Been a while, huh?  I am bound and determined to get one segment of the family tree published by the end of the year so here I am asking the hard questions once again.

I’m in the process of cleaning up my Winkler ancestors.  Good ol’ George is still throwing up road blocks, especially where this supposed half sister Harriett Murray is concerned.  According to the Historical and Biographical Atlas of Knox County, Indiana, George’s parents were George and Sophia (Gross) Winkler, and George was born in Tennessee.  I still can’t find any trace of them in 1860 or 1850 in Indiana, Kentucky or Tennessee.  It’s likely the surname was somehow misspelled.  At any rate, I’m not putting in too much effort to find them at this time.

Harriett Murray is another matter altogether. She shows up in 1880 living with my 3GGrandparents (George and Josephine) in Edwardsport and is listed as a half-sister to the head of the household, namely George.  So back to 1870 and 5 year old Harriett can be found with her parents Samuel and Sophia Murray  in the Wheatland area.  Samuel is listed as being 50 and Sophia 30.  If this Sophia is George’s mother, she would be more like 50, not 30.  It wasn’t uncommon for ages to be wrong on the census rolls back then.  In fact, there was a Samuel Murray who married a Sophia Dillon in nearby Daviess County in 1860.  It’s not completely out of the question that Sophia Dillon could be Harriett’s mother, instead of Sophia Gross.

So, it’s hard to say what happened to Samuel and Sophia between 1870 and 1880.  I’m guessing Sophia died.  Samuel may or may not have died.  It was commonplace for single dads, especially older ones, to dump their kids on the relatives.  The problem now if figuring out where Harriett went.  There aren’t any 1890 census records due to the fire at the Library of Congress, and vital records were crappy during that era.  Sadly, nothing is coming up in my search.

Harriett, where did you go?