I haven't posted in a while, and have run into a dead end on my father's
paternal name, SWIKARD, so I thought I would give fair time to his mother's
CHAPMAN line.
I know that Harry Chapman was born in October of 1860. He married Catherine
(Carrie) Bond in Springfield, (Sangamon County) Illinois in November 16,
1882. I have been told he was one of the states earliest Union Electricians
and did work on the Lincoln Tomb. All of Catherine Bond's family was born in
England and came to the US in 1869.I know nothing about the years from 1882
to 1900 where I find Harry Chapman again on the 1900 Census from Chicago,
Illinois. From that data, he is still listed as an electrician, as being born
in Illinois. His father is listed as having been born in England, and his
mother as being born in Kentucky.
I have a suspicion that his Kentucky born mother, may have been a Patterson
as that is a name my father left to me in a letter. In this letter, he says
he remembers stories that the Patterson's had left Virginia after the Civil
War, and married into the Bond family. Documents have provided me with a few
different facts from what he had remembered, but everything has been so much
on target, that I can't discount anything he said. Perhaps she could have
been born as the family migrated westward toward Illinois. If anyone has a
Patterson connection in Peoria or Springfield, who married a CHAPMAN, and
then had a child named Harry Chapman, where are you? Harry Chapman and
Caroline Bond Chapman had five children between 1883 and 1891; Bertrand
(known as Bernice) my grandmother, Hallie, Earl and Edith. They grew up in
Chicago.
Many thanks for reading this long post,
Jackie Swikard Shaffer