Hagerman - Searle - Yeager - Yeatts

1870 Census has him in Dayton, IL with Joe Yeager's family. Susan is next door, with Samuel and \"Nellie\". I don't know why Amelia was in Gettysburg at this time.

My father's mother thought we might be related to John Brown. That's apparently true, but not THAT John Brown. The abolitionist JB was born in CT in 1800; our JB was born in PA in 1786. And our JB was still alive for the 1870 Census.

1860 census shows a Brown family who might be our John. This john had a wife named Sophia. There were twenty-somethings named John and Ann in the household. Japser, Wayne, Illinois.

Hmmmm.... I'm trying to unravel several trees posted on Ancestry which include this John Brown. Several of them have him married to Elizabeth Cook. Nobody knows anything about EC. Several list parents for JB: William Brown (1738-1835) and Mary Piersol (1740-1835). But, one of them lists a bunch of kids from that marriage, two of them named John. The Johns were listed with the same birth date. but one of the Johns died fairly young, in 1822. Furthermore some of these trees cite a document to claim JB (born in 1786) received a Civil War pension. A nearly 80 year old fighting in a Missouri Infantry unit. I don't think so. And there's a frightful lack of documentation of any of this. The moral of the story: parents, don't give your kids ridiculously common names; it just gets everybody confused.

Ancestry user JRich351 lists a specific birthdate of 12 APR 1786 for this JB. Only source is another tree.