Tag Archives: Kansas

Aaron Stout: New Jersey Stouts Scatter

Aaron Stout 1780-1864

Last time, I talked about a great uncle (Josiah Stout) of my great-great grandfather Isaiah Stout (1822). Another brother, Aaron Stout wound up closer geographically to the location of my great-great grandfather Isaiah, but Aaron traveled from New Jersey perhaps before Isaiah was born. Aaron Stout’s children scattered throughout the Midwest.

To keep the generations consistent, I am using the system of numbering starting with Richard Stout, the founder of this Stout family in North America. The generations are (1) Richard, the first to come to North America, (2) David, (3) Freegift, (4) my ancestor Isaac and his brother Obadiah (5) Isaac’s children including my ancestor Isaiah and his brothers Josiah and Aaron, (6) Josiah’s and Aaron’s children.

Generation FIVE: The Children of Isaac Stout (1740) – Aaron Stout

The birth of Josiah in 1780 and Aaron in 1781, might have come as a surprise to parents Isaac Stout (1740), and Mary Quimby Stout. The couple had reached the top edge of middle age, as reckoned in that period when the two were born. The two youngest boys turned out to be the restless ones in the family of six children. Their elder brother Isaiah(1740) (my ancestor) and their sisters all remained in New Jersey.

I have found it difficult to find official records of Aaron’s life. that no doubt at least partly stems from his migration to the still wild lands of Ohio about 1820.

The Historic and Genealogical Miscellany compiled by John Edwin Stillwell from the mid 1850s into the early 1900s provides most of the information I have about this family.

Stillwell tells us that Aaron, son of Isaac and Mary Qumby Stout, married a daughter of Nathaniel Hixson, Mary, but I have not found a record with the exact date. I believe the name of his wife is correct, because Nathanial Hixson’s will was administered by Aaron Stout, and the oldest son of the couple bore the name Nathaniel Hixson Stout. Nathaniel (the son of Aaron) born in 1806, leads me to assume that the couple married about 1805.

Aaron Goes to Ohio

Five of the children of Aaron Stout and Mary — Nathanial (1806-1867) Moses (1808-1887), Ebenezer (1810-1877), Isaac (1817-1891), and Theodore (1819-1907) list the birthplace of New Jersey on Census reports. A sixth child, Rachel Hixson (Biggs) (1824-1876) is recorded as born in Okeana, Butler County, Ohio. Stillwell (mentioned above) also says there was another daughter named Tacey and a daughter named Mary. I cannot verify either of these. Stillwell lists Mary and Rachel as the two youngest children, both born in Ohio. Logic says they would name a daughter Mary, but because there are so many Mary Stouts, I am not willing to spend the time it would take to verify her information.

The birthplaces of the children gives us a clue as to when the family moved to Ohio. It had to be between the birth of Theodore in 1819 and Rachel in 1824 (or earlier if Stillwell is correct and daughter Mary also first appears in Ohio.) Aaron’s biography in Find a Grave states that he migrated to Morgan County, Ohio in 1820, but I do not know their source.

Okeana in Butler County grew up on the Western side of Ohio, not far from Cincinnati.

Aaron Stout gravestone
Presumed gravestone of Aaron Stout in Butler County, Ohio

Whenever he specifically arrived, Aaron stayed put in Okeana, Butler County Ohio for the rest of his life. His children on the other hand, inherited his wandering gene. The two oldest sons wasted no time becoming independent.

Generation SIX: The Children of Aaron Stout

Missouri, Tenessee, Illinois, and Kansas

On this map, I have added the migration of Aaron and his children to that of his brother Josiah and his children. As we have seen, Aaron went to Ohio, from the Stout home base in New Jersey which is marked in red. If you follow the link to the map, you can click on each marker and see the name of the place, the name of the person who settled there and the year that I believe they first settled. I left out some locations where the stay was brief, and left out most of the stopping places of the rolling stone, Isaac Stout.

Nathaniel: Born in New Jersey, according to Find a Grave bio, he moved to St. Louis in 1828 when he was 22, and on to Memphis Tennessee in 1833. He died in Memphis Tennesee in 1867, and his wife is listed as a widow in the Memphis city director in 1883.

Moses: Born in New Jersey, Moses succeeded as a merchant in St. Louis. According to Find a Grave his move to St. Louis occurred in 1828 at the age of 20. In 1830 he married in St. Louis. One book says that Nathaniel and Moses went into business together in St. Louis, and in 1833, Moses bought out his brother Nathaniel. That is when Nathaniel supposedly moved to Memphis. Moses lived as a widow with a daughter’s family in St. Louis in 1880. He died in St. Louis in 1881.

