One of the more interesting Maiden ancestors I've discovered during my years of poking around cemeteries and courthouses is a great grand-uncle named Joseph Maiden.Born to George and Jaley Maiden in Lawrence County, Indiana, in 1841, Joe's mother died in late 1844, and the family then moved to Whiteside County in western Illinois, where his father bought property and took a new wife, Sara Templeman. We know little about Joe's activities in those early years, but he married Maria Grant in December of 1861 in Carroll County, Illinois. Within a couple of years, they were in the vicinity of Tama, Iowa, where most of their eight children would be born and raised. A look at our on-line Maiden database provides additional details about their children. The last of Joe and Maria's children was Albert, born in Tama, Iowa, in 1879.
For some years, rumors abounded that Joe's wife, Maria Grant, was related to President Ulysses S. Grant. We've found no evidence to support that claim, but it does make a nice story.
By 1884, it appears Joe and his family arrived in northwest Nebraska. He and a friend, George Lowery, drove a team of horses and a wagon from Valentine to Chadron, since the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad (FE&MV) had not yet laid track into communities beyond Valentine. The line had already been taken over by the Chicago and Northwestern Railway, but the name FE&MV remained until 1903.
Joseph Maiden was the first of the Maiden clan to live in the White River area of northwest Nebraska. Chadron was then a part of Sioux County; however, in March 1885, the Nebraska legislature partitioned it into three counties: Sioux, Dawes, and Sheridan. First county elections were conducted in June of that year.
In October 1885, Joseph Maiden was chosen to be the Democratic nominee for Assessor of Chadron Precinct in Dawes County. The Chadron Democrat newspaper wrote that Maiden had "been in this couintry longer than anybody" and was "too well known to require (more) mention" among the candidates. "They are all good men."
Joe Maiden won the November election and became one of the first Assessors in the county.
Information about Joe's personal life gets a bit muddled at this point. We've found no record of what was happening with his family during that period in the early 1880s, but the seven children would have been teens or younger. We did find that he Joe married a Julia Kernell in Chadron in 1888, and another Maiden researcher says he found evidence that Maria Grant Maiden went to the west coast and died in Los Angeles in 1913. Did Joe and Maria divorce?
Joe Maiden was reportedly active in civic affairs and was listed among the members of the International Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) in Chadron. Following the death of his father in 1891, Joe bought the house and lot in Tama, Iowa, that had belonged to his father. He paid $200. His father's attorney, J.W. Willett, detailed the distribution of proceeds in a letter to recipients dated July 8, 1894. Joseph and Julia Maiden appear to have returned to Tama and had a daughter, Minnie, in 1893. Some years later, in December of 1909, he wrote from Tama to John C. Derrick, "I am thinking of going to some new country...."
Within the next few years, in about 1910 or 1911, Joe moved to a farm in Pennington County, South Dakota.
Following the death of his half-brother, William Henry Maiden in 1911, Joe wrote a touching letter to Henry's widow, Dora, in which he described his own dire circumstances and urgiing her to "forget the past" and think of the present and future.
During the next decade of his life, almost nothing is known about Joseph Maiden. He is pictured at left in a four-generation photograph with his daughter Martha Derrick, grandson Marvin, and great grandson Harold Derrick. The picture is believed to have been taken on the west coast -- probably Oregon, where Martha and her family had settled. You may click on the photograph to see a larger image. Whether Joseph had moved to Oregon or was only visiting is not known. His great grandson, Ron Maiden, wrote us some years back that Joseph Maiden died in 1928. We've subsequently received further information that Joe Maiden is buried in a cemetery at Coquille, Oregon, just a few miles up the Coquille River from Bandon, Oregon, where Karen and I visited an old lighthouse last summer.Alas, ours was not a family research trip, so another chance to learn more about our Maiden family slipped from our grasp. An opportunity to learn more about great grand-uncle Joe!
