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People Names and Dates

Full Name Evaline Downen
AKA Full Name
People ID 667920
Title
First Name Evaline
AKA First Name
Nickname
Middle Name
AKA Middle
Patronymic/Matronymic
Priorsurnames
Surname Downen
AKA Surname
Father's Surname
Mother's Surname
Suffix
Gender Female
Full Birth Date If Known 1859-11-21
Birth Year 1859
Birth Month 11
Birth Day 21
Full Death Date If Known 1860-05-02
Death Year 1860
Death Month 5
Death Day 2

Events, Dates and Places

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Event Date Geo Top Level Geo 2nd Level Geo 3rd Level Geo 4th Level Geo 5th Level Notes

Relationships

Relationship Related To Relative's People ID Relative's Birth Year Relative's Death Year Other Date (typically Marriage Date)
Granddaughter ofJohnson Downen66813318051855
Granddaughter ofHicksy Bowden Downen66800518071869

Military Service
No military service added for this person

Rank If Known Or Highest Or Final Rank Branch of Service Beginning Date if Known End Date if Known

Military Actions Served During

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Interment, Inurnment or Memorialization Information

Cemetery Vail Cemetery
Address East Main Street east of town on the south side of the road before it turns north and becomes County Road 409
City/Town Industry
County/District McDonough
State/Province Illinois
Postal/Zip Code 61440
Country/Principality USA
Organization
Property Type
Has MarkerYes
No Marker
Is Cenotaph
GPS/LatLong Coordinates
End of Interment RecordIf there are additional interments or cenotaphs for this person they will appear below
  

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Other Information

Biographical or other information about the person

https://mills-sfv.com/Genealogy/GLS/People/Text/667920.txt

In addition to the tragedy of Evaline's life being cut so tragically short, since she died before the 1860 census was taken, there is no way to know for sure who her parents were. The possible parents are:

David Downen and his wife Manerva Standard Downen

Henry Downen and his wife Anna Reed Downen

Samuel Downen and his wife Mary Hendrickson Downen

I picked through the census records and other information on the three families. Henry and Anna are the least likely candidates, because they had a daughter that was born earlier in 1859 six months before Evaline's birth. In addition, Anna was still alive for the 1900 census and she noted she had born three children, and those three children are all known and accounted for (one with Henry and two with her second husband Daniel Shoop. So it seems that we can rule out Henry and Anna as the parents.

David and Manerva are still a possibility, but less likely than Samuel and Mary. They had a son Gideon who only shows up in the 1860 census and never again. If his birth year is correct in the census, if Evaline was their daughter she and Gideon would have to be twins. If I could find a birth date for Gideon and it was the same as her birth date, I would be sure she was their daughter and that she and Gideon were twins. The odds of finding that information for Gideon seem slim, as he most likely died before the age of 10 and I don't know what kind of records were kept at that point in time.

And rather than rule out David and Manerva (which isn't possible anyway with the information I have), I will note that Manerva seems to have been exceptionally fertile. With David Downen and her second husband Michael Lawyer, she is known to have had 11 children in the span of 19 years. I haven't found any sets of twins in her known children, but she definitely had lots of kids and I wouldn't rule out Evaline being her daughter.

This brings us to Samuel and Mary. Samuel died in 1861 and it looks like Mary remarried her second husband Andrew Wilhelm around 1865. She is known to have had at least three children with him. When she was noted in the 1900 census, she was recorded as being the mother of six children, of whom two were still alive (these would be Edith and Jesse Wilhelm, her son Thomas Wilhelm having died at the age of four or five). There is a good likelihood that one of those deceased children could have been Evaline, since there are no recorded children being born to Mary and Samuel.

Anyway, that's my speculation on Evaline's parentage. Most likely Samuel and Mary, some possibility of David and Manerva, and virtually no possibility of Henry and Anna being her parents. Since I am certain that she was a granddaughter of Johnson Downen and his wife Hicksy, I have recorded those relationships as fact.

See also Francis M. Downen, who is very likely to be a sibling of Evaline's. The research I have done on Francis also points to Samuel and Mary being his most likely parents.

See also Samuel P. Downen, another potential sibling.

The Vail Cemetery is in west central Illinois, so I am unlikely to get there any time soon to see if the proximity of the markers to each other gives some clues as to who belongs to which families. There are at least 17 Downen family members buried in this cemetery, if not more. The only family with more members there than the Downens is the Vail family (presumably the people the cemetery is named for).


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50 characters max)
Family Search ID G7HG-MDT
Find A Grave 1 93432529
Famous per Find A Grave
Famous per Consensus
Find A Grave 2
Find A Grave 3
BillionGraves Record ID
Other websites
Record Entry Date 2018-11-01 12:44:40
Record Last Edit Date 2020-04-23 15:09:00

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