James McCollor was the third child of Patrick and Bridget McCollough/McCollor, born near Solon, Maine, in about 1820. 

During his lifetime, beginning when he was only about 2 or three years old, and until he was in his mid twenties, the family moved to Canada and back to Maine, several times. This story can be read in the story of Patrick and Bridget, elsewhere on this site. 

James worked in the lumber business in and around Solon, until he was about 40 years old, when he joined the Union army. Athough all the records we have confirm he was a private, the regiment he joined is the 24th in some records, however, Ancestry.com lists him as being in the 1st Maine Veteran Infantry and another ancestry.com record lists him as being in the 7th Maine Regiment. Several of this brothers joined up with the 24th, adding credence to that option.

Up until then, the family used the McCollough name, but because of an error made by the officer who registered the men into the army, they were forced to take the McCollor name in order to later claim their army pensions. I have my own theory on how this happened, after growing up with a Maine born and raised father, and having spent much of my own adult life in Maine. The name "McCollough", with the Maine accent, comes out with an "R" sound at the end. Quite possibly, the officer wrote it phonetically, and thus our name was changed forever from McCollough to McCollor!

James survived the war, and upon his return, still unmarried, he lived with his brother Patrick's family. Census records show him as living there in 1860 at 40 years old (bringing his birth date to 1820?) and again ten years later in 1870. Later that year he finally married in 1870 at the relatively old age of about 48 to 50. He married on November 6, 1870 to a woman named Caroline M. Keef, by Justice of the Peace, J.H. Goodrich.

Caroline was considerably younger than James, born July 9, 1844, in Brighton, and was living in Moscow, Maine at the time of her marriage with what appears to be her widowed (?) mother-in-law, 78 year old Sara Keef, and Caroline's three children,  Ella, 10, Frank, 5, and Elizabeth, 1.  The particular census this information comes from does not give much information to work on compared to others.  She must have been married very young when she was first married, for her age is given as just 24 years old.  It appears she is living in a house that they own, valued at $400, and Caroline does not work outside the  home.

Records are a bit confusing, so please note I am not certain of her biography and am only giving you what I have found on ancestry.com. Dates and spellings are varied and sometimes contradictory.

According to her death record and as given in a family tree of a family named Foster, Caroline was born to an English immigrant William Martin (born about 1801) and his Maine born wife, Esther W. Hughes (born about 1812).  Esther is sometimes in census records given the name Elizabeth. Caroline had several siblings, Elizabeth "Lizzie" (1839 - 1828), Esther "Etta" (1841 - ?), Sarah (b. 1842), and John Frank (b. 1849), and later, Winfield M. (b. 1855) and Llewellyn (b. 1856).

Her first husband, James (Jno?) Keef, was much older than she, born in 1828 in Moscow, Maine. She married him at the age of 14 in 1858, the same year Ella was born.  He died July 17, 1895 in Zumwait, Washington state. They apparently divorced very soon after.  

Some family records state no children resulted from the marriage of Caroline and James. There seems to be data otherwise. Later census's claim Caroline had five children, four living as of 1900. We know she had three children living at the time of her marriage to James. Her eldest daughter, Ella Mary  (Davis) predeceased Caroline by three years. That leaves one living child that may have been Jameses child.

James or John "Jno?" Keef was the name of Caroline's first husband. According to Stigman and McCollor* an incorrect record claims her first husband was a man by the name of Heeb.  The 1860 census of the keef household includes Caroline, and a baby, Mary, mentoned above. (oddly, Ella Mary's gravestone records her birth year as 1862 which by all records, is wrong). By 1860 he is out of the picture and it appears she has married to or living with his brother, Charles. Ella Mary was the daughter of James Keef, and Frank and Elizabeth, children of Charles. In 1850, They are living in the household of his parents "Robart" (Robert?) and Sara(h). 

For five or six years following the marriage, James continued to work in the lumber business, and in 1875 or 1876 he and his wife moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he changed his occupation dramatically, to work in a bakery.  We don't know why he made such a big move, to Chicago from Maine. 

He died in a fire very shortly after the move to Chicago, and as far as we know is buried there.  Caroline applied for his military pension in 1886.

Caroline remained in and around Chicago for the remainder of her life. The 1900 Federal Census is a little contradictory and may be erroneous in places.  Despite it's problems, I still believe it is our Caroline unless someone out there will kindly confirm or correct.  It gives her a birth date of 1854 and living in her sister Etta Beecher's family (husband Adolphus, and three younger people, Edwin N. Sawyer, 27, William M. Sawyer, 23, (both sons of Sarah, another of Caroline's sisters), and Frank Frandsen, 21. Frank is listed as a boarder, while the Sawyer men are listed as the Beecher's nephews.  Ten years later, she is still living in that household, listed not as Etta's sister-in-law, but as one of several boarders. The census taker erroneously spelled her name McCollan.

According to the Chicago death index, Caroline died at home, May 23, 1918 at Oak Park, Cook County, Illinois. She was 70 years old. 

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