Family:Samuel Cassman and Mary Kahl (2)

Samuel suffered continual tragedy throughout his life. It started with the death of his five year old brother Philander Jr. when he was eight. Five years later Philander Senior died at the age of 34, leaving the 13-year-old Samuel without a father. Five years after that the now 18-year-old Samuel became an orphan when his mother Catherine also died before the age of 40.

It isn’t known of Philander and Catherine moved their family from Muncie to Lafayette or if sometime after Samuel lost his parents he moved there. In any event, Samuel met Mary Kahl of Lafayette and married her there five years after his mother’s death left him an orphan at 18. They quickly had six children in just ten years. Trouble began again after the birth of their fifth child, daughter Jennie in 1870. The next year Sam’s brother Hamilton died at 28. Sam’s oldest son James died that same year, just nine years old. Mary gave birth to youngest daughter Mary Agnes a year later, but something must have been wrong because Sam would have daughter Ida with another woman the year after Mary Agnes was born. Mary died two years later, just 37. She left Sam to care for the remaining five children. Sam married Ida’s mother soon after Mary’s death. The sorrow would continue to deepen as 4 year-old Mary Agnes died the following year.

Marriage Record

1. ↑ Gene Cassman. Cassman GED Gene Cassman. (GED File, Downloaded Aug 25, 2001).
2. ↑ Slevin, Ruth M. Tippecanoe County, Indiana Marriage Records: Book 4, November, 1850 through Book 9, September, 1861. (Fort Wayne Public Library, 1975)
   1861.
3. ↑ 1870 US Federal Population Census: Tippecanoe, Tippecanoe County, Indiana
   1870.