AMOS HIMES OF KOSCIUSKO COUNTY, INDIANA

Our great-grandmother, Clara Melvina (Himes) Baughman's death certificate named her parents as Amos Himes and Clara Watts. This same information was given to Enid Ritter by my grand aunt Bertha Bailey (my grandmother's youngest sister). Because Amos Himes is an uncommon name in Indidna, he is relatively easy to find in the census indexes. He was present in Kosciusko County in the 1840, 1850 and 1860 censuses in Jefferson Township.

As can be seen, the family was quite inconsistent about their ages. Amos and Clara were in Ohio for a while after marrying and moved to Indiana after the birth of William (ca 1836/1838) and before the 1840 census. This suggests a move to Indiana between 1836 and 1840. This fits with Laporte/Winamac Land Office records that show an Amos Himes bought land in northern Kosciusko County on 14 Aug 1838, which he patented 25 June 1841 (40 acres in section 14 of Township 34 range 6). He must have sold or lost the land since the 1850 and 1860 censuses show no land values for Amos (also, the land was in Van Buren Township, but Amos lived in Jefferson). Susan (b ca 1843/1844) and the later children were all born in Indiana.

What Happened to Amos Himes after 1860? There is no sign of Amos Himes in the 1870 census. Nor is he or his wife listed in the Kosciusko County Cemetery Inscription books. An Amos Himes married Lucy A. Snively on 3 Apr 1862 in Kosciusko. Our Amos Himes was the only one of that name in Indiana in 1850 and 1860, and there are no Amos Himeses in 1870 in the state. Thus it appears likely that the Amos Himes who married Lucy Snively was ours. This would suggest that Clara had died between 1860 and 1862. Most likely Amos died between 1860 and 1870. A family story passed down by Aunt Bertha (Amos' grandaughter) was that Amos and his wife were killed together by an interurban express train while trying to cross the tracks in a horse and buggy. However, the death certificate of their daughter Susan states that she was killed by an "interurban car." And since her husband Jason Jones died on the same day in 1906, it appears that the story was really about Susan and her husband and not about Amos and Clara.

In the 1870 census the children are somewhat scattered. Several of the older children had married in Kosciusko. Sarah married Hiram Pinkerton in on 28 May 1851, William married Christena Shaffer on 22 Mar 1862, and Susan married Jason Jones on 12 Jun 1862. Sarah and Hiram were in Jefferson Township, Susan may be with Jason in Plain Township, with her name given as Catherine in the census. William and Christena were in Marshall Co., Indiana. I have not located Rebecca or Joseph, although Joseph later married in Kosciusko (1878). The three youngest children were all in Pike Co., Illinois in 1870, where they had married--Thomas in 1866, Margaret in 1867 and Melvina (listed as Malinda in the 1860 census) in 1869. This suggests the possibility that Amos and his youngest childen had moved to Illinois before he died. Our family lore had that Melvina was orphaned at a young age, which explained why she married at age 16. Her sister Margaret had also married at age 16 two years earlier in Pike County, Illinois, suggesting that Amos may have been deceased by 1866. Of course it is also possible that Amos died in Kosciusko and his two younger daughters moved to Pike to join their brother who might have moved there earlier. But it would have made more sense for them to stay in Kosciusko if that were the case, where they had two older married sisters. A search of the 1865 Illinois state census for Pike County failed to locate Amos there, but the ink was very faded and the census unindexed. Amos Himes is not listed in an 1866 enumeration of adult males in Kosciusko so had died or left the county by at least then. An Amos Himes is listed as marrying Emeline Lee on 2 Jan 1865 in Scott Co., Illinois. Since Scott is adjacent to Pike, there is a possibility that he was alive and married a third time. He is not listed, nor is there an Emeline Himes, in the 1870 census.

Margaret and Melvina married two Baughman brothers, Lewis and Daniel, in Pike Co, IL on 11 Nov 1867 and 4 April 1869, respectively. Sometime between 1872 and 1877, the three Himes siblings (including Thomas) and their spouses made a return migration together to Kosciusko County, Indiana. My grandmother was quite young (she was born in Illinois in 1870) but was said to have remembered her younger brother crying a lot at the time they moved.

