Heck Of A Guy

Introduction To The Early Years Of Allan Truax

Although information about the life of Allan Lincoln Truax¹ is spotty in general, almost nothing is known about him from his birth until he arrives in North Dakota as a young man. Consequently, today’s post, which covers his childhood and early adolescence, contains not only the facts that are available but also inferences from that data as well as some outright speculation.

Whatever value today’s post may offer lies, in fact, as much in an appreciation of the biographer’s task as in its handful of laboriously earned nuggets of information about Allan Truax and his times.

The Truax Family At The Time Of Allan’s Birth²

The Truax Parents
At the time of Allan Truax’s birth, his father, John Galbraith Truax, was almost exactly 42 (John’s birthday was October 22 and Allan’s was October 24), and his mother, Louisa (Rouse) Truax, was 36.³ They would celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary January 6, 1872, less than three months after Allan was born.

The Truax Sibship
According to the genealogical records. Allan was the sixth of of seven children, all of whom except the youngest were sons. One of his older brothers, Franklin, died ten years before Allan was born, and another, James died of typhoid fever⁴ when Allan was two. The complete sibship, as recorded in the family genealogy (to which Allan contributed editorial effort) follows:

• John Newton Truax (b.1853 d.1877: never married)
• Franklin Truax (b.1859 d.1861)
• William Wesley Truax (b.1856 (d.1950-ALT) m.1884=2= Cora Jane Roberts)
• Franklin Truax (b.1862 m.1889= Algenora A. Anger)
• James Chalmers Truax (b.1865 d.1873)
• Allan Lincoln Truax (b.1871 m.1901= Evelyn Maude Baldwin b.1873 [1872-ALT])
• Alice Louise Truax (b.1879)

The Truax Family Migration From Ontario To Michigan

According to several biographical and genealogical documents, including those he himself contributed or edited, Allan Truax was born in the town of Mayville, located in Fremont Township, Tuscola County, Michigan. The Truax family had not, however, been lifelong residents of this area. A review of genealogical and demographic records provides a helpful but incomplete and inconsistent map of the family’s movements.

The records consistently report that Allan’s mother and father were born in Ontario. According to the Wells and Cragg Descendants genealogy pages, Allan’s brothers, William Wesley and Franklin (the second Franklin in the sibship) were both born in Sunderland, Ontario, Canada on November 5, 1856 and April 15, 1862, respectively.

The birthplace of the youngest brother save Allan, James Chalmers Truax, born March 19, 1865, is not given in the genealogy documents but is listed in the Michigan Death Records⁵ as Mayville, Michigan. Further, genealogical records indicate that Allan’s father died August 4, 1904, in Mayville, Michigan.⁶

The 1880 United States Census⁷ provides some helpful information about the Truax household but also introduces some conflicting data. The Truax family is included in the census area of Fremont Township, Tuscola County, Michigan.⁸ The household itself included⁹

• John: Head of Household; Married, Male, White, Age 50, Birthplace: Ontario; Farmer¹⁰
• Louise: Wife; Married, Female, White, Age 45; Birthplace: Ontario; Keeps House
• Franklin: Son; Single, Male, White, Age 18; Birthplace: Ontario; At Home
• Allen: Son, Single, Male, White, Age 8; Birthplace: Ontario;¹¹ At Home
• Alice: Daughter, Single, Female, White, Age 8 Months; Birthplace: Michigan

This is the only document, to my knowledge, that lists Allan’s (Allen’s) birthplace as Ontario.

Ms Edwina Morgan and The Great Michigan Fires
Further complicating the issue is the absence of the Truax family from records that should have included them, most notably the Michigan State Census of 1870. My failure to detect the family in that data base prompted an email query to the Library of Michigan Reference Desk regarding the likelihood of a household being overlooked in the 1870 census. An incredibly helpful librarian, Edwina A. Morgan, responded:

There will be more about these fires in the next Truax post; for now, it’s sufficient to recognize that about two weeks before Allan Truax was born, much of Michigan was in flames with a tremendous loss of lives and property and that in 1881, when Allan was 10, the region where his family lived was again ravaged by fire.


What to make of all this?

It seems unlikely that the several genealogical and biographical records,¹² including those written by Allan Truax himself are in error about his birthplace and that the single census document is correct. I suspect, instead, that the 1880 Census data point -Allan’s birthplace - is incorrect and Allan was born in Mayville, Michigan.

From the preponderance of data in the records discussed above, the Truax family probably resided in Ontario until at least 1862 (when Franklin Truax was born) and moved to Mayville, Michigan no later than 1865 (when James Chalmers Truax was born), with the parents continuing to live in Mayville until John Galbraith Truax’s death in 1904.

Of course, that does not explain why the Truax family living in Mayville wasn’t counted in any governmental listings (e.g., the 1870 Michigan Census) other than the 1880 Federal Census and the Michigan Death Record of James Truax. While I’m uncomfortable attributing this to simple bureaucratic errors, compounded by the scarcity of available population records noted by Ms. Morgan, I am unable to develop viable alternative hypotheses. All other explanations would either render all of the genealogical information erroneous or require the Truax family to have moved to parts unknown after the birth of James in Mayville in 1865, only to return to that same town after the 1870 census but prior to Allan’s birth in 1871 .

Mayville, Michigan

From historical records of Mayville and the surrounding area,¹³ less than 40 years prior to the birth of Allan Truax, his home town had been no more than another undifferentiated part the forests that covered the thumb of Michigan, inhabited only by Indians and the occasional trapper or adventurer.

