In the pile of photographs my paternal Grandfather, Loran McKinley, Sr. (1916-2003) gave me were 3 pictures of large groups. Some of the same people were in each of these photos. He identified himself and his parents in one of them. Two of them were labeled “Wall’s Reunion” from 1920 and 1926 and the other just had a caption of “June 4, 1916.” Grandpa said all of the photos were of Wall family reunions, but the caption on the photo from 1926 indicated it was the “8th Annual Wall’s Reunion” & that didn’t match if the first one was also a Wall reunion. And to top that off, I had no idea who the Wall’s were and how we were related to them.
These photos have intrigued me for years. I would pull them out now and then and wonder about the reunions and all of the family members depicted. I searched newspapers for “Wall reunions” with little luck. I even saw one of the photos online with a few people identified. How nice it would be to identify everyone in each of the pictures. But that would take a lot of work.
Since I received them, I have done a bit more family history research and have figured out who the Wall family was and how my family fits in. And I think the first photo does depict a Wall family reunion, but maybe they didn’t call it that until they started having formal reunions a couple of years later. I’ll try to discuss the photos in more detail in future posts, but first…
The Wall family:
I knew the groups in the photos were from Morgan County, IN. So that was the first place to search. If you look at information about the Wall’s in Morgan county, you will find a notation that they were the “same family for which Wall Street in New York was named.” But let’s correct that tale first off. Wall Street was named for a dirt path that ran alongside a fortification wall that was built in the 1600’s. It was not named for a family.
The book, The Pioneers of Morgan County; Memoirs of Noah J. Major, published in 1915, mentions a man named William Wall as the husband of a daughter of the early Morgan County settler, John Stipp. But that didn’t help me much. The book also indicates that the oldest daughter of Benjamin Stafford married Martin Wall. I recognized Benjamin Stafford (1810-1891) as my GGG Grandfather. Further research on Ancestry.com & findagrave.com indicated that Martin Wall was Benjamin Martin Wall (ca1830-1912) and his wife was Sarah Ann “Sally” Stafford (1831-1869). Sarah Ann was the daughter of Benjamin Stafford and his first wife, Ruth Gifford (1810-ca1833).
So I had one connection to the Wall family. But it didn’t stop there. I was able to find Benjamin Martin Wall’s parents as William Wall (1795-1880) and Mary Margaret Stipp (1798-1865). Mary Margaret was the daughter of the Morgan county pioneer, John Stipp (1773-1857). I found an image on Ancestry.com that is reported to be William and Mary.
William and Mary Wall also had a daughter, Susan (1822-1888). She married Joseph Fry in 1838 and was widowed by 1851 when he died either during a flatboat trip to carry goods to New Orleans, or just after returning home. She was left with 5 sons.
Getting back to my GGG Grandfather, Benjamin Stafford. After his first wife, Ruth died, he married Margaret Price & had 8 children with her. Margaret died in 1852. Then, it is said that Benjamin married a Miss Sloan, but I have yet to find any credible information regarding this marriage. In 1854, he married Susan (Wall) Fry. He still had children at home as well. He was 44 years old and Susan was 32 years old. They had 7 more children together, one of which was my GG Grandmother, Priscilla Stafford (1859-1941). So this is my direct line to the Wall family and may be why my relatives were at their reunions. Looking again at the Wall family connection, Benjamin and his daughter, Sarah, married siblings. Interesting.
I looked further into the William Wall and Mary Stipp family to see if there might be any other interesting connections. One of note is that Mary Stipp had a sister, Sarah (1801-1887) who married John Rudicel (1799-1865). Their daughter, Mary Eva Rudicel (1828-1872) was the second wife of Noah J. Major (1823-1911). This same Noah Major is the man whose memoir was published posthumously. This memoir is a great reference for research on the pioneer families of Morgan County, IN. This photo of Noah and Mary Eva was also posted on Ancestry.com.
So, I finally found the reason my ancestors would have been at Wall family reunions—we had a direct relationship to them through the Stafford line.
But I still would like to have more information about the photos and the reunions. Maybe next time…
© MJM 2026
