in search of robert kerlin

Do you have SMITHs in your family? If so, send me the names. Also, send me the names of Robert and Hannah’s children. Do you have the names of Robert and Hannah siblings?

I can give you SMITH connects to the KERLIN family. There was a tailor shop around one of the Washington and Amhurst Streets corners that I can send information to you on IF you do not already have it.

There are also SMITHs in the immediate area at that time.

Best advise for you is not to get hung up on just one proffession. As the eras were changing everyone that could, got into business’ that made good money. Most all had farm land of some kind. If they had a trade, they were also involved in that type business; but when the big rush to go west started to peak these same people ran stage routes connected to inns much needed in the west as those past through the lightly populated areas of the time.

My grandparents owned over 500 acres just south of Winchester living and running it as a plantation. My grandfather, still much to be discovered, ran a stage line, inn with tavern in a Licking County, Ohio town that he founded in about 1837. This only lasted a few years as the railroad came right down the center of  town. Not to worry, he owned the whole north side of town aka farming and rentals plus he still had the inn and tavern which railroad passengers used. Not to let a good deal go to waste he left some of his older children there, keeping all his assets and business and moved to Illinois where he set his younger children up in several neighboring counties before returning to die in Ohio.  Just think, without TV and computers to take up your time, you could really get around and take advantages of the opportunties. My grandparents did not leave Virginia until they were in their 40s. I still found my grandfather paying taxes in Warren county Virginia, after he sapposely sold everything and after he had settled in Ohio.

MY POINT is that a successful land holding Mason aka Landowner most likely was a part of some different partnerships which he had an interest in that was not necessarily where he lived. REASON, we can not find them is that those partnership-business did not bear the names of all those that had an interest.

ANOTHER thing I would factor into my thinking. The well known ZANE that founded Zaneville, Ohio was a furnace owner and landowner in the same neighborhood as your Robert KERLIN who bought property on Furnace Hill. This ZANE had many different partnerships, as did others.

Anyway, you probably already know all this; but I mention it also, since you have not found Robert KERLIN’s grave. I don’t have any dates on your people so I can’t make a resonable guess; but he could have moved out of the area or remarried. One of my Uncles in Winchester married in his 70s in the 1850s to his third wife in her 50s. I believe this happened more of a business arrangement where the younger one took care of the older one—-yes, there was a prenep.

C.