tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47747936592108169142024-03-05T00:24:59.672-05:00Family History StuffOccasional morsels about my family's history. I welcome your comments, corrections, and additional information.Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-14082597141140479472019-05-27T15:59:00.000-04:002019-07-11T08:55:32.161-04:00My “coolest ancestor” kept people in slavery<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHiNGuIA3Ue6IcdwidxtBIYeARbyIzl_nP06QLIdGVai0-j0ZhMNy56yE7W5f8gboKIrCeWNc_eHx2XG8mieUOAyu7auEwgg24kw88kw9G6Wovbn8C4SMK0LT7vI0fZYzySnLY39RRnmI/s1600/marthabellwill.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="493" data-original-width="952" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHiNGuIA3Ue6IcdwidxtBIYeARbyIzl_nP06QLIdGVai0-j0ZhMNy56yE7W5f8gboKIrCeWNc_eHx2XG8mieUOAyu7auEwgg24kw88kw9G6Wovbn8C4SMK0LT7vI0fZYzySnLY39RRnmI/s320/marthabellwill.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
I’ve mused a little bit before on this blog about how much we should look to our ancestors as a source of pride or shame. And honestly, I derive more pride than is probably warranted from some of the admirable things I've uncovered in my family's past. A case in point is Martha McFarlane McGee Bell, who I enthused in a post a few years back was “<a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/11/quite-possibly-my-coolest-ancestor.html" target="_blank">Quite Possibly My Coolest Ancestor</a>.” Martha Bell was a nurse, midwife, and the richest woman in her county in North Carolina. Two of her children, <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/06/me-and-william-mcgee.html" target="_blank">John and William McGee</a>, became preachers and helped launch the Second Great Awakening. Most awesomely, she is said to have been a spy for the patriots in the American Revolution.<br />
<br />
But I'm writing on Memorial Day after a day of thinking about the Civil War and my family’s role in it. I recently confirmed that my great-great-great-grandfather William Burrow—Martha’s great-grandson—<a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2019/03/william-burrow-18331863.html" target="_blank">died fighting for the Union in the Battle of Fayetteville</a>, which is another source of pride. I was totting up the Union soldiers and sympathizers and the Confederate soldiers and sympathizers and feeling good about mostly being on the right side of history.<br />
<br />
Then, I started thinking beyond the war to slavery. I have known for years that one of my great-great-great-grandfathers in Arkansas, William Shumate, kept people in slavery; it is mentioned casually in a couple of accounts of his family. His son Bennett, my great-great-grandfather, is the only Confederate soldier in my direct ancestry. Beyond them, though, I had always had a vague notion that my Scots-Irish, hill-dwelling ancestors were not prosperous enough to have held people in bondage.<br />
<br />
Today, though, my thoughts turned to prosperous Martha and William Bell, who owned a mill in North Carolina. Nothing I had read about them had ever mentioned that they held people in slavery, but what are the odds that they <i>didn’t</i>, I suddenly wondered.<br />
<br />
The answer came too easily. I went to Ancestry.com and found that someone had transcribed Martha’s will. She died before her husband, so it seems to have gone unsaid that he—the executor of her estate—would inherit most of her property. But the will is otherwise concerned with only one thing: her bequest of 11 human beings to her grandchildren.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9dpR9VgS9yE9ZyVu02zw_qQgj7MbVm7T3uHXhVIZ8DDDvJtfLAFnLD5xswgOw-QIMWA70vWWiVROinljf1V_hYvPgr7YB0zt8VOqw4CD7n_0v7a18pBx-_ldgpgaF_okA99PgS6imBas/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-05-27+at+2.48.09+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="764" data-original-width="878" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9dpR9VgS9yE9ZyVu02zw_qQgj7MbVm7T3uHXhVIZ8DDDvJtfLAFnLD5xswgOw-QIMWA70vWWiVROinljf1V_hYvPgr7YB0zt8VOqw4CD7n_0v7a18pBx-_ldgpgaF_okA99PgS6imBas/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-05-27+at+2.48.09+PM.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After I found Martha’s will, I found this 1847 newspaper account of old revolutionary times that, while remarking on Martha’s spirit, casually mentioned the Bell’s “negroes.” Raleigh (NC) Register, 11 Sep 1847.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Reading this straightforward, seemingly casual dispersal of living people as property was a gut punch. “First I give to my grandson, William McGee, the son of John McGee. one Negro boy named Charles. Then I give to my grandson, John McGee, the son of William McGee, one Negro boy named Sampson. Then, I give to my grandson, John Welborn, the son of Jenny Wellborn, one Negro woman named Fan, with the youngest child she now has.” It goes on until she has gifted 11 people to 10 of her grandchildren.(My great-great-great-great-grandmother Martha McGee Burrow is not among them.)<br />
<br />
I had put Martha on a pedestal. I saw her as a feminist pioneer—looking after women's health not for money but as a calling—and a champion of liberty in her efforts for the Continental Army. But as with so many heroes of that era, we have a terrible contradiction to live with: the fact that they espoused liberty—and risked their lives for it—while holding people in a sickeningly cruel and unjust system of bondage.<br />
<br />
I’m still trying to assimilate all this. For years, I have had idle thoughts about trying to write a novel about Martha, but that story would now be darker and more complicated.<br />
<br />
I should add that you don't have to find slaveholders in your family tree to find yourself complicit in our nation’s defining sin. My white family benefited for generations from systemic advantages denied to black people, beginning with slavery and suffrage but continuing through the Homestead Act, Jim Crow, the Federal Housing Act, the G.I. Bill, and more. Our nation owes African Americans a tangible debt for these centuries of systemic theft of their wealth, and I for one support a national program to make it happen. (If you haven’t already, read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s excellent article “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/" target="_blank">The Case for Reparations</a>” for an excellent argument along this line.)<br />
<br />
