Hello. I would appreciate some help with McKelvy marriages; these would be in or around Barkeyville, Irwin Township, Venango County (I think!). My great-great grandparents, Andrew McKelvy and Elizabeth Grey, operated a hotel in Barkeyville from the mid-to-late 1850's through the 1870's. Their son, John H. McKelvy, married Eliza Catherine Bigley there 10 April 1864 (he served in Company K, 4th Regiment, Pennsylvania Cavalry, wounded 5 February 1865, Harper's Run, Virginia). John and Eliza emigrated to Kansas in 1878 or so. Andrew and Elizabeth were married in Baltimore, Maryland 15 June 1837, Andrew died in Barkeyville 23 September 1872 and was buried in the Old Log Cemetery, I have never been able to find out what happened to Elizabeth. But, marriages and other riddles; Andrew and Elizabeth's children were John H. (above); Leonora Elizabeth (b. abt. 1840, Ann Arundel County, Maryland, d. unm. 28 March 1860, Barkeyville, b. Old Log Cemetery); William Andrew (b. 1834, Maryland, d. unm. 19 February 1864, Andersonville POW camp), served Company K, 4th Regiment, PA Cavalry; James (b. 1844); Mary Catherine (b. 1849, Mercer County, Pennsylvania); Nancy Ann (b. 1849, Mercer); Samuel Wilson (b. 11 August 1841, Mercer, d. 24 March 1923, Bolivar, Allegheny, New York), married abt. 1881 Mary McKinnon; Caleb Grey (b. 17 May 1855, Barkeyville(?), d. January 1908, Ohio), m. 2 November 1875 Martha Smith; Thomas Perry (b. January 1857, Barkeyville, d. 5 January 1929, Youngstown, Ohio), m. abt. 1885 Flora Amelia Sutliff. I suppose what I'm really asking is for any information on these folks that anyone may know; marriages, spouses families, any- and everything that anybody would be willing to share (and, of course, that goes both ways). Just one example is Eliza Catherine Bigley, my great grandmother -- she was born in 1845 (from census and pension documents) but I have no idea whatsoever who her parents were, where she lived, all of that (although her brother was Alva M. Bigley who served in the same unit during the Civil War as John H. and William McKelvy). As an aside, old John H. didn't have it so easy. He lost the use of his left arm from the wound he received at Harper's Run, emigrated to eastern Kansas and farmed there for a few years then picked up and homesteaded in western Kansas. He died 1 October 1888 and was buried in the Ravanna Cemetery (the town of Ravanna ceased to exist by 1900). In the early 1970's a bunch of kids were out in the country looking for fossils and bones to identify (this is cattle and wheat country) for a high school science class and... yup, dug up great granddad. Holy toot. After much ado, the kids got to excavate what they hadn't dug up under the supervision of an archaeologists, pay for a new coffin, and old John wound up in the cemetery where most of his kids are buried a few miles north of where he had been. After John died and Eliza could not prove to the government that she was actually married to this wounded veteran, she abandoned the kids, took off for Pennsylvania and was never heard from again (still trying to hunt her down, too). The younger kids were sent to Pennsylvania, wound up in orphanages, some got rescued from that by the older boys and went back to Kansas, two of the girls stayed in Pennsylvania... A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma but that's the story and I'm sticking to it. Thanks for any help, Thomas