Cattle Brands & Ancestors

     We called him Uncle Charlie.   Charles Dandrea was married to Bernice Kilbourn Cochran. Bernice was the sister to Betty Kilbourn and aunt of my mother-in-law.  Garna, my mother-in-law, lived with Bernice and Charlie for a period of time when she was young.  She said it was one of her favorite time periods in her youth.

Charlie preferred mules over horses.
He would also take one Australian Shepherd over ten men.

    Uncle Charlie was a cattle rancher near Mayer, Arizona. He had been born in Arizona to Italian Immigrants, Louis and Liberata Dandrea. 
   Recently, during an internet search, I found some information about cattle brands in a newspaper. That caused me to search for Charlie's brand.

 L D Bar

     Our family ranching expert is Kathy Torres. Kathy trains horses and her husband, Danny, runs a cattle ranch near San Jose, CA. Kathy says that the first symbol reads L D Bar. The second is an earmark.  It represent a cows ears.  The line shows where you lop it off so in case you can't read the brand from far away, you can see the ear mark. The C stands for cattle and LH gives the location of the brand, left hip.
     It is reasonable to assume that the LD in LD Bar come from either Charlie's father or his mother's brand.

     This brand was from 1916 and belonged to Charlie's mother. This was for a horse and L.T. refers to left thigh. Poland is a ghost town near Mayer.

   B Bar brand of John A. Bell in Kansas. He was Bernice Kilbourne Dandrea's grandfather.

1. Arizona Live Stock Sanitary Board, Brand book of the State of Arizona : brands ordered, compiled, and printed by the Arizona Live Stock Sanitary Board, 1963 http://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/cdm/ref/collection/statepubs/id/10669

Separate Bells

    Mildred Jane Hughes Mahaney and John Richard Bell were married in Lake County, Indiana on 5 Apr 1850¹.  Prior to her marriage to John R. Bell she had married to Edward Mahony in 1844².  
    Both John and Edward owed land in Porter County, near the border with Lake County. 

In 1870 were still living in Indiana (census data).  However, by at least 1873, the Bell family was living in Kansas. (In 1873, John A. Bell wed Amanda Jones.) By 1875 Mildred Bell is living separately from John R. Bell³.

John R. Bell is listed several pages later in there census.









     In the 1880s they both owned land about four miles apart.  



     In the 1885 Kansas Census she states that she is widowed.  Shortly after this they packed up and headed west to Comanche County and then Stevens County.  John R. Bell is buried in Stevens County, Kansas where the gravestone states that he died in 1889.  Mildred Bell remarried and purchased land near her son John A. Bell in Stevens County.  She died in 1898.

1. "Indiana Marriages, 1811-2007," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VNTX-P1Y : accessed 28 July 2015), John R Bell and Mildred Mahany, 05 Apr 1850; citing , Lake, Indiana, county clerk offices, Indiana; FHL microfilm 2,413,488.
2.  "Indiana Marriages, 1811-2007," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KDH3-KTQ : accessed 28 July 2015), Edward Mahony and Mildred Jane Hughes, 09 Dec 1844; citing , Porter, Indiana, county clerk offices, Indiana; FHL microfilm 1,686,155.
3. Kansas State Historical Society; Topeka, Kansas; 1875 Kansas Territory Census; Roll: ks1875_10; Line: 55  Ancestry.com. Kansas State Census Collection, 1855-1925 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009.

Should it be an "A" or Should it be a "W"?

      John Andrew Bell was the son of John Richard Bell and father of John Fletcher Bell. All three live in Labette County, Kansas in 1775¹.  

      But wait a minute.  That 1775 Kansas Territorial Census shows the name John W. Bell.  How do I know that this is my John A. Bell?  This John Bell was born in Indiana and lived in Indiana prior to coming to Kansas. That is what I expected.  He was married to Amanda who was born in Kentucky.  He had a son named John Fletcher Bell.  The ages are about what I would expect.  If we examine land records, a John W. Bell owns land adjacent to a Benjamin F. Jones and near John R. Bell and Mildred Bell.  Benjamin Fletcher Jones is the father-in-law of John A. Bell. Mildred Bell was his mother.  I am convinced that this John W. Bell is the same person as my John A. Bell.

     For some reason all records that I have found prior to Labette County refer to a John Bell.  In Labette County the records refer to our John A. Bell several times as James W. Bell and then in 1885 as John H. Bell³.  When the family moved west to Comanche County for a few years, land records referred to him as John W. Bell.  

