ELEVENTH GENERATION

67. William Frederick (Will) KORNGAEBEL was born on 28 Dec 1855 in Elliottsburg, Spring Twp, Perry Co, PA. He was baptized on 28 Dec 1855 in Ludolph Church, Germany Rd, Tyrone Twp, SE of Elliotsburg, Perry Co, PA.
Translation of Baptismal Certificate:
Record of Birth & Baptism
TO THOSE TWO PARENTS:
As Georg Korngabel and his Wife Elizabeth a daughter of Schreckengast was born a Son on the 28th day of December in the year of our Lord 1855.

This child was born in Spring Township in Perry county, in the State of Pennsylvania in North America; was baptized by the Rev'd. Linebauch and received the name William.

WITNESSES:
(blank)
He was buried in 1908 in Summit View Cemetery, Guthrie, Logan Co, OK.
Lena May Kongable Benson wrote:
When the horse-drawn hearse was taking William F. Kongable's casket to Summit View Cemetery for burial from their home, the creek bridge just south of the house was out and as they went down beside the old bridge, the hearse turned over so the burial was delayed several hours.
He died on 8 Jul 1908 in Guthrie, Logan Co, OK.
He died of typhoid fever.

Lena May Kongabel Benson wrote her grandchildren:

Your great, great, grandparents, George and Elizabeth Korngabel, came from Germany, settled in New Bloomfield, Perry County, Pennsylvania, where their son, William Frederick Korngabel, your great grandfather, was born December 28, 1855. He was a farmer and blacksmith. While young he decided to come 'out west' to Ohio, then to Morning Sun, Iowa.

He worked at his blacksmith trade and there met twin sisters, Henrietta and Annetta Crocker, who were born October 27, 1862, at Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Died at his farm in Guthrie OK on 8 July 1905 of Typhoid Fever. Henrietta lived on the farm until 1915 when she moved into town to live with your Grandfather and me.

When William Frederick Kongabel and Henrietta Crocker were married, they belonged to a United Presbyterian Church and all through the years when they moved from place to place, he always moved where there was a U. P. Church. Many of his children and grandchildren are faithful members of this church at present time.

William Frederick Kongable always went to church with his family, even when we only had wagon or buggy, in hot or cold weather. I remember one time we went 10 miles across Platte River in Nebraska - this river was a mile wide, frozen over with ice, and temperature 48 degrees below zero. The team we drove was put in Livery stable and fed while we were at church.

He was married to Henriette CROCKER (daughter of John CROCKER and Sarah HOLMES) on 13 Sep 1883 in Morning Sun, Louisa Co, IA.
Morning Sun Herald, Vol. II, No. 24, Thursday, September 13, 1883:
Personal: W. F. Kongabel is home again from Dakota. Rumors afloat convict him of matrimonial intentions.

Morning Sun Herald, Vol. 11, No. 25, Thursday, September 20, 1883:
As intimated by THE HERALD last week. W. F. Kongabel was married last Thursday afternoon to Miss Etta Crocker, at the residence of Thomas Spalding, by Rev. W. A. Spalding, of Narwood, Ill. A large number of the immediate relatives were present, including Mrs. J. T. Ochiltree, Herman, Hattie and Pearl Ochiltree, of Burlington, Mrs. W. A. Spalding and Miss Susie Bell, of Narwood, Ill., and Lewis Kongabel, of Winfield. They were the recipients of numerous handsome presents. Mr. and Mrs. Kongabel left at 7:05 p.m. for Maitland, Dakota, intending to stop at Valisca and Omaha to visit relatives. The best wishes of all who know them go with them. May they live happy and contented in their home on the frontier.

Same issue, Personal:
Rev. W. A. Spalding and his wife left for Oscaloosa, Friday. Rev. S. occupied the pulpit in the U. P. Church there last Sabbath. He will preach here next Sabbath.

