The Bertha Malone Collection includes ten Civil War Era letters: seven letters are written to a Union soldier named Thomas Noddins from his family in Ionia, Michigan, and the other three letters are written to members of the Noddins family from friends. I transcribed these letters, digitized them, and added that information to the MSU Archives website. While trying to understand the content of the letters, I found the amount of names and family connections mentioned overwhelming. I needed to see the Noddins family laid out in front of me to understand who was being talked about or who was writing to Thomas. That's why I created the Noddins family tree.
I started by taking information from the letters about Thomas Noddins and his father, Robert Noddins, to search for the men on ancestry.com and findagrave.com. Those sites were extremely helpful in tracking the marriages, births, and deaths of the Noddins family. Below are three photos of documents and their magnified images from ancestry.com having to do with the Noddins family.
After going through the images and information I'd found, I put the family tree together. It was very large, with many children from each marriage. Below is a condensed family tree, starting with Thomas Noddins and his wife, Betseyann. Three out of four of their children survived to adulthood.
Interestingly, their amount of surviving children aligns perfectly with the statistics on survival rates of children with closely related parents, which Betseyann and Thomas are. Betseyann's mother was Thomas' sister, Charlotte Sherwood, making Thomas Betseyann's uncle. Children of this type of familial marriage have a 1 in 4 chance of dying in infancy; one out of four of Betseyann's children died in infancy.
The Noddins Family letters mention a William multiple times, sometimes referring to him as Thomas' brother. I knew that Thomas did not have any brothers, but after creating the family tree, I found he did have a brother-in-law named William Hicking. This must be the brother talked about in the letters; William was with Thomas for a few months at a time while they were serving in the army together.
I also found Thomas' obituary on findagrave.com from February 16, 1915. His tombstone is in Letts Cemetary in Ionia, Michigan.
Thomas Noddins' Obituary in Daily Sentinel
“Thomas Noddins was born June 26, 1836, near Quebec, Canada, and departed this life from his home, where he resided with his son, William in the township of Orleans, Ionia county, Michigan, Feb. 8, 1915. He was the only son in a family of five and when he was less that two years old he with his parents moved to Niagara county, N.Y., where he resided until 1859 when they came to Michigan, locating in Berlin township, Ionia county.
December 10, 1863, he was united in marriage to Miss Betsy Ann Sherwood also of Berlin who died on Dec. 25, 1903. Four children were born to this union, one son dying in infancy. Two sons, Robert S. and William, both of Orleans township, with a daughter, Mrs. Alva Comstock of Bushnell, Montcalm county, survive him. He also leaves eight grandchildren, one great grandchild, and aged sister, Mrs. Charlotte Sherwood of Berlin, besides other relatives and friends to mourn his death.
In the month of September, he responded to the call of his country by enlisting in the 10th N.Y heavy artillery regiment and served to the end of the war. In the spring of 1866 after having resided in Berlin for 26 years he moved to Bushnell, Montcalm county and six years later to Orleans where he died.
In early life he gave his heart to God and continued to live in the faith of Christ until he was summoned to his home in Heaven. Funeral services were conducted at the home of his son William, Friday, Feb. 12 by J.A. Hudnutt, pastor of the Free Methodist church. Interment in the Berlin cemetery. We sorrow but not as for those who have no hope.”