Eighner Surname Home Page

This is not complete and almost certainly is not completely correct, but I still have something of a life and have to get back to it. So for the time we will call this my version of family legend, although certainly there are still some persons living who could patch this up from personal knowledge. Some of this is just plain guess work and some is based on work by other researchers following other lines whose sources and attention to our line I cannot vouch for.

All records agree that the Illinois Eighners who spell their name that way are descended from John and his wife Nancy MCBRIDE. Whether and how Joe EIGHNOR who married Mary Ellen AARON is related to John is something of the mystery of this part of my story.

In his lifetime, my father Lawrence Clifton, became a Mormon, and in accord with his religious obligations, he attempted a family genealogy which is recorded in the Latter Day Saints archives. Some of this work was carried on or reported to the Mormon archives after his death by Claudia, his second wife, so part or all of what I have identified as Lawrence Clifton's theory may be owing to Claudia. Evidently my father believed that the John who married Nancy MCBRIDE was born in France, and that his father was named Gean, and apparently my father thought Gean never came to America.

Census records, not available to my father, cast considerable doubt on this account. Apparently John reported to the 1880 Census that he was born in Kentucky, and in those days there would have been little incentive to hide being a Western European immigrant, if he had been one. He reported his father was born in France and his mother was born in Germany. So it would appear that the person my father called "Gean" was the one who immigrated.

{A researcher} working on another branch of the family which goes through the female descendants and thus does not bear the name Eighner, has put together a story of this "Gene" which seems to me entirely plausible and conforms to the facts as I know them, but which I have not absolutely nailed down with evidence. This is her story:

A Frenchman born around 1828 whose name was sometimes given as Gene and sometimes as John and whose surname was variously spelled Eighner, EIGHNOR, EICHNER, AGNER, and AGNOR, married a woman Frances whose maiden name might have be SCHMIDT or SMITH. Her family hailed from Germany, but fled to Alsace. Whether Gene (so I call him to avoid confusion with the many Johns to follow), married her there or in America is not clear, but they both ended up in America and had children named John, Louise, George, Amelia, Frank, and Joe, as they lived in various places in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana before Gene brought the family to the Iroquois County, Illinois area.

This researcher has also written that Gene tossed the family records in the fire in a heated disagreement with his wife over the spelling of the surname. This, of course, has the strong odor of legend about it. I can find no evidence of Gene, so spelt, or of AGNOR or AGNER although both are consistent with the traditional pronunciation of the name. EICHNER if it ever occurs looks like a transcription error because it cannot be reconciled with the traditional pronunciation.

While I can locate people who correspond to all of the children except Louise and perhaps I located Gene himself, I have not yet found any direct evidence that any of the children were siblings of any of the others nor any direct evidence that any of them were the children of Gene or Frances. {The other researcher's} theory ties up many loose ends and makes a relatively neat package, but in amateur genealogy neat packages are suspect.

The pieces of the puzzle the other researcher has put together are each fairly solid, but the glue that might hold any of them to the John and Nancy MCBRIDE piece is, so far, entirely legendary.

A John Eighner died in Fairfield township, Tippecanoe County, Indiana, in 1918 at the age of 92. Also in Fairfield township, I find Frank S. and his wife Nettie OLSON. The only solid evidence I have found for Laura and for Nettie's maiden name comes from a 1919 farmers directory, listing them all as residing at "Plain View Farm." Dates for Frank S. and Nettie are found in an obituary index and in a transcription of their shared headstone in Fink Cemetery.

An account has appeared on the web that Laura married a man named Benjamin Franklin SYMMONDS, a man only two years younger than her father. I can find no substantiation for this, however, and reguard it as dubious.

I entertained the notion for a while that "Nettie" might be a shortening of "Antoinette." Among Swedes, however, if it is shortened from anything, it is shortened from 'Henrietta." I found no indication that Nettie's name was ever anything but Nettie.

While it is a fair guess that John is Frank S.'s father, he might as well be an uncle, or someone entirely unrelated. John's dates are right for him to be "Gene," the father of John who married Nancy MCBRIDE and therefore the progenitor of the Illinois Eighners.

Of Louise I have learned nothing. On the possibility that this might have been a transcription error, I investigate Louis, and although Louis was about the right age at the 1880 census, he was working on a farm in Michigan and is recorded as having been born in Prussia of Prussian parents.

So far I have found two theories of Amelia. On is that she was born about 1858 in Cincinnati, married a man named MORTON, and survived in Fowler, Benton County, Illinois, until the 1940s. I do not know the basis for this report. The other is that as Amelia IGNER she married Edwin MATTESON in Paxton, Illinois. A license for this marriage was issued 10 OCT 1990 in Ford County. MATTESON may have spelled his name MATSON.

With George we have the nearest thing to evidence connecting the John and Nancy McBride family, for which evidence is abundant, with Gene's family, which so far is legendary. George shows up living with John's son (named John, too, but called "Jack") in the 1920 census, when he is listed as Jack's uncle, aged 60. I also found a listing of rites for George in Rankin in 1948 (when George would have been 88). This listing is included with war casualties, but because it is three years after the war ended and we do not seem to be missing a male Eighner of an age to be in the service, it seems possible this was George, John's uncle. (Since Nancy was in her 60s at the time of the 1920 census, it seems impossible that she could have had another son afterwards who served in the war. It is possible that Joe EIGHNOR had a descendant named George, or the uncle George had a family with a son named George before he showed up living with John in 1920, but there is no evidence at all for either of these alternatives.)