Where did Amos Himes and Clara come from? Most people in our family assumed that Amos Himes was of Germanic origin like the Ritters, Baughmans, Hammans, other Himes, Hoovers and Earnsts among my Dad's ancestors. My Uncle Paul was sure they were all Germanic ("Pennsylvania Dutch"). Grand Aunt Bertha (who was born after the migration from Pike Co., Illinois to Kosciuko) even said that she imagined that the Himes and Baughmans had immigrated together from Germany. However when my Dad visited his grandmother Melvina (Himes) Baughman in Indiana in the early 1940's (after her husband Daniel Baughman had passed on), she told him that they were "Scoth-Irish." She was quite elderly at the time, and her parents had died when she was still a teenager, but what she said makes at least some sense in light of other information about the Himes families of New England.

Amos was born in Connecticut in the early 1800's. In the earliest U.S. censuses, Himes or Hymes was a fairly common name in New England, and the given name Amos can be regularly found there. In the 1790 census, there were 13 Hymes families listed, including two in Connecticut, two in New Hampshire, four in Rhode Island and one in Vermont (the later headed by an Amos Hymes). There was one Himes listed in Vermont, but most with that spelling (seven) were in Maryland or Pennsylvania. There was also one Hyams in Rhode Island. By 1800 the predominant spelling had shifted to Himes, even in New England, where there were eight Himes families, three Hyams, and two Hymes families listed, predominantly in Vermont and Rhode Island. By 1810 (about the time our Amos was an infant), there were nine Himes families and two Hymes families in New England, including two in Connecticut.

Looking at Rootsweb World Connect Family Trees, Family Search and Family Tree Maker one can find two relatively well documented families using the name Amos Himes prior to 1810 or so.

Amos Himes b. 1747 Rhode Island d. 1805 Vermont m. [1] Jane Reynolds 1771 Vermont, m [2] Thankful Andrews 1779 Vermont
(ancestor: David or John Himes/Hyams b 1645 Great Britain, with Scotish wife)

Amos Himes (son of above) b. 19 Dec 1787 Vermont, d. Bradford Co., PA m. Anna Adams 1807 Vermont, children moved to Illinois.

Amos Himes b. ca. 1775 RI, m. [1] Ruth Campbell ca. 1804 in New York, m [2] Ruth Raynor Keyes 1821 Scriba Co., NY
(ancestor: Benjamin Himes b. ca. 1700 in Wales; served in War of 1812)

Amos Himes (son of above) b. ca. 1810 NY lived in Ohio (no other information given).

There has been some speculation that the Amos Himes b. ca. 1810 in Scriba Co., NY might be our Amos Himes. There are no other Amos Himes listed in Ohio censuses during the period prior to our Amos settling in Indiana and we knew from the birthplace of the older children that our Amos and Clara were in Ohio at least between about 1830 and 1836. However our Amos and his son Joseph (in the 1880 census) give Amos' birth place as Connecticut, not NY. Interestingly the son William does list his father as having been born in NY in the 1880 census, but this is probably a confusion with his mother having been born in NY and (likely) his father having lived in NY before moving to Ohio. In addition, there is another Amos Himes that might possibly be the son of the the Rhode Island/Scriba Co. NY Amos Himes. The 1850 and 1860 censuses show an Amos J. Himes born NY ca. 1810-1814 living in Michigan. There is no sign that the Michigan Amos spent time in Ohio (his children were born in Michigan between 1842 and 1860), but neither he nor our Amos can be ruled out as the possible son of Amos Himes from Scriba County, NY. Either way, our Amos does appear to have followed the same pattern as the NY Himes family, moving from New England to New York and then further west. These New England Himes families appear to have mainly originated in the British Isles rather than German areas of Europe. It is also worth noting that the maiden name of Amos' wife (Watts, or possibily Watson from one record) is common in Wales and the British Isles. Maybe great-grandmother Malvina Himes Baughman said she was Scotch-Irish because of her mother rather than her father. This is a situation where a Himes y-chromosome project might prove informative in separating out the varous Himes families. If anyone reading this has any information that might shed light on the mystery of the origin of our Kosckusko Amos Himes, please email at philr@stanford.edu.