July Updates

28 June 2010 Evans City Offices and Evans Cemetery Talked with Kim Betz at the Evans City offices. There are no records of burials in Block 1 Lot 1 Graves 1 thru 8 or Block 1 Lot 2 Graves 4 thru 8. There is a record that James McAfee bought the eight Lot 1 graves in 1892, but with a question mark by the date. There is a record that John McAfee bought the eight Lot 2 graves in 1888, but again with a question mark by the date. There is a record of the burials of Samuel J. McAfee and Sarah M. McAfee and S. Blair McAfee in Lot 2 graves 1, 2, and 3 and there are headstones standing there today. There is a question mark in the records for grave 6. There is also a question mark on grave 1 in Lot 1. The book Tombstone Inscriptions of Weld County Colorado Volume 1 says that part of the cemetery records were burned in 1937 and the above information was reconstructed from other town records. There was also some reported vandalism and some headstones were destroyed. I feel like the graves were purchased much earlier that 1888 and 1892 because they are choice lots at the front of the cemetery by the entrance and would have sold in the 1870s. I think James McAfee is buried in Lot 1 grave 1 and probably Sarah McCloy McAfee is buried there also. I believe that John McAfee and Marjorie McAfee are buried in Lot 2 and possibly some of their children, especially Elizabeth.

11 July 2010 Results from the NARA Request I got the files from the homestead application by John McAfee for the SW ¼ of Section 12 (160 acres) in T4N R66W, just south of Evans, Colorado, near the area called the “Big Bend.” There are no answers to the where in Ireland question, but there are some useful pieces of information. 1) John McAfee always considered himself a citizen of the United States because he came here as a minor and his father told him that he (his father) was naturalized. Since he couldn’t produce any proof of his father’s naturalization, he had to get a Final Certification of Naturalization – Minor. This is why we could never find a Declaration of Intent. 2) At the time of the final entries for the homestead, he filed an affidavit saying that the occupants of the homestead were himself, his wife, and five children. This was 1883. [I think the five children were Samuel Joseph, Alice Mary, Katherine Wilson, and John James, plus one more. The one more could be Lida McAfee Higgins who was just married a year earlier or it could be Edwin John McKinley, Maggie McAfee McKinley’s surviving son who would be John McAfee’s grandson.] 3) John McAfee filed an affidavit saying that he had settled on the SW ¼ of Section 12 on the 21st day of May in 1877. 4) Two people filed affidavits entitle Homestead Proof – Testimony of Witness. One was Moses Lovelady and the other was James McAfee. 5) In the Homestead Proof – Testimony of Witness by John McAfee, he states that “My father came to this country when I was about 2 years old.” [This is inconsistent with the statement by Samuel Joseph McAfee that his father came to this country when he was 8 years old as recorded in the biographical sketch published by Chapman Publishing Company in 1898.] 6) On the 27th of March 1883 he filed a statement that he was 66 years old. [This age is inconsistent with all of the entries on the federal and state censuses. I would have expected 67 or 68.]