Ebenezer: Born in New Jersey, he would have been about ten when his parents moved to Ohio. Like his brothers, his interests ran to commerce rather than farming. Records show that he married in Fayette Illinois in 1843. By 1850 when he was 40 years old, he and his family lived in Springfield, Illinois, where he worked as a store clerk. His brother Isaac and his mother-in-law live with his family. By 1855 he had moved to Bloomington Illinois. In the 1860 census, that job designation has changed to Merchant. He died in Bloomington in 1877 and his widow still lived in Bloomington when the 1889 city directory was published.

The Rolling Stone, Isaac Stout (1817)

Isaac: Born in New Jersey, Isaac Stout had more trouble finding himself than any of the other children of Aaron Stout, judging by the census record trail he left behind. We first see him aboard a ship sailing from Galveston Texas to New Orleans at the end of November 1839. The ship’s manifest lists the young adventurer (twenty-two years old) as a merchant. In 1850 we see him living with his brother Ebenezer and working as a clerk in Springfield, Illinois. In 1860, he has returned to Ohio, where he works as a merchant in Preble, Washington County, Ohio. He lives with his mother Mary, who is 76. His mother died at 78 years old, and Isaac, the rolling stone, returned to Illinois.

Before he showed up on the 1870 census, however, he married Matilda Montgomery, probably soon after his mother died, and they had three children. The family on the census includes a boy named Benjamin Stout, 13, but Matilda is too young to be Benjamin’s mother. Besides, at the time she was born, she was still living with her family. I have no idea who Benjamin belongs to. Isaac has reached the age of 53 before he has established a family with his much younger wife. Matilda is now 27. They live in McLean, Illinois and Isaac has fallen on bad times. He works as a laborer.

You might think things are looking up for Isaac, the rolling stone, when you see that in 1880, at 63 years old, he has found work as a school teacher. However, school teaching in that period was women’s work, and for men, teaching school probably came as a last resort to someone who couldn’t succeed at anything else. The family has grown by three–now six children. and they have moved to another town, Mt. Pulaski, Illinois.

St. Anthony Home for the Insane and the Aged, Dubuque, Iowa

The sad end for Isaac comes in 1900 when the census shows him listed as an “inmate” a Catholic Institution, St. Anthony Home, located in Dubuque Iowa. St. Anthony’s was Home for the Insane until 1897 when it was expanded to include a Home for the Aged. Those listed at the address include a lot of Sisters and then a list of inmates. Isaac died in 1901. Why Dubuque? I am puzzled because his wife proves hard to trace and I would have expected her to outlive him by many years. I cannot find her in the records after 1880, but perhaps she remarried when or even before Isaac died.

The Daughter, Rachel Stout

Rachel: Not to be outdone, the daughter in the family, Rachel Hixson Stout (Biggs), the only child of Aaron that I know for a fact to have been born in Ohio, ended life in Missouri. Rachel married Hamilton Biggs in 1842 in her family’s home county of Butler in Ohio. However, by 1850 she and her husband had moved a short distance away to Israel Ohio and then moved to Eaton Ohio. She lived in Fairview Kansas in 1870 and died at the age of 52 in Medoc Missouri, in 1876.

P. S. If I were following this family for one more generation, I would have to add Oklahoma to the map. But I am not.

How I Am Related

  • Vera Marie Badertscher is the daughter of
  • Harriette Anderson Kaser, who is the daughter of
  • Vera Stout Anderson, who is the daughter of
  • William Cochran (Doc) Stout, who is the son of
  • Isaiah Stout (1822), who is the son of
  • Isaac Stout (1800), who is the son of
  • Isaiah Stout (1773) who is the son of
  • Isaac Stout (1740), who is also the father of
  • Aaron Stout (1780)

Notes on Research

U. S. Census 1830, 1840 Morgan, Butler County Ohio; 1850 Israel, Preble, Ohio; 1850 Bloomington, Sagamon, Illinois; 1860 Bloomington, McLean, Illinois; 1860 Eaton, Washington, Preble, Ohio; 1860 & 1870 & 1880, St. Louis Missouri; 1870, Bloomington, McLean, Illinois; 1870 West Township, McLean, Illinois; 1870, Fairview, Labette, Kansas; 1880, Mt. Pulaski, Logan, Illinois; 1900, Dubuque, Dubuque, Iowa;

New Orleans, Passenger Lists, 1813-1945 The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New Orleans, Louisiana, 1820-1902; NAI Number: 2824927; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service; Record Group Number: 85; Isaac Stout, Departure from Galveston Texas; 28 Nov 1839 . Accessed at Ancestry.com

New Jersey, Marriage Records, 1670-1965 ; Hunterdon County, New Jersey; Nathaniel Hixson Stout and Catherine Brewer, 25 Sep 1833 . Accessed at Ancestry.com

