Thursday, May 14, 2015

Family Bible of Noah Westfall of West Virginia, with Dates from 1854-1874


Family Bible of Noah Westfall of West Virginia, with dates from his 1854 marriage to wife Matilda Ann Coon (maiden name Evans, according to the West Virginia Marriages 1851-1896) to the 1874 birth of his son John Westfall with subsequent wife Agnes (Litton) Westfall.

From brief online research, I found that Noah Westfall lived in Jackson and Upshur Counties, West Virginia.


The marriages page shows Noah's marriage to Matilda Ann Coon very distinctly, with a date of June 27, 1854.  There's another record written in a much fainter ink that appears to be the birth record of James K. P. Coon, born November 21, 184x [1847 or 1849].


Was Matilda Ann's maiden name Coon [or Koon] or Evans?  If we can believe the West Virginia Marriages 1851-1896 database that shows her maiden name as Evans, perhaps she had previously married a Mr. Coon.  But she was very young when she married Noah Westfall, let alone having had a previous marriage. Could her mother, a Mrs. Evans, have remarried a Mr. Coon?  Could her mother, a Mrs. Coon, have remarried a Mr. Evans?  Hopefully a reader will weigh in.  And should the correct spelling be Koon, rather than Coon?

As for the second record on the page, interestingly, I found a James Knox Polk Koon (1847-1906) who served as a private in the 10th West Virginia Infantry during the Civil War and later worked as a lawyer and merchant in Upshur County, West Virginia.  His parents were, I believe, Jacob and Sarah (Koon) Koon.   If he is the James K. P. Coon referenced on the page above, I wonder how he ties in with "Matilda Ann Coon".  Again, hopefully a reader will weigh in.

The two births pages list Noah's and Matilda's birth dates, as well as those of 8 children, though the two listed on the right page were the children of Noah and his subsequent wife Agnes (Litton) Westfall, whom he married on June 7, 1869.  I don't have a death date for Matilda; there's no Deaths page, though there is a page with the top half removed; perhaps Matilda's death was recorded on the missing portion.




Births

Noah and Matilda Ann Westfall, born April 8, 1821 and November 12, 1840, respectively; their children
  1. John H. Westfall, born June 7, 1856
  2. Rebecca Ann Westfall, born November 17, 1857
  3. Sarah Jane Westfall, born February 12, 1860
  4. James W. Westfall, born October 1863 [15 or 13 ?]
  5. Columbus Westfall, born June 9, 1865
  6. Richard Hilery [?] Walter [or Walker] Westfall, born October 21, 1867
Noah and Agnes Westfall; their children
  1. Debora Westfall, born January 2, 1870
  2. John Westfall [middle initial H or A or ?], born March 1, 1874
Bible records are not necessarily primary sources, so if you have corrections to the above information, please leave a comment or contact me directly.    Wouldn't you love to know which of Noah's descendants left the scribbling?








Note: the page at left is missing its top portion.  It was presumably a Deaths page, and may have recorded Matilda's death.











Jackson County and Upshur County, West Virginia


9 comments:

  1. A nice post as always. My little comment is about the scribbles from a child. They sure add character to the Bible, but I'm sure the parents were furious!.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, probably horrifying at first, but then down through the ages more of a bemused acceptance. I just hope the scribbling was from a family member and not from a child after the Bible had been lost from the family.

      Delete
    2. Noah Westfall is my great great grandfather. I now have his bible in my possession, and what a treasure this is for me to have.

      Delete
  2. Pam, you can get to the image from familysearch > WVCulture.org.

    https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FYM6-32G

    Matilda's information gives her age (frightening), then "single" and her name looks a lot more like Evans than Coon to me. Her parents' names look like William and Sarah Evans. She was born in Marion Co, then in Virginia.

    I think the indexers got it wrong and ancestry carried it over into their records.

    -- Ed H

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Ed! I saw that, but worried that this might be one of those cases where she gave her current parents, rather than one or both real parents. She's called Coon on the Marriage page, and there's that pesky birth date of James Knox Polk Coon/Koon - how does that tie in?? If she'd had a previous marriage, she would have been even younger! A puzzler...

      Delete
  3. ok, my second try, after reading your post more closely. The death records of three of her children--John H, Columbus, and Rebecca--all say that Matilda's maiden name was Coon. (on familysearch > WVCulture.org).

    A tree on rootsweb mentioned that a Sarah Koon, widowed, was listed next to Noah & Matilda in 1860. I looked and Sarah has a son James in the household whose age matches James K P Coon. Noah's parents were on the other side of them.

    So maybe Sarah ___ married Jacob E Coon who died. Then she married William Evans who was alive when Matilda was married, but died before 1860. Which leaves the question: Why did Sarah go back to the name Koon when widowed the second time?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hello, my Grand father was Noah Westphal he married Naomi Haynes...He passed away in 1963 I believe he was from Jackson County also . Probably he was a descendant...

    ReplyDelete