I have left few stones unturned in trying to find the father of Nick Frelow Eller. Isabella (from my title) was the daughter of a man named William Eller, born in NC around 1831. That's according to the 1860 census of Castor, Madison, Missouri. Also according to that census, Isabella was herself born in 1854 in Indiana, and she had a younger brother named James E., born in Missouri in 1858. That tells me that the Eller family moved from Indiana to Missouri between 1854 and 1858.
The main reason that Isabella is so interesting is because the man I'm trying to trace, Nick Frelow Eller's father, was (according to the 1880 census for Scott, Taney, MO) William Eller, a man born around 1830 in NC. By 1880, Isabella would have been 26 and probably married, so she would not have appeared on that 1880 census with her father, but the children that do appear, Franklin, Nick and Eliza were born, respectively, in MO, IL and IN. For that to be true, the family had to have been living in MO at the time of Franklin's birth, 1860, subsequently traveled north to IL by the time Nick was born, 1865, later lived in IN, where Eliza was born in 1866 and, finally, returned to MO by 1880, the date of the census.
Isabella, too, was living in MO with her father, William Eller, in 1860, and Franklin could have been born that year after the census was taken.
My hunch is that William had Eller relatives living in Indiana. It's possible that the Civil War, brutal in Missouri, was a factor in the family's move north again between 1860 and 1865. Also, if Nick's place of birth, IL, is accurate, the family was moving quite a bit and that might explain why I have yet to find a census record for them in 1870 (the record, by the way, which would possibly show Isabella and James in the household along with the younger children). Lacking this record, I can't be sure that Isabella's father is the same as Nick F Eller's father.
I've tried to replace that record with other information and that's why I ordered this Indiana marriage certificate. It shows Isabel Eller marrying David Brown in Indiana in 1872, but I was hoping it might show the name of the bride's father or mother. It doesn't.
Nevertheless, date and place and name are all consistent with the timeline I sketched above. If Nick's older sister was to marry, it would have been in Indiana between 1870 and 1880.
I'm still trying to confirm a hypothetical timeline I've constructed for William Eller's life. I'm searching Indiana for Ellers, especially in Monroe (where David and Isabella are buried) and in Greene (where they married) counties, and I continue to look for records between 1866 and 1880 for William.
If YOU have any information that could help me, please comment.
Headstone: Richland Cemetery, Bloomington, Monroe County, IN
Actually, Franklin Eller's year of birth on his headstone in McPherson, KS is 1861 (not the 1860 estimated on the 1880 census), so he would not have appeared on the 1860 census.
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