I just want to end by remembering the people that Martha enslaved. Here are the only names I know for them: Charles, Sampson, Fan and her youngest child, Becky, Solomon, Absalom, Judy, Gains, Jacob, and Fanny. May light perpetual shine upon them, and may they have their reward in Heaven.Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-73656226991358573012019-03-04T16:42:00.002-05:002019-03-04T17:00:32.241-05:00William Burrow, 1833–1863<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNoasjd35WPC7gzO7Tb_N1NYb8uyp9TX7cjHjuftwCY1eQzZ6TTjIxkxkdbpqvZECjdG-GI43rN_LVBRaDmyzXUtagbOQZf970xbrh1305CvqqBW2pZ7jryYGTfM-e9r_H0rC-jdX88Cc/s1600/Wm.+M.+Burrow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="449" data-original-width="250" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNoasjd35WPC7gzO7Tb_N1NYb8uyp9TX7cjHjuftwCY1eQzZ6TTjIxkxkdbpqvZECjdG-GI43rN_LVBRaDmyzXUtagbOQZf970xbrh1305CvqqBW2pZ7jryYGTfM-e9r_H0rC-jdX88Cc/s320/Wm.+M.+Burrow.jpg" width="178" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">William Burrow’s headstone at the <br />
National Cemetery in Fayetteville.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It's been a minute or two since I've posted anything new on this blog. But I wanted to report on some new confirmation about an ancestor whose Civil War story had been a little sketchy to me up to now. I had for years seen references to William Burrow, great-grandfather of Blanche Vermillion Branch, having died fighting for the Union at the Battle of Fayetteville in Arkansas in April 1863. But I was unsure if the William Burrow who is buried at the National Cemetery there was the same one in our family.<br />
<br />
What we know about our William Burrow is that he was born in Missouri in 1833, married Frances Stacy in 1853 (she died in 1863, around the time William was killed in combat), and was the father of Jane and Martha Burrow. His father was James Burrow, and his mother was Martha McGee, daughter of the Cumberland Presbyterian minister and revival leader <a href="https://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/06/me-and-william-mcgee.html" target="_blank">William McGee</a>. (Martha McGee and her granddaughter Martha Burrow were presumably namesakes of William McGee's mother, <a href="https://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/11/quite-possibly-my-coolest-ancestor.html" target="_blank">the Revolutionary spy Martha Bell</a>.) James and Martha McGee Burrow came to Missouri from Tennessee in the early 1830s.<br />
<br />
A few newly discovered nuggets lay out the case pretty well. Most important is a passage from a 1917 book called <i>The Ozark Region, Its History and Its People</i>, which contains a lot of biographies of local folks. An item about a man named Harry Moore, who would be Walter Vermillion's first cousin, begins like this:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The father of Harry Moore is Walter Moore, an old citizen of Lawrence
county, who had lived to the time of his death, September 10, 1916,
upon a farm north of Aurora for more than forty years. Walter Moore was
born in Edwards county, Illinois, on the 9th day of January, 1846, and
was left without either parent before he was one year of age. His
grandparents took him to Barry county, Missouri, early in the year 1847,
and here he grew to manhood, working upon the farm and thus acquiring a
knowledge of that business which made him a farmer for life. Mr. Moore
married Miss Jane Burrow of Lawrence county, a daughter of William
Burrow. She was born in Lawrence county on the 31st of December, 1858 [sic—other sources say 1855].</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
William
Burrow was a farmer who enlisted in the Union army at the outbreak of
the Civil war, and was killed at the battle of Fayetteville, Arkansas.
He is one of the honored dead who sleep in the National cemetery at
Fayetteville. Shortly before Mr. Burrow's death his wife had passed
away, and his daughter was thus left, as her future husband had been, an
orphan. Like him too, she was taken to the home of her grandfather.
This was James Burrow, a native of Bedford county, Tennessee, who came
to Missouri about 1832 and bought a tract of land, on which is located
the celebrated Orange Spring. He was born in 1799, and passed away in
1880, at the advanced age of eighty-one years.</blockquote>
<br />
We have well established that Jane Burrow was the sister of our own ancestor Martha Burrow (who married <a href="https://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2009/03/john-washington-vermillion-1857-1928.html" target="_blank">Wash Vermillion</a> and was Blanche's grandmother). Jane Moore would later be one of the people who regularly wrote to Martha's son Ira <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2008/01/life-in-prison.html" target="_blank">in prison</a>. Census records show that both Jane and Martha lived with their grandfather James Burrow after their parents' death. This biographical item, likely reported by Harry Moore himself or a family member, connects William Burrow at Fayetteville to our family.<br />
<br />
I had been a bit confused/skeptical because William is also identified in a Goodspeed history of Lawrence County as having been a member of the Lawrence County Home Guard during the war. But I'm guessing he left that outfit to join up with the real army in Arkansas. Civil War records show that the William M. Burrow who fell at Fayetteville was a sergeant in Company E, 1st Regiment, First Arkansas Union Cavalry.<br />
<br />
A record of a pension application from December 8, 1873, identifies William Burrow as "1Sgt E, 1 Ark Cav." The application does not name the minor dependent, but lists her guardian as Walter Moore. Walter married Jane Burrow in 1872, but she did not turn 18 until December 31, 1873. Perhaps Walter served as legal guardian of his wife (and maybe Martha as well) for the purposes of the pension. At any rate, this again connects our known family to the fallen soldier.<br />
<br />
The only other reference I've found to William Burrow's service and death comes from an article about the Battle of Fayetteville originally published in <i>North and South</i> magazine and reprinted <a href="https://www.lincolnandthecivilwar.com/Activities/Arkansas/HubPages/04Articles/Fayetteville01.htm" target="_blank">here</a>. Relying on a battle report in federal records written by commanding officer Albert Bishop, the author writes:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
About six o’clock the Confederates made their initial move toward
Fayetteville, charging on horseback out of the ravine and up toward
Federal Headquarters and the nearby Baxter house. This attack by
Carroll’s Cavalry and Dorsey’s Missouri squadron drove the defenders
back into the rifle pits and houses, where they rallied and from
where they poured in a considerable fire from their long-range
Whitney rifles. In the streets Cabell’s men met with effectual
resistance from the windows, doorways and corners of the houses. One
of the defenders, First Sergeant William M. Burrow of Company E,
First Arkansas Union Cavalry, fell badly wounded. “As his comrades
were bearing him from the field, he begged them to ‘lay him down and
go to fighting,’” wrote Lieutenant Colonel Bishop.
