KYBATH-L Archives

From:
Subject: Bailey Obituaries from Sharon Karn
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 10:54:34 EDT

Thanks to Sharon Karns for sharing the obituaries from the Adams County, Ohio
area. Unfortunately I can't shed any light on the particular individuals
involved but am confident all are related to the Bailey, England, and Moreland
families of Bath County.

The individuals in question certainly represent the difficulty in doing
genealogy research in the culture of the rural19th century among most of our shared
ancestors, particularly with their tendency to use and reuse common names and
to marry into the same family down the road because of the difficulty in
traveling very far by horseback or buggy. The William E. Bailey who married Nancy
England in 1884 is a good example. This William E. Bailey is the third such
Bailey so-named in Bath County that I know of and at least the third Bailey to
marry into the England family during the middle part of the 19th century.
The first William E. was the son of Robert Bailey and Anne Barnes, who died in
1819 and 1827 respectively. He married Polly England and died young in 1843
(conincidently Polly had a sister named Nancy). The young widow then married
Fielder Moreland and very possibly were the parents of the Martha Moreland
England that Sharon also submitted an obit for. The other Bath County William E.
Bailey that I am aware of was born in 1873, the son of William Warren Bailey
and Sarah Jones.

After trying without success to find a home for the third William Bailey, I
checked my data base and found that in the approximately four generations of
Baileys in Bath County during the 19th century 15 were named William, 13 were
named John, 12, Robert and 11 named Charles. Of course that total pool of
possibilites doesn't include the many dozens prior to the 1850 census and those
who migrated elsewhere before the census taker arrived. I suspect all of this
is why I remember my mother lecturing all seven of her sons never to give their
children the same names as their cousins because the Baileys were notorious
for naming children without regard to how many others in the extended family
had the same name. ( I guess we Baileys weren't very creative.) We followed our
mother's orders and used a greater variety of names but have never to this
day dipped into the fad names.

Pete Bailey
Indianapolis

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