Family Reunion: Shriver
Going four generations back to find another line
This surname can be found among my Sixteen great-great-grandparents. We have to go that far back to find the first Shriver -
Nancy Ellen “Ella” Shriver (1864 - 1936) was my Grandma Nancy’s Grandma Nancy - put another way, Nancy (Shriver) Witter was my paternal grandmother’s paternal grandmother. Nancy (Witter) Callin was about 11 years old when her grandmother died in Kansas, so it’s possible they met at some point, but if they did, the younger Nancy’s memories did not make it to us.
Nancy Shriver - who was referred to as “Ella” - was the daughter of Alexander Mitchell Shriver and Mary E (Cline) Shriver, born in Ohio and raised in Caldwell County, Missouri. She was the middle child of nine children. The family lived in Caldwell County until 1882, when they moved to Vienna, Pottawatomie County, Kansas. That is where Ella met Abraham Howard Witter (1859 - 1918) and they married on 11 Feb 1885. They lived in Belvue Township, raising seven children in Wamego and in St Marys.
Alexander Shriver was born on 28 Sep 1837 in Salem, Columbiana County, Ohio. He was the son of George Shriver (b. 1798) and Catherine Harmon (b. 1813) and his family lived in Washington, Monroe County, Ohio, in 1850. Mary E Cline was born on 11 Sep 1831 to John C. Cline Jr (1799–1868) and Elvira Mcvay (1803–1892) and grew up in Monroe County, Ohio. The Mcvay family is documented on WikiTree back to the 1560s, but I have not done any research in that direction, yet. (If you’re interested in seeing what I can learn about that line, you know what to do!)
I have a lot to learn about Ella Shriver - the records I have found only give me a bare-bones account of her life, but with so many siblings and cousins to investigate, we are bound to find something that will let us tell her story in more detail. This is one of the families that settled in the Midwest during that difficult time just before the Civil War, and we have yet to discover what their part in those events might have been.
Again, if you want to learn more, drop a note in the comments, and: