Permelia Ann Kinney, my great-great grandma

Here is another ancestor I know very little about, and who is a bit mysterious. She is my great great grandma on my maternal grandpa’s side. A few years ago, I went to Mendon Cemetery to find their graves, but that was about all I knew. I do love her name and thought she might be easier to find but there are a plethora of women named Parmelia in the records.

She was born in Sherwood, Branch County, Michigan on 1 February 1850 to Peabody Kinney and Eliza Amanda Giltner Kinney. Sherwood Township is directly south of Battle Creek Michigan in the center of a square diagramed by current roads I69 on the East, I94 to the North, US131 on the West and I80/90 to the South. It was farm land mostly when they lived there, and indeed her father Peabody is listed as a farmer in the 1850 US Federal Census. He is not listed in the Agriculture schedule of that year, but the neighbor, Elisha Foote, is. Perhaps he worked on the neighboring farm. The value of Peabody’s real estate in 1850 was $200, whereas Elisha’s was $1000.

In 1851, my records show that Peabody Kinney died in Texas on his way westward. It is one of those “genealogy do-over” tasks — there is no citation at all in my files. (There is another Peabody Kinney in the 1850 census living in the Lansing, Michigan area with the same birth year but born in Vermont instead of New York. Hmm. Is there more to this story?) His wife Eliza died in 1856, leaving Permelia an orphan at age 6.

The marriage record shown below for David and Parmelia answers some questions of what happened to her after her parents died. The witnesses, Charles Giltner and Christiana Giltner are her mothers people. Christiana is her grandmother, Charles perhaps her uncle. In 1850, Christiana (Christina in the census) and her husband John also lived in Sherwood, Branch County. She was 15 when she was married to David. David had been married previous to this marriage to a woman named Mary who died in 1864. It is hard to imagine being married to someone thirteen years older than oneself, but her grandmother probably was glad there was someone to care for her orphaned granddaughter.

Over the course of their marriage, they had five children, including my great grandma Smittendorf, Alta White, who was born in 1885. It seems possible that there were miscarriages, infant deaths, or or children I haven’t found. There is a 15-year gap between my great grandma and her next oldest sibling. When time allows, I will dive deeper into the story of Permelia and her family.

I haven’t figured out how to do footnotes on Squarespace. All census records used in this post were found on Ancestry.com. Some of the birth and death information is from those, and also Findagrave.com for David Embley White, Mary White and Permelia Ann Kinney White.

Marriage entry for David E White and Permelia Ann Kinney. Michigan, County Marriage Records, 1822-1840. Database with images. “Michigan, County Marriage Records, 1882-1840.” Ancestry.com. https://www.ancestry.com : 2016