Burrow died from his wound two weeks later. </blockquote>
<br />
Like a lot of the family history I write about here, I never heard any of this growing up. William's daughter Martha, Blanche's grandmother, died too young to pass family stories on to her own children, much less her grandchildren. And Blanche's own father died when she was still an infant, so I think a lot of family lore just got lost along the way.<br />
<br />
The Civil War was complicated in the hills of Arkansas and Missouri, and I don't know what William Burrow was fighting for when he gave his life. But I know that Blanche, a patriotic woman, would have been proud of her great-grandfather if she had known the story.<br />
<br />Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-50301389512657415552012-11-11T00:41:00.000-05:002012-11-11T13:40:04.788-05:00Not Quite Hatfields and McCoys, But Still Pretty Bloody<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5d6nYefNGgvdQs901Qb9m3hSU81O3pA2BEDZ-CtK-QzbwumiwLMbgfebvvDfaTa2Fjs6831a7tUQGzY2J2xCqmO-VN7nuMVwalcEgq9pHoQauSdJB_G-yLv4r6dUip1ouO7_pbHA4wZw/s1600/Picture+5.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5d6nYefNGgvdQs901Qb9m3hSU81O3pA2BEDZ-CtK-QzbwumiwLMbgfebvvDfaTa2Fjs6831a7tUQGzY2J2xCqmO-VN7nuMVwalcEgq9pHoQauSdJB_G-yLv4r6dUip1ouO7_pbHA4wZw/s320/Picture+5.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The <i>New York Times</i> wrote about the Turner-Howard feud in 1889.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Well, I certainly didn't expect to uncover a new piece of family history while reading Malcolm Gladwell's book <i>Outliers</i>, but that's exactly what just happened. <i>Outliers</i> is Gladwell's attempt to explain what makes people successful. As the back cover puts it, "we should look at the world that surrounds the successful—their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing." (I'm just halfway through the book, and it's really fascinating. I'd recommend it.)<br />
<br />
To illustrate how centuries-old cultural traits shape people to this day, Gladwell talks about one of my <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2008/08/finally-were-persecuted-minority.html">favorite subject</a>s, the Scotch-Irish immigrants whose proud, violent culture was shaped by their experience on the border of England and Scotland. A good half of my ancestry is Scotch-Irish, and some of the stories I've told on this blog reflect that culture of feuding hill-country clans. (Remember how Silas Jones fled Arkansas? The story is <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-were-not-razorbacks.html">here</a>, <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-were-not-razorbacks-part-ii.html">here</a>, and <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/08/why-were-not-razorbacks-part-iii.html">here</a>.) Gladwell uses as an example a feud between the Howard and Turner families in Harlan County, Kentucky, after the Civil War.<br />
<br />
The feud he recounts—between the descendants of William Turner and those of Samuel Howard—went on for years and cost at least a dozen lives. (One account is <a href="http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~bloodhound/feudsofharlancoky.html">here</a>; you can read Gladwell's summary on Google Books <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=3NSImqqnxnkC&pg=PT96&lpg=PT96&dq=%22the+patriarch+of+the+howard+clan+was+Samuel+Howard.%22&source=bl&ots=24ad80TTEz&sig=oqkRB8zpxwP5lCZusNylcUQxHNg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=tjOfUJ7gL6660QGg1oDADQ&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ">here</a>.) It started with a dispute over a poker game and escalated with each successive insult to Scotch-Irish honor. At one point, the governor sent troops to the area to protect the courthouse in the midst of the feud, and in 1889, the New York Times published an article about the feud, calling it "a faction war that has cost many lives and still disgraces the state of Kentucky." The main characters on the Turner side were grandsons of the patriarch William Turner: Will, George, and "Devil Jim." As Gladwell puts it succinctly, "These were not pleasant people."<br />
<br />
When I saw the name Turner and Harlan County, though, I had to reach for my family history files. And sure enough, the same William Turner described as the patriarch of the feuding family was an ancestor. Born in 1770 in Virginia, William married Susannah Bailey and moved to Harlan County, where he owned a tavern and two general stores. Their daughter Mary Turner married Bales Shumate. They had at least one son, William Shumate, before Mary drowned in the Clover Fork River in 1828. (The family story is that she was going to her sister's house to care for someone who was sick.) A few years later, their son William moved to Arkansas with his wife Sarah and her Ball family; Bales moved to Arkansas at about the same time. William and Sarah were the parents of Bennett Shumate, who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War and was Cal Jones's grandfather. (I wrote about the Joneses and Shumates in the Civil War <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/03/joneses-civil-war.html">here</a>.)<br />
<br />
So although my direct ancestors had moved west some 30 years before the feud began, they were very closely related to the feuding Turners. I hope to learn more about the particulars of the feud and report in future blog posts. <br />
<br />
<br />Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-6275481462344756152012-06-11T14:20:00.001-04:002015-06-02T16:15:03.592-04:00The Vermont Clarks and the Year Without a SummerI've talked about this before, but the most common theme in my family history is an insistent westward movement over many generations. I've learned enough by now to understand the macro reasons for such movement: people scraping together an existence from the land had to keep looking for new land, and, being poor people, they had to keep looking for land nobody really wanted. <br />
<br />
But in the absence of much detailed written or oral history in my family, I've never known much about the events or decisions that may have led anyone in particular to pick up stakes and move. (There are some exceptions, most notably Silas Jones's perceived need to <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/08/why-were-not-razorbacks-part-iii.html">get out of Arkansas in a hurry</a>.)<br />
<br />
So it was exciting for me to hear today about the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer">Year Without a Summer</a> in New England in 1816. I heard about this on an <a href="http://backstoryradio.org/weathering-the-storm/">episode</a> of <a href="http://backstoryradio.org/"><i>Backstory</i></a>, a terrific public radio show about American history. As they described it, there was crazy snow, cold temperatures, and frozen ground all summer, leading to crop failures and hunger.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4_J3q8mmFEEt0BKnPPOyd13O-LLWut7H9SHKWfPs3p1l6Ni1mlcMEb6gSgBPN2vlT1dELzV-dO-SioSg-JMfjzETvrcDE3eO1Fylea5CXSsHyZzgf0WIEUb6kE_XJuXw5abmW9Aev__E/s1600/Chichester_canal_jmw_turner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4_J3q8mmFEEt0BKnPPOyd13O-LLWut7H9SHKWfPs3p1l6Ni1mlcMEb6gSgBPN2vlT1dELzV-dO-SioSg-JMfjzETvrcDE3eO1Fylea5CXSsHyZzgf0WIEUb6kE_XJuXw5abmW9Aev__E/s400/Chichester_canal_jmw_turner.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 was bad news for farmers, but good news for painters of sunsets. J .M. W. Turner's painting <i>Chichester Canal</i> was inspired by the golden sunsets caused by the ashy sky.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It is now understood that the cold weather was largely due to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1815_eruption_of_Mount_Tambora">a huge volcanic eruption in Indonesia</a> the year before, but no one knew that at the time, and, as the <i>Backstory</i> guys explained, the freak winter caused people to leave Vermont and New Hampshire in great numbers for less settled, warmer places like Ohio and Indiana.<br />
