The Estate of Samuel Whittington: Gotta Love Those Court Cases

When Samuel Whittington died in Calvert County MD in 1806, he had no children and left no will.  So to ordinarily, he wouldn't be of much interest to a family historian.  But in Samuel's case, the ultimate settlement of his estate, some twenty years later, resulted in a Chancery Court case that laid out several generations of the Whittington family, a veritable gold mine of genealogical information.

By plotting out the complex explanation of Samuel's heirs, I was able to trace an extended family tree for the Whittingtons of Calvert and Anne Arundel Counties.  And, because a couple of his heirs were involved in other suits, I could make even more connections between the Whittingtons and the Woods family, in the process finding a solution to a long-standing brick wall.

In 1827, when the court case was filed, Samuel's three brothers, William, Francis and James had all died intestate as had his sisters, Elizabeth and Rebecca, both of whom were married to men named Turner.

His sisters Lavinia (who married William Stevens) and Araminta (the widow of James Wood) were still living.

Because all these heirs were dead, the plaintiffs needed to name all the heirs of the heirs.  Genealogical Heaven!

William Whittington's heirs (all of age in1827) were Clement, John S., Rachel (who married Washington Green Tuck) and Mary.  The fact that there were all over 21 allows me to calculate some parameters for their birth dates: the children of William Whittington were all born before 1806.

The heirs of James Whittington were:
Eleanor who married William P. Hardesty (died intestate before 1827)
Elizabeth who married John Ward (died intestate before 1827)

Eleanor Hardesty's heirs (all infants under the age of 21) were:
John James Hardesty
William Thomas Hardesty
Joseph Henry Hardesty
Mary Ann Elizabeth Hardesty
Susan Rebecca Hardesty

The heirs of Francis Whittington were:
Francis
Charles (died by 1827, left children Maria, Ellen, Lewis and Sarah Ann, all infants)
Elizabeth Wood (died intestate by 1827, left a daughter Eleanor Wood, an infant of Baltimore MD)
Samuel
Ann
Eleanor
William (died by 1827, left daughter Drusilla)

The heirs of Rebecca Turner were:
Elizabeth who married John Hollingshead
Eleanor who married John Winfield
Mary who married Mr. Dalrymple (both of whom are dead by 1827, leaving as heirs Eleanor Gibson, John Dalrymple and William Dalrymple)

The heirs of Elizabeth Turner were:
William
Thomas who was dead by 1827 leaving Elizabeth, Richard, John, Mary Ann, Thomas and Ann as his heirs. 
Richard
Sarah who married Joseph Griffith
Wilhelmina who married Clement Chaney
Rebecca who married William Howard.  Rebecca was dead by 1827 leaving as heirs Elizabeth who married James Forsyth, Rebecca who married Walter Crosby, Peggy who married James Cox, Eleanor who married Mr. Gibson, Mary, the widow of Mr. Dew, Sally, Matilda and Willy Ann and infants  Mahala and Sophia.

See what I mean?  A gold mine.  And reading through all the documents in the original case file led to many more details of marriages and deaths.  After that, a search of marriage records and census records allowed me to fill in details for at least some of these folks.

Ultimately, I was able to show that the Samuel Whittington shown above as the son of Francis Whittington, was the same person who married Dorothy Wood and whose father I had been searching for for quite a while.

Overall, Chancery Court cases like this are worth reading through every last page and making very careful notes because they are full of information.

The document below shows the distribution of Samuel Whittington's estate in 1827.
 

The Disappearance of Louis Winkler

I came across Louis Winkler in the course of doing my due diligence on the Weems family.  Following up on the children of Edwin Dawson Weems and Rosetta Norman, I found a marriage for their daughter Martha Weems with one Louis Winkler in Washington DC in 1899.

Louis, a 38-year-old native of Hungary, showed up with his wife Martha in Baltimore in the 1900 Census where Louis was working as the Supervisor of the Insane at Bayview Asylum.

Then, a search in Baltimore newspapers turned up the strange story of Louis's disappearance.  On January 14, 1903, Louis apparently walked out of the house and did not return.  "He kissed his wife and two-year-old child good-bye, saying that he would be back about five o-clock, if not earlier and spoke in his accustomed endearing way to his wife.  He left about 10 o'clock in the morning  and since that time has not been seen or heard from."

His father-in-law called for the police to find Winkler, speculating that either he had met with foul play or he had sailed back to Hungary.  Meanwhile, his pregnant wife gave birth to a son, Edwin Weems Winkler, on January 29. 

I was never able to find a follow-up story, so I was forced leave this mystery unsolved.

Some years later, I came across a Find-A-Grave entry for Martha Weems Winkler who was buried in, of all places, Bozeman MT.   Her memorial was also linked to that of her son Edwin Weems where  little more of the story was filled in. His memorial said that his father had died when he was three years old and that the family had moved to Bozeman in 1910.

With that information, I went back to look for a death certificate for Louis Winkler and I did find one in 1906 in Baltimore, so that fit the information in Find-A-Grave. I made a note to go get a copy of the death certificate from the Maryland Archives.

Then I also went back to Ancestry and searched again for Louis Winkler.  This time,  a passport application from 1921 turned up.

This Louis Winkler, also from Hungary, was living in Cleveland OH and clearly had not died in Baltimore in 1906.  Were there two Louis Winklers?

Update: 7 April 2017

Yes, it turns out there were two Louis Winklers and the one that died in Baltimore in 1906 was not Martha Weems' husband.

I found the death certificate for Louis Winkler who died in Baltimore in 1906 and he was from Germany, not Hungary and was a laborer, not working in a hospital.

The Death Certificate of Louis Winkler in Cleveland showed that he was from Hungary.

Further, his occupation was hospital orderly.  A story from a Cleveland newspaper indicates that in 1906, Louis Winkler was a hero who rescued hospital patients from a damaging fire.

I got another piece of the puzzle when someone saw the picture of Louis I had posted in Find-A-Grave.  Louis and Martha's son, Edwin Weems Winkler, published notes about his mother and father, which were kindly shared with me. 

Martha, or "Dolly" as she was known, was apparently a lively, vivacious girl who badly wanted to get away from her strict parents.  She married and quickly divorced a drinking, gambling man named Cole.  The family considered this disgraceful and sent her out West to Montana to stay with her mother's sister and returned to Maryland about 1894, but still was not getting along well with her family.  She went to live with a cousin in Baltimore and ended up with a job in a hospital, which is probably where she met Louis Winkler.  They were married in Washington DC in 1899.  According to the notes, Louis was well-educated and spoke seven languages, though his English had a pronounced accent.  He was trained as a male nurse, which was uncommon in Maryland and he had difficulty finding work in this field.  He tried his hand at selling insurance, but this was not successful.  The couple had a daughter about 1900 and a son in 1903, but faced many financial difficulties and quarreled quite a bit.  This resulted in the "disappearance" article where I first noticed Louis.  Martha took her two young children back to her aunt in Montana since she did not feel welcome at the family home in Maryland and divorced Louis when she got there.  She apparently had nothing more to do with Louis and his son did not know what happened to his father.