I’ve written a lot about my great, great grandfather, Anderson McVey, and how he lived up on Shade Creek Road, north of Victor, an unincorporated area. Since my dad remembered him, I always felt like I knew him too.
The store accounts below were on the Fayette County Genealogy Facebook page some time ago, but I don’t know who posted them. I wish I knew which store they came from. Was it a store in Victor? The first photo shows Victor around 1900. I think the post office was there. What else? Surely they had a general store. Do you know anything about that? Wherever it was, Anderson bought bacon, lead, a pair of pants, coffee, and a coat. Take a look at the names of some of the other shoppers. Tyree and Imboden show up, as well as the name Pat Moran.
I’m familiar with the area. It’s right off the Midland Trail (60), so it would be easy for people in Ansted to come there to shop.
There is no date on the record, so I looked at some of the other names and tried to figure out when some of these people died.
I easily found Pat Moran (William Patrick Moran) on Findagrave and found him to be a rather interesting character. He died in 1916, so the purchases shown in the photos were made before August 13, 1916. Did Pat go to Victor to shop? According to the 1910 census, he lived in “Ansted Town”.
Though Pat Moran is buried at the Episcopal Church in Ansted, that does not really tell me where he lived, certainly not at the time of his death, though I’m curious. The photo below is from Findagrave.
Findagrave provides some information about his family. His memorial includes a newspaper article, and it is fascinating. The dates on Findagrave don’t agree with the newspaper article, however. According to Findagrave, Pat was about 92 when he died. The newspaper, however, claims he lived to be 107! I’m not really going to try to figure out how or why that discrepancy exists. I just want to share the newspaper article because the life of Pat Moran sounds so interesting. I got a bit of a bad feeling about the fact that he was a guard at Libby Prison during the Civil War. I have previously written about how my ancestor Jacob Koontz died at Libby Prison because he supported the Union.
But sometimes people don’t have much choice about where they end up. Pat Moran lived in the Ansted area after the Civil War and apparently shopped at the same place my ancestor Anderson McVey did. I just don’t know where that place was.
If it sounds like I’ve rambled it’s because I really wanted to share the newspaper article below, but thought I should give you a little background on how I happened to find it. So, check out Pat Moran’s Findagrave memorial and read the newspaper article. It’s from the Fayette Tribune, August 17, 1916. If you are a descendant, we would love to know more about this man who lived an extraordinarily long time, whether 92 or 107, and shopped at the same place my ancestor Anderson McVey shopped.
See? Findagrave is not always right, but you sure can find some interesting things there.