I wanted to tell you a story about Samuel Spitler - but instead, today’s story is about how little we know about Samuel Spitler.
On February 9, 1864, Thomas B. Hale married his second wife, Elmira Spitler.
Thomas and Elmira were the parents of one of My Sixteen 2nd great-grandparents, Alice (Hales) Greenlee Cramer:
Because they were married in 1864, Elmira appears in two Census records under her maiden name, presumably with her family. Those records from 1860 and 1850 establish that Elmira’s father was Samuel Spitler, born in Ohio in either 1809 or 1810.
We can derive a few facts from these two records:
In 1850, Samuel’s wife was Jane, who was most likely the mother of the six children listed.
In 1860, Samuel’s wife was Margaret, who had children from a previous marriage. We know from her marriage records that her maiden name was “Kalen” and her first marriage was to Philip Pifer in 1845.
Samuel’s family lived in Perry Township, Wood County, Ohio.
But from there, things get a little dicey. These are just a few factors that have made it difficult to flesh out Samuel Spitler’s biography:
Lack of records; I haven’t found key records (like Samuel and Jane’s marriage record) supporting some of my guesses.
I haven’t found a record of Samuel’s death or obituary.
Multiple Spitler families were in the area, complicating searches for his children.
Spelling variations I have seen include “Spittler” and “Spitter,” but who knows how else the name could have been rendered.
Samuel’s household in 1850 included two people (“Sylvia” Spitler, age 23, and John Spitler, age 31) who might have been his siblings. I found an 1840 Census for “Saml. Spitter” in Vermillion Township, Richland County, Ohio, that seems to account for Samuel, Jane, their two older children (John and Catherine), and possibly a sister the same age as Sylvia.
In 1860 and 1870 his household included people who could be relatives of either Samuel or Margaret: an 82-year-old Catherine Taylor who could be an aunt or a mother-in-law of either of them (or just a boarder, of course); and children who could be from either of their previous marriages. (Census enumerators were not careful about recording which children were “Spitler” and which were “Pifer”.) And while Margaret appears in 1880 as a servant in another household where she is listed as “married” there doesn’t appear to be a matching record for Samuel in 1880 - which only suggests that he was alive in 1880 without proving anything.
When it comes to putting together Samuel’s biography, there are only four records you can hang your hat on: three Census records (1850, 1860, and 1870), and the marriage record between Samuel Spitler and Margaret Pifer (1857). We have a possible death date of 1893, based on a Find-A-Grave memorial for a Samuel Spitler in the Bechtel Cemetery in Van Buren Township, Hancock County, Ohio. That cemetery does hold several of Samuel’s relatives (of various surnames), so that’s plausible, but the headstone photo is unreadable, and the person who transcribed it recorded his age as “age 10/3/7” - which would rule this out as Samuel’s memorial.
We can assume Samuel married Jane about 1835, as their oldest child in the 1850 census was born about 1836. Jane appears to have died about 1855, and with an infant daughter and five other children between the ages of 7 and 20, Samuel probably depended on those older children to run the house until he remarried.
Normally, I would research each of those children and look for clues about their parents in their biographies - but each of Samuel’s children presented a different set of problems. His two sons, John and Levi, left no obituaries and none of their other records mention their parents. There are marriage records for more than one Catherine Spitler - any of them could be Samuel’s oldest daughter, and none of the records mention parents. Except for Elmira, I was unable to find evidence for the other daughters beyond 1860. Most of them would have been of marriageable age, but I found no marriage or death records that could explain where they went.
Samuel’s second wife was born Margaret Kalen, probably around 1821 in Pennsylvania. According to Ohio County Marriage records, she married Philp Pifer on 23 Mar 1845 in Columbiana County, Ohio. The couple had three children before Philip’s death, probably around 1855. After Margaret Pifer married Samuel in 1857, she bore a son and at least three daughters - though, again, the records contradict each other and I have had to make several guesses about what they mean. Some guesses are easier - “George W. Spitler” is clearly supposed to be “George W. Pifer” - but others are murky without other supporting evidence.
All of this adds up to something but not to the kind of story I usually enjoy telling. There are too many questions and too many possible threads that could either spin into a nice tale or tangle into a confused mess. Maybe if I keep chipping away at the edges and filling in the gaps, a real story will emerge.
The good news is that Samuel is not a “brick wall” - he’s more of a chain link fence. Or, if we want to stick with a Wavetops metaphor, he’s a bit of foam floating above the more readily supported biography of his daughter.
If you came this far and think you recognize this family:
And whether you recognize them or not, I will keep posting about different branches. Stay tuned, and I might even find someone you are related to!