Tag Archives: Doc Stout

The Stout Family Pictures Raise Questions

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Great-great grandmother Emeline is squinting her eyes, because she had lost most of her eyesight later in life.

Judging by the leg of mutton or gigot sleeves on the two younger women, I believe this photo was taken in the last half of the 1890s. A velvet vertical trim adorns Aunt Sade’s double-breasted jacket . Aunt Lib’s outfit is even more elaborately adorned, with flaps extending out from the shoulder over the tops of the large gathered sleeves, light-colored embroidery trim on the jacket and collar, and a light-colored ribbon bow on her right side at the waist. It looks like she has a chain, but the locket is tucked inside her jacket.

The women look as though they are wearing winter clothes, however the four sons posed on a porch. Perhaps that was not a real porch, but a staged set at the photographer’s studio? Whether they went to the studio for their picture, or the photographer went to Emeline’s farm, I am certain that the family portrait was taken in Emeline’s home. I can see a photograph on the wall which is part of my collection of old photos. Emeline also had a lovely patterned wallpaper on the wall.

Interesting that the two Ohioans are wearing the string bow tie, and the two westerners the large four-in-hand.

I am curious about the star-shaped dangle on a watch chain worn by rancher Tom. I’m guessing it is the symbol of some fraternal organization. Anyone out there have a clue?

One More Photograph

It was quite a day for photographs. My great-grandfather, W.C. (Doc) Stout also posed for an individual photograph on that day.

Doctor William Cochran Stout, my great-grandfather

Besides not knowing the exact year of the Stout family picture, some mysteries remain.

The Photographer

Addison, Quaker City, it says on the front of the cardboard frame of the Stout family picture. Quaker City was the town nearest the Stout farm in Guernsey County, Ohio. Many times I get help dating pictures by looking at lists, particularly Langdon Road, that list old photographers. However, I have not found a reference on line, so know nothing about the Addison Photography Studio in Quaker City.

The Missing Siblings

Where was brother George in the Stout family picture? Since he was a doctor practicing in Guernsey County, perhaps he was called out for a patient.

Where were sister Martha (Mattie) Stout Cunningham and her husband? They lived in Guernsey County.

Why was Aunt Sade ‘s husband the only spouse included in the family portrait? It is quite possible that Tom’s and Frank’s wives did not make the long trip from out West, but W.C. Stout and Dr. George Stout and Lib Cunningham all lived nearby, yet their spouses are not pictured.

And the biggest question of all–what brought this family together? It was not a wedding, nobody had died in the late 1890s, Emeline would have turned 70 in 1898. Could the family have gathered for her birthday? I’m missing something here. Something that was important enough to draw the entire family together, and commemorate the event with a photograph. Emeline’s 70th birthday seems the most likely.

Meanwhile, however, I have the photograph to add to the others of Great-great-grandmother Emeline Cochran Stout.

Emeline Cochran Stout, mother of Dr. Wm Stout. 1890s.

How I am Related

Vera Marie Kaser Badertscher is the daughter of
Harriette Anderson Kaser, the daughter of
Vera Stout Anderson, the daughter of
William C. Stout, the son of
Emeline Cochran Stout

William C. Stout is also brother to

Tom Stout
John Franklin Stout
George Stout
Elizabeth (Lib) Stout Cunningham
Sarah (Sade) Stout
Martha (Mattie) Stout

who are therefore my 2 X great-uncles and 2 X great-aunts.

All photographs are in the possession of the author.

This Old House: Where Ancestors Lived

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Among the treasures that showed up in our recent move, was this picture of my great-great grandmother’s old house. I decided to put this picture together with other old house pictures, most of which I have already shown to you.

Great-Great Grandmother Mary Morgan’s Old House

Mary Morgan’s Killbuck house with Doc Stout office on right. Circa 1880

Mary Bassett Morgan (1810-1890), (wife of the infamous Jesse Morgan) lived in this Killbuck, Ohio house. When Hattie married Dr. William Stout in 1872, the newlyweds moved into an apartment in Mary’s house and Dr. Stout set up his office in the lower front part of the house, facing Main Street.

I have not researched land records–if they exist for those early days of the community–so I don’t know if Mary first lived in that old house with her first husband, Asahel Platt. Since Mr. Platt apparently owned a general store, this would have been a perfect location. And those big windows on the left side, look like a store front to me. Mary did not live in one place consistently. After Mr. Platt died, she lived in another county, where she met and married Jessie Morgan. Later census records indicate she joined her daughter in a household that probably provided a room for the school teacher, Hattie Morgan.

In 1870, Mary’s census address includes a variety of people, making it look as though she runs a rooming house. That could be the big house above. Next to her on the census list, we see a physician, so possibly that doctor left and Doc Stout took over his office.

The little town of Killbuck (then called Oxford) has two main streets–Main and Front. This building stands on a corner of the intersection of Main and Front Streets, facing Front Street where most of the businesses developed. Hattie and “Doc’s” three children, William (1873), Maude (1875) and Vera (1881), my grandmother, were all born in that house at the corner of Main and Front.