<br />
As it happens, my only New England ancestors, <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2009/03/crank-and-walty.html">John</a> and <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2009/03/marcy-marcy-marcy.html">Marcy</a> Clark (who I've talked about a little before), were married in Vermont in 1810. Eight years later, their son <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2008/05/about-ambrose.html">Ambrose</a> was born in Ross County, Ohio. I have no record of when they moved (nor do I have birthdates or birthplaces for any children older than Ambrose) but the timing makes me wonder if they were among the people who fled New England when it seemed that summer would never come again.Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-31379006580228709692011-12-08T19:08:00.004-05:002015-06-02T16:15:18.605-04:00Lancelot's Round Table<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN1yRN-6zGqM9Z6_gahwwOTZZTEkOvTWdhIYtc95dzyiObKFbVYF2xkN7VTu-3kQUsxjmIK_0HoJgWmS5z-d1H3DgFzFUDHlp_0T2kyuHTzeaj9XzZLSJsdLRG612n-Qed5oaEIeVC52pd/s1600/40872828_125156188606.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684136447191122898" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN1yRN-6zGqM9Z6_gahwwOTZZTEkOvTWdhIYtc95dzyiObKFbVYF2xkN7VTu-3kQUsxjmIK_0HoJgWmS5z-d1H3DgFzFUDHlp_0T2kyuHTzeaj9XzZLSJsdLRG612n-Qed5oaEIeVC52pd/s400/40872828_125156188606.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 300px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
One of the main reasons I started this blog was to put out some information that would attract distant cousins who were Googling family names so that we could find each other and share information. So the main reason for this post is to share some information I've gleaned over the last few years about the family of Lancelot Branch, the progenitor of all our Branch relatives in America. (That's his headstone at left, at the Horatio Cemetery near Punxsutawney, PA.)<br />
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As I talked about in this post a few years ago, Lancelot was an English coal miner who left England for Pennsylvania after the Civil War and sent for his wife and young daughter soon after. Unlike a lot of families who immigrated to America, Lancelot wasn't part of a bigger group including siblings and cousins—the rest of his family seems to have stayed behind in England. (The single exception I know about is his cousin Cuthbert Branch, who went to Ontario.) So even though there are a fair number of Branches in the U.S., we're not likely related to most of them.<br />
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When i wrote the last post about Lancelot, I knew from census records that he and his wife Elizabeth had three sons and three daughters: John George (my own ancestor), Thomas, Joseph, Sarah Jane, Elizabeth, and Maggie. At that time, though, I had only made contact with people from the family of Thomas. Since then, I have found what became of Joseph (he went to Canton, Ohio, and had three daughters) and Sarah Jane (she married John Commons and raised a large family in Southwest Pennsylvania). While I haven't found any of Joseph's family members, I have been in touch with a descendant of Sarah Jane's. Through online newspaper archives, census records, and even Facebook, I've been able to add dozens more people to my record of Lancelot's descendants.<br />
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But I'd like to add more! I don't know what became of Joseph's daughters, and not all of Thomas and Sarah's people are accounted for, and Elizabeth and Maggie are still complete mysteries. To that end, I'm posting this table of Lancelot's descendants—stopping at his great-grandchildren and excluding the names of any people who are likely to be alive (for privacy's sake). It may be of interest to some of you, but the main reason for posting it is essentially as "Google bait." If you've come to this page because you searched on a name and have discovered a connection, e-mail me at familyhistorybites@gmail.com.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">I Lancelot Branch 1836 Staindrop UK–1907 Horatio, PA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>m 1866 Tynemouth UK Elizabeth Charlton</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">II Sarah Jane Branch 9/9/1867 Seghill, UK–1914 PA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">m ca. 1884 John Commons 1858–1942</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">III Maude Commons ca. 1886 TN– July 1961 Meyersdale, PA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">III Charles William Commons 2/24/1887 Meyersdale, PA–8/16/1966 Carmichaels, PA </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">m ca. 1916 Mildred Margaret Crossland 4/28/1893 Glassport, PA–6/7/1966 Carmichaels, PA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV Charles Howard Commons 3/16/1917 Boswell, PA–7/4/1971 St. Petersburg, FL</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>m 2 Lydia Lorraine Bryan 7/12/1927 Columbus, OH–5/18/1967 St. Petersburg, FL</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV Marguerite M. Commons 9/28/1918 Boswell, PA–11/9/2001 Bedford, VA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV George M. Commons 9/2/1920 PA–8/27/1981 PA in Carmichaels in 1966</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV Edith Jane Commons 12/7/1922 PA–9/19/2000 CO?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Daughter]</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">Virginia Ruth Commons ca. 1929 PA </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">III Harry Commons 2/26/1889 Meyersdale, PA–2/1960 Detroit, MI</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">III Raymond L. Commons 8/4/1890 PA–10/29/1963 Ligonier, PA </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">III Ralph Edward Commons 3/23/1892 Summit Twp., PA–4/25/1961 Miami, FL</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">m 6/5/1923 Detroit MI Emma Leonora Flach 12/20/1894 Detroit, MI–12/10/1966 Ferndale, MI</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV Ralph Edward Commons 3/20/1924 Detroit MI–12/20/1990 Pinellas Co., FL</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV Lenore Ruth Commons 10/7/1926 Detroit, MI–8/31/1976 MI</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>m Edward Marckwardt 6/14/1923–5/1/2009 Cadillac, MI</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">III Ruth J. Commons 9/22/1893 Meyersdale, PA–7/2/1967 Berlin, PA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">m 4/22/1933 John Adam Gruber 12/28/1901 Penn, PA–6/9/1999 Topton, PA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">III John Roy Commons 1/14/1896 Somerset Co. PA–6/7/1952 Altoona, PA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">m ca. 1923 Emma J. Finnegan<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ca. 1898 PA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV John Roy Commons Jr. 12/2/1923 PA–1/24/1997 PA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Daughter]</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Son]</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">III Byron Earl Commons 8/19/1898 Meyersdale,PA–1/30/1986 Escondido, CA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">m Roseanna McCabe 6/27/1917 Ida Grove, IA–1/8/2000 Rancho Murieta, CA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV Richard Earl Commons 11/3/1948 CA–12/13/1997 CA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">II John George Branch 3/4/1872 Somerset Co., Pa.