My Greer family confuses me, to say the least. I'm having such a hard time figuring out where they came from, I am starting to think seriously that they sprouted spontaneously from an ear of corn in Iowa one day!
My great-great grandfather was John Leland Greer. According to his Civil War Pension Record, he was born in Morgan County, Indiana around 1844. I have no idea who his parents were, but I've started doing a little digging to try to figure out who they might've been before I start blindly looking for a birth record for him. I found some Indiana marriages through 1850, and started looking to see how many Greer men got married prior to 1844 in Morgan County, Indiana. I've narrowed it down to only one, if I stick to those criteria - a James Greer married Elizabeth Brian in Morgan County, Indiana 18 May 1843. Now, of course I know that this doesn't mean they're definitely John's parents, but all I'm trying to do is narrow my search down a bit, and if I'm wrong, I'll just deal with it and continue looking.
Now, along those same lines, I dug up the 1840 census from Morgan County, Indiana and found only one Greer - a Polly, listed as the head of the household. The following table shows the information that was given in her census entry.
| Under 5 | 5 to under 10 | 10 to under 15 | 15 to under 20 | 20 to under 30 | 30 to under 40 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 male |
2 males 1 female |
2 females |
1 male |
1 female |
If you'd like to see the Morgan County, Indiana census from 1840 in its entirety, you can view it online here.
Given that I'm still working entirely on guesswork and assumptions here, and that nothing has been proven or disproved, I would be likely to assume that Polly is the female aged 30 to 40. Now, it's also possible that the male aged 15-20 is the same Greer that married Elizabeth Brian in 1843. If it truly is James in the 1840 census, and even if he's only 15 in 1840, by 1843 he would have been 18, and of marrying age. However, if he was even a couple of years older in 1840, it would make it seem even more likely that he could have been the man who married a young woman in 1843, and possibly had a baby the following year.
It all seems so believable, I'm having a hard time staying skeptical of the entire thing. Until I'm able to prove it, it'll remain speculation, but it would seem that I'm finally starting to fit together the pieces of my Greers. Most of John's siblings seem to have been born in Iowa, as were his children. As I was digging for information on a couple of his children, I managed to acquire copies of all of the marriage registers with Greer entries in Madison County, Iowa from 1864-1877. I've compiled them into a table for easier reading, and you can view them here.
I also found three very old letters sent from "Uncle Jack" (really John Wright) to my great aunt and uncle, Ernie and Agnes Greer in 1975. I've done my best to translate the spidery handwriting for you here.
Last updated Friday, May 14, 1999