A Joe EIGHNOR, of about the right age to be the legendary Joe, shows up in Butler township, Vermilion County, Illinois, in the 1900 census. He only has two daughters at the time (Eve Lettie and Francis Ann, but his wife (Mary Ellen AARON) is only 24. He may have sons, but I have been unable to connect more recent Illinois and Indiana EIGHNORs to Joe. This needs more work, but if this is the legendary Joe, who would be according to legend, the brother of the John who married Nancy McBride, the Illinois Eighners would be related to any of the Illinois and Indiana Eighnors who are descended of Joe.

The legend is a good working theory of the origin of this Eighner line in America. It is known, however, that there are lines in Pennsylvania and the Carolinas who had different first American ancestors (whether those ancestors have common ancestors in Europe or not). So it is possible that the legend has confused some descendants of those other lines. However, if the legend is right, this is the picture that emerges:

Gene who spelled his name variously, was born in Frances, married a woman named Francis of German extraction, and immigrated from Alsace in the late 1840s or early 1850s. Gene and Frances lived in several places in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, and Gene died by the name John Eighner near the residence of his son Frank in Tippecanoe County, Indiana.

Gene's sons were George, John, Frank, and Joe. Frank farmed in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, and had no sons. Joe spelled his surname EIGHNOR and may have had sons who would account for some or all of the Illinois and Indiana EIGHNORs. There is no indication that George married or had a family, but he shows up as a farm hand at the age of 60 on his nephew's farm and may have survived to the age of 88. John married Nancy MCBRIDE and all the Illinois Eighners who spell their name that way are descended of John and Nancy MCBRIDE.

John was born in 1854 (or perhaps a year or two later), evidently while his father was moving frequently. His birthplace is reported on various censuses as Kentucky or Ohio, which discrepancies are probably a result of various family members responding to the several censuses. In any event, he seems to have been settled in Illinois when he married Nancy McBride, and between 1876 and 1897, they had a number of children: John (called "Jack"), Charles, Joseph, James W., Anna, and Nellie.

Nellie died in infancy. Anna married Arthur BURDICK, and I believe they remained in Illinois and had children, but this needs more work. James W. married a woman named Mary and had a son Howard. Evidently there was an acrimonious divorce, and Howard and his mother assumed her maiden name TAYLOR. I met Howard (or perhaps a son named Howard) when I was a child and have this explanation so well as I understand it and remember it from him.

Joseph married Edna Pearl KEENE (called "Pearl") and Charles married Mabel KEENE. Mabel and Pearl were sisters, the daughters of John Lewis KEENE and Christina ROSENBERG. As a result, descendants of Charles and descendants of Joseph are double cousins, being cousins once in the Eighner line and cousins again in the KEENE line. Joseph and Pearl apparent had two children: Lawrence Clifton, my father, and a daughter about whom I know nothing. I am, as our grandmothers might say, a confirmed bachelor, but I have a brother who has a son and a daughter. Since there is much to say about Charles, I will skip him and Mabel for the moment.

John's son John, called "Jack," married Mary NELSON of Danish extraction. Their children, so far as I can tell, were Clarence and Carrie. Carrie married Dexter Marshall FOSTER, who was somewhat older and called "Marshall." There were numerous Carrie FOSTERs in Illinois at this time, one of whom was much nearer Marshall's age, and it would appear that some researchers (or I) have confused the Carries. Our Carrie was born in 1904 and is recorded as being 15 year of age and living with her parents in the 1920 census. Her death, as FOSTER, is recorded in the Social Security index in 1982. Marshall was nearly 20 years older. The Mormon records have it that he married a Carrie EIGHNER born in 1889. So far as I can tell, there never was such a person. He may have married another Carrie, not Eighner, who was nearer his age, and our Carrie may have married a different FOSTER. At any rate, I have discovered nothing about Carrie's descendants.

We know much more about Clarence. He married Marie GRAFFELMAN and the only disagreement of records about her is how many fs and ls were in her maiden name. Their children were John Henry (also called "Jack"), Michael, Theodore, and a male who may yet be living. Theodore had a daughter, and I have not discovered much about the others, but Jack had two sons and a daughter. One of the sons died as a young man, but the other son has two daughters and a son.

Now we return to Clarence's uncle Charles, the second son of John and Nancy MCBRIDE and the husband of Mabel KEENE. Charles and Mabel had a number of children.

Earl removed to Minnesota and had six girls and a boy with Alice CARLOCK. The son may still be living and may have a daughter.

Arthur married at an advanced age a young woman named Wanda Lorene of Alabama. When he died, she returned to her family in Alabama with their son who survives.

I have found little information about Donald and Bernice who I believe, perhaps mistakenly, were children of Charles.

Ernest and another son who may yet be living married sisters. The son who may be living had sons Jack and Donald by the sister he married and two daughters by his second wife Barbara PRESLEY. Jack had a daughter. I do not have information about Ernest's family with the sister he married.

Ruth married Bruno PETROWSKI and had a son and two daughters.

Yet another son who may be living married, but I have been unable to find information about his family. I have several good guesses, however.

I find many mentions of younger Illinois Eighners, but have no firm information about who their parents or grandparents were. I assume that most or all of them are descended of Clarence or his uncle Charles because I do not have accounts of all of their sons.