When I was in high school, a restaurant called Hale’s occupied that corner–and possibly the same building, much remodeled. But the restaurant building burned down in the 19 s and the rebuilt building on the corner bears no resemblance to Grandma Morgan’s old house.

Great Grandfather Doc and Great Grandmother Hattie Stout’s New House on Main Street

By the time my grandmother, Vera Stout (Anderson) was about four or five years old( circa 1885) , Doc Stout build a grand new house for his family, around the corner on Main Street.

I can see echoes of Hattie’s mother’s house in the new house and office Doc Stout built on Main Street. She obviously wanted to have the same kind of porch she had in her mother’s house.

Stout Family old house in Killbuck, Ohio

Dr. William Stout and family in front of family home, circa 1885

Grandma and Grandpa Anderson’s Farm House

When my grandmother married, she and her husband Guy Anderson lived for a time on this house on a farm near Killbuck. The first picture below–a gathering of their extended family in 1909–gives a hint of the grandeur of this house, which had been built by Guy’s uncle. The next picture shows how the house looked a few years ago.

Vera and Guy Anderson and families 1909

Old Anderson Farm, Photo courtesy of Herb Anderson

Grandma and Grandpa Anderson’s House in Town

However, farm life did not agree with Vera and Guy, and they moved in to town. I wish I had a better picture of the little house they lived in on a side street in Killbuck. In this one, Grandma is sitting on the porch with the three children–Bill (1905), Harriette(1906), and Herbert (1908).

Vera Anderson and children at small house in Killbuck, about 1910

Not long after the picture of this old house, the house burned to the ground. Mother tells how her father, who had a hardware store at the time, came running calling for her because he was so afraid that she had been caught inside in the fire. It was a traumatic experience that none of them would ever forget. Mother said that for years, Grandma Vera would look for things and then realize they were destroyed in the fire.

Great Grandmother Hattie Stout’s Small House

Doc Stout died in 1910, and Hattie Stout decided to move to a smaller house. She lived in this little place when my mother went off to college. This picture shows Mother’s brothers, Herbert and Bill Anderson, and her friend Sarah, who later married Bill Anderson. A cousin from Guernsey County gazes off to the right. Hattie Stout sits In the center and her daughter Vera Stout Anderson, in an apron, pets her dog Peggy. The picture dates to about 1925. (The family had moved to Columbus, Ohio when Harriette started college at Ohio State University, but returned to Killbuck when Guy and their sons could not find work.)

My grandmother Vera pets Peggy. In the center of the picture is my great-grandmother Hattie Stout, Vera’s mother. About 1925 when my mother was in college.

The End of Doc Stout’s Grand Old House on Main Street

Guy and Vera by this time had moved into the family homestead–the house that Doc Stout had built when Vera was very young. Vera continued to live there until she was in her 80s. Through the years part of it served as the doctor’s office, it became a boarding house, then a restaurant, and later Vera offered rooms or apartments for rent. When she sold it, she moved to a small house on Water Street near Front Street in Killbuck, and the grand old house on Main Street was dismantled to pave a parking lot for the grocery store.

Stout-Anderson house newspaper article

So of the five old houses shown here, only one survives that I know of. It is possible that the small house of Hattie Stout might still exist in a different form in Killbuck. But meanwhile, I am glad to have a collection of pictures of houses of my grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandmother.

Isaiah Stout, Truth, Half-Truth and Mysterious Myths

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Isaiah Stout (1822-1872)

The long and fascinating story of the Stout family in America starts in 1643 on the East Coast when Richard Stout of Nottinghamshire, England ended a 7-year stint with the English navy and worked briefly as a mercenary for the Dutch in New Amsterdam.

I will tell Richard’s and his wife’s stories later, but they wound up in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and the Stouts married, prospered and multiplied in New Jersey for some generations before spreading over many different states. Because there are so many Stouts, there are many books and many truths, half-truths and mysterious myths to wade through.

My maternal grandmother’s (Vera Stout Anderson)‘s paternal grandfather was Isaiah Stout. For several generations each family of Stouts had an Isaiah and an Isaac–just to make things interesting for their descendants who might want to trace family history, I tend to think, peevishly.

More realistically the names reflect a strong religious theme that started when the pioneer, Richard Stout, cast his lot with the Anabaptists who differed with my Pilgrim ancestors in that they did not believe in baptizing babies. Since I know that my Great-grandfather William C. Stout was a devout Christian, I have no reason to doubt that his father, Isaiah was as well.

I see an interesting mystery in the biography of Isaiah Stout’s son John Franklin Stout (brother of my great grandfather William Stout) in the book Omaha, the Gate City and Douglas County Nebraska (1917) it says

“His (John Franklin’s) grandfather Isaac, a native of New Jersey, spent his entire life in that state. His father, Isaiah Stout, was born in New Jersey 1822 and traveled on foot to Ohio when 17 years of age.”

