Family History Notes and Photos by Bob Mesenbrink

My great grandfather was Jonathan Stephenson - my mother's paternal grandfather, although she would never have the chance to know him. He died a few months before she was born, at the same home in fact while visiting in Castana, Iowa in 1919. He was born in Cayton, England, a village just south of Scarborough, Yorkshire, in 1847. His father, George, was a grocer, dairyman, and small farmer. His family had been in the Cayton area for centuries. Jonathan's mother was Mary Bielby from Bridlington, a larger town farther down the coast to the south. Jonathan and his older brother, Robert, weren't listed with their parents, sister, Jane, and younger brother, Henry, in the 1861 census. Robert had died a few years earlier, and since Jonathan was almost 14, he probably had to go to work. Yet another brother, John Robert, was born in 1862.A couple years later, Jonathan's mother died and his father remarried, to Ann Harrison in 1866  and started another family. Jonathan would