When I was a teenager, I remember my mother researching my grandmother’s family tree. I heard a lot of speculative stories about my great-great-grandparents, and I remember thinking that if I wrote the story down exactly as it happened it would make one fantastic melodrama! Knowing the facts now, that’s not exactly true…but it’s close. So without further delay, here is the sad – and somewhat confusing – story of the John Rogers family.
Meet John and Sidney
My great-great-grandfather, John William Rogers, was born about 1850 in the Town of Hebron, Jefferson County, Wisconsin, the oldest child of William Rogers and Margaret Elmendorf Rogers. In 1860, at just 10-years-old, his mother died from tuberculosis. His father, William, made the tough decision to put his young daughters up for adoption to other families in the area. John and his younger brother Edwin stayed with their father, but six years later William died too. Before he passed away, he married his third wife, Hannah Gray. Hannah continued to care for the boys after William’s death. On the 1870 census, John and Edwin are listed as living with Hannah in the Town of Cold Spring, Jefferson County.
When he was about 22-years-old, John had the opportunity to travel to Vernon County, Wisconsin with his Elmendorf relatives. Vernon County is located amidst the rolling hills of southwestern Wisconsin. It was while living in this area that John met my great-great-grandmother, Sidney Madvina Coleman. Sidney was born on Christmas day 1856 in Crawford County, Wisconsin, the youngest child of Thomas Coleman and his second wife, Catherine Bogart. We’re not sure how John and Sidney met, but they both had relatives living in the same part of Vernon County, so it’s likely their families introduced them. By all accounts, it was love. John and Sidney were married on 18 September 1873 in the Town of Kickapoo, Vernon County, Wisconsin. He was 23 and she was 17.
After they got married, John and Sidney stayed in Vernon County for a few years. While there, they had their first two children, Myrtle and William (my great-grandfather). A baby girl named Ivy was also born and probably died soon after. In about 1878, the family moved to Pewaukee, Wisconsin, where John worked for the railroad. Daughters Rose and Maude were born there.
A Game of Family Story Telephone
From time to time, family stories are misheard, remembered wrong, or simply embellished (there’s no way Uncle Gary really saw that 30-point buck…or did he?). As a result, the real stories sometimes get lost, like a game of telephone. Here’s the part in this story where the version I heard and the true version are very different from one another.
What I remember hearing…
One day, one of the little girls was out playing in the yard with a stick, as kids do. While running around, she fell and the stick went straight through her eye. She was very sick for a couple of weeks with an infection and then tragically died. Sidney exhausted herself caring for the girl, contracted tuberculosis, and also passed away.
This story is, of course, not entirely true. I either heard it wrong or someone told it wrong, but letters written by both Sidney and John to Sidney’s sister Ann Coleman tell the actual story.
Dated June 6, 1880, Sidney’s letter has the real story…
“Our little girl fell off the door step three weeks ago today and she a stick in her hand and one end in her mouth and she run it under her tongue and it was in there 2 weeks and came out under her chin i thought we would lose her for 2 weeks.”
John’s letter tells a similar story. Based on birth and census records, the little girl must have been daughter Rose, who actually survived the accident. On top of that, Sidney didn’t die after caring for Rose. That came later. It’s crazy how much a story can evolve!
John and Sidney’s Final Chapter
Sometime between 1881 and 1883, the family moved “up north” from Pewaukee to the Town of Unity, Wisconsin. John purchased land just east of the town in Marathon County. I don’t know the exact reason for the move, but John had an aunt Dorothy Elmendorf Chapman who lived there, and an uncle Daniel Elmendorf living in the Town of Spencer just south of Unity. That probably had something to do with it.
John and Sidney’s youngest daughter, Jessie Violet (she went by Violet), was born here. What happened next was, once again, the actual story, not what I remembered hearing. Violet was born on 14 June 1883. Sometime shortly after her birth, Sidney contracted tuberculosis. John’s aunt Dorothy, who had cared for Sidney after she gave birth to Violet, continued to care for Sidney while she was sick. However, Sidney never recovered. She died on 15 January 1884, about three weeks after her 28th birthday. I knew she died young, but it didn’t really register in my brain how young she was until I wrote it here. My own children are older now than she was when she died. No tombstone exists for Sidney, but she is probably buried in a cemetery near Unity, Marathon County, Wisconsin.
Sidney’s death was a tragic turning point for the John Rogers family. But I’ll save the rest of John’s story for another day.
Image Credit
All photos from the records of Gerald and Ruth Dilley.
