Shire Surname Weblog

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I maintain a profile/blog on MySpace. Rather than clutter this board with my own personal ramblings, MySpace is where you can keep current with what's going on in my life. I will, however, make sure that I post everything here that I think is relevant to our content.

To view me on MySpace:  www.myspace.com/danshire

Thank God for Kids

Recently I made a Shire Family Memories video for my family members. I got my hands on some old 8mm movie reels and I transferred them to DVD. Much of the footage was scenery or otherwise rather unusable "stuff". But there were was plenty that was just too precious to simply put on a shelf, never to be seen again.

So I decided to extract some of the "better" scenes and put some music to it to share with the family. One of my favorite clips that came out of it were of children that I put to the song "Thank God for Kids". So I thought I would share that piece with the world at large.

Enjoy!

In a Nutshell

I think that anyone who has experienced the frustrations of genealogy research will totally appreciate this video. It's a funny song and the frosting on the cake is that it is the Muppets! How can you go wrong with the Muppets??

Samuel Shire Mystery

As we know, census information can be unreliable at times. Errors by the census taker in capturing the correct names or other details, poor handwriting, individuals giving word of mouth information to the census taker, etc. all make the data sometimes inconsistent, all together wrong, or perhaps just downright confusing.

This leads us to Samuel Shire and what exactly happened to him out in Kansas.

Samuel was born in 1839 to Jacob Shire and Catharine Boyer in Pennsylvania. In 1859 he married Martha Jane Sprague in Crawford County, Illinois, and after serving in the Civil War he and his wife moved out Kansas.

The 1910 census shows Martha as having given birth to one child with none living. So far I have not uncovered where or when this child was born. They lived in Indiana at the time of the 1870 census, so there are three states to research as likely locations; Illinois, Indidana and Kansas.

I don't have a death date yet for Martha, although I have heard that she died in 1910. Here is where the mystery really kicks into high gear.

The 1920 census shows Samuel living alone in Wichita, Kansas. The census, however, shows him as divorced. For years I wrote this off as being a census taker error. But recently I stumbled across a marriage index in Kansas referencing a marriage between a Samuel Shire and a Myrtle Harper in 1912.

The 1915 Kansas State census shows Samuel and Myrtle living with her children from a previous marriage. The census was transcribed as Samuel's age being 46, however when I zoom in on the census page, it looks very possible that his age was written as 76. If my interpretation of the census is correct, it is possible that this is the very same Samuel Shire, son of Jacob Shire, widower of Martha Jane Shire.

There is a Myrtle Shire living in Kansas in the 1920 census. Living with her is her 9 month old child, Roy Shire. This census shows her as being a widow. Later census data and SS Death Index shows Roy's last name as Shires rather than Shire.

I have, as of yet, been unable to locate any matches for another Samuel Shire in Kansas at the time of the marriage of Samuel and Myrtle. If this is a different Samuel Shire, I don't know where he comes from, when he moved to Kansas, and when he died.

So, did Samuel Shire remarry at the age of 73? Did he father a child at the age of 80? We know that he died in 1927, so did he divorce Myrtle and the census showing her as a widow is incorrect?

The easy answer to all of this is that he never remarried after Martha died and the 1920 census showing him as divorced is incorrect. But until we can find documentary evidence of his life in the early 20th century we just can't be sure.

If anyone has a copy of his will or death certificate please share it. Or perhaps someone out there is descended from Roy Shire(s) and has family accounts that can prove or disprove any of this.

Second Marriage of George W Shire?

George W. Shire (son of David Shire and Sara Dursham) was born 21 May 1855 and died 19 Dec 1930. George married Mary Parr on 11 Mar 1877 in Crawford County, Illinois.

Mary Parr Shire died on 3 Feb 1922.

In the 1930 census, there is a G W Shire living in Oblong, Crawford County, Illinois. He is married to Emma (born about 1865). This GW Shire is listed as being a janitor at a bank, which is the same occupation listed for George Shire in the 1920 census.

Does anybody know who George married and when?

History of the Name

So no big revelation here, but I thought I would share it anyway.

I realized that all of the Shire surname histories referred to the name being an English name, but all of our research indicates that we are of German descent. So I took a moment to look for some likely German variants of the name and see if we can agree on the most likely "original" name.

Here is what I found. Again, not any breakthrough research, just what was listed on Ancestry.com.

The surname Scheier is a variant of the form of the German surname Scheuer, which derives from the Middle High German "schiur" meaning "barn". In the Middle Ages such a person was not only put in charge of barns owned by his village but he would typically collect a tenth of the harvest from the farmers to be used by the village's non-farm occupants.

The surname Scheier may alternately have been derived from a village named Scheuern, many of which can be found throughout the Germany of today. Someone who hailed from one of these villages, but is now living someplace else, could have been named Scheuer or Scheier.

Historic references for the surname Scheier and its variant forms of Scheierle, Scheuerle, Scheuermann and Scheuer can be found in documents dating back to the twelfth century. One Karolus Skuro (Old High German form of Scheuer) was a resident of the city of Koeln in the year 1178. The name of Cunrad dictus Scheuermann, a resident in Kirchen, near Loerrach, appears in a document dated 1272. Merk (also Marquard) Scheuerlin was a farmer near Beuren in the year 1319.

I guess the main reason I found this interesting is because I found some church documents in Pennsylvania for Conrad Scheuer, who we believe to be the "first" in America of my family's line of Shires.  There have, of course, been other spellings in documents, but Scheuer seems to be the most common (at least in my opinion, others may disagree, which is what this is all about).

Hello Shire Clan!

Shire family members post your comments and stories! It’s awesome living in the age of the world wide web where geography is irrelevent!

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Ancestors

I am the grandson of Jason Eugene Shire (1894-1961) and Alice Florence Patterson (1900-1984). I have been able to trace my ancesry back to Jacob Shire (1809-1867) and Catherine Boyer (1809-1888). I think Jacob’s father was John (or Johann?) Shire and his grandfather was Conrad Shire.

I haven’t yet been able to confirm the connection between Jacob and John. This is currently my number one research priority.

I’d be interested in hearing about other people’s lineage and who they are researching.