1895 Map of Tuscola County Michigan, birthplace of Allan Truax

Tuscola County was first settled in the 1830s by New Yorker Ebenezer Davis, his wife and eleven children. Townsend North, also a New Yorker, was a lumberman who received 3,000 acres of Tuscola timberlands for building a bridge across the Cass River in 1835.

The History of Sanilac County 1834-1984¹⁴ describes a journey undertaken to that area in the 1842 that required the pioneers to jettison all nonessentials from their packs upon their arrival at Fort Gratiot, still 24 miles from their destination, because the balance of the trip could be accomplished only on foot through an ancient Indian trail through the woods.

While the reasons the Truax family moved from Ontario to the thumb of Michigan is unknown, these histories refer to political unrest in Ontario and the promise of jobs in the lumber mills bringing many to the area.

By 1860, the township of Fremont had been organized and areas were cleared for farming.

Ironically, the forest fires that ravaged the area but ironically benefited the county by clearing the land for agriculture to expand. Sugar beet production increased dramatically due to a “sugar bounty” law in 1881 offering one cent per pound for sugar manufactured from sugar beets.

Allan Truax: The Early Years - Part II
The next Allan Truax post will elaborate further the life of Allan’s community (based on a history of the county published in 1883 I just discovered), the Great Michigan Fires, and the beginning portion of Allan’s career as a teacher.

Allan Truax At Heck Of A Guy
An explanation of who Allan Truax is and why he is a feature of the Heck Of A Guy Blog can be found at Who’s Allan Truax?

Identification: Allan Truax, Allen Truax, and A.L. Truax
“Allan Truax” and “Allen Truax” appear with approximately equal frequency in the written material I’ve reviewed, with “A.L. Truax” occurring somewhat less often. The name Mr. Truax inscribed in his books was “Allan” so I use it preferentially

Other Heck Of A Guy Posts About Allan Truax

• The first Allan Truax Post was Allan Truax, A.E. Housman, The Ex, and Me
• The most recent Allan Truax Post before this entry was Allan Truax Timeline In Context
• All Allan Truax posts can be found by clicking on the Allan Truax category

Footnotes

1. An aside: It only recently occurred to me that it is likely, although unproven, that Allan Lincoln Truax’s middle name derived from President Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated only six years before Allan’s birth. According to genealogist, Myra Vanderpool Gormley, writing at RootsWeb’s Guide to Tracing Family Trees,
   Civil War heroes provided many names for our ancestors. Robert E. Lee, or a combination of his name, is borne by many of our Southern male ancestors. The names Stonewall Jackson and Jeb, for J.E.B. Stuart, also became popular. In the northern states, Lincoln and Grant became common given names, while many parents named their daughters for states, such as Missouri, Tennessee or California.

   Even if it could be proven that Allan Lincoln Truax were named after the martyred president, it would be neither surprising (I attribute my tardiness in recognizing the potential source of the name to my geography; every third business, park, and school in Illinois, it seems is named “Lincoln”) or, notwithstanding the temptation to perform an ex post facto psychoanalysis in order to attribute Lincolnesque characteristics to Allan Truax because of his middle name, psychologically enlightening. It does serve, however, to anchor the start of Allan’s life to the post Civil War era.↩

2. This information about the Truax family, except where otherwise noted, is primarily from The House Of Truax online genealogy. Key: b - Born; d - Died; = - Followed by either name of spouse or number of children; ALT - Information added by Allan Lincoln Truax. Some additional data is from the genealogy pages found at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/ ↩
3. The Truax and Rouse families had a thing for each other. According to Wells and Cragg Descendants, James Truax, John Galbraith Truax’s brother and Allan’s uncle, married Christina Rouse, sister of Louisa Rouse, both of whom, according to Email fom: Jennifer Smith Subject: [QC-ETANGLO-L] Re: ROUSE Family were daughters of John Rouse And Rebecca Chapman. I.e., each Truax brother married a Rouse sister.↩
4. Tuscola County, State of Michigan: Death Records↩
5. Tuscola County, State of Michigan: Death Records↩
6. Allan’s mother died five years after her husband in Oregon.↩
7. LDS Search: 1880 Federal Census Family History Library Film 1254607, NA Film Number T9-0607, Page Number 152D ↩
8. The town of Mayville is not specifically named in that census but was located in Fremont Township, which is specifically named as site of the Truax household↩
9. The two oldest brothers, John and Wesley would have been about 27 and 24 (depending on the exact date of the census), respectively and were likely living on their own; James Chalmers Truax, another son already mentioned in this discussion, is not included in this household listing, having died prior to 1880↩
10. The last item for each household member, except the infant, Alice, for whom that entry is blank, is the category “Occupation”↩
11. Emphasis mine↩
12. The multiplicity of records may be misleading because it is impossible to untangle which of these records, if any, drew their data from another. Indeed, it is possible that all the genealogical records I found had a common source so that any mistakes made in that original document would have been preserved in the secondary records.↩
13. References include Tuscola County, Michigan, The Forming of Newaygo County, and History Of Sanilac County↩
14. Sanilac County is adjacent to Tuscola County↩
15. The depot was built by 1882 by the Port Huron & North Western Railroad. The tracks and depot are now owned by the Saginaw Valley Railroad, which is part of the RailAmerica shortline empire and are operated by the Huron and Eastern, another RailAmerica company. See http://user.mc.net/~louisvw/depot/mayville/mayv.htm↩

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