ARMED FOR BEAR by Janet Miller, [email protected]

After years of careful research -- lots of it through Internet connections -- a cousin, sister, and I headed for Kewanee, Illinois, in September to meet a newly discovered cousin and finally track down some of our missing links. We had an exact schedule, which cities and towns, which county courthouse we were going to do -- Henry and Stark -- what records we were looking for, what documents we needed, what historical societies we were going to, and which cemeteries to look through. We were armed for bear and a great time.

Like many others, our MCGUIRE family is rooted in Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary War. But in the 1850s what would be my whole branch headed west to Illinois and from there spread out into Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, and California and many connections were lost.

So, researching my Pennsylvania family roots found us in Toulon, Illinois, a little town that holds the courthouse for Stark County, Illinois and a deed book for a land sale that cited the probate record of my great-grandfather, James Pendergast MCGUIRE, born in 1846 in Derry, Pennsylvania, who had died in 1896 in Atchison, Kansas. There before us was the citation for a document we had searched for for years. We had repeatedly queried the Atchison County courthouse over the years to no avail, but here was the volume and page number.

While my cousin and I were making fools of ourselves jumping up and down and hugging each other, a complete stranger who was also going through deed books looked up and laughed at us and asked us what name we were researching. When we told her, she looked at us with a frown and said she had just seen that name in Wyoming, the next little town over, where she had obtained a booklet from City Hall about the town's 150th anniversary. She flipped open the book and there before us was our great-great- grandfather, Jacob MCGUIRE (father of James MCGUIRE), born in Derry, Pennsylvania in 1823, who had posed for a picture of the town's leading businessmen in 1897.

We had intended to go to the library in Wyoming the next day to look for obituaries, but it was now late afternoon on Friday and Saturday, we realized, would be too late. We tore the 10 miles to Wyoming's City Hall only to find that there were no more booklets; the woman we met had their last copy. But a kind woman sent us around the corner to the library, which after a brief search turned out to have a stack of them in a closet. After some mild begging and a donation to the library's book fund, we got one. Then the woman we had spoken to at the City Hall came running in because she had found another copy and wanted to make sure we got one!

Planning to come back the next day, we started to leave, but when I saw a computer tucked into the corner of this little library, I asked if they had microfilm copies of old newspapers. Yes, she said, but the computer wasn't working. But if we wanted to look at old newspapers they were down in the basement. So in a damp, cell-like room were stacks of the WYOMING POST-HERALD going back more than 100 years, crumbling to bits in old bound books that were wrapped in plastic. It took me 10 minutes to locate the obituary for my great-great-grandmother, Jane Thompson McGuire, which explained why repeated requests to Henry and Stark counties had never produced a death certificate. She had died in Kansas (one of the states I had previously checked with no luck) at a daughter's home and her body was returned to Wyoming to be buried. And for the first time, I knew her maiden name and that she was born in Allegheny Co., Pennsylvania, not Westmoreland County, where the McGuires lived, and that she was the sister of the wife of Jacob's brother Daniel.

And, finally, there was the obituary of my great-great-great- grandmother, Sarah Miller McGuire, age 102 at her death, the oldest woman in Stark County. She had been born in 1796, married in 1818 to Pendergast McGuire, the son of a Revolutionary War soldier, trekked from Pennsylvania to Illinois in 1855 and borne 13 children. She had spent the last years of her life with his son Jacob's family in Wyoming, but had been buried in Kewanee in the family plot of another son, George W. McGuire, and his family. She was a woman "of strong opinion," the obituary said, who continued to do fine needlework "into her last years."

I felt I had come full circle. It was the marker for Sarah's grave in Kewanee which had brought us to Illinois. Several months before, I had asked for help checking for McGuires in cemeteries in Kewanee at the Web site of the Henry County Genealogical Society. (I had never been able to find death records, but I knew some of my family had to be buried there.) A wonderful woman who lives in Florida most of the year, but Kewanee in the summer, answered and offered to check for me. In fact, she though she knew where one of the graves might be because of her own research. She had indeed found Sarah's grave in St. Mary's Cemetery, which is a very old and small cemetery from which many of the markers can be read from the street. She became so intrigued that she did additional checking which turned up the obituary of my great-great-grandfather Jacob, who had died in Kewanee, and other McGuires, and she realized that she knew someone who was possibly related to us!

So Sarah had brought us to Kewanee, to new friendships, and to an 83-year-old cousin who didn't think she had any real family left. It was a wonderful day!