This has been a very busy, interesting year. While continuing my ongoing quest to find the documentation and verification for the Crook line, we had a most interesting trip to Northfield, Ohio. Northfield was the birthplace of Hiram Kinsley Cranney, Elizabeth Crook's 3rd and final husband. We found a record of his birth at the county's main library and the middle name is recorded there as Kinsley--not King or Kingsley as we often see on genealogical records). Supposedly, his parents, William and Nancy Cranmer Bacon Cranney, died there. We searched diligently for any older record of their deaths as well as for their graves, but were not able to find any documentation. I am not sure who contributed the information on them in the genealogical libraries, but wish I knew their sources! We did find a copy of William's and Nancy's marriage record, married on May 17, 1814 as near as we can tell from the record. Ira Hudson, the clerk who recorded the information recorded it with enough different dates!
We did find the record of Hiram's marriage to "Elizabeth Buffy." I wondered why her name was written as Buffy, when all genealogical sources indicated it was Boughey, but later in doing some research of the area, I found that during that time period, Buffy was a popular nickname for Elizabeth. Also, the marriage of his brother, Philander, to Louisa Bryan and his sister, Emeline to James N. Drake.
Nancy was married to Isaac Bacon when they moved to the Western Reserve in 1804 (in the area which is now Ohio). Isaac went to Cleveland to fight in the War of 1812. Though never having to fight, he came home to die shortly thereafter from sickness. William Cranney had been living in Euclid, close to Cleveland. His brother, Gad, also lived in Euclid and raised a family in that area. William seemed to travel back and forth between the two areas. We never found out what exactly he was doing and why he traveled so much. William and Nancy apparently lived in Northfield on the property that had belonged to Isaac and her. They sold the property to Nancy's son, David Bacon, and to Benmamin Wait (could be Watt, Waite, or Watte) on 10 April 1834. The transaction indicates that on that date, William and Nancy were living in Amherst, Lorain County. Yet, in the 1840 census they are listed in the Northfield census. Did they write journals or records of their lives? I wish we had them, if they did! It would clear up a lot of questions.
