X00296 William Henry Muckle Solved!

It's always fun when you solve a mystery that you hadn't been looking to solve.

Edith Mary Williams was the fifth daughter of Isaac Amos Williams and Caroline Seymour Sanders. I have found two marriage records for her; the first is a marriage to a Willian Henry Muckle on 15 March 1882 in Lindsay, Ontario, Canada. The second marriage was to William Bastoph on 7 November 1895 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA.

There were a few interesting things about these findings. The first one is the question of how Edith got from Lindsay, Ontario in 1882 to Omaha, Nebraska in 1895. I was not able to find a death record for William Henry Muckle - assuming that he died somewhere between 1882 and 1895 - checking in Ontario, Manitoba and the US as well. But one of the most interesting things is that in the second marriage record, Edith's last name is listed as Williams and not Muckle. It was as if the first marriage hadn't happened at all.

Some time ago, I was looking into William Bastoph's Civil War history and requested a copy of his pension file. I certainly was not expecting to find an explanation to all of that in a pension file, but sure enough I did.

Included in the pension file was a copy of the decree of divorse from Edith's first husband:

The decree was from the State of North Dakota and evidently William Henry Muckle deserted his wife on 17 January 1889 and went to Seattle. The divorce was granted 4 August 1890.

That certainly explains why she reverted back to her maiden name and why I couldn't find any death information for William Muckle. As for how she got to Nebraska, it's still not confirmed, but after the divorce, she could have moved in with some of her relatives and moved around.

William Bastoph Civil War Stories

I was doing some research on William Bastoph, who was the second husband of Edith Williams.

From some of my initial research, it appeared that William had quite a history to him, having been a civil war veteran. But his background story became potentially more interesting when I found an unsourced story about him in Ancestry that someone had posted.

In the story it mentions that William Bastoph was wounded in battle at one point and left on the battlefield for dead. A friend of his went out after the battle, found Bastoph and rescued him. The article went on to say that after the war he went on to become a civil engineer and built bridges throughout the American West. It also mentioned that he evidently had enlisted in the war because of a fallout with a girlfriend.

So, I decided to look into some of these stories to see if any of them could be backed up with sources. I checked with Newspapers.com and Newspaperarchive.com and found a number of articles that confirmed his civil engineering history

To investigate the Civil War side of things, I found through his service record that he served in the 103rd Regiment

I then managed to find a Battallion history for the 103th Regiment

and sure enough there is a personal account of the Battle of Seven Pines that mentions William Bastoph:

"When we got back to the open space where we had rallied our force we saw a line of soldiers in the woods to the left of that position. They stood, in grim silence, and in good order, and as we had not expected to see an enemy there we thought they were our own men ; but noticing straw hats and gray uniforms among them, we were perplexed with doubts. I stood on a stump to have a better view, and halloed out to them, 'show your colors.'

It was not a discreet thing to do, and I realized that when their guns came to an aim. I dropped quickly behind the stump, and their bullets splashed sand and water in my face. Our doubts were dispelled it was now every man for himself with us. I crawled into a thicket towards the rear, and when I came out at the other side I saw Corp. Bostaph of my company staggering from a wound under his arm. Sergt. Rimer and I took hold of him and helped him along. A man of Co. D, told me that Gillespie had fallen. As we came in view of Couch's line men called to us to hurry back.

Within the lines I met again the colonel of the 96th New York, and he advised our party to seek our Regiments. By this time we had had enough fighting for one day, and so we took his advice and continued our course to the rear. We placed Bostaph in an ambulance. It was five o'clock when we found our regiment, a mile to the rear."

And so I've found some more documentation to back up the story. Plus a whole lot more to research about that battle and his war service. As for the fallout with a girlfriend story, that may take some more research to verify