     After the family arrived in Stevens County, John A. Bell was the name used.  It was used in court records, land records, tombstone, and a published county history.  For now I am leaving the name, John Andrew Bell, in my records, but  . . .
     Why did the name change?  Was it intentional or accidental?  I would love to know the reason.


1. Kansas State Historical Society; Topeka, Kansas; 1875 Kansas Territory Census; Roll: ks1875_10; Line: 75  Ancestry.com. Kansas State Census Collection, 1855-1925 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009.
2. "HistoryGeo.com" 14 July 2015 <https://www.historygeo.com/>
3. Kansas State Historical Society; Topeka, Kansas; 1885 Kansas Territory Census; Roll: KS1885_69; Line: 1  Ancestry.com. Kansas State Census Collection, 1855-1925 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009.

Bell Marriage in Jasper County

     John A. Bell and Amanda C. Jones wed on 7 Aug 1873¹ in Jasper County, Missouri.  In the "History of Stevens County & Its People" several of their children state that this marriage took place in Indiana².  This may have been the story that John and Amanda told their children but no record has been found to show that they were married there or that Amanda ever lived in Indiana.  At the time of the marriage they were living in Mount Pleasant Township, Labette County, Kansas^3,4.  In the years prior, Amanda lived in Kentucky and Missouri. John had arrived from Indiana.  Later they homesteaded land in Labette County, near Mound City, where several of their children were born before moving west to Stevens County, Kansas..  

     At the time of the marriage John Andrew Bell was probably eighteen years old and Amanda was most likely sixteen years old.  Was it legal for them to get married at that age?  Did their parents approve? In any case, John and Amanda chose to travel from Labette County, through Cherokee County, crossing the Kansas-Missouri border, and to Jasper County, Missouri.  At that time it appears that Jasper County may have served as the area's 'Gretna Green'.  (Gretna Green is a border town in Scotland, which is famous for weddings of couples who elope.)  Twin Groves is one of the townships in Jasper County that borders Kansas.  There is a William Bishop in that township in 1880 Census.

     So, considering John's and Amanda's ages and location of wedding, is it possible that they eloped?  

    

1. "Missouri, County Marriage Records, 1819-1969." Marriage of John Bell and Amanda Jones. Jasper County, Missouri FamilySearch. https://familysearch.org : accessed 7 Apr 2013.
2. The History of Stevens County & Its People. pages 367-373, Hugoton, Kansas: Stevens County History Association, 1979.
3. Ancestry.com. 1870 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch
4. Year: 1870; Census Place: Mount Pleasant, Labette, Kansas; Roll: M593_436; Page: 48B; Image: 100; Family History Library Film: 545935

Western Kansas Homesteads

Clara and Jake Kilbourn

     In 1892 John Andrew Bell homesteaded 160 acres in the southwest quarter of section 15 in Township 33 South range 35 West of the Sixth Prime Meridan of Kansas.   This farm was about 12 miles east of Hugoton, Kansas.
     In 1894 Jonathan C. Kilbourn, homesteaded 160 acres in the northeast quarter of Section 4 in Township 35 South Range 40 West of the sixth Prime Meridian in Kansas.   The Kilbourn homestead was about 20 miles southwest of Hugoton.
     Lewis Joseph "Jake" Kilbourn married Clara Bell on 5 Sep 1901.  In 1913 they homesteaded 160 acres in the northeast quarter of section 28 in Township 34 South Range 38 West of the Sixth Prime Meridian in Kansas.
    All three homestead were within Stevens County.  Jonathan Kilbourn probably was not too successful at farming or he wasn't healthy enough to continue farming because in less than six years he was living in Indiana, where he had met and married his wife.
     While running the homestead, Jake drilled water wells as a sideline.  That eventually became his sole source of income so about 20 years after claiming the homestead he moved the family into Hugoton¹.     
     On aerial images from 1990 there appears to be farm buildings on Jake's property, but there doesn't appear to be any now on Jake's or Jonathan's old homesteads.


By zooming in on this map you can see the land as it appears today.


1. "Jake Kilbourn Passes Following Long Illness." Hugoton Hermes, Nov 7, 1947.

2. "Google Maps Engine Lite." 2012. 23 Aug. 2013 <https://mapsengine.google.com/>