Merging Margarets (Margaret J. Ramey Osborne Wheatley)

Originally published March 25, 2014

It's been a while since I have had a chance to work on genealogy, but I hope to ramp up my old pastime this year and get a new website online. I've added quite a few tidbits here and there during the years since my last major update and I think it's time to get the new stuff out there.

This week, though, I had a pressing genealogical matter to attend to. Oddly enough, while Tom and I were in Italy earlier this month, we met a couple with the surname of Wheatley (this was an American couple, not an Italian couple). I mentioned that my great-great grandmother's sister, Margaret J. Ramey, had married a Wheatley, and since this couple was from Maryland, I wondered if there was a connection. Mr. Wheatley said he guessed probably not since he was originally from Wise County, Virginia.

Well faint, and fall over dead. Small world, indeed.

Although he wasn't familiar with my GGG Aunt's husband, John W. Wheatley, the Wheatleys are a relatively small family, so I thought I'd have another look at GGG Aunt Margaret's file and see if I could find out more.

A lot of new information has come online since the last time I worked on her documents, so imagine my surprise when I discovered that she was not the "late bloomer" I had assumed when she married John Wheatley at 38 - she was a widow with four children! And just to make the story even better, I had unknowingly duplicated her in my database. She was the Margaret Ramey ("parents unknown") who married my GG-grandfather Jonathan Corder's double-first cousin, Hiram Osborne, in 1854. How is that for a tangled web?

So in other words, double first cousins (Hiram Osborne and Jonathan Corder) married sisters (Margaret J. Ramey and Emily A. Ramey, daughters of Henry Ramey and Prudence Robinette Ramey).

Hello! "Merge documents!"

Hiram Osborne died in the fall of 1865. Although he was a confederate soldier, it is unclear to me whether his death was war-related since it came several months after the end of the war. Relatively little is known of their four children, Andrew J., Emaline, Winfield and Savannah. Savannah was living with her Ramey grandparents in Gladeville in 1880, and later she married Patrick Wells and had one daughter that I can find. Other than that, I have very little on these double-and-triple cousins of mine. If any of their descendants see this post, please provide what information you can.

The upshot of the pressing genealogical matter was that I got distracted from my original Wheatley mission, but I learned that my GGG Aunt Margaret was left a widow with three small children and an infant during the year the unpleasantness between the states came to a close. She remained a widow for nearly 10 years before remarrying to John W. Wheatley on 19 January 1875 in Wise County.

I will be updating a combined Person Sheet for Margaret J. Ramey Osborne Wheatley with additional details this year.