Ohio, County Marriages, 1774-1993; Butler County, Ohio; Rachel Stout and Hamilton Biggs; 29 Apr 1842 . Accessed at Ancestry.com

Illinois, Marriage Index, 1860-1920 ; Fayette, Illinois, Ebenezer Stout and Huldah Briggs, 18 Apr 1843. Accessed at Ancestry.com

Tennessee, Wills and Probate Records, 1779-2008 ; Probate Records (Shelby County, Tennessee); Author: Tennessee Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions (Shelby County); Probate Place: Shelby, Tennessee Nathaniel Hixson Stout, 11 Oct 1867 Accessed at Ancestry.com

Missouri, Wills and Probate Records, 1766-1988: Author: Missouri. Probate Court (St. Louis City); Probate Place: St Louis, Missouri : Moses Stout, 3 Feb 1881 , Case Number 13863. Accessed at Ancestry.com

Historic and Genealogical Miscellany : Data Relating to the Settlement and Settlers of New York and New Jersey, Vol. IV, John Stillwell M.D. , Self Published, New York: 1903 , Digital edition available at archive.org

Stout and Allied Families,Vol. I, Herald F. Stout, Capt. USN , Dover Ohio: Eagle Press:1951, Accessed on Ancestry.com

The history of the Stout family : first settling in Middletown, Monmouth County, New Jersey, Nathan Stout, 1823. Accessed at Ancestry.com

Find a Grave website Aaron Stout; Mary Hixson; Nathaniel Hixson Stout; Moses Stout; Ebenezer Stout; Isaac Stout; Rachel Stout.

From Farmer to Lawyer, John Franklin Stout

John Franklin “Frank” Stout 1861-1927

“Dependent upon his own resources from the age of eighteen years, he has made good use of his time and opportunities and his developing powers in the practice of law are now indicated in the large and important clientage accorded him.”

Omaha, the Gate City and Douglas County Nebraska (1917)

Born in 1861, the 8th living child of Emeline and Isaiah Stout, John Franklin Stout, known as “Frank,” made his own destiny. The large family lived on a farm near Middlebourne in Guernsey County Ohio, and when Frank’s father died in 1872, the eleven-year-old boy probably wondered if his future was to be the farmer of the family.

Frank’s oldest brother Will (my great-grandfather) had left for medical school in Pennsylvania, his brother George had attended medical school in Cincinnati and the following year, Tom, his closest brother would leave to go West.  But Frank must have been a bookish boy, who loved to study.  After finishing public school at the age of 17, he went to Ohio Weslyan College in Delaware for a year, and that was enough education to qualify him for teaching.

John Franklin Stout

John Franklin “Frank” Stout, taken in Cambridge, probably while he was teaching (early 1880’s).

Back he went to the family farm and took teaching jobs during the winter, while he helped out with crops and livestock in the summer months. But the pull of the West, that had drawn Tom and probably many of the numerous Stout cousins out west, called to Frank as well.  After six years teaching, he lingered in Guernsey County long enough to study with a lawyer in Cambridge, Ohio for two years and passed the examinations to become a lawyer on June 10, 1887. Soon after, he got on the train for Kansas.

His first practice was set up in Hutchinson Kansas that year,

John Franklin Stout

John Franklin Stout in his law office, probably his first office in Hutchinson Kansas (1890s)

He met his future bride in Cambridge Ohio, perhaps when he was teaching, or perhaps during the two years he was studying for the bar, but the tie must have been strong, because after 3 1/2 years, he returned to Cambridge to marry Lida Stitt in September, 1890. [Correction, March 2018: According to the marriage license, they were married on September 24.  Previously I had said they were married Christmas Eve, but if they had a ceremony then it was repeating their vows.]

They continued to live in Hutchinson, Kansas until 1895, when Frank apparently decided that Omaha was a more fertile ground for a lawyer.  And population figures bear that out.  The population of Omaha jumped from 30,518 in 1880 to 140,451 in 1890, although it fell in 1900 to about 104,000. He established his law firm in Omaha and three years later their daughter Gertrude was born (May, 1898).

Omaha was prospering as a shipping center, supporting stockyards and grain mills. It also became the banking center of the area. The booming city had approved a charter for government in 1886, a library was built in 1871, a Masonic Temple would be constructed in 1900 and the Auditorium in 1904. I wonder if Frank and Lida went to see Sarah Bernhardt or the New York Metropolitan Opera on the stage or attended the astounding electric shows in 1908 and 1909. I picture them joining the throng of nearly 28,000 people attending the Trans-Mississippi Expositions’ opening day in June of 1898, and hearing President McKinley speak. Certainly, Omaha offered a metropolitan atmosphere that far exceeded Cambridge, Ohio.

