| Notes |
Diana's father had southern roots and so did her husband. Henry was born in South Carolina in 1818 as were his parents. Diana and Henry began their married life in Wabash County, naming their first child after her brother Mathias. Diana and her brother must have been close friends as well as siblings because Mathias named a daughter after Diana. In fact he named her Diana Courll which led early family researchers to believe his wife was a Courll. Imagine their surprise when they discovered his daughter carried the married name of his sister.
There are no deed records for the Courlls in Wabash County and tax records are inaccessible, so no record there pinpoints their peripatetic movements between Indiana and Illinois. Although they lived in Fulton County, Illinois in 1850, their first child was born in Indiana. No problem there; they could have moved after his birth in 1849. The 1860 census provides a clue because their daughter Emma who was three years old was born in Iowa, so they were in Iowa at least by 1856 or 1857. But the children born in 1851 and 1854 were born in Indiana. Dianna may have gone home to have these children, but Fulton County where they lived in 1850 is about 250 miles from Wabash County, Indiana, a long trip for a pregnant woman and her children in the 1850's. Henry, a teamster, owned property worth $200 in 1860. That would suggest that he had a small home in a rural town. Also in the household is another teamster, John R. Courll, age 24. He is probably Henry's brother as he lived with the family in 1850, too.
The family's whereabouts in 1870 is unknown, but in 1878 Henry paid taxes in Dwight Township, Livingston County, Illinois, and they lived next door to son Mathias. In 1880 only one child is still at home, twelve year old John H., birthplace Illinois. At that time Mathias, Diana's brother, was in Greenfield Township, Grundy County, on the border with Livingston County. Henry did not buy property until 1881 and then he only bought an acre in Dwight. Henry had been farming since his youth and at age 63 he was probably more interested in a garden than a farm. Additionally, he may not have had the money to buy land here. The central Illinois counties of Grundy, Livingston, and McLean were recognized as some of the richest farming land in the country. Land there has always been expensive; not only was it productive land, it was prairie land that did not have to be cleared of great stands of timber. Even though family farms are on the wane in these counties today, land is still expensive with small farms regularly selling for thousands per acre.
The Lexington Genealogical and Historical Society in Livingston County is an active association spearheaded by a one-woman dynamo whose mission is to record every burial in every cemetery in Livingston County and its contiguous counties of McLean and Woodford. The society owns a tiny brick building in Lexington in which there are rows of file cabinets, some card file size, some legal size. Every burial is recorded on a card and cross-indexed with records in the vertical files. A thorough examination of those records in 1999 was a fruitless search for the deaths and burials of the Courlls although family tradition says the Courlls are buried in Round Grove Cemetery, Livingston County. Henry was dead by 1892 because Dianna is identified as a widow when she sold their acre in Dwight Township. Neither Dianna nor Henry's names are in the death records in Livingston County, nor are they in the Grundy County records. Will County severely restrict access to their marriage, birth, and death records, and so far no access to any of those has been granted. They may lived with one of their daughters when they died. The Illinois Statewide Death Index covers the years 1916-1950 and of course, Henry is not there, but neither is Dianna. Their death dates remain unknown.
Kay Germain Ingalls 2003
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1828 - 1903 (75 years)
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