I recently made major discoveries about the family of my 2nd-great-grandfather, Robert M. Curry. It was the story of a family from Mercer County, Kentucky, making the all-too-familiar westward move to Monroe County, Missouri. Piecing that family together using both old and new research tools was a satisfying project, and I was ready to dust off my hands, call it a day, and mark the week’s work complete.
As it turns out, though, there may be even more surprises waiting for this researcher.
I recently visited the local public library to check records available through Ancestry Library Edition. While reviewing Robert’s siblings, I found a marriage record for Susan Curry and Hiram Cunningham in Monroe County, Missouri, dated 6 November 1853. Susan had appeared in the 1850 census but then seemed to vanish from the record.
While searching for additional Cunningham information, I found another Curry-Cunningham connection: Elizabeth Curry and Andy Cunningham, married 16 December 1841. Elizabeth? That was not a name I had previously encountered. Could she have been the young girl marked only by a tick mark in the 1830 census and then missing from later records?
Unfortunately, Elizabeth and Andrew appear not to have had a long marriage, as Andrew remarried in 1847 after Elizabeth presumably died. However, they did have a son: George Washington Cunningham.
As a researcher, I wondered whether there was enough evidence to place Elizabeth within the Curry family. I believe there is. George’s 1886 marriage record names his mother as Elizabeth Curry. In the 1900 census, George reported that his mother was born in Kentucky. Various Cunningham families also appear within the Curry FAN network (more on that another time). Most importantly, the 1841 marriage record names Samuel Curry as the father of the bride. The fact that Elizabeth does not appear in Samuel’s later estate records could simply mean that she had already died. Taken together, these clues make her inclusion in the family quite plausible.
I was fortunate to find many more records for Hiram and Susan Cunningham, though they introduced a possible misidentification. I located Hiram in FamilySearch, but his wife was listed as Susan Sanders, and the couple was living in Mercer County, Kentucky. Dead end? Perhaps not.
The marriage record attached in the sources was the Monroe County, Missouri, marriage of Hiram Cunningham and Susan Curry—not Susan Sanders. In addition, the sources included death certificates for four of their children. Three listed the mother’s maiden name as Curry, while only one gave the name Sanders. It is entirely possible that the informant for that one certificate simply provided incorrect information. Secondary records often contain such errors.
We now have records for Hiram Cunningham in two counties—Mercer County, Kentucky, and Monroe County, Missouri—that were already connected by migration and family ties. Are there additional records linking Kentucky’s Hiram to Missouri? Yes. Several Monroe County land transactions in the late 1850s name Hiram and his wife Susan. There are also no competing records for another Hiram Cunningham in Missouri during that period.
It seems very possible that Hiram moved west to an area where his cousins had settled, married a woman whose family was connected to both Kentucky and Missouri, and later returned to the Bluegrass State. Susan died before her husband, but the widower later remarried—Artimesia Curry Gabhart Bennett, a cousin of the Missouri Currys.
With so many ties between the Curry and Cunningham families, it is very tempting to identify this Susan as Robert Curry’s sister. But one more promising source remains.
Hiram J. Cunningham served in the 9th Kentucky Cavalry in the Union Army during the Civil War, and both invalid and widow pension files exist for Hiram and Artimesia.
It looks like another trip to Washington, D.C., may be in order.
One last thing: Why spend so much time digging for records about a couple of 3rd-great-aunts when there are so many other avenues to pursue? First, all of these clues can help create a more complete picture of the Curry family and the close ties they shared with neighbors who may have migrated alongside them. Second, we often encounter brick walls when researching maternal lines, and perhaps someone else will make a breakthrough by building on these records.
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