This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list.
Surnames: CALMEESE, GILLESPIE, BOLIN (OR BOHN)
Classification: Query
Message Board URL:
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/YOH.2ACEB/52
Message Board Post:
Hi everyone.
Have read all your posts and wanted to ask if anyone has a Robert Calmeese in their family
tree? He was on the 1870 census for Neosho County, Kansas, and was age 50 at the time and
born Kentucky approx. 1820. Living with him was his wife or maybe sister or sister-in-law,
Jane, age 55, and a little 12 year old boy named Andrew Bolin or Bohn (can't quite
make out the writing). Jane and Andrew also born Kentucky.
The reason I am interested in your family name is that my great grandfather, John
Gillespie, (age 29 at the time) was also living with these people on the 1870 census. All
four people were shown as "black"; however, I'm not sure that is correct
because John Gillespie was mulatto and almost white in appearance.
John Gillespie was born in Mason County, Kentucky, in 1842 and grew up as a slave on a
plantation in Fleming County, Kentucky, until he joined the Union army in 1864, serving in
Co. H, 27th Reg., United States Colored Troops. After the war, he returned to Fleming
County for about a year and a half, then went to Putnam County, Indiana, for about a year
and a half, then went on to Kansas, where he appears in Neosho County in 1870 with this
family.
I don't know whether he just met up with these people when he arrived in Kansas, or
possibly traveled to Kansas with them from Putnam County, Indiana, or was related to them
in some way in Kentucky.
Anyway, do not know who John Gillespie's "owner" was in Fleming County, or
anything else about his life in Kentucky, so Robert and Jane Calmeese are my only leads.
So I hope their names ring a bell with someone!