What I know about Sarah Catherine HAROLD

Sarah Catherine Herold is my second great grandmother on my mother's father's side of the family. She was born on June 22, 1854 in Kanawha County Virginia, which is now WV. She was the third child of Dabney (sometimes referred to as Daniel) Herold and Nancy Griffith. There is also the question about the spelling of the last name. Could it be Herald? I have not seen it this way on any document but then again I do not have a document written by Sarah herself.

According to the 1900 census she married Joseph Leftwich Chandler in 1874. They were married for at least 44 years as both died after 1930 and before 1940. They had eight children together between 1875 and 1892. One being Dabney Chandler named after Sarah's father and another being my great grandmother, mentioned before, Wealthy Susan Chandler.

According to the census records the family lived in Kanawha Co. WV, Colcord to be specific, until 1900 where they moved to Scott, Boone Co. WV and then back to Kanawha Co. in 1910 to the town of Washington and finally ending up in Gripp Mountain in 1920.The couple spent their final years living with their son Dabney and his wife Bessie in Washington WV.

What I know about Wealthy Susan CHANDLER

I find it so interesting that my great great grandparents would name one of their children Wealthy. Were they hoping for the best for this baby or their family? If so, that didn't work out.

My grandmother went by her middle name, Susan. She was born, according to her birth record, on Aug 13, 1877. However, her death certificate states her birthday as July 24, 1877. I have to go with the birth record.

Most of the trees out there have her listed as Susan Chandler and I was determined to prove her name was Wealthy. Her birth record only says W. S. Chandler but I found a delayed Birth Certificate for one of her children, Herman Stevens, with her name "Wealthy Susan Chandler" BAM! That was one of those moments where I jumped up and down!

She married my great grandfather, Millard Stephens (the name spelling changed to Stevens somewhere between Millard and my Grandfather Steward and was spelled Stephenson on the record) on October 18, 1898. They had 10 children in their 41 years of marriage. Millard died on September 4, 1939. 

At age 65, five years after her husbands death, she marries Marian Edward Kidd. Now the funny thing here is she marries him again two years later in 1946. There is a story where she takes to her bed at a daughters home for a long period of time after the first marriage but that is just a story. I have not found a divorce record to date but who knows, it may be out there somewhere.

It was not a glamours life for Wealthy Susan Chandler Stevens Kidd but she lived to a ripe old age of  92. I can only imagine the things she saw change during her lifetime and the things she had to endure. I would have been eight years old at the time of her death. I never met her and even if I did I would probably not remember which makes me a little sad. As we would say at Genealogy Happy Hour, "Cheers!" GG Grandma Susan! 

Welcome to my blog! I have to admit that this is a bit out of the box for me and has taken quite a while, not gonna say how long exactly, to get this going. Thanks for checking it out.

I hope to meet new relatives and share family information with other researching the same branches and limbs. Just to get started some of the family names I am researching are: Burke, Schwiebert, Herman, Freytag, Curtiss, Stimmell, Roesch, Freytag, Preston, Frettinger, Stevens/Stephens, Florentz, Chandler, Pierre, Adkins, Herald, Eitenne, Meisler, Griffith, Adkins and Bartram. I think that is plenty for now and goes back 5 generations. I am sure more names will enter the picture.

Most of these families are found in West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio, France, Germany and England. Do these names and places sound familiar? Maybe we are related.