My great-great grandfather Isaiah’s grandfather Isaiah (1773-1810) and his son Isaac (1800-1877), were part of the minority of Stouts who stayed in New Jersey through the 19th century. , perhaps influenced by all those uncles and cousins who were moving west, John Franklin’s father, Isaiah (1822-1872) DID resettle in southern Ohio, and it is quite possible it was when he was 17 and he walked. I know from reading about the wagon trains in that period that most travelers walked alongside the wagons rather than ride.

That would be very interesting, if true, and totally in line with the adventurous spirit of other, earlier Stout men–particularly the pioneer, Richard Stout. But, alas, I have no way of proving that Isaiah Stout (1800-1877) actually walked from New Jersey to Ohio in 1839, at the age of 17. It is also of interest because Isaiah’s next to youngest son, Thomas, left home at 17 to travel west from Ohio. This same bio says that John Franklin Stout is “a representative of an old New Jersey family of Dutch extraction.” That is partially true. As I pointed out, Richard Stout, the pioneer, was English. However his wife Penelope came from Holland.

Emeline Cochrane Stout

So many Stouts had scattered to the western frontier (which Ohio still was) that I suspect Isaiah was following some uncles or cousins west in 1839. Whatever his motivation for landing in Guernsey County in southern Ohio, five years after he arrived, he had won the heart of 18-year-old Emeline Cochran and the approval of her family who were pioneers in that county. They were married On June 11, 1844 (NOTE: ERROR IN THIS DATE CORRECTED 3/2020) and the following year their first son, my great-grandfather, William Cochran Stout was born.

The History of Guernsey County (published in 1882) holds another mystery.

“The couple lived for some years in Guernsey and Washington counties, and in Clay county, Indiana, lived in Oxford township for ten years and finally settled on a farm one mile west of Middlebourne in Wills township, where Mr. Stout died in 1872.”

I have heard no family tales of that move to Indiana–although I know there were other Stout families in Indiana. Nor do I have any concrete record of them living in Washington County. I do know where the Stout farm was located in Wills Township, Guernsey County, west of Middlebourne. [ADDITION March 2016] I have discovered a land deed in which an Isaac Stout and his wife “Lidia” transfer land in Delaware County, Indiana in 1838. This cannot be the father of the Isaiah that we are focusing on here, because there are clear records of an Isaac and Lydia Stout in Indiana. Plus, it is a different county than mentioned in the Guernsey County book.

In the 28 years they were married, Emmeline and Isaiah had eleven children, built a house and a successful farm. (UPDATE 3/2020: Thanks to a reader, here’s an aerial view from 1975 of the Stout farm. (https://vintageaerial.com/photos/ohio/guernsey/1975/EGU/4/2)By 1989, the later owner of Isaiah Stout’s farm said they barns had been torn down.)

Three of Isaiah and Emeline’s children died before reaching the age of 5. Isaiah, apparently uneducated and content to stay in Ohio and work his farm, surely was proud of his bright sons and daughters, although he did not live to see most of them reach success in marriage and careers. I can’t help think that he might have been disappointed that his four successful sons turned their back on his Ohio farm.

Isaiah died when he was just fifty years old, before his youngest two sons left for the west and became a lawyer and a rancher, but he saw his two oldest sons become doctors.

I have no photos of Isaiah–although there are pictures of Emeline and most of the children in our family collection. Based on the photo of his sons that you can see in the article on Dr. George Stout, I have a mental picture of a sturdy man with a high forehead and upright bearing.

Unfortunately Isaiah never met any of his 24 grandchildren before he was buried in the Stout cemetery in Guernsey County.

The Stout Cemetery, Guernsey County, Ohio. Photo by Larry and Judy Anderson.

How I am related

Vera Marie Badertscher, who is the
daughter of Harriette Anderson Kaser who is the
daughter of Vera Stout Anderson, who is the
daughter of William Cochran Stout, who is the
son of Isaiah Stout.

Notes

U. S. Federal Census: 1850, Liberty, Washington,Ohio; 1860, Oxford, Guernsey, Ohio; 1870, Wills, Guernsey, Ohio. Non Population Schedule,1870; Census Place: Guernsey, Guernsey, Ohio; Archive Collection Number: T1159; Roll: 36; Line: 6; Schedule Type: Agriculture, Isaiah Stout.
Ohio, County Marriages, 1774-1993, Guernsey County, Isaiah Stout and Emeline Cockran, Ancestors in Aprons.
Find a Grave, Isaiah Stout
History of the Stout Family by Nathan Stout, accessed on line at U. S. Gen Web Archives.
The Household Guide and Instructor with Biographies, History of Guernsey County, Ohio, by T. F. Williams (1882) (Two copied pages that include the Stout/Cochran family are in my possession. (Whole available free through Google books)
Omaha, The Gate City and Douglas County Nebraska, Vol. 2, edited by Arthur Cooper Wakely (1917). (E-book Available free through Google Books)
Family photographs are in the author’s possession.