeden that was received on the same day as John. I've been looking for some evidence that John's brother Patrick William went by William since their father was a Patrick. While I can't tell for sure that this William is John's brother, it looks like a good possibility. The combination of the names John, Minerva, and Hiram is unusual enough to make me pretty sure that this is the same family.

This was the only entry I found for the Creedans in the Quaker records. John is buried in St. Mary's Cemetery in Ft. Recovery, Mercer County, Ohio. This is a Catholic cemetery, so it looks like he returned to his original religion at some point.

Mystery Monday - Patrick William Creeden

I've run into a bit of a brick wall in trying to find information on Patrick William Creedan. He was born in Clinton County, Ohio around 1865 to my 3x great-grandfather Patrick Creedan and his second wife, Hannah Hoover. The family is in Clinton County, Ohio in the 1870 and 1880 census records.

Patrick is 5 in the 1870 census which was taken on June 23, 1870 in Wayne Township in Clinton County, Ohio.

Patrick W. is 16 in the 1880 census which was taken on the June 6, 1880 in Wayne Township.

In 1883, his father Patrick died and left a portion of his estate to his son Patrick William. That's the last definite trace I have of Patrick William.

I've found several more records that could be for Patrick William, but the name given is William or W. P. Creeden. My guess is he may have gone by William since his father's name was also Patrick.

The marriage record shown above states that W. P. Creeden married Mary C. Snyder on August 24, 1885 in Clinton County, Ohio. Several Ancestry.com trees have this marriage as May 16, 1885 in Ross County, Ohio, but there are no sources. I've been unable to find any Creeden marriage records in Ross County.

In 1887, Quaker records from Clinton County show that a John and William Creeden were received by request. The record lists John's wife Minerva and his son Hiram, but no family for William. In 1889, there is a disunity record for John, Minerva, Hiram and William, meaning that they left the Quaker group or were asked to leave for some reason. Although I can't tell for sure who William is, the John in the records is a match for the son of Patrick Creedan and brother of Patrick William Creedan.

In the 1900 census, William and Mary C. Creeden are living in Darke County with their children Minnie, Elsie, Orval, Ralph, Elzworth, William, and Mary O. They've been married for 15 years. The entry right above them is for a John and Ida Creedan and their children Flora and Stella. This is a match for Patrick William's brother John and John's second wife Ida. William's birth date is May 1864 according to this census record.

Kansas had a state census in 1905 and William and Mary C. Creeden are living in Sedgwick County as of March 1, 1905.The same children are listed, plus Violet. It looks like Mary O. from the 1900 census goes by Opal in this census. John Creedan lived out his life in Darke and Mercer counties in Ohio and died in Mercer County in 1923. William died in 1909 and is buried in Pratt, Kansas. His gravestone says he lived from 1862-1909, so that birth date is a bit earlier than any of the census records.

There is another William Patrick Creeden of about the same age in Ohio during this time. This William was the son of Timothy and Ellen Creeden in Hamilton County. A marriage record for him showed that he married Margaret Nolan in 1883 and consent was given by his father Timothy.

In the 1900 census record shown above, William and Margaret Creeden are living in Hamilton County with children Thomas, Michael, and Laurence. William was born in Feb. 1863. Timothy and Ellen also had a son named Laurence, so that name seemed to run in their family. I mention this William since I've seen records for him confused with the William who went to Kansas.

A death certificate and/or obituary for the Kansas William might help clear this up, but so far, I've been unable to find one online. According to the Kansas Historical Society, death certificates weren't kept by the state until 1911. Records before that may have been kept at the county or city clerk's office, but not all of these survived. The historical society has microfilm for some vital records, but I don't see anything for Pratt or Sedgwick. I'll post an update if I locate any additional records.

Church Record Sunday - Baptism of Patrick William Creedan

Patrick William Creedan was born on May 16, 1864 to parents Patrick and Hannah Hoover Creedan. The family lived in Clinton County, Ohio, but Patrick was baptized in St. Andrew's parish in Milford, Clermont County, Ohio. Construction of the Catholic church in Clinton County wasn't completed until 1868 so the family had children baptized in the nearby parishes before the new church opened.

Baptism record for Patrick William Creedan, May 29, 1864

The image above is the entry for the baptism of Patrick William Creedan. The baptism was recorded in Latin and the year 1864 was written on the top of this page. On the left of the record, the baptism date was given as May 29 and the date of birth as May 16. The entry roughly translates to "I baptized Patrick G. son Patrick Credin and Hannah Hoover, sponsors Timothy Kiefe and Margarita Calahan". The priest's name was abbreviated to J. B. OD.

Patrick's name is given as Patrick William in his father's will in 1883, so I believe the initial G in the baptism record stands for Gulielmus, the Latin version of William.

A transcription of the record was made for the diocese of Cincinnati. The name of the priest is spelled out as J. B. O'Donoghue. The number 23 on the left is the entry number for Patrick's record in the ledger. There are a couple of mistakes in this transcription. Patrick's mother is given as Anna instead of Hannah and Patrick's middle initial is given as J instead of G.

At some point, Patrick started using his middle name William instead of Patrick. Patrick was listed as Patrick in the 1870 census and Patrick W. in the 1880 census for Clinton County, Ohio. His father Patrick's will left a share of the estate to his son Patrick William in 1883. In the distributions from the estate in 1884, Patrick is named as Patrick W. Creeden, minor. In the final account of the estate in 1885, Patrick's name is given as Wm. P. Creeden.

Wm P Creeden named in final account of estate in 1885

In 1885, W. P. Creedan marries Mary C. Snyder in Clinton County, Ohio. Quaker records in Clinton County from 1887 and 1889 mention a John and William Creeden. John's wife and children are listed in the records and they are match for Patrick William's brother John. The William in the records is most likely Patrick William.

In 1886 or 1887, the birth of Minnie Creeden was registered in Greene County, Ohio to parents Wm. Creeden and Mary Snyder. They are living in Bowersville in Greene County. The date of the birth was given as May 11, 1886 and the location of the birth was Sabina, Clinton County, Ohio. Sabina was also the location in the 1870 census for Patrick and Hannah Creedan.

 

In 1900, John and William Creedan are listed next to each other in the census for Darke County, Ohio along with their wives and children. Note that Williams birth month and year are given as May 1864.

By 1905, William Patrick Creeden and his family were living in Kansas and appeared in the 1905 state census for Kansas. William's age was given as 42 and Mary's as 43. William died in 1909 and is buried in Kansas. His tombstone in Kansas gives his year of birth as 1862. I have a few cases in my family tree where the wrong year appears on a tombstone, so it's possible that a family member gave the wrong information.

My conclusion is that Patrick William and William P. or W. P. Creeden are most likely the same person. Most of the records indicate that he was born in 1864 with the exception of his tombstone. That discrepancy leaves some room for doubt, but all of the other records with a date seem to indicate that he was born after 1862. Mary's tombstone also gives her year of birth as 1862 and this is more consistent with the census records which indicated she was a year or two older than her husband.

A final note is that my sister and I have several DNA matches to descendants of William and Mary Creeden. They are similar in size to our matches from the other children of Patrick and Hannah Hoover Creedan. The matches form a cluster where we are all sharing the same matches, so that indicates there is a relation between the Kansas and Clinton County Creeden families.

Sources: The Roman Catholic baptism registers for the diocese of Cincinnati are available on FindMyPast.com. The Quaker index is available on Ancestry.com. The other images in this post are available from FamilySearch.org.