Francis O'Neil and the O'Neil Family - Part 1

The O'Neil Family, Ireland, Scotland, Wisconsin, Iowa

This post, about Francis O'Neil started off as part of my Short Biography series but is has grown significantly as more information has come to light. For that reason, I have pulled this one out of the Short Biographies and have elevated it to a multi-part Family Story.

Francis O'Neil was born in 1812 in County Armagh in Ireland (now Northern Ireland). He is reported to be the son of James O'Neil (b.1785, d.1817) and Nancy (Agnes) Hughes (b.1787). James was born in County Antrim and is reported to have had a least two brothers, John and Barney. Not much else has been found about this or prior generations of the O'Neil family. When Francis was about five years old, his father died, and his mother took the children and moved to Scotland.

Francis O'Neil and Elizabeth Nevin

1940 Census - Once in a Lifetime

Something is about to take place that only happens once and takes 72 years; truly a "once in a lifetime event." In just a few days, on April 2nd of 2012, the individual family records of the 1940 census will be unveiled and made available to the public. It will also be the first census to go almost immediately into digital format.

Reuben Holcomb I - Short Biography

Reuben T. Holcomb - Wisconsin Pioneer

I find Reuben Holcomb to be one of the more interesting of my ancestors. This might be in part because there is some good information available about him but I think it is also because of the times he lived in and the pioneering path he chose. Reuben was born May 16, 1816, on the western frontier in Monroe County, New York. He was the third born of five known children of Apollas Holcombe (b.1791, d.1823) and Mehitable Bunnell (b.1793, d.1853). Apollas was born in Granby, Connecticut and had come west to Bloomfield, New York, with his parents after the American Revolution. Apollas was a veteran of the War of 1812, where he was wounded at the burning of Buffalo in 1814. He would die in 1823 at the age of 32 and leave Mehitable to raise their five young children. Mehitable was the daughter of Jonathan Bunnell (b.1741) and Mehitable Morse (b.1743). The Bunnell family came west from Blandford, Massachusetts and settled near the Holcombe family in Bloomfield.



Rural Green County has changed little since first settled by
Reuben Holcomb and others in the 1840s and 1850s.

David Hermann - Arrived - Part 2

Part 2 - A Life in Wisconsin
If you missed part one of the story, go here . . .

Note, this post has been revised. The original David Hermann article has been updated and more information has been added. Because of its length, it has also been split into two parts with most of the new information in this part.

David Hermann was born in 1838 near the Baltic Sea in the Principality of Mecklenburg. His family and ancestors were of the peasant class and of very modest means. Life was probably very hard for them and advancement in that society was unlikely. In 1860, he married Anna Rohde and two years later, the two of them, along with their firstborn child, boarded a ship and sailed for America. They would travel from New York to Wisconsin and settle in the south-central part of the state.

Farm buildings from the Hermann farm in the Town of Verona, Wisconsin;
they are no longer in use but still standing in this 2011 photo.

The Flow of Information

A little over a year ago, in a post titled New Discoveries are Delightful, I wrote the following: "my genealogy research is pretty casual these days." I went on to say how I was running out of information and was content to sit back and take it slow. I also acknowledged that "new stuff shows-up." Those thoughts were all pretty genuine but what I did not realize was that just around the corner, a massive amount of family history was waiting for me. First, some background information,

When I wrote that post, in January of 2011, this blog was only about three months old and I had yet to write any posts on individual family members. It would not be until February of 2011 that I would write my first post on one of those family members - the Goldner Family.  That was followed a couple of months later with a post on the Peterson / Moe Family. Both of those two talked as much about the process as the families themselves.

Green County Historical Society

David Hollister & the Hollister Family (3)

Part Three - The Next Generations
If you missed Part 2 of the story, go here . . .
If you missed Part 1 of the story, go here . . .

By the 1880's David Hollister, along with a number of his grown children, where living in western Iowa, near the Nebraska border. There were also a few children who stayed back in Wisconsin. Some farmed and some had other occupations and a few moved on to other places. The Hollister clan would grow and multiply in Iowa and David would live out his life with his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren nearby.

Wedding photo of Hiram, the son of Niles Hollister

David Hollister & the Hollister Family (2)

Part Two - Across the Midwest
If you missed Part 1 of the story, go here . . .

David Hollister was born in newly settled western New York in 1802. His parents might have been John Hollister and Elizabeth Van Scoter. He first married Celinda Giddings, the widow of his brother Abraham. They lived in Pennsylvania and Indiana but Celinda would die around 1841. In those days, death was common and almost expected. The living would carry on and as a matter of survival, most widowed spouses would remarry. David was in his 40s with a family in tow, but as you will read below, there would be another beginning as he had not even reached the halfway point of his long life.

Wisconsin Territory about the time the Hollisters came to the state.
Settlement was limited to the south and along Lake Michigan.
Indian tribes still occupied areas north of the Wisconsin River.

David Hollister & the Hollister Family (1)

Part One - Connecticut and New York

Note: I have updated this series a few times as more information has become available about David Hollister and his family. Now, in 2025, I made the decision to split the original three-part series into four parts with new information in all four parts. This will allow me to continue to grow and refine these posts as more information is obtained.

David Hollister's lifespan encompassed most of the 19th century. He was born about 1802 in New York and died 101 years later in 1903 in western Iowa. He spent a good part of his life on the move, pioneering in New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Wisconsin and finally Iowa. David's life is fairly well documented but up until now, his exact ancestry has been elusive. There are at least 40 Hollister families in New York in the 1810 census and since children's names are not given, it has been hard to tell who David might belong to. In addition, the Hollister lineage in Colonial America is well known but David does not show up in that body of work either. Recently, an online source has provided a possible ancestral line and I will list that here but beware, it has yet to be verified.

Captain John Hollister built this house in Glastonbury in 1649. It has been noted
that he lived across the river in Wethersfield and probably rented out this house.
Later, Hollister would claim it as their ancestral home and live in it for generations.