By 1917, when Frank’s biography was one of those published in Omaha, the Gate City and Douglas County Nebraska: A Record of Settlement, Organization, Progress and Achievement, Vol. II, the Stouts were integrated into the community and his law practice had grown from being the 2nd named partner (Wright and Stout, Hall and Stout) to his own firm of Stout, Rose and Wells, with the additions of Hallick Rose and A. R. Wells as partners. His picture reflects a mature, dapper man, sure of his place in the world.

John Franklin Stout as shown in the Omaha history.

John Franklin Stout from the book on Omaha’s history, published in 1917.

He and his wife attended the Presbyterian church and supported the Republican party. He was a member of the Masons, who had completed their grand temple just ten years after he moved to Omaha. He was one of 2000 members of the Commercial Club, joined the Omaha Club and was an early member of the Omaha Country Club, organized in 1901–all the trappings of success.

Frank’s son, Robert Irving Stout, graduated from Amherst College in Massachusetts (1913) and returned to Omaha to lead a very distinguished career in banking, following in his father’s footsteps by belonging to every important organization in town.  Robert also served in the World War (which we now know as WW I).

When Lida died in 1917, Gertrude was still at home with her father, and in 1923 father and daughter sailed to England.  Although records show me when they returned to New York from Plymouth England, I have no other information about their journey.  Although I heard many stories of family members who were avid travelers, Frank and Gertrude are the first of my ancestors (that I know of) who traveled abroad.  It sounds like an exciting reward for his long path to success.

When they sailed to England, Gertrude was 25, and she had not yet married. Since she married the year that Frank died, is it possible Frank disapproved of the marriage and the trip was a ploy to separate her daughter from the man she wanted to marry? You may accuse me of being a romantic, but I know that my grandmother was sent off to New York City to separate her from an “unsuitable” match. Sent by her father, Frank’s older brother.

Yet census reports tell me that Earl C. Sage, Gertrude’s husband, who also lived with his parents until the couple were married, was a medical doctor, so it is difficult to see why our successful lawyer would have an objection.

On the passenger list, he gives his address as 117 South 39th Street, Omaha. This charming house was built in 1907, and Frank and Lida moved into it in 1915, after living at several other places in Omaha, including twelve years at 1103 South 31st Street.

John Franklin Stout home

Google Map street view Frank Stout home,Omaha

My grandmother seemed to have lost track of her uncles, and she and my mother never had the rich stories about these Western wanderers, Tom and Frank, that they had about other branches of the family. So I am glad to learn and pass on their stories.

If the youngest son was out to make the most of every opportunity and show that he could do as well as his older brothers, John Franklin Stout succeeded.  Frank Stout died in 1927 and was buried in Northwood Cemetery in Cambridge, Ohio beside his wife Lida.

My relationship:

  • Vera Marie Badertscher
  • Daughter of Harriette Anderson Kaser
  • Daughter of Vera Stout Anderson
  • Niece of John Franklin Stout

NOTES:

  • U. S. Federal Census: 1870 and 1880, Wills, Guernsey, Ohio; 1900 and 1910, Omaha, Ward 7, Douglas, Nebraska; 1920, Omaha, Ward 9, Douglas, Nebraska
  • Ohio, County Marriages, 1774-1993, Guernsey County, John F. Stout and Lida Stitt.
  • Kansas State Census Collection, 1855-1925Kansas State Historical Society; Topeka, Kansas; 1895 Kansas Territory Census; Roll: v115_124; Line: 25
  • U. S. City Directories, Omaha, Nebraska, for years 1895-1925, John F. Stout, Ancestry.com
  • City populations are from  Nebraska Department of Economic Development
  • Omaha, the Gate City and Douglas County Nebraska: A Record of Settlement, Organization, Progress and Achievement, Vol I and Vol,II, edited by Arthur Cooper Wakely (1917). Vol. II, pg.188-189 for bio of John Franklin Stout; Vol. I for background history of Omaha.
  • Who’s Who in Burt County Nebraska, 1940 for information about son Robert.
  • Cemetery Records available at Find a Grave.
  • From Ancestry.com:
  • Guernsey County Ohio census for 1870 and 1880; Omaha Nebraska Census for 1900, 1910 and 1920.
  • Ship passenger record Rotterdam, Plymouth England to NYC 1923
  • Google Maps for picture of the house at his address in Omaha.
  • Family photographs  with inscriptions, in the possession of the author.
  • Find a Grave, John Franklin Stout

This has been a weekly post in the 52 Ancestors/52 Weeks Project started by Amy Johnson Crow at “No Story too Small.” Check out her weekly recap showing the list of participants for some ripping good stories.