Sepia Saturday: John J. M. Biggs

The photo today is grainy and blurry,

the result of scanning and trying to enlarge 

a tiny photo taken by my paternal grandfather

 Lloyd Arnett when he was a teen.

The man with the horse and buggy

is John James Madison Biggs.

Lloyd's mother was Mary Biggs,

daughter of John and his wife Dicy Reed Biggs.

John James Madison Biggs was born March 5, 1837

in McCracken County, Kentucky to Elijah Biggs, Jr.

and his wife Mary "Polly" Brown,

the fourth of eight known children,

though there were said to be ten.

The family moved to Illinois when John was a boy and

his father Elijah died when John was only 12.

About a year later, Polly Brown Biggs married Larkin Cantrell.

For whatever reason, shortly after her marriage,

she farmed out the boys to a local Williamson County family,

J.W. McCreery and his wife. 

All the Biggs boys were said to have served

in the Union army during the Civil War,

but I've never found John's records. 

John married Dicy Caroline Reed 

in Moultrie County, Illinois on November 25, 1858.

I don't know why they married there, 

as I can't establish a connection between Moultrie County

and either the Reeds or John Biggs. 

In 1860, they were living in Fayette County, Illinois

near Dicy's parents, Abner Reed and Temperance Moutray Reed.

I can't find hide nor hair of them in the 1870 Census,

but by 1880 John and Dicy were living

 in McDonald County, with their five youngest children.

Their eldest daughter, Mary, my great-grandmother,

had already met and married Anvil James Arnett.

She was 13 years old when she married.

(Can you imagine?)

John and Dicy continued to live in McDonald County

until their deaths, as far as I know. They're

both buried in a church cemetery in Rocky Comfort.

Dicy died in 1912.

John died in 1924.

But here's the weird thing:

apparently neither died in Missouri,

unless they died under assumed names.

There are no Missouri death certificates for either,

though they were required in that time period.

About half their kids were living in Missouri;

half in Oregon, but they didn't die in Oregon either.

It's a mystery.

I figure that the horse and buggy shot of John Biggs

 was taken around 1920, about the same time

 as this photo of John and his older brother,

Christopher Columbus Biggs.

Christopher Columbus Biggs

died in 1921.

Maybe someday I'll find obituaries

that tell me where Dicy Reed Biggs

and John James Madison Biggs died.

If I'm really, really lucky.

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