My great grandparents in 1900: Clark Pittman and Lucinda Greenlee

 This is the 4th and last post focusing on my great grandparents and where they were in 1900. The three previous posts are:

The final pair of great grandparents is Clark Pittman (1851-1931) and and Lucinda Greenlee (1864-1900).

The Pittmans were a prolific and also long-lived bunch. The earliest in America was Richard Pitman, who was a Quaker settler in New Jersey in the late 1600s. He lived to be 89 and died at Pennsauken Creek, near present-day Camden. The inventory of his estate was valued at $145 and included "9 old books."

It was his grandson, another Richard, who would move the family to Bedford County, Pennsylvania, near the Maryland border. This was not a single-family exodus, but many families, all moving around the same time. By now the Pittmans are not Quakers but "Primitive Baptists." This Richard, by the way, lived to 107. His son William also lived to 107. His son Richard lived to 100. His daughter Syche lived to 104.

It would be Elias Pittman (1765-1839) who would move the clan on to Monroe County, Ohio, somewhere around 1820. This was another massive exodus. We find many of the same surnames in the churchyards of southern New Jersey, Bedford County, Pennsylvania, and the Monroe County, Ohio. The Truax clan, for example, often moves along with the Pittmans in each case.

Monroe County is in southeastern Ohio, jut across the river from Wheeling, West Virginia. Clark Pittman was born there in 1851. He is still there for the 1860 census, but before the end of the Civil War Clark is in Brown County, Indiana, where he would remain. Brown county is the 4th "hotspot" where many Pittmans would settle.

Clark was married five times in the course of his life. His wives were:
  1. Mary E. Crouch
  2. Sarah Elizabeth Harden
  3. Martha Petro
  4. LUCINDA GREENLEE
  5. Rebecca Painter
Lucinda Greenlee was my great grandmother. She married Clark in November of 1893 and bore him two sons: Otis Earl and Orval Edgar (my grandfather). Her last appearance in the census is in 1900. Her forebears came from Campbeltown, Scotland, show up in Washington County, in southwestern Pennsylvania, then Belmont County, Ohio (neighboring Monroe County, where Clark lived in his early childhood), then to Brown County at last.

I have not found death certificates for any of Clark's first four wives, including Lucinda, but it seems she died later in 1900, and Clark soon remarried. By his five wives he had at least 12 children. He remained on his homestead in Washington Township (7 miles east of Nashville)  until his death in 1931. My mother has memories of visiting the home in her early years in the 1930s, but I suppose it is almost certainly gone now.

This picture shows Clark and his son, Orval, my grandfather, along with little Vernia Edell, who was Clark's daughter by his 5th wife, Rebecca Painter. The picture was taken in 1918.




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