Rosel Edwards and his wife,
Naomi Jane Barrick Edwards, were my great-great-great-grandparents. I am still
getting to know them little by little through the records they left behind,
which I’ve recently started to gather. It appears that Rosel was a fairly
prosperous farmer who was born and lived his entire life in Delaware County,
Ohio. His name is rather unusual, too. That makes his paper trail much easier
to follow. His wife usually went by her middle name, Jane.
My lineage leading to Rosel
and Jane Edwards stems from my paternal grandfather, Lloyd Ballenger. It can be
traced as such:
Lloyd R. Ballenger (1911-2002) was
the son of
Charles C. Ballenger
(1882-1953) and Irene P. Clark (1887-1965);
Irene P. Clark was the
daughter of
Marshal K. Clark (1857-1914)
and Rose E. Edwards (1867-1942);
Rose E. Edwards was the
daughter of
Rosel Edwards (1841-1912) and
Naomi Jane Barrick (1843-1934)
Their shared tombstone rests
in Sunbury Memorial Park in Sunbury, Delaware County, Ohio. I love that it is
inscribed with their full birth and death dates. It reads:
ROSEL EDWARDS
SEPT. 12, 1841 – JULY 30,
1912
NAOMI J. HIS WIFE
JULY 15, 1843 – JAN. 8, 1934
Their
daughter, Rose, is buried nearby, along with her first husband, Marshal Clark.
Marshal met a rather awful and sudden end, which I wrote about earlier in The Tragic Fate of Marshal Clark.
The roots of both the Edwards
and Barrick families seem to stretch way back into early Ohio history. I’m excited about exploring them further to determine just how far
they go, and where they might lead me to.
