STRASMA | LOWTHER | DRINAN | RUDDELL

Unraveling the McConchies

The story of Robert Daniel 'Tip' McConchie

   Tracing Robert Daniel “Tip” McConchie’s family has proved to be a challenge. His father died when he was 4 years old — US Federal Census Mortality Schedule records that James R. McConkie died in September 1849 of “bilious cholick” after an illness of two days. He was listed as a laborer. The family, headed by his widow Catherine Cole McConchie is recorded in the 1850 census for Rappahannock County, Virginia: Catharine A McConchie, 25; Mary, 6; Robert D, 5; Douglas T, 3; James W, 10/12.

   James R. McConchie’s wife, Catherine, was born 24 June 1824, the daughter of a slave-holding Virginia farmer named Daniel Cole and his wife Elizabeth Whitehead.   Daniel had served in the Revolutionary War as a private in the Continental Army, enlisting in 1780 in Virginia. In 1850 Daniel owned six slaves, women aged 41 and 67, a man aged 28, and three children 7 and younger.

   No slaves are listed for the McConchies although earlier censuses showed McConchie families in the Culpeper County area owning slaves.

   Catherine Cole McConchie, married again on 3 May 1852 in Rappahannock County, Virginia. Her new husband, Joseph W. Garner was seven years younger than Catherine, just 20 years old at the time of their marriage. Catherine’s son Douglas subsequently died in 1855 at the age of 7.

   The family then disappears from official records, and none of them appear in the 1860 federal census. They may have been on the move at time of the time of the census - Tip's obituary reports: "Just before the outbreak of the Civil War, the family came to Edgar county, the journey from Cincinnati, O., being made in a covered wagon."

   Just over a year before the end of the Civil War Tip enlisted as a private in Company K, Indiana 129th Infantry Regiment on 25 March 1864.

   Thelma Lowther Otey described Tip as a rascal and story teller — he told her he had enlisted on the side of the Union because he wanted to free his “mammy” and that his father and brother had fought for the Confederacy. However, relatives may have had slaves in Virginia, but his family had none. Further, his father died in 1849, long before the war, and his brother would have been just 12 at the time the war began and did not serve in the army.

   Thelma recalls that he would tell of his involvement in General Sherman’s “March to the Sea” campaign — not marching, but riding in an ambulance. This tale was true since his later pension application confirms that he contracted “scrofula of both legs caused by eating salty meat and lying on the ground” while on duty near Atlanta. He was given a pass to ride in an ambulance as the march continued.

   Disease among Tip’s infantry regiment was far more dangerous than the Confederate army. Twenty-one officers and enlisted men were killed or mortally wounded in battle while 168 men died of disease.

   Following the war, the 1870 federal census shows the Garner and McConchie family living in Paris, Illinois, where Joseph W. Garner, 39, is a photographer and his wife Catharine is shown to be 44. Two of Catharine’s sons, Robert, 22 and James, 20, are living with them along with three additional sons of Joseph and Catherine Garner: Thomas, 18; George, 12; and Joseph, 8.

   Tip's older sister, Mary, had married John D. Noel on 5 March 1868 in Edgar County.

   Ten years later, the 1880 census for Paris shows the the Garner family with Joseph, 47, as a clerk and Catherine, 55, keeping house. Two of their sons are living with them along with Catherine's daughter, Mary Noel, and her two children.

   Tip's younger brother James, a painter and paper hanger, continued to live in Paris. He married Sarah Francis Reed and they had five children. Sarah died in 1893, and James was killed by a train in Decatur three years later.

   In the 1900 census, Catherine remains in Paris, living with her son, Joseph, and daughter, Mary Noel. She died in 23 November 1904 in Montgomery County, Indiana, at the age of 80.

   On 28 November 1873 Tip married Sarah Catherine Rhoads in Paris, Illinois. Tip was 27 and Sarah was 20. Sarah came from a family with German roots that came to Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary War and moved West through Kentucky before settling in Illinois in the mid-19th century.

   She was the daughter of Benjamin Talbert Rhoads, born in 1815, and Mariam Tolen, born the same year.

   Benjamin or B.T. was the grandson of Daniel Rhoads, who was one of the original “minute men” who marched from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts in the early days of the Revolutionary War arriving in time for the Battle of Bunker Hill.

   Thelma Otey tells the story of Tip and Sarah’s courtship:

“Well Grandma [Sarah Rhoads] told her Dad that she was going to marry the first man that asked her. She was going with three different men, and she said the the first one that asks me I’m going to marry. And Grandpa Tip said, “Yes, and by God, it had to be me.” He just never could say the right thing, I guess.

“Grandpa Rhoads, Grandma’s Dad, had a section of land [and he gave part of it to each of his children when they married].… They lived on one corner of the land, and he put put Grandma and Grandpa diagonally across from there on the other corner of the land because he wanted them as far away from him as he could get him. He didn’t like him.”

Thelma recalls that Sarah Rhoads McConchie was a large woman, while Tip was slight — his civil war pension applications shows he was 5 foot 6 inches tall and weighed 116 pounds.

“Yeah, she was big. She was German, and she carried herself with, I thought, dignity. But everybody said you didn’t tease Grandma, but I would tease her.   Grandma and I had been, had always been awful close. Grandpa, course I loved him dearly. I liked to go any place with him.”

Sarah and Tip had 8 children — Claude, Dess, B.T., Robert, Foster, Ada Laura, and Ruth. Maud died in infancy. Tip died in 1937 at the age of 91. When he died he was the last surviving civil war veteran in Edgar County. Sarah died the next year just before her 85th birthday.

Ada Laura married Homer Lowther, grandfather of Laura Jane Lowther (Strasma).