Morning Sun, Iowa
Year founded: platted in 1851, incorporated in 1867.
Source of the name: Cicero Hamilton and H.C. Blake, while hunting some lost oxen early one morning, saw a glorious sun rise. Hamilton suggested calling the town Rising Sun, but Blake suggested Morning Sun because several residents had first lived in Morning Sun, Ohio.

Claim to fame: Highest elevation in the county. One of the first Rural Free Delivery sites in the country in 1896.

Most famous sons and daughters: Jack Hamilton, professional baseball player, Jonathan Harkeman, the city's first settler, invented the first diamond plow in 1836. Edward Arthur Mellinger, an inventor who held 29 patents, many of which helped develop the dial system. Cliff Roberts, co-founder and chairman of the Masters Golf Tournament in Atlanta. E. Raymond Wilson, a Quaker lobbyist in Washington.
Henriette CROCKER was born on 11 Oct 1862 in Newburyport, Essex Co, MA.
When were Henrietta and Annetta born? Family tradition has passed down the birthdate of 27 Oct 1862, but the following Massachusetts birth records for children who were, unfortunately, not named at the time of the recording, indicate otherwise:

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE
WILLIAM FRANCIS GALVIN, SECRETARY
ARCHIVES DIVISION

COPY OF RECORD OF BIRTH

B 000569

Name: (TWIN) CROCKER
Date of Birth: OCTOBER 11, 1862
Place of Birth: NEWBURYPORT
Sex: FEMALE Color: WHITE

FATHER MOTHER
Name: JOHN Maiden Name: SARAH
Residence: NEWBURYPORT Residence: NEWBURYPORT
Birthplace: DIGBY, N.S. Birthplace: DIGBY, N.S.
Occupation: ----- Occupation: -----

Date of Original Record: 1862 Date of Amended Record: -----

Year 1862
Vol. 150
Page 263
No. 261

=====================================

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE
WILLIAM FRANCIS GALVIN, SECRETARY
ARCHIVES DIVISION

COPY OF RECORD OF BIRTH

B 000570

Name: (TWIN) CROCKER
Date of Birth: OCTOBER 11, 1862
Place of Birth: NEWBURYPORT
Sex: FEMALE Color: WHITE

FATHER MOTHER
Name: JOHN Maiden Name: SARAH
Residence: NEWBURYPORT Residence: NEWBURYPORT
Birthplace: DIGBY, N.S. Birthplace: DIGBY, N.S.
Occupation: ----- Occupation: -----

Date of Original Record: 1862 Date of Amended Record: -----

Year 1862
Vol. 150
Page 263
No. 262


27 October 1862 is also the date on the placing agreement for Annetta Crocker signed by R. W. Coulter, on microfilm records of the New England Home for Little Wanderers.
She was adopted on 1 Jul 1872 in Half-orphaned in Mass, brought to Morning Sun, Iowa at age 10.
In 1865, the Howard Mission school principal, the Reverend Russell G. Toles, went to Boston to help that city's ministers organize the Association for the Relief of Little Wanderers. Under this group's direction the Boston charity, sometimes known as the Baldwin Place Home for Little Wanderers, was created as a refuge for the children of the immigrant poor and for those who had been orphaned or left destitute by the Civil War. Toles then left Howard Mission in New York and took on the role of the first superintendent of Boston's newest charity. ... From the first the home took in children from not only Boston but from surrounding states, and there was no discrimination on the basis of age, sex, religion, or race. ... Those that could be placed in private homes were given over to families to be legally adopted or "treated as a member of the family": indenture was not approved, and the home stressed that children were not to be used as servants or hired help. The need for the home, as well as its acceptance and success, can be seen in the numbers of children received in the first five years of operation. Between 1865 and 1870, at least twenty-five hundred children entered the charity's care, with a number placed beyond the boundaries of Massachusetts. In fact, soon after the charity opened, children were being found new homes, perhaps thinking of the hymn often sung by the home's youth choir - "Oh, think of a home over there." By September 1865 three companies had gone west, and for the next forty years, from one to four companies of children were placed out each year.

