(posted 1 January 2016)
Background information: According to his death certificate, Arthur L. Vining died in Utica, New York, on 3 June 1931. The “place of burial, cremation or removal” was Waterford, New York, and the “date of burial” was 6 June 1931. His death was reported by Delmar [Delmer?] Vining, his younger son.(posted 1 January 2016)
Background information: Vinings, Georgia, was settled in the 1830s by Hardy Pace and was initially known as “Crossroads”. In 1837 Stephen H. Long, a civil engineer, was charged with building the Western & Atlantic Railroad from Atlanta to Chattanooga. The railroad was constructed through the area of Crossroads in 1838-1841. In the course of this construction, there was a culvert-tressel-styled bridge that had to transverse a creek around a mountain. Somewhere in this time frame a railroad worker or supervising construction foreman, supposedly by the name of Vining, may have had the responsibility of this stretch of rail. The bridge on early maps was called “Vining’s Bridge”. Subsequent placement of a railway station one-half mile south of the bridge transferred the name as “Vining’s Station”, known for the duration of the Civil War as such, and mentioned no fewer than 150 times in the official records and memoirs of primarily Union forces. The name was shortened in 1904 to simply “Vinings”. Today it is a historic place inhabited by rather wealthy individuals -- and is in need of a fathered identity.There are no census, marriage, or death records that put a Vining in this (Cobb) county during the target years (1840 more or less). There were some Vinings from Putnam County, Georgia, who won land in the Georgia Land Lotteries, but it appears they never actually lived in Cobb County and they sold the land. Further, they were farmers and the work on the railroad required engineering know-how, something not common in the south. A hypothesis is that this presumed Vining was an individual from the northeast—Pennsylvania, Delaware, etc.—who worked on the railroads, went to Crossroads contractually, and possibly moved on.
Information sought:Likely answer (posted 3 August 2026): An article on the Vinings, Georgia, community web site, “An Unintentional Name”, names William H. Vining, a young assistant engineer from Delaware hired to work on the Western & Atlantic Railroad in the late 1830s. That may be the William H. Vining in our records, son of Henry Vining and Rebecca Lyle, born 5 March 1811 in Wilmington, Delaware, who turned 26 the year Long took charge of the survey and was 27 to 30 during the 1838–1841 construction. He is also listed as having died in Chile, which would put him in that country at the same time American engineers were helping to build the first large railway there. Thanks to Nancy Christie and Kerry Penney for sending in this reference.
(posted 3 January 2017)
Background information: Robert Vining married the widow Mary Jane (Courtney) Miner on March 16, 1898, in Putnam County, Ohio. Officiator was the Rev. J.E. Smith. Two years later Mary Jane was listed as head of house in the 1900 census of Shelby county, Ohio, with a married daughter living with her and another daughter living next door to her. Robert Vining was not listed. No death/divorce records have been found in Putnam County, Ohio, for Robert. His fate is unknown. The Find A Grave website for Putnam County lists only two Vinings buried there. They are William and Edith Vining and are buried in Cascade Cemetery, Cloverdale, Putnam County, Ohio. No relationship between them and Robert has been found. The “Pensioners on the Roll” for Putnam County listed a Joseph and William G. Vining, both of Kalida, Ohio, in Putnam County, Ohio, but no Robert. There are other mentions of Vining families in the 1800s in Putnam County but, again, with no connections to Robert.(posted 17 August 2026)
Background information: The Vining Family Association recently received a large collection of studio and family photographs of the Vining/Hargraves families of Coffee County, Georgia, c. 1890–1920, from Dr. Antoinette Graham, an antiques dealer of Florida. (The two families are connected through James Vining and Sarah Brooker Vining’s daughter, Sara Ellen Vining, who married John Hargraves in 1889.) One photograph in the collection has been identified — James Vining and his wife, Sarah Brooker Vining — but the rest are unidentified, or identified with only a first name. Three of the larger studio photographs are shown below. There are many additional, smaller images.