–3/4/1940 Horatio, Pa.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">m 10/1896 Punxatawney, Pa. Margaret Jehu 6/15/1877 Providence Pa.–1/4/1971 Commodore, Pa.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">III Clarence Milo Branch 8/6/1897 Horatio, Pa.–4/1968 Bristow, Okla.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">m 1928 Okla. City, OK Blanche Idella Vermillion 4/6/1907 Wayne, IT–11/28/2003 Drumright, OK</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">IV [Son] </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">IV [Son] </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">IV [Daughter]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">III Richard Branch 12/6/1900 Desire, Pa–1946 Youngstown, OH</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">m Bessie Elizabeth Johns 2/9/1903 Punxsutawney, PA–8/14/1993 Youngstown, OH</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">IV [Son] </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">IV Richard Branch 10/10/1925 Ohio–2/18/1997 Los Angeles, CA</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">III Ruth Branch 1903 Horatio, Pa.–1903 Horatio, Pa.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">III Sarah Jane Branch 1/10/1906 Horatio, Pa.—7/22/2000 Hillsdale, Pa.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">m 2/28/1925 Leonard Ball 9/10/1902 Elanora, PA–1/4/1983 Indiana, Pa.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">IV [Son</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">IV Clarence Leroy Ball 1/11/1928 PA–May 15, 2006 Dixonville, PA</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">m 5/27/1949 Betty Mae Witherite 12/22/1927 Green Twp., PA–10/6/2001 Commodore, PA</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">IV William Eugene Ball 12/29/1930–7/10/1951 Cincinnati, OH</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">IV Gerald Wayne Ball 10/31/1935–7/27/2011</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">III George Branch 7/29/1908 Horatio, Pa.–7/1981 Greenville, Pa.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">m 8/3/1929 Ruby Arlene Shovestull 6/14/1910 PA–5/1981 Greenville, Pa.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">IV Robert Eugene Branch 7/15/1931 PA–11/8/2000 OH</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">IV [Daughter] </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">IV John George Branch 12/30/1934–3/1/2000 Greenville, Pa.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">III Esther Branch 4/2/1913 Punxatawney, Pa.–1/1942</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">m Leroy Jones</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">III Harry Leeroy Branch 12/24/1916 Punxsutawney, Pa.–11/11/1994 Youngstown, OH</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">m 7/13/1942 Gladys Johnson 3/20/1923 OH?–8/1/2007 Poland, OH</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">IV Alice Esther Branch d. bef. 8/1/2007 </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: black;">IV [Daughter]</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">II Thomas James Branch 10/1874-5, Meyersdale, PA–1933 Arnold City, PA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">m Annie Haddick b. Wrekenton, Northumberland Co., UK–1971, PA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">III Leonard William Branch 6/4/1895–10/2/1966, Allen Park, MI</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">m 10/10/1928 Detroit, MI Mary Agnes Walsh 3/22/1902 Montreal, QC–8/31/2006<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>San Pedro, CA</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV Thomas Martin Branch 8/2/1929 Grosse Pointe, MI–11/1991, Troy, MI</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Son] </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV Robert William Branch 12/17/1932 Detroit, MI–11/27/1972 Los Angleles, CA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Son]</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">III Margaret Branch<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>ca. 1898 PA–aft. 4/1942</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">m ca. 1916 Frederick Homer Moors 6/26/1893 Butler, PA–10/12/1962 Somerset Co., PA</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV Arthur Gene Moors 6/26/1917 PA–5/18/1997 MI</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>m Hilda Blanche Arisman 5/15/1918–1/16/2000 MI</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV Dorothy M. Moors 8/10/1920 Boswell, PA–3/19/1985 Virgilina, VA</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>m Henderson Loftis 11/11/1919–4/1957</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">III Elizabeth Branch 2/11/1900 Punxsutawney, PA–2/26/1991 Clarion, PA </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">m<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ca. 1923 John Richard Baldwin ca. 1899 PA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV Gloria Baldwin 12/5/1925 PA–12/17/2003 FL</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Son]</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">III Maude Pearl Branch 4/30/1903 Meyersdale, PA–8/1983 Bellevue, WA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">m ca. 1925 Walter M. "Bus" McMillen 10/18/1903 Bridgeville, PA–4/13/1955 Bridgeville, PA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Daughter]</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV Robert Branch McMillen 7/10/1935 PA–10/12/2002 Bellevue, WA</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">III Leona Louise Branch 11/22/1905–2/23/1997 Pittsburg, PA</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">m Edward William Schietinger 7/1/1894 Pittsburgh, PA–6/2/1985 </span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Daughter]</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Daughter]</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Daughter]</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">III Anna Branch 8/12/1908–4/21/2004</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">m Raymond S. Call 1901–1946</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Son]</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Son]</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">III Ruth Branch ca. 1912</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">m Robert Schmidt</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Son]</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>III Thomas James Branch 7/9/1915 PA–11/17/1978 CA</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">m Rose Lillian Caplan 8/29/1915 PA–7/1/1977 CA</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Son] </span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Daughter]</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">III Irene Branch ca. 1921</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">m Glenn Wilhelm</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Daughter]</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Son]</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">IV [Son]</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">II Elizabeth Ann Branch<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>ca. 1876</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">II Maggie Branch ca. 1879</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;">II Joseph William Branch 8/26/1884-5 Meyersdale, PA–1947 OH</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>m ca. 1912 Mabel/Mable Lenora Burchfield 2/1/1893 PA–1/30/1974 OH</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>III Mona L. Branch 5/1/1913 PA–4/9/2000</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>III L. Irene Branch 2/4/1915 PA–1/30/1989 OH</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>III [Daughter]</span></div>
Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-88570037014878003592011-03-15T20:52:00.005-04:002011-03-16T08:28:30.849-04:00Our Cousin in the White House<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcmk8Sc92I1FCAjrApUK2jy6Vh9cMWbl-tmf-upRjJZrzCN0-8rfnWAF3N0lJ1ApUbU8NRC-4bUgnMsmhNS744v7bAhM82fY-kyw6mQHaVdgsvRzgcSRcjerh0YDSaA42cKIcHHyERyDM/s1600/the_young_united_states_president_barack_obama_and_his_grandfather_Stanley_Dunham.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 270px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcmk8Sc92I1FCAjrApUK2jy6Vh9cMWbl-tmf-upRjJZrzCN0-8rfnWAF3N0lJ1ApUbU8NRC-4bUgnMsmhNS744v7bAhM82fY-kyw6mQHaVdgsvRzgcSRcjerh0YDSaA42cKIcHHyERyDM/s320/the_young_united_states_president_barack_obama_and_his_grandfather_Stanley_Dunham.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5584474811653932370" border="0" /></a><br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }@font-face { font-family: "Palatino"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; </style>I read today that President Obama went to Arlington National Cemetery to pay his respects to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-cnn-wwi-vet-arlington-repose-031511,0,521902.story">Frank Buckles</a>, who was until last week the last surviving veteran of World War I. Somehow that reminded me that Obama's grandfather, Stanley Dunham (that's young Barack and his grandfather in the picture), was a veteran of World War II, and that started me off on one of those long serendipitious internet rambles that led me to a satisfying but not-so-surprising discovery: Barack Obama is a cousin to our Jones family. <p class="MsoNormal"> </p><br />Specifically, he's Cal Jones's 9th cousin twice removed, or, put another way, Cal was a straight 9th cousin to Stanley Dunham. The first common ancestor is a man by the name of Benois Brasseur (1620–1663), a French Huguenot who came to Maryland some time before 1635. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huguenot#North_America">Huguenots</a> were French Protestants who were persecuted by the Catholic powers-that-were in France; a number of them settled in Canada, New York, and the mid-South in the 17th and early 18th centuries. The Shumate ancestors on the Jones side were also Huguenots; their original surname was de la Chaumette.) The name was gradually anglicized to Brashears, now a common surname in the south. <p class="MsoNormal"> </p><br />Benois Brasseur was an ancestor of Stanley Dunham's on his mother's side, and an ancestor of Cal Jones's on <i style="">his</i> mother's side. (Specifically the line goes through Cal's mother Nannie Shumate, her father Bennett Shumate, his mother Sarah Ball, her father Bennett Ball, his father Moses Ball, his mother Ann Brashears and then back four more generations to Benois.) And the journey of the future president's family across the continent was not so different from that of Cal's family. Cal's Brasseur/Brashears ancestors moved over several generations from Maryland to Virginia to Kentucky to Arkansas and finally to Oklahoma. Obama's went from Maryland to Kentucky to Missouri and finally to Kansas. The original French Huguenots married into English and Scots-Irish families and assimilated into the backwoods Appalachian culture that they brought with them as they moved west from one scrubby stand of mountains to the next until they ran out of new woodlands. <p class="MsoNormal"> </p><br />I said the discovery was not so suprising, and that's because I've spent enough time looking at American family trees to know that if a piece of your family has been here for 300 years or so, there's a pretty good chance you're related to another American who can say the same. Without trying very hard, I've already discovered that Cal was a 9th cousin to Richard Nixon (through Cal's Quaker great-grandmother) and an 8th cousin once removed to George W. Bush (through his New England great-great-grandparents), and that his great-great-great-great grandfather was a second cousin to James Madison. And if one unconfirmed lineage is to be believed, Cal was a sixth cousin once removed to his own wife Clara. (They both had Quaker ancestors named Mills.) <p class="MsoNormal"> </p><br />The ironic thing for me is that while a lot of people spend a lot of time trying to show how foreign Obama is, we forget that half his lineage—and that of the people that raised him—is from that same Scots-Irish Protestant Appalachian culture that has produced the strongest and most vociferous opposition to his presidency. I'll bet his grandfather and mine would have had a lot to talk about.Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-6962566613630329702010-03-22T23:33:00.003-04:002010-03-22T23:42:48.052-04:00Young Burton<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinXDkPBNs4bU48nYpyFWMycPZKO-rlc1H-0sf2HR71P9_tB3XrHfupl0zSlWiqhE2a4CC5DlpeVog3iCBDac-9j92Qi2mPn6TTDWBYwBsRtS6u24OV8k4nbJbW51GOh1nfHQVaiz4CLnM/s1600-h/Picture+1.png"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 266px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinXDkPBNs4bU48nYpyFWMycPZKO-rlc1H-0sf2HR71P9_tB3XrHfupl0zSlWiqhE2a4CC5DlpeVog3iCBDac-9j92Qi2mPn6TTDWBYwBsRtS6u24OV8k4nbJbW51GOh1nfHQVaiz4CLnM/s320/Picture+1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451669485148910514" border="0" /></a><br />To make up for rudely fact-checking William McClung Paxton's book, I should give him posthumous thanks for gathering and documenting hundreds of Paxton cousins—including the Confederate general and Yale graduate <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_F._Paxton">Elisha Franklin Paxton</a> and the Texas pioneer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Houston">Sam Houston</a> (both cousins of our Paxton forebears). Also, he published this nice picture of Burton Paxton and one of George that I blogged <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/03/ask-and-ye-shall-receive.html">here</a>.Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-46132215920979191682010-03-22T16:43:00.006-04:002010-03-22T17:14:06.495-04:00Another family myth shot to hell<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsU3ZByagljeN9PwJJV1RmumAKy2ju2bbUljT1olWvKMBAt-NU2CukC-iFqJA-eYodKokg5ROCX4VQdjlEJeGZGgnj5w5ShwYWtbagA9rEwAFmf4TZg3E8aGGuu196KhPbrBKo2B5Dor4/s1600-h/WilliamJuxon.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 258px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsU3ZByagljeN9PwJJV1RmumAKy2ju2bbUljT1olWvKMBAt-NU2CukC-iFqJA-eYodKokg5ROCX4VQdjlEJeGZGgnj5w5ShwYWtbagA9rEwAFmf4TZg3E8aGGuu196KhPbrBKo2B5Dor4/s320/WilliamJuxon.