The manner in which placements were made by the New England Home for Little Wanderers did not differ dramatically from the practices of other agencies. Nevertheless, ... there were definite ideas about correct procedures. First, the home staff targeted "a large town or small city of 8,000 or 12,000 people, with good schools and churches, and a good farming country around it." Ministers and prominent citizens were asked if they would aid in finding placement homes. When the answer came in the affirmative, groups of children were organized with as many as four adults in charge; one of these agents would precede the group to the town, arrange for local ministers to be involved, reserve rooms in the local hotel (usually hotels gave free lodging to the children), and see that handbills and posters were printed. Interestingly, reports of these emigrations stressed the large amounts of food taken along for the train trip and the face that the children had hotel accommodations until they were placed with families that had applied for and been accepted as worthy. Of his experience in Adrian, Michigan, one minister reported that fifteen children had been placed, but determining the suitability of homes had been difficult: "Others would apply and examine the children about as a man would a horse or ox. 'How much can I make out of this boy? ... seemed to be the idea. My answer was, 'Nay, if it is simply a matter of profit and loss, you must apply elsewhere. These children have souls to save as well as work to do.'" ... In fact, by 1890 the home was making it clear to all concerned that is placed out were to be "treated as *sons* and *daughters* (emphasis in original), and that legal adoption was highly encouraged."

[The Orphan Trains: Placing Out in America, Marilyn Irvin Holt, University of Nebraska Press, 1992, pp. 103-105.]

For many descendants of the placed out and the population of placed out still living, the unknowns of the system create a circumstance by which they have no knowledge of their place in America's history or of past family histories and the whereabouts of relatives. This is a fact of late twentieth-century America.

A prevailing misconception of the system is that all of those placed out were orphans. Most were not, having at least one parent living. Countless children were handed over by parents who could not care for them, and thousands of others had been institutionalized as "half-orphans" or because of destitution before they emigrated to new homes.

Placing out is much more than an account of children sent to faraway homes and separated from poverty-stricken families or removed from streets and orphan asylums. The system itself tells much about what America was like, what care existed for the poor, and what Americans believed about social welfare and themselves during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

[Ibid, pp. 157-159.]

=====================================================
Baldwin Place Home for Little Wanderers
Officers of the Home:
Rev. R. G. Toles, Suprt ... C. H. Minor, Asst' Supt. ... R. B. Graham, Visiting Agent
Rev. S. S. Cummings, Missionary Agent

AGREEMENT

Morning Sun, Iowa, July 1, 1872

The undersigned agrees to receive to receive into his family Henrietta Crocker to be treated in all respects as a daughter. She is to receive a good common school education, to attend Church and Sunday-School, and to be cared for in sickness and in health. I will not dispose of the child in any way without the consent of the officers of the BALDWIN PLACE HOME FOR LITTLE WANDERERS, located in the City of Boston, State of Massachusetts. If I do not wish to retain the child I promise to return the same to the above-named institution, at my own expenses, if required. Should circumstances arise which should make my home unsuited to the wants of the child, or on proof being brought forward that the child was not properly treated or cared for, I will surrender the child to the Officers of the Home on their requisition, at their expense.

In consideration that I can have the full and entire control of the above-named child till of age, I cheerfully subscribe to the above conditions.

/s/ Thos. Spalding

WITNESS: C. C. Childs

RECOMMENDATION
We, the undersigned, being personally acquainted with Mr. Thomas Spalding of Morning Sun, Iowa, and family, cheerfully recommend them as s uitable person to be entrusted with the spiritual as well as temporal welfare of any child.

/s/ Hry Wallace, Pastor
UP Church

H. C. Blake
M. Ochiltree

(*To be signed by the pastor of the church to which you belong, and two responsible citizens.)

[Original in the possession of the family of Harold J. Kongabel, youngest son of Henrietta Crocker Kongable.]

