Searching for Calhouns

Hello Michelle,

I have read your post regarding your search for the three Calhoun brothers.  As the dates are really early (in irish genealogy record time) you seem quite sure that Samuel was born in 1826 and you have a date of 1st April 1808 for Arthur.  It seems a little odd that there is 18 years between the brothers?  Of course it wouldn't be odd if there were 14 or so children in the family and they were all like steps of stairs in their ages.  But when there seems to be only three in the family then I would start to question whether one of them is an uncle or such?

I went to www.rootsireland.ie and found a few records which could possibly be your family..

Samuel Cahoon baptised Co. Antrim  1820

Samuel Cahoon baptised Co. Antrim 1829

William Cahoon baptised Co. Antrim 1822

I looked up Nethercut also and found a few records but none seemed to fit the marriage record timeframe for Arthur.

The rootsireland site is free to join and search but it would cost about €5 to view and print records.

Hope this helps in some little way,

anne Dennehy

Anne -

Thank you so much for your quick reply!

The information I cited comes from a notebook that a Calhoun cousin compiled in 1974. In this notebook, he cited letters from my Great Great Grandfather William John Calhoun stating that he only knew that his father, Samuel, had been born in 1826 in Northern Ireland. There was a letter from George S Nethercut, a family friend and the brother of Arthur Calhoun's wife, Eliza Jane. In that letter, he stated that there were 3 brothers, Arthur (b 4 Jan, 1808, d 15 Aug 1885 ), William (no birth or death, moved to Glasgow, Scotland) and my ggg grandfather Samuel. There's no mention of sisters and although George says that he knew the brothers parents very well and that they lived to a "good old age", he never mentions names. Samuel married Sarah Johnson (also from Ireland) here in the US 13 Oct 1851 and my g grandfather, William John, was born in New York 21 Oct 1852. Sarah wrote WJ in 1895 that she didn't know what Samuel's parents died from, but that her own parents died from typhoid fever, her father at the age of 44, her mother 2 years later. Again, no one mentions their names or villages!!

I made the assumption of Drumquin based on Arthur's oldest son, William, being born there 21 Sept 1835.

I don't know any of my Calhoun cousins to discover if they have any newer information, but may have to track them down in order to go further.

Again, thank you for you kind reply and I hope one day to travel to Ireland. The Calhouns are not the only Irish in my ancestry as I am pre-dominately Scottish and Irish I am discovering and that makes me incredibly happy!

Michelle O'Dell Parker

Hello five years later from some sort of cousin - my great-great-great-grandfather is this Arthur Calhoun, and I will search to see exactly what his dates were (my parents will have this info). I am pretty sure it is the same one because he was married to Eliza Jane Nethercutt Calhoun, and they lived in Drumquin, Tyrone Co. in northern Ireland. The Calhouns originally hailed from Scotland and I'm not sure when they settled in Ireland, but famine apparently drove them with at least some of their kids to the US. One of their children was a Margaret Calhoun, who married an English man, Edwin Smith, and one of their sons was Leroy Smith. He and his wife Tena (Antonina) Sempek Staroska met in Omaha, NE in the early 1900s, and homesteaded in South Dakota in a sod house before returning to Omaha. Leroy was a very smart guy who ended up going into the contracting business and built several buildings in Omaha. He and his son Gerald (my great uncle) also built and flew their own small plane! The children were Gerald, Irene, Evelyn, and a boy who did not survive past infancy. Leroy and Gerald built houses for each of those three surviving children, where they all lived with their families right in a row on south 60th street between the UP railroad and what is now I-80. Many of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren are still living in Omaha, NE.

Laura

Laura -I apologize for not replying more quickly! I switched computers and somehow your post got lost in the shuffle and I had to do some detective work to find it.

I found a passenger list for both Arthur and Samuel. 

Arthur, Eliza, their older son William and daughter Margaret (Maggie) appear to have come over on the famine ship Virginia, arriving 3 July, 1849. Their daughter, Susan, was born on board ship.

Samuel, followed in 1850 on the Guy Mannering, arriving in New York 28 May, 1850. The list shows a Eliza- 9, Catherine -7, and George-3, directly below Samuel's name, which corresponds to the names of the children that my Calhoun family notebook contains. The ages are off by a year or so, but I think this is our famiy.

Does this correspond to information you have?

Looking forward to sharing information with you!

Michelle

 

 

 

 

Hello Michelle,
Here we are several years later and I am also investigating this part of the family. I've traced the Samuel line through the von Unwerths to the O'Dells, as well as William K and Donald B Calhoun's lines and have made contact with Donald B's grandson.

I am skeptical about Arthur and Samuel being brothers and think that Arthur may be a cousin or uncle to Samuel. I base this on being able to find 3rd and 4th cousins to Samuel, but no one who is related to Arthur...yet. Perhaps the letter from George Nethercut lends credence to him being a sibling, since he knew them.
 

I am descended from Samuel's brother William b. 1817, d 1883. The family was in Curraghamulkin (between Castlederg and Omagh and close to Drumquin)  in Griffiths Valuation (I had Ulster Ancestry confirm this) in 1852. They had a farm, but William became a stone mason. The parents names were William Colquhoun (spelled the Scottish way in Griffiths, so he may have been born in Scotland) and Elizabeth Johnston (an Arthur Johnston was a witness to the marriage oftheir son  William and Isabella Little, my 2x GGrandparents). I suspect that Elizabeth Johnstons' father's name may have been John, but have not yet found proof.

The brothers also had a sister, Elizabeth b. 1832. She married a man named John Cather, a shoemaker from Sixmilecross and they moved to Greenock, Scotland.

William and Isabella had 7 children: William John, Eliza Jane, Susan, Isabella and Sarah all born in Ireland, then my GGrandfather, James and Joseph, born in Glasgow. They moved to Scotland ostensibly after the parents died. Eliza Jane moved back to Ireland and married John Emery. I have been in touch with their descendants. James and Joseph married 2 sisters named Annabella and Rebecca Henderson, from the Castlederg area. James went to Glasgow and had 10 children and Joseph eventually set up a foundry in Douglas Bridge, Ireland and later a hardware store in Coleraine. I have been in touch with his GGrandchildren. Isabella married a man named William Futt Beggs and they came to the U.S. and have descendants in Massachusettes and Kansas, I believe. As a small child in Rutherglen, Scotland, my father knew Sarah, but said she was ill and stayed in bed most of the time. I don't know about Susan. I've been in touch with one of WIlliam John's descendants, who lives in Yorkshire, England after growing up in S. Africa.

 

I don't know if Laura is still out there, but it is exciting to find out more about the Arthur Calhoun line. I hope to touch base with our cousins here in the U.S.