A Valentine for Iowa

Discovering the origins of Valentine Shuffler (1853-1916)

Writing an accurate history means leaving out assumptions. Sticking only to facts and evidence, and refraining from speculation about things that we cannot know, such as personal motivations or attitudes of the people involved.

But writing a complete history means adding a human element to the facts—putting what we know about the personal motivations and attitudes of the people involved back into the story so that we have some idea why they did the things they did.

Sometimes, finding those facts in the first place requires us to make imaginative assumptions about the people named in other facts. Assumptions are tricky. Without them, we might not know where to look for more evidence; but we have to be careful and devise tests to tell whether the evidence we find is telling us what we wanted to know.

This can be a real balancing act.

The Starting Point

Our starting point today is this guy:

Valentine A Shuffler was the eldest child, and only son, of Benjamin Franklin Shuffler (1833–1915) and Ruth Dyer (1837-1899), born on 16 Aug 1853 in Indiana. When he was seven years old (in 1860), his family lived in Cass County, in the southeast corner of the Nebraska Territory, and by 1870, they had relocated to a farm 340 miles East, near Scott, Fremont County, Iowa.

Valentine’s son was Frank Benjamin Shuffler (1888-1919), one of my wife’s Sixteen great-great-grandparents. I shared Frank’s story last year:

The Ballad of Mrs. Steele

I “know” some of Valentine’s ancestry from seeing what other researchers have shared on Ancestry and FamilySearch—but I don’t always see the evidence that supports what they claim, and even when that evidence is there, I don’t always see the chain of reasoning that led from a piece of evidence to a conclusion.

In other words, my job is to challenge what I see by asking “How do you know that?” and examining the answers carefully before adding those answers to my tree.

So, my task for today is to answer the question, “Who are Valentine Shuffler’s ancestors, and how did they get to Iowa?”

We have three pieces of evidence to work with:

• 1860 Census - the family of Benjamin “Shifler” (the transcription of what looks, to me, like “Shufler”) in Cass County, Nebraska Territory

• 1870 Census - the family of Benn and Ruth Shuffler in Scott Township, Fremont County, Iowa

• 1852 marriage record for Benjamin Shuffler and Ruth Dyer in Marshall County, Indiana

Finding Facts

I talked about the research I did to find Ruth Dyer’s family a couple of weeks ago:

Records Don't Tell the Stories

Her parents were Quakers from North Carolina, and that essay talked about how the records kept by the Society of Friends (aka, Quakers) in North Carolina tracked the Dyers family in Indiana.

Traditionally (in other words, an assumption), a marriage took place where the bride or her family lived. So, the 1852 Marshall County, IN, marriage record of Benjamin and Ruth would normally indicate that the Dyer family lived in Marshall County. However, the Dyers’ records indicate that Ruth was born and raised in Wayne County, IN, and in 1850, the census showed her living in the household of her married sister, Mahala Cook (who we know about from the detailed records from North Carolina) - in Salem, Henry County, Iowa.

Wayne County, IN to Salem, IA, via Marshall County, IN

Salem, IA and Marshall County, IN, are about 330 miles apart, and Wayne County, IN and Marshall County are about 175 miles apart; which makes me think that Benjamin’s family probably lived in Marshall County. Another assumption - but let’s see what we find there:

• 1840 U.S. Census record in Marshall County, IN, for “Valentin Shoepler”

• 1844 land record in Marshall County issued to “Volentine Shofler” for 168 82/100 acres in “the North West quarter of Section two, in Township thirty-three, North of Range one East, of the second principal Meridian, in the District of Sands subject to sale at Winamac, Indiana.

• 1855 probate document for a man called Valentine Shuffler, including an affidavit from Sarah A. Bailey attesting that his widow is Margaret Shuffler.

• The History of Indiana, vol. 2 (pg. 31 and 33) talks about the elections organizing Marshall County, held in Aug 1836 at the Plymouth court house in Center Township includes a list of known voters, which includes Valentine Shuffler.

Further sleuthing turns up a marriage record in Marshall County for Sarah Ann Shoffler and David A. Bailey, dated 15 Apr 1841. Sarah A. Bailey, then, is probably the daughter of Valentine Shuffler.

Resting on Assumptions

None of these facts are, by themselves, “proof” that Benjamin is the son of this Valentine Shuffler in Marshall County, IN. But when taken all together, there are compelling reasons to conclude that this Shuffler family is the family of Benjamin Shuffler. Not only does his marriage to Ruth place him in Marshall County, but Benjamin named his oldest son “Valentine” in 1853 - and the younger Valentine named his son “Frank Benjamin” in 1888.

Accepting these assumptions and facts into our story may be the right call, but they aren’t the end of the search. Now, we need to look for more information about Sarah Bailey and Benjamin’s other siblings - and see if we can trace their parents back east to where they probably married. Benjamin’s obituary stated that he was born in Brown County, Ohio, in 1833, about three years before his father’s appearance in Indiana. Other clues will likely arise as we chase down the other children who lived in the household in 1840.

There are seven other children in that household - there are many facts and assumptions to be gathered and tested before we know who they all are!