Believe it or not 

(Author's note: I'd like to say that this is straight up genealogy and that one might have no interest given that this is someone else's family history. However, this story, this connection, is just too unusual to pass up. You be the judge.)

As always, unapologetically unedited.

"Believe it or not." Okay, maybe I wasn't clear enough, "Believe it or not." I'm being very literal here in both publishing and genealogical terms. I gotta say, this is something I have never seen in forty years of working on family history. It's one of the most unique finds I think anyone could discover in their family tree. And, no, it's not a 300lb tomato or a lost twelve-foot Jack-a-lope found on a road in Mississippi. Would you believe it? While studying Paige's family tree, I discovered one of the country's (Heck, one of the world's!!!)  reputed oldest recorded people. (Heck, I'm sure I'm saying that incorrectly...but...) Her ancestor lived to be one hundred and thirty-four years old. His name was Henry Francisco.

But wait - it gets even better. 

And remember what I said something about [Ripley's] Believe it or not?                        

Yeah, he was featured in the 1939 issue. Say what??? Yeah, nuts, huh? Even crazier than all of that is that he is reported as being the oldest man to have volunteered to fight in the Revolutionary War, enlisting at the age of 91!!!

Okay, I'd better get to it here. The story isn't so difficult as it is pieced together. I think I will start with one of Henry Francisco's official death notices:                                  

And, to not get too far off the beaten path here, one of Henry's obituaries:

                  

            

The accounts of Henry Francisco's great age come from Dr. Benjamin Silliman, who, hearing rumors of this man and veteran of extremely advanced years, stopped by Henry's home to interview him. The account of Dr. Silliman's interview with Henry is too long to go into here, but it is, if not a fanciful account, certainly one that is quite incredible. The story of 134-year-old Henry Francisco was in numerous newspapers in 1819-1820 in both the United States and Europe.

I don't want to discount the fact that Henry served in the Revolutionary War at age 91 either, and applied for a pension:         

In fact, (or rather Believe it or not!) Henry Francisco is listed on a Wikipedia page among those in recorded history with the longest reputed (legendary and disputed) lives lived. His age is based off an old family Bible record. Whether or not that record is a valid one....well...???

                 

The age of Henry Francisco seems to have "fallen out of favor." (As we like to say these days, "too many haters.") Up until recently, Henry Francisco was an "approved" patriot for joining the DAR. No less than twenty-two ladies have already joined the DAR off of Old Henry, but recently, they are now calling his record into question and putting a stop to it. I cry foul!

                                        

Okay, so by now you're wondering about how all of this connects to my client and friend, Paige Dunham. Please bear with me as I attempt to guide us through the twists and turns of her connection to Old Henry. Let's start with the basic genealogy:

To do this, I am going to cut to the chase here and show you what I have relied on to connect you back to Henry Francisco. This sort of "proof" would not work easily for any lineage society application, as some of it is inferred. As we work through this, I want you to keep in mind a couple of things: the first is "Madison, Jefferson County, Indiana." The second is the morphing of the Francisco name to both "Sisco" and "Cisco."

Okay, let's go with Exhibit A below:             

Above, you have a Sons of the American Revolution application filed by Jack Hatfield, who gives his ancestry from Henry Francisco down through his grandmother, Harriet Francisco Leas. Now I'm pretty sure that Jack Hatfield didn't do the genealogy here. I suspect that he relied on his grandma's s genealogical work.   Her line back to Henry is spelled out again here:      

Why is this important? 

Because Harriet Francisco Leas also had several brothers. One of her brothers was Shelton "Clark" Franciso, AKA, "Clark Cisco." Now the records get a little foggy here, but hang in there with me. Harriet and Clark's parents (John Francisco/Cisco and Anna Belle Keil/Kyle) died pretty young, leaving a lot of children behind. For reasons I'm still unraveling, the Francsco/Cisco family moved from Hamilton County, Ohio, to Madison, Jefferson County, Indiana, where most of them stayed and lived out their lives. Census records are difficult for anything before 1850, so "proving out" relationships between siblings beyond submitted family trees requires a lot more investigation into each of the presumed siblings to find any correlating ties. 

However, keeping that precept of "Madison, Jefferson County, Indiana," below are the marriage records for Harriet Cisco Leas and for her brother, Clark Cisco.      

                    And now for Clark:

Now (slightly) enlarged:

And also, two years earlier, their brother Calvin Cisco married by the same guy too.

  

As you can see from the two marriage certificates, the man who married both Harriet and Clark was the same guy. (I'm not even gonna mention that the other names on the certificate connected to both Harriet and Clark appear to also be the same) So...this "coincidence" certainly supports the idea that Harriet and Clark were indeed brother and sister, or, at the very least, "familiar family enough" to have sought out the same clergyman or judge to marry them. And yes, you can say that Madison, Jefferson County, Indiana, probably didn't have a lot of options for marriage officiants in 1850 - still, in general, it supports the submitted family trees that they were brother and sister.

I have not done a lot of other "fan genealogy," i.e., looking at the other siblings of Harriet and Clark. I do see, most notably, that their alleged brothers, Calvin and Alonzo, also lived and died in, you guessed it, Madison, Jefferson County, Indiana, also. This leads me to believe (in the absence of further investigation that the line holds true, and that yes, Paige Dunham is a descendant of one of the men rumored to have been the most long-lived in modern history, that is, Henry Francisco.

Another thing that ties the siblings together, at least for the brothers, Alonzo Cisco, Calvin Cisco, and Clark Cisco - is their occupation. They were all butchers - all three of them - indicative of a family trade or of a family business.

Paige's ancestry from Clark Cisco on down is pretty much a given.

I think it's best supported in the death certificate of her great-great-grandfather, Don Carlos King,  which names his mother Annie Belle (Cisco) King, and the 1880 census record where he is living with his parents in, where, you guessed it, Madison, Jefferson County, Indiana.   

  

  Anna, living with sister Elizabeth and next door to what appears to be brother Calvin.

   

    

       

So indeed, there you have it. Granted, the line needs a little bit more polish on it, but all the evidence points to the fact that Paige Dunham descends from Henry Francisco, a Revolutionary War enlistee at the alleged age of 91 and a guy who lived to be 134 years old - and who was featured in Ripley's Believe it of not!!!

In my humble estimation, that's freaking incredible.

☮