Welcome to the Wellons and Wyant (and Dixon) Family

This blog will be devoted to my maternal grandparents, Ralph and Bessie Ethel (Wyant) Wellons. I will cover their ancestors for a few generations and say a little about their kids and grandkids. I hope to do it by providing facts, posting photos and telling stories. I have to admit that we don’t have a lot of stories about my grandparents ancestors. Their parents died before we were born or at least before we were old enough to remember them. I hope to give readers a sense of what it was like growing up with my grandparents, what their life was like, and where they came from. Other than their siblings, most of what I know about their ancestors comes from what I could find using ancestry.com. It is an amazing family record web site.

I have a similar blog that contains over 220 articles, with pictures and newspaper articles as well as a lot of personal stories contributed by my relatives on the Dixon side. I was fortunate in covering the Dixon family in that my grandparents both grew up on farms near each other in a small town in southern Illinois. That town, Albion, had a great newspaper during the late 1800’s and has had a great historical society for many years. It’s about the size of Frankton, but had the first public library in the state of Illinois. It was known as “The English Settlement” and the first Dixon’s to emigrate came from Leeds in England in 1840 and 1841. The first Fischer’s (my grandmother’s family) came over at about the same time, but from Germany.

The Wellons and Wyant clans were both in America for several generations before my grandparents met and married. They also have a lot of Indiana connections, but also some Oklahoma, Kansas, Illinois and Missouri! I don’t know yet when they emigrated to America or where they came from. Note: I’m having to check to make sure that there isn’t some Native American blood in the Wyant line as my grandmother’s oldest brother answered “Indian Reservation” when asked his birthplace by a census taker. I think he was born after, not before, the land was sold by the Cherokee Indians to the federal government. I’ll tell the story in more detail, but this gives you a sense of how pretty interesting stories can come from genealogical research.