By Jared Olar
Library Assistant
At this weblog we have written several times about the life of Pvt. William H. “Bill” Costley (c.1840-1888), who was the eldest son of Nance Legins-Costley and also one of Pekin’s eyewitnesses to the first Juneteenth in Galveston, Texas, in 1865.
Most recently we included a short biography of Bill Costley in our extended account of the known ancestors and descendants of Nance Legins-Costley. Thanks to a recent genealogical discovery, that account can be augmented by the addition of another wife for Bill Costley and a daughter who was born in 1881.
Previously it was known that Bill, along with most of the Costley family (including his parents), moved from Pekin to Peoria in the early 1870s. Peoria city directories list Bill (usually with his surname spelled “Cosley”) in 1873, 1875, and 1876, showing him working in various Peoria livery stables (for he was a hostler and horse trainer). After 1876, Bill disappears from Peoria and is later found in Davenport, Iowa, where in 1883 he married a white woman named Margaret A. “Maggie” Hartman.
Bill and his wife Maggie appear in the 1885 Davenport City Directory, and are also enumerated together in the 1885 Iowa State Census, living at 320 Main St., Davenport. It is unknown if Bill and Maggie had any children, but in any case the following year Bill and Maggie separated and Bill moved to Minneapolis, Minn., where the 1887 city directory lists him as living at 212 S. 4th St. and working as a coachman. The next year, however, Bill succumbed to dementia and was committed to the state hospital in Rochester, where he died on 1 Oct. 1888 and was buried in the state hospital cemetery under the name of “William H. Crossley.”
Bill’s state hospital records say he had “some” children, but until now we did not know who they were. Now we know the name and date of birth of one of them.
Her birth record gives her name as “Emma Cosley.” She was born 20 July 1881 in Davenport, Iowa, and the birth record says her parents were “Wm Cosley,” 49, horse trainer, born in Pekin, Illinois, and “Mary Rebecca Cosley,” 29, maiden name “Webster,” born in Cincinnati, Ohio. The record says both of Emma’s parents were “black.” Emma was born at home, 215 Rock Island St., Davenport, Iowa, and she was her mother’s fifth child.
From the information in Emma’s birth record, I was able to find her parents in the 1880 U.S. Census, a year before Emma’s birth. The census record shows them living in Davenport, Iowa, in a boarding house. They were not yet married at the time, and Bill’s name is seven lines above Rebecca’s. Bill is listed under the garbled name “William Causby,” 46, horse trainer, born in Illinois, while Rebecca is listed as “Becky Webster,” 27, born in Iowa (apparently an error for “Ohio”).
I have not yet found a marriage record for Bill and Becky, but considering the date of birth of their daughter Emma, they probably married sometime in the latter half of 1880. As for Becky’s earlier history, it is probable that she is the “Rebecca Webster,” age 9, born in Ohio, the only black person in the white household of John D. and Mary W. Harris of Davenport, Iowa, enumerated in the 1856 Iowa State Census. So far I have found nothing else about Becky’s life prior to the 1880 U.S. Census.
I have also not yet been able to trace Emma Cosley’s life after her birth in July of 1881. The fact that Bill remarried to Maggie Hartman in 1883, just two years after Emma’s birth, indicates that either Becky had died by then, or perhaps Bill and Becky separated and divorced. If the latter, then it is possible that Becky later remarried, and her daughter Emma could have grown up bearing the surname of a step-father.
Since the 1890 U.S. Census records are unavailable (destroyed in a fire), if Emma grew to adulthood then it is likely that the next available record of her would be from the latter 1890s or from the 1900 U.S. Census, by which time Emma would likely be recorded with her married name.
For these reasons, it will be somewhat of a challenge to try to find further information about Emma Cosley. Even so, it is a welcome discovery finally to know the name of one of Pvt. Bill Costley’s children. In addition, these new discoveries show that Bill was living in Davenport by the time of the 1880 U.S. Census. This reduces the gap in the record of his life by three years – from 1876-1883 down to 1876-1880.
UPDATE — 12 Feb. 2022:
Further research on Emma Cosley has uncovered more information about her, including her full name, place of residence as a young woman, and her date of death and place of burial.
The key to tracking down more information about Emma Cosley was to identify the father of the four older children of Emma’s mother Mary Rebecca (Webster) Cosley of Davenport, Iowa. It is now known that Rebecca married an African-American named Charles H. Marshall on 28 Feb. 1867 in Davenport. Rebecca and Charles had four children, but it seems two of them died in infancy and their names are unknown. Their two other children were daughters named Anna Ella Marshall, born circa 1867, and Martha Margaret “Mattie” Marshall, born in Jan. 1869. On 13 May 1886, Anna Ella married Davenport saloon-keeper Linsey Pitts (1845-1913), a former slave who fought in the Union Army’s 60th Missouri Colored Troops during the Civil War. Rebecca and Charles became estranged and apparently divorced circa 1880, but later Iowa census records and city directories show that Rebecca kept or went back to her married named Marshall after she gave birth to Emma Cosley.
Emma was enumerated in the 1900 U.S. Census in the household of her mother Rebecca (Webster) Marshall. Emma’s older sister Mattie Marshall was also living with them at the time. Interestingly, however, Emma is not listed in that record under the name “Emma Cosley,” but rather under the name “Nancy Marshall.” The record’s age and date and place of birth for “Nancy Marshall” line up with Emma’s known date and place of birth — and Rebecca (Webster) Marshall certainly gave birth to no other daughter at that time. It seems, then, that Emma’s full name was “Nancy Emma Cosley-Marshall” (which means she likely was named after her paternal grandmother Nance Legins-Costley). Since Emma’s father Bill had remarried to Maggie Hartman by 1883, and then had moved to Minnesota in 1886, where he died in 1888, it is probable that Nancy Emma never knew her father. She then would have been raised by her mother under her mother’s married name of Marshall rather than Cosley or Costley.
Sadly, Nancy does not seem ever to have married or had children. The Davenport death register shows that she died at the age of 22 (sic – she was 21) on New Year’s Day, 1 Jan. 1903, and was buried the next day in Oakdale Cemetery (now Oakdale Memorial Gardens), in Lot 145. Her newspaper obituary says:
“OBITUARY
“Marshall.
“At her home, 330 West Fifth street, occurred the death of Nancy Marshall, a young colored woman, at the age of 22 years. She is survived by her mother, residing in Chicago, and two sisters, one in Clinton and one in West Superior, Wis. The funeral was held yesterday afternoon from the Boies undertaking rooms, with interment at Oakdale cemetery.”
Davenport Daily Republican, Saturday, 3 Jan. 1903