===========

From "Beckonings," by Charles H. Beck, Morning Sun, IA, Library.
The "Hry Wallace, Pastor" who recommended Thomas Spalding is the Rev. Henry Wallace, pastor of the stone Presbyterian Church in Morning Sun from 1871-1877. The church was built in 1856. Wallace was born in Ohio to Irish immigrant parents and was educated at Geneva Hall, an academy in Northwood, Ohio, and at Columbia College in Kentucky. He taught school for one year and then attended the United Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. He also attended Monmouth College to complete his theological training. He first preached in Monroe County, Iowa. In 1863 he married Nancy Cantwell in Ohio.

He came to Morning Sun in 1871. The place was described as a village of farmers who had emigrated here from a community of the same name in Ohio. They established three churches, one United and two Covenanter, one in town and the other in the country. Some of these families were said to be carrying on the same old feuds that they had in Ohio.

He described the Morning Sun residents as "touchy people that had to be handled gently, as a rule."

[Henry A. Wallace, Sec.of Agriculture under FDR, was one of his sons and a founder of Pioneer Seed.]
She died on 25 Jul 1949 in Guthrie, Logan Co, OK.
died in Benedictine Heights Hospital, Guthrie, after a ten day hospitalization. Cause of death was appendecitis, with senility an antecedent cause.

Services Wednesday for Mrs. Kongable

Funeral services for Mrs Henrietta Kongable, 86, who died Monday in the local hospital, will be held at 9:30 a.m. in the United Presbyterian Church. Ren Klon E. Matthews will officiate and burial will be in Summit VIew cemetery under direction of Smith Funeral Home.

Mrs. Kongable, whose home was at 801 E. Vilas, came to Guthrie in 1902 from Kansas. She was a Gold Star Mother of World War I and a member of the United Presbyterian Church. Her husband died in 1908.

Survivors include five daughters: Mrs. V. O. Benson and Mrs. H. E. Birch, sr., Guthrie; Mrs. L. L. Barnes, Houston, Tex., Mrs. Dan Bennett, Ralston, Miss Monnie Kongable, Oklahoma City; three sons, Geroge F., Wetumka, W. C., Canal Zone; Harold J., Houston, Tex. 28 grandchildren and 39 great grandchildren.

Her grandsons will serve as pallbearers. The family requests no flowers.
She was buried on 27 Jul 1949 in Summit View Cemetery, Guthrie, Logan Co, OK.
From Lena May Kongable Benson:
Henrietta Crocker Kongable, born Oct. 27, 1862, had six toes on both feet, six fingers on hands, extra fingers were removed when a child. Her twin sister Annetta Crocker Wyckoff did not have any extra fingers or toes. Neither did any of her four daughters or three sons.

We were always told we were related to he giants in the Bible (2 Samuel 21:20 or 1 Chronicles 20:6). This trait was passed down through her children with the exception of the oldest (Lena) and the youngest (Harold). It has also shown up through the fourth generation but just mostly tiny fingers what can be cut off at birth.

Henrietta had nine children:

1. Lena May had no extra fingers or toes
2. George Frederick had [extra fingers and toes]
3. Edna Blanche fingers
4. Winnie Pearl had tiny pea-sized finger with tiny nail, on one of her little fingers. Was removed when a baby.
5. Nellie M. had both extra fingers and toes, were taken off.
6. Howard Spalding 2 bean-like fingers, 6 toes, 6 fingers on one hand
7. Monnie Ruth
8. William Crocker 6 fingers, 5 toes
9. Harold J. had no extra fingers or toes.

John Crocker, age 63 at the time of the 1860 Census, Four young children listed in the 1860 Census: Wm. H (6), Clara E (4), James B (3), and Abby A (1).

The 1870 Federal Census for Essex Co, Mass, Ward Five, on 7 July 1870 (Microfilm M-593, Roll 611), Page 17, Line 18, showed Henrietta Crocker, age 7, Female White, cannot read or write, and her sister, age 7, Female White, cannot read or write, twins, living in Dwelling Unit 138, Family 157, with Sarah Crocker, age 42, Female White, born in Nova Scotia, keeping the home. Two other children lived in the home: Dora, age 5, Female White, cannot read or write, and Dennis, age 1, Male White, cannot read or write.

