52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Close to Home

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52Ancestors

Joseph and Martha’s daughter Mabel was born July 29, 1899. Martha died sometime after Mabel’s birth and likely before Joseph put a public sale notice in the newspaper on December 28, 1899 selling his farm animals and equipment in Girard, Kansas.¹  By June 1900 Joseph and three of his four children were living in Carterville, Missouri and his occupation was grocer.² Mabel, the youngest child, was being raised by others according to family tradition.

Joseph married his second wife, Sarah, in 1892 and they continued living in Carterville and had two children together. According to City Directories they were living Joplin, Missouri by 1903 and he was selling cigars, then by 1906 in the same city he was a grocer at 814 West Fourth and their new residence was 401 S. Amander.^3,4,5  In the 1910 census for Joplin he was a grocer with his residence at 401 S. Connor.⁶

February 13, 1911 Joseph spent the night in his store to guard it due to recent robberies in the area.  The following morning his 17 year old son found him and managed to get him home, which was about one hundred feet away.  Unfortunately, Jospeh died a couple of hours later that Valentine’s Day.  Later, it was determined that Jospeh suffered a stroke during the night.⁷

Mapping the addresses of Joseph’s residence and store using the 1906 Sanborn fire insurance map for Joplin, provide information about the location, buildings and surroundings.⁸  The proximity of his residence and store was less than the 180 feet block they were on. Using the legend in the book, we glean additional information^{9, 10}:

• The dwelling at 401 S. Amander was as a single story frame construction with a shingle roof.  There was a fire hydrant at the NW corner of his lot and a fire box just one block south.  Across the street to the west was an ice house made of brick.
• The store at 814 West Fourth was a 14′ single story frame construction with a shingle roof and a framed partition along the front plus a 12′ stable in the back.  The next block to the east was the Jackson Avenue School that was a grade school in 1906.

In 2007 my mother and I visited Carterville and Joplin and walked the streets where my great, great grandfather Joseph Keithley lived and worked.  In both towns he worked close to his homes as was likely more common in those days.  Our primary reason to visit was to see the locations where Joseph’s daughter, Eva, lived and to learn the proximity and surroundings of where she met her future husband.  To our delight we were able to see where their paths likely crossed plus we learned more about Joseph.

When you stand at 814 W. 4th St where the grocery store was, notice the vacant corner lot just west, that was the location of Joseph’s residence, 401 S Connor. Use the embedded google map as the visual aid to see how close to home Joseph’s store was.

Footnotes:

1. “Public Sale!”, (Girard, Kansas) The Western Herald, 28, December 1889, p. 3.
2. 1900 U.S. Census, Jasper County, Missouri, population schedule, Carterville, pg.10A (penned), enumeration district (ED) 47, dwelling 196, family 206, Joseph H. Keithley, digital image, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 27 January 2020); NARA microfilm publication T623, roll 18.
3. Hoye’s City Directory of Joplin and Carthage and also Carterville and Webb City (Kansas City, Missouri : Hoye Directory Company, 1903), digital image, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 27 January 2020) p. 227;
4. Boone’s Joplin and Carthage, Carterville, Webb City, Jasper County, (Boone, 1906-1907), digital image, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 27 January 2020) p. 234.
5. Dunham Directory Co’s Joplin, Missouri and Jasper County Directory (Dunham, 1909) digital image, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 27 January 2020) p. 214.
6. 1910 U.S. Census, Jasper County, Missouri, population schedule, Joplin, pg 6B (penned), enumeration district (ED) 42, dwelling 148, family 187, Joseph H. Keithley, digital image, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 27 January 2020); NARA microfilm publication T624 roll 790.
7. “J.H. Keithley Is Found Dying In Store By Son” (Missouri) Joplin Globe, 11 February 1911, p. 2, col. 2.
8. Sanborn Map Company, “Insurance Maps Joplin, Missouri, 1906” digital image MU Digital Library (https://dl.mospace.umsystem.edu/mu/islandora/object/mu%3A413606 : accessed 27 January 2020); street address 814 W. 4th and 401 S. Amander; citing sheet 18.
9. Sanborn Map Company, “Insurance Maps Joplin, Missouri, 1906” digital image MU Digital Library (https://dl.mospace.umsystem.edu/mu/islandora/object/mu%3A413606 : accessed 27 January 2020); citing sheet Key.
10. “Collection Sanborn Maps” database, Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-maps/about-this-collection/ : accessed 27 January 2020); citing About This Collection.

Further Reading:

• Tombstone Tuesday – Jos H Keithley, by Kay Bauman
• 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks # 19 – Joseph Henry Keithley – by Donna Brown, my mother
• In the Moment – by Donna Brown

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Amy Johnson Crow offers weekly prompts to get us thinking about an ancestor and to share something about that person. She calls it 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. 

Week 4 Close to Home prompt:  Is there an ancestor who always lived close to where he was born? Maybe an ancestor who lived not far from where you live now? How about a discovery that you made in your house? Feel free to share your links and stories in the comments.

Each of my posts using one of her prompts will have the tag of “52Ancestors” and I’ll share them on the thread she’s started for that week in her Generations Cafe Facebook Group.