When I learned that my uncle, Duane Musselman, had a collection of information for the Musselman side of the family, he lent his files to me, and I inserted them into my computer. Some of the information in Duane’s files came from cousin Marilyn Young and a distant half cousin, Grace Barr Wheeler.

I also contacted a few distant relatives and solicited information from them in exchange for printouts of their family tree.

Duane also had many pictures of our ancestors on the Musselman, Barr, Butler, and Reid branches of the tree. I borrowed these as well and took snapshots of some of them with my camera. They turned out very nicely. Now I had my own collection of photos as well as the negatives.

I thought that I had everything, then. But later I was to learn that it just goes on and on. I became curious about some of the missing information like; Where were they born? Where did they live before? Who were their parents? Did they have any brothers or sisters? However, I hadn’t the time to conduct any extensive research, and eventually forgot about it.

I started out with approximately 350 individuals in my database. Now I have over 3500! A lot of them are not directly related to many of us, but are the ancestors of those who married into the Musselman or Swanson families.

One of the first things that I wanted to find out was – Who were his parents and where did they come from? At the time, I had information that Theodore was born in Albany, New York or in Indiana. (There is also a town called Albany in Indiana.) My first big thrill in my new hobby came when I found Theodore’s death record on a micro film roll in the Sioux City Library. It listed Theodore’s birth place as well as his parents and their birth places. His father was George Musselman, born in Pennsylvania, and his mother was Anna Topping. Theodore’s birth place was listed as New York. Hurray! I had traced the Musselmans back one more generation.

I later found George and Theodore in the 1880 South Dakota Census on a micro film roll at the Mormon Church’s Family History Center. They both lived in Hutchinson County, SD as farmers, on separate farms but in the same section of the same township. George had a new wife, Carrie. She was about 26 years his junior. Theodore was listed as single and 21 years old.

In November of this year I was able to obtain the Probate Record for George F. Musselman, from Brule County, SD. A list of his heirs provided some new names and verification of some existing information. The most important being the two children that he had with his second wife, Joseph and George M. Musselman. It is believed that Joseph later lived in Colorado and George M. in California. This information has added a new branch of half cousins, currently unknown, to our tree. Also listed in George F. Musselman’s Probate Record was a set of carpenter’s tools as being personal property of his estate. These tools may have been the ones found in Grandpa Clifford's garage after his passing. There seems to be an unintended tradition of carpenters in our family; George F., Theodore, Ted, and Mark. Great Grandpa George H. Musselman did some wood working, too.

The oldest generation of the Reids that we had was Henry Reid and all of his children. A short, one paragraph, biography of him was found in a book about the history of Page County, Iowa. In that one paragraph was discovered that he was born in New Jersey and came to Iowa from Ohio.

Four separate Reid families were found in Page County. We took note of all of them, trying to link them together. Two families were linked together when it was discovered, in a Muscatine County Census of 1870, that the same mother of Henry Reid, Nancy Ann Monk Reid, who is buried in the same lot as Henry, was living with a John C. Reid, also her son. This John C. Reid later moved to Page County as well and a short biography of him was in the same book as Henry.

So now we have one additional generation back from what we had. Nancy Ann Monk was the wife of John Reid. They moved from New Jersey to Ohio in about 1837. Their son Henry was born in New Jersey and John C. was born in Ohio. John and Nancy had 12 children. The names of three other children of John and Nancy Reid were provided to me by Michael Thorstad, a descendant of John C. Reid. Mike saw my Family Tree Home Page on the Internet and contacted me to share our information. These additional children were Mary Ann, William, and Joseph. The descendants of Henry, John C., Mary Ann, and William have been traced throughout Page and Fremont Counties, in Iowa and to Plymouth and Woodbury Counties. Five of Henry’s sons moved north to Plymouth and Woodbury counties. They’ve been found in the Census’ for 1900 and 1910 in Plymouth County and in the Sioux City, City Directories. Their addresses, occupations, spouses, and children have been traced yearly through the Sioux City, City Directory. All of them living in Leeds at one time or another.

Now, we thought we knew for sure that Nettie was John Taber’s natural daughter, or did we? The night after finding the birth record of Nettie, Dean Musselman was awakened at 3:00 in the morning with the theory that maybe "Notta Taber" actually meant "not – a –Taber" and that John Taber knowing that she wasn’t his daughter, decided to make a subtle statement to the fact by giving her this name on the birth certificate. Or maybe "Notta" is just a common English girl’s name. We may never know for sure.

The Barr family has been tracked back to Thomas’ parents, Robert and Mary Barr from Yorkshire, England, where Thomas was born in 1825. Charlotte was born in England, too, but nothing is known of her parents and siblings. Duane Musselman has had some contact with a half cousin of ours, Grace Barr Wheeler. She is the granddaughter of William G. Barr, one of the sons from Thomas’ first marriage to Elizabeth Lemmon. Grace has been a wonderful source of information about the Barr branch of our tree. I have been in contact with her as well. She has been researching her family tree for many years.

Our half cousins, on the Taber branch, have been traced to only their spouses and a few of their children.

Millard and Lena had three girls, Anna Mae Mason, Luella Belle Reid, and Iva Opal Tucker. Lena’s third daughter, Iva Opal, was living in Jefferson, Iowa with her husband and their children until her death in 1971. Anna Mae married Jess Mason, who was a photographer. He took many beautiful photos of Elsie Reid while she was living with him and Anna Mae after Elsie’s mother, Luella Bell, died when Elsie was only about six months old. Additional information has been found about Jess Mason’s ancestry, too. Jess and Mae Mason lived in San Jose, CA in and after 1935.

It has been difficult to locate Luella’s birth record, if there is one. Her marriage and her death record state that she was from "Crawford" which we took to mean Crawford County, Iowa. Well, there used to be a Crawford post office just outside of Sioux City in 1892. It was where Morningside is now. A C. J. Butler farmed near there and got his mail from this Crawford post office. We thought that this C. J. Butler could be our Calvin Butler and that Luella could have been born at his house, right there in Woodbury County. Well, we still can’t find record of her birth there or in Crawford or Cherokee Counties. Another fact is that Crawford County used to include Plymouth, Woodbury, Ida, and Cherokee counties, at the time of Luella’s birth. The search continues.

Some research by Karl Fredrickson, my second cousin, has located some Swedish relatives still living in the old country and his sister, Kerstin, is visiting some of them this month, in Sweden. I am grateful to Frances Benson Clark, my Grandpa Swanie’s cousin, for letting me borrow the old photographs that she has from her mother’s belongings and to Sally Swanson Plowman, Bob Swanson’s daughter, for her contribution to the photo collection.

 It was also a pleasure to get in touch with my second cousin, Cindy Rae Young Stodden, who was also helpful in the old photo hunt, as well as being enthusiastic about our family’s history.

If anyone wishes to have some family tree information, I am always willing to provide it. Please note my address and phone number at the bottom of this page. If you have access to the Internet, our family tree is posted on my Home Page, "The Sioux City Musselmans". The address is listed at the top of this page.