I’ve just found another source for Milnes’ life which clears up most of the problem — the source I drew on earlier was less detailed, and “1862″ was either an error of fact or a typo: Wm. Livingstone, History of the Republican Party, 284, says that “Mr. Milnes has been a Republican ever since he was old enough to know politics, and cast his first vote for Abraham Lincoln while in the army in front of Petersburg, Va., in 1864.” So if he had /cough/ lied about his age /cough/ by a few months, he could have voted for Lincoln in 1864, under the disputed act discussed in your reference. Whew!

J. Benton, Voting in the Field, 92-104.

Just one of the many reasons I hang on to friends like you and Nate Oman, Mark B.

Thanks for the history lesson. There’s probably also a gospel lesson in there somewhere, about divine disapproval over our waiting to be commanded in all things. If I’d stopped to think about it, I might have realized that woman suffrage was available locally and temporarily, but I didn’t think to broaden that to race or age or other qualifications for voting.

For the past eight months I’ve been posting the family histories from my files onto a blog so my extended family has access to them.

However, I’ve recently been branching off into a different project since I just received a copy of an old diary that I’ve been trying to locate for about 15 years. Consequently, I had forgotten that the families I mentioned in comment 6 are up to be posted next. They probably would have gotten a one page 30 minute treatment some Sunday. However, another kind reader of your blog provided me with a copy of a family history that will allow a better work up of these ancestors. Someone evidently wanted to be remembered.

Thanks for making this connection possible!

One quick and one long-winded note.