From Lena May Kongable Benson:
When Henrietta and her twin sister Annetta were 7 years old, they were put in an orphan's home in Boston, Massachusetts.
Baldwin Place Home for Little Wanderers
now the New England Home for Little Wanderers
20 Linden Street
Boston MA 02134
Marilyn Sneden, adoption coordinator
617-232-8610 or 617-428-0234
June Leonard (Wed & Thurs)
617-232-8610 or 617-428-0258

[Microfilm records of the New England Home for Little Wanderers in Boston, MA, indicate that the children may have been placed in the Home around 31 Jan 1871. That is the date of the first documents in the Home's microfilm records signed by Sarah Crocker, with information about Anna Dora Crocker and Whitney Crocker. It is also the year that Warren Crocker Bartlett was born to Sarah Crocker and Nicholas W. Bartlett.]

In June, 1872, they were taken to Morning Sun, Iowa for adoption. Henrietta Crocker was adopted by Thomas and Mary Spalding and lived in their home until she married William Frederick Kongabel on September 13, 1883. It was about this time he began leaving the letter "r" out of his name, spelling it Kongabel.

After marriage they went to Delmont, South Dakota, and settled on a Tree Claim farm, where they built a house and set out trees to pay U.S. government for title to this land. Staying there 4 years, they sold it and moved near Majors, Buffalo County, Nebraska, on a farm. They now had 2 children, your grandmother, Lena May, born 10/19/1884, and George Frederick, born 6/16/1886, near Delmont South Dakota.

They lived in Nebraska 12 years, where following children were born: Edna Blanch, 3/2/1889; Winnie Pearl, 11/13/1891; Nellie M., 12/15/1893; Howard Spalding; 4/4/1897; Monnie Ruth, 3/30/1899. They then moved near Olathe, KS, for 1 year, where son, William Crocker, was born 12/19/1901. Next year leaved near Ottawa, KS, for 1 year. Then moved to a farm near Guthrie, OK, in 1903. On 5/25/1905, Harold J. was born.

When family moved from Nebraska to Kansas, the mother and children, except two, came on passenger train, the father and 2 girls, Edna and Winnie, came in freight car with their furniture and horses and cattle.

It was here your grandmother, Lena May Kongable, lived with her parents and attended Logan County High School."

Henrietta lived at farm home near Guthrie until 1919 when she moved to Guthrie city. At the time of her death at age 86 she was living near her daughter, Lena May, at 801 E. Vilas.

=============================

Henrietta Crocker's story is all too common for the era, a story which also indicates something of the social circumstances of late 19th century America and why there were Orphan Trains placing children out from Eastern cities to farms in the Midwest.

John Crocker, a ship's carpenter, was in his late 50s when he married Sarah Crocker, who was in her early 20s, about 1855/56. They became parents, a child born about every other year, through the birth of John Whitman (Dennis) Crocker on 25 Oct 1868, when John Crocker was @ 71 years old and Sarah was one month short of age 36. At least one of the 9 children born to them died shortly after birth.

Less than one year after the birth of their last child, John Crocker died on 14 Aug 1869, probably in a work-related event in the shipyard in Salisbury MA, just across the river north of Newburyport. This left
Sarah Crocker, probably illiterate and unskilled, as the sole support for her brood of 8 children ages 15 to 1. They were living at 19 Oakland in Newburyport at the time.

Sarah took in boarders to help pay the bills, one of whom was Nicholas Bartlett, who was a stevedore, or ship laborer. Still, she was unable to make ends meet, so in the spring of 1970 she turned her oldest four children, ages 15 to 12, out on their own. Still she could not manage, and in late 1870 she placed the youngest four children in the New England Home for Little Wanderers in Boston.

About the same time, she became pregnant with Nicholas Bartlett. Their son, Warren, was born 20 Oct 1871. He was listed as "Warren Crocker" in an 1880 census, but in later life he tooks his father's name as Warren Bartlett.

