Re: Dudleston Family History
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In reply to:
Re: Dudleston Family History
8/20/01
Kathy,
Thanks for your information about the Herkimer, NY connection.Anything more on
this lead would be greatly appreciated.
I sent this information to Ron Dudelston
and may have copied you before:
This is about all I know about Hamilton's family.I do know that Thompson Fiddy, Nancy's father, is indexed in
the 1820 Ohio census, but I have yet to see the actual entry.
After I received your e-mail, I spoke with Faye Duddleston Hall, a cousin, who researched the information.
She thought that Hamilton's brother Ralph had no children.(So how do you exist?) She lists the siblings as: 1)Ralph 2) Hamilton 3)Elmira 4)Charles and 5) Isaiah.I have more information about these siblings.
You might like to know some information about Hamilton.My father wrote this some years ago:
"There is no formal history of my mother's ( Leone Duddleston) Duddleston side, but my cousin Faye Duddleston
Hall did some research and located the Duddleston ancestors first in the mountains of West Virginia (then Virginia)
in the early nineteenth century.When General William Harrison (I believe) cleared the Indians out of Ohio they
moved there and eventually would up in Muncie, Indiana(northeast of Indianapolis).It was there that young Hamilton met Mathilda Sloniker and married (sometimein the 1850's).
While in Muncie, Hamilton built some furniture, including a desk I have in Milwaukee and a hutch.These good went with the couple on a wagon trip to somewhere in Kansas-Missouri area.The fighting and chaotic situation there in the struggle from whether the Kansas territory would be save or free induced them to move again to La Valle, Wisconsin in Sauk County.Why La Valle?Perhaps the Sloniker relative preceded them, for there are other Slonikers in La Valle.
At any rate the furniture went with them and eventually the desk and hutch were rescued by Gladys and Leone from my grandfather's barn and reconditioned by a furniture builder in Madison in the 1930ties.The hutch was a prized piece to Leone and since she had no daughters and Susan was her first granddaughter it was Susan to whom the heirloom was awarded although it was used in our houses in Milwaukee until Susan was married.One more trial for the hutch; it survived Jim and Susan's tornado in Athens, Georgia with slight damage.
The first homestead was just east of La Valle; there is a picture of a house on that property among the family pictures but I don't know when it was built.The farm house of Joseph and Julia was erected on a different farm site and still stands.Joseph Duddleston was born in 1858 and one sister, Mary, who married William Cherry but had no children.Hamilton volunteered to fight with the North in the Civil War when he was in his thirties and had two children - perhaps because of his Kansas experience.He died in the battle of Shiloh and is buried there.Mathilda carried on with some help from a war widow's pension.That pension stopped when she married a man named Swain, but was reactivated after he died.(The pension facts were obtained by my cousin Faye Hall from War Department records.)Mathilda live to be 80 and was always referred to by mother Leone as Grandma Swain.
I know nothing of my grandfather Joe's early history, but it must have been tough.The next reportable event was his marriage to Julia Sosinski sometime after 1880.Since their first child was born in 1883 when Julia was 19 and Julia had started teaching at age 16 in 1880 that must have been the approximate date.Joe was six year older."
Please note that Hamilton Duddleston actually
died of disease at Colliersville, TN.