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451568845585885042" border="0" /></a>Before I learned almost anything else about my family history, I knew -- or thought I knew -- one juicy fact: that one of Clara Paxton's ancestors had officiated at the beheading of Charles I during the English Civil War. This nugget came from a 1903 genealogy called <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=zxgbAAAAYAAJ&dq=we%20are%20one%20paxtons&pg=PP21#v=onepage&q=we%20are%20one%20paxtons&f=false"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Paxtons: We Are One </span></a>by William McClung Paxton. The book outlines the genealogy of a Paxton family that immigrated from Northern Ireland to Pennsylvania and then to Virginia in the 18th century. (Clara, her brother Burton, and their parents George and Grace are actually listed in the book, which also includes photos of George and Burton.) Here's how the Charles I story is reported in the book:<br /><blockquote><tt>Several centuries of Scottish life had endured [sic] the Paxtons with love of liberty, and with the heroic faith, and piety of John Knox. Of course, they cast their lives and fortune to Cromwell. One of the family officiated at the execution of King Charles I. This may have been James, our ancestor. After the restoration, in 1603, James Paxton fled to County Antrim, in the north of Ireland, and found friends in the Scotch-Irish inhabitants." </tt></blockquote>The wording "officiated" had always puzzled me. Did it mean he was the executioner? The master of ceremonies? After living in Connecticut for a while and reading more history, I learned more about what happened to Charles I -- and what happened to the men who signed his death warrant after his son, Charles II, was restored to the throne. (Three of those men, known as the regicides, escaped to America and hid out among their Puritan friends in Connecticut. There are three streets in New Haven named for them: Whalley, Dixwell, and Goffe.) In my armchair historian kind of way, I searched in vain for any mention of a Paxton in connection with the story of the execution. Over time, I also learned that a lot of William McClung Paxton's scholarship has been found to be erroneous, if not fanciful, during the century since his book was written.<br /><br />But my occasional Google searches recently led me to one woman's theory about the Paxton-Charles connection -- that it was just a case of mistaken identity because of vaguely similar names. On a <a href="http://listsearches.rootsweb.com/th/read/PAXTON/2005-08/1125424306">genealogy listserv</a>, Joanne writes:<br /><tt></tt><blockquote><tt>[N]o Paxton was recorded as being present at the time of the execution of King Charles I. It was Dr. William JUXON -- not Paxton -- who was present and officiated at Charles' execution in in January 1649. Juxon was a well-know clergyman, the Bishop of London, and appointed as Lord Treasurer of England.</tt></blockquote>But wait a minute. The Bishop of London and Lord Treasurer of England would have been an <span style="font-style: italic;">ally</span> of the king's. So maybe "officiate" means something different in this case. Off to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Juxon">Wikipedia</a>'s entry on William Juxon (that's their picture of him above):<br /><br /><blockquote>During the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War" title="English Civil War">Civil War</a>, the bishop, against whom no charges were brought in parliament, lived undisturbed at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulham_Palace" title="Fulham Palace">Fulham Palace</a>. His advice was often sought by the king, who had a very high opinion of him. The king selected Juxon to be with him on the scaffold and to offer him the last rites before his execution.</blockquote>So he was <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span> kind of officiant, acting in a priestly capacity. If this is in fact the story, it's hard to see how William McClung Paxton could have gotten it more wrong. Too bad. I liked having a bad-ass regicide in the family.Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-60805143992465633402009-09-18T16:32:00.005-04:002009-09-18T16:41:36.328-04:00Putting a Face With the Name<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7MOqKsCrsYkEEJDxjPy6YJwLl4foGUxR1IStOM_SmO0G8av2ftDT1V49uK9ugXm5IaMChEMCkQd9FBMCo3tScYbXdUT2PT-AtMatHVPr1TUN9c58goZJec0N-aqBY7npSop_k8N_HYlg/s1600-h/Ancesters_003.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7MOqKsCrsYkEEJDxjPy6YJwLl4foGUxR1IStOM_SmO0G8av2ftDT1V49uK9ugXm5IaMChEMCkQd9FBMCo3tScYbXdUT2PT-AtMatHVPr1TUN9c58goZJec0N-aqBY7npSop_k8N_HYlg/s400/Ancesters_003.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5382909857181283938" border="0" /></a>I've written a few times before about Levi Overholser, my <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/05/other-overholser.html">pioneering</a>, <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/06/levis-railroad-ties.html">railroad-promoting</a>, <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/06/levis-tips-on-business-negotiation.html">gun-toting</a>, <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/06/bad-apple-on-family-tree.html">alleged-bankruptcy-fraud-committing</a> ancestor. But I don't ever remember seeing a picture of him. Now, from an Overholser cousin, here he is.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcqf41Tqjs-IixXbbHiZ-JwS4Ep37rLcFoXTuK0F_J7_YM_hyphenhyphenYMRsYvSqNDbX-wgh3Pi9C33zcVxZ7RKU7A_x2VzCfrwNNFvT2Ubz3gMJzlkcLvqoYrkkxqNFAtt3072CjzsUzutPp-8Q/s1600-h/DSCN1351_0042.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcqf41Tqjs-IixXbbHiZ-JwS4Ep37rLcFoXTuK0F_J7_YM_hyphenhyphenYMRsYvSqNDbX-wgh3Pi9C33zcVxZ7RKU7A_x2VzCfrwNNFvT2Ubz3gMJzlkcLvqoYrkkxqNFAtt3072CjzsUzutPp-8Q/s400/DSCN1351_0042.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5382910114402783282" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Said cousin also sent this photo of Levi and Mary Overholser's graves at Fairlawn Cemetery in Oklahoma City. Thanks, Cousin!Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-57989220109191162792009-04-06T11:03:00.004-04:002009-04-06T11:50:31.201-04:00Cousin Conclave<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBJTGcpQol80dpv3GorhYv34veP1nmf3QPQ_RLSWX2vH29KzFpYRHu63htWp45gvMvtjMye72c93ei4ghLg5eMuPGk5bpvEyNkwzESFSp1iJuMFD9YuasbsEEfOaouS8EO5yGO9_Ghgp4/s1600-h/branchcousins.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 238px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBJTGcpQol80dpv3GorhYv34veP1nmf3QPQ_RLSWX2vH29KzFpYRHu63htWp45gvMvtjMye72c93ei4ghLg5eMuPGk5bpvEyNkwzESFSp1iJuMFD9YuasbsEEfOaouS8EO5yGO9_Ghgp4/s400/branchcousins.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321594506432732562" border="0" /></a><br />This photo (click to enlarge) was probably taken around 1940 on the farm of John George and Margaret (Jehu) Branch in Horatio, Pennsylvania, near Punxsutawney. A couple of George and Margaret's grandchildren have identified themselves in the photo: Clarence Milo Branch's daughter is seated in the back row at right, and his younger son is seated in the first row at right. They believe most if not all of the other nine children are their Branch cousins, but they could not identify them definitively.<br /><br />George and Margaret had 14 grandchildren in all, 12 of whom had been born by 1940. (The oldest of these was born in about 1924, the youngest in about 1936.) Clarence's older son does not appear to be in the picture. So the rest may well be children of George and Margaret's children Richard Branch, George Branch, and Sarah Ball. (Their youngest son, Harry, didn't marry until 1942.)