Was her decision to place the four youngest children in the New England Home for Little Wanderers in Boston prompted by her pregnancy by Nicholas Bartlett? Was Nicholas Bartlett unwilling to support children of whom he was not the father? Was theirs a consensual union, or was Sarah raped by boarder Nicholas Bartlett? All questions which will likely never be answered, but indicative of the heart-break which Sarah Crocker must have known.

9 months after Warren was born to Sarah Crocker and Nicholas Bartlett, twins Henrietta Crocker were "placed out" from an Orphan Train in Morning Sun, Iowa. Her twin sister, Annette, was also "placed out" in the same area, but the name of the family with whom Annette was placed out is not known.

Sarah Crocker and Nicholas Bartlett and their son Warren lived at 22 Olive in Newburyport until they moved to Lynn, Mass. in 1893. There is no Massachusetts record of a marriage of Sarah Crocker and Nicholas Bartlett.

Henrietta was placed out with the family of Thomas Spalding, a blacksmith in Morning Sun of Scots-Irish ancestry and strong Presbyterian faith. Thomas and Mary Kennedy Spalding, both born in
Beaver Co. PA, were parents of seven children. Henrietta was treated as one of their own, and in later life Henrietta's children called Thomas Spalding "Grandfather." Henrietta and the Spalding family remained close throughout life, and at least the next generation of descendants did so as well.

In the United Presbyterian Church of Morning Sun Henrietta met Will Kongable, trained as blacksmith in Perry Co, PA, but working with or for his brother, George, as a farmer. The Kongables were raised in the German Reformed faith, but as there was no congregation of that tradition in Morning Sun, they worshiped with the Scots-Irish Presbyterians.

Henrietta and Will were married 12 September 1883 in the Morning Sun United Presbyterian Church and departed immediately thereafter for a tree claim near Delmont, SD. Over the next 20 years they moved progressively south, working on farms and ranches in Buffalo Co, NE, and Johnson Co, KS, always worshiping every Sunday at a United Presbyterian Church, though this at times required a 10 mile sleigh ride across the frozen North Platte River with the children bundled beneath buffalo robes.

In early 1903 the family moved to Guthrie, OK, where Will purchased a 80 acres and built a home, which is still standing and occupied by a descendant family. Will died tragically in 1908 of typhoid fever. Henrietta raised the seven of her nine children who remained in the home, ages 19 to 3, on her own, through very difficult times.

On 25 July 1949 Henrietta died and was laid to rest beside her husband in the Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie. Many of her descendants live in the Guthrie area still.

One genetic peculiarity has marked descendants of Henrietta Crocker Kongable: she was born with six toes on both feet, and six fingers on her hands. These extras were removed when she was a child. Her twin sister Annetta Crocker Wyckoff did not have any extra fingers or toes. Neither did any of Annetta's four daughters or three sons, but an occasional descendant of Henrietta is still born with extra tiny nubs on feet or hands. This genetic peculiarity was also passed to descendants of one of Henrietta's older brothers.
William Frederick (Will) KORNGAEBEL and Henriette CROCKER had the following children:

+91 i. Lena May (Mae) KONGABLE.
+92 ii. George Frederick KONGABLE.
+93 iii. Edna Blanche KONGABLE.
+94 iv. Winnie Pearl KONGABLE.
+95 v. Nellie M. KONGABLE.
96 vi. Howard Spaulding KONGABLE was born on 4 Apr 1897 in Buffalo Co, NE. He was buried in 1918 in Summit View Cemetery, Guthrie, Logan Co, OK. He died on 4 Oct 1918 in Camp Pike, AR.
He died in Influenza epidemic; in Army camp during WWI.

He had 2 bean-like fingers, 6 toes, 6 fingers on one hand.

+97 vii. Monnie Ruth KONGABLE.
+98 viii. William Crocker (Bill) KONGABLE.
+99 ix. Harold J. KONGABEL.