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JOANNA PERKINS was born April 17, 1798 in New Hampshire, probably in Rochester in Strafford County, a daughter of JOSEPH and MARY PERKINS. She was married on February 1822 in Rome, Maine to JOSEPH P. (middle name unknown; just have the initial) RANKINS (aka RANKIN), a farmer. We don't have his date of birth, but he was baptized April 17, 1801 in Lebanon, York County, Maine, and his parents were THOMAS RANKINS and JOANNA WALLINGFORD.
Belgrade Lakes - Smithfield and Rome, Maine
Map showing Smithfield and Rome in Maine
Smithfield and Rome are side-by-side
Belgrade Lakes area - This is where
Smithfield and Rome, Maine are
Joanna and Joseph Rankins and family, as well as other related families (some apparently only related through marriage though some of those may actually be related "by blood," also) came out to Iowa from Maine soon after the Civil War ended. At first at least some of them (possibly all) tried settling in Boone County, Iowa, in 1867 (about a year and a half after the railroad was completed at Boone).
By 1869, however, they had settled in Cherokee County, and that's where they stayed for the rest of their lives.
Joseph and Joanna were the senior members of the group who moved out from Maine to Iowa (Joseph was 68 years old in 1869, and Joanna was 71). Not all of their children came with them, but several did, along with husbands and wives and children of their own. Their son Thomas had left Maine long before to emigrate to Australia, where his descendants still live.
Their oldest child, Eleanor R. Rankins is our ancestor. She was born in 1823 in Smithfield, Maine.
This is the area where our family lived in Maine
The photo was taken for us by Joyce Ball Brown
Joanna Rankins died in April, 1880 in Pilot Rock in Cherokee County, Iowa. Her husband, Joseph, died in May, 1880 (have also seen 1882 as his death date), also in Pilot Rock. If they died just a month apart, there is a story to be told. They were both buried in Good Hope Cemetery in Silver Township.
Joseph and Joanna's daughter, Mary C. (Rankins) Whitehouse and her husband, Isaac Whitehouse, are buried nearby (as are several other members of the Whitehouse family), as well as Joseph and Joanna's daughter Ada H. (Rankins) Burgess and her husband John Louis Burgess (and other members of the Burgess family), and Joseph and Joanna's son Joseph P. Rankins, Jr. and his wife Abby, and other Rankinses who are probably related.
Joseph and Joanna Rankins had nine children; their oldest child was Eleanor R. (middle name unknown, except for the first letter) Rankins, who married Robert Ellis. Robert and Eleanor Ellis' daughter Helen Ellis (born in Maine in 1855) married Stephen Goff (the one who built the log cabin in Cherokee) in Iowa in 1872.
One of Eleanor Rankins' brothers (Helen Ellis' uncle), Joseph P. Rankins, Jr., was Mayor of Cherokee for two terms: 1893-95 and 1896-1901.
Another of Eleanor's brothers, Thomas Rankins, born in 1829 in Maine, is the one mentioned above who emigrated to Australia, probably in the early 1850s from Maine; he married Emily Stanbury (born in Devonshire, England) in 1855 in Victoria, Australia, and he died in 1892 in Victoria. We have heard from one of Thomas' descendants living in Australia.
Rankins graves in Good Hope Cemetery, Pilot Township, Cherokee County
Joanna (Perkins) Rankins' gravestone
Photo by Marge Witcraft
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As we entered the cemetery, as a nail is drawn to a magnet, I walked to some bushes, spread the branches with my hands and looked down upon this stone.
It says:
Joanna
Husband
Jos Rankins
died
April 16, 1880
Aged 82 y.
- Marge
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Stephen Goff & Helen Ellis and Families
Cherokee, Iowa - Picture Links
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