<br /><br />Let me know by comment or e-mail if any of those faces look familiar. Whoever they are, it's a great picture!Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-3328342324508511052009-03-29T21:14:00.002-04:002009-03-31T13:24:34.698-04:00John Washington Vermillion, 1857-1928Someone I've tried to learn a little more about in my research is Blanche Branch's grandfather, John Washington (Wash) Vermillion. Blanche's father Walter Vermillion died when she was just five months old, and her other three grandparents died before she was born, so Wash was an important person in her life. She spoke of him with affection and reverence, and she attributed some of her life decisions (most notably being a Republican and a Methodist) to his influence. From a variety of sources I've been able to put together a partial chronology of his life.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7YTt3krqEtSPLn1sX_f0Xtzo9wpkCJSLXv3HwdV29bm_Y2iMjj4eL0gZ80mpH1zy27MbOogPzsQ7j5BxJJv4Zn8FsFcDdfRTVMq_K1dzbIznV1B7kEsne4T_Iq4bA7sygl1sXZQv8ZJY/s1600-h/lawrence.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 238px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7YTt3krqEtSPLn1sX_f0Xtzo9wpkCJSLXv3HwdV29bm_Y2iMjj4eL0gZ80mpH1zy27MbOogPzsQ7j5BxJJv4Zn8FsFcDdfRTVMq_K1dzbIznV1B7kEsne4T_Iq4bA7sygl1sXZQv8ZJY/s320/lawrence.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5314220105019492290" border="0" /></a>According to his grave marker at the Hillside Cemetery in Purcell, Oklahoma, Wash was born on January 19, 1857, most likely in Lawrence County, Missouri (in the southwest part of the state--see map at left, click to enlarge). His parents were John H. Vermillion and Mary Smith. His mother was born in Tennessee, we know from the census, but we know little more about her except for some hunches. (It's hard to narrow down the possibilities for someone named Smith.) His father was born in Missouri, where the Vermillions had arrived in the 1830s from Ohio. (If you go back further, the Vermillions descend from a French protestant immigrant named Giles Vermillion who came to Maryland in 1698.)<br /><br />In 1860, the census has John H. and Mary Vermillion with children Reuben (3), Wash (2) and Andrew (1) in Spring River Township. In this and subsequent censuses, John is listed as a farmer. Before Mary Vermillion died in 1888, she and John had 12 children in all, though some of them apparently didn't survive past childhood. (John would have another three with his second wife before his death in 1900.) In the 1870 census, 12-year-old Wash is listed with his parents and siblings; for Wash's "occupation," the entry reads "works on farm."<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidaLobpa_2Mw2w2FbtPp4n9cksLhz33QElLAfRyvhdW3pGEgSRzmazTkNj6LdPgUwAb43vXig6zrTDm-cLf9rINn9aXkB5n2jpYnUj0pI1aTff0OvuHA212YCulU1E3CBR_wvuDftghks/s1600-h/Picture+1.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidaLobpa_2Mw2w2FbtPp4n9cksLhz33QElLAfRyvhdW3pGEgSRzmazTkNj6LdPgUwAb43vXig6zrTDm-cLf9rINn9aXkB5n2jpYnUj0pI1aTff0OvuHA212YCulU1E3CBR_wvuDftghks/s320/Picture+1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5314238396488974066" border="0" /></a>On November 25, 1875, when he was 18, Wash married Martha Burrow, a Missouri native who had lost both of her parents when she was about 5. (See marriage record above--click to enlarge.) I'll talk more about Martha in another post, but I'll note here that she was the great-granddaughter of the revival preacher <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/06/me-and-william-mcgee.html">William McGee</a> and great-great-granddaughter of the Revolutionary spy <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/11/quite-possibly-my-coolest-ancestor.html">Martha Bell</a>. Wash and Martha soon got a piece of land to farm themselves: they were enumerated in the 1880 census in Aurora, the township just east of Spring River, with Martha and sons Walter (2) and Willie (5/12 yrs.). This squares with Blanche Branch's report that her father, Walter, was born in Aurora. Wash and Martha had five children in seven years: Walter Edward (1878), William R. (1879), Ira Monroe (1881), John (1883), and Cora (1885). It wasn't too long after Cora was born, apparently, that Martha Burrow died.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0ZejmJgQol4lyp2fy274FPR6VN35McLdioR3nCOPsznQ1J9sS6-9JWUsbJUbYEIxGCEXvvPBWWBp8z62djnYxwGEa5HsTXaCGxRBCHjkhyEin_T2qyFzz58wK8WpCrBT9wtKW3XTKhC8/s1600-h/jwvermillion&children.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 234px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0ZejmJgQol4lyp2fy274FPR6VN35McLdioR3nCOPsznQ1J9sS6-9JWUsbJUbYEIxGCEXvvPBWWBp8z62djnYxwGEa5HsTXaCGxRBCHjkhyEin_T2qyFzz58wK8WpCrBT9wtKW3XTKhC8/s320/jwvermillion&children.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5314239017246222546" border="0" /></a>I have never run across any cause of death or even a date of death. One clue is an undated photograph taken of Wash and his five children without their mother (at left; click to enlarge). Bearing in mind that Walter (standing at left) and Cora (in front of Walter) were seven years apart, I'd guess that they might be 10 and 3, which would mean the picture was taken in 1888. If so, Wash found himself widowed with five children by the time he was 30 years old.<br /><br />It would come as no surprise that he would want to marry again. And Susannah (usually called Susan) Bassett Lamar, the woman he married, was probably motivated as well. A year older than Wash, she was the widow of one William Henry Lamar and had two teenaged daughters. They probably married in 1894. (There may have been another wife between Martha and Susan: the 1910 Census reported that Wash had been married three times, Susan twice. But I haven't yet been able to track down any other evidence of another marriage.)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivnZgshTq4xl9zgz6n5nnb47fqIkcYEGG304WbsfL0zhw6Eg1Zup8Amp2Db6XFOSLWzfROVNBpswNYY2aos3rw3FDgXQ6N-QDlzwMkRSQmeysERWuERZtUuBZd5HSvaYdSUYLbjrEW6pg/s1600-h/250px-OKMap-doton-Wayne.PNG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 128px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivnZgshTq4xl9zgz6n5nnb47fqIkcYEGG304WbsfL0zhw6Eg1Zup8Amp2Db6XFOSLWzfROVNBpswNYY2aos3rw3FDgXQ6N-QDlzwMkRSQmeysERWuERZtUuBZd5HSvaYdSUYLbjrEW6pg/s320/250px-OKMap-doton-Wayne.PNG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316805588826225954" border="0" /></a>Around 1889, Wash took his family to Indian Territory, where he established a farm in the vicinity of Wayne in McClain County (see map at left). A 1900 newspaper account of his son Ira's murder trail (more on that <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2008/01/what-ira-did.html">here</a>, <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2008/01/vermillion-murder-trial.html">here</a>, <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2008/01/life-in-prison.html">here</a>, and <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2008/01/iras-life-on-outside-mostly_15.html">here</a>) says that the family had been in the area for 11 years, so they would have arrived in Indian Territory just as Oklahoma Territory was opening to white settlement across the Canadian River.<br /><br />The 1900 census shows Wash and Susan and four of his children in the Chickasaw Nation of Indian Territory, near Wayne in McClain County. His son Willie had died the year before at the age of 20; he is buried in Purcell.<br /><br />While still mourning his son Willie, Wash and the family faced another tragedy in 1900 when 18-year-old Ira, drunk, lassoed Joseph Nemecek and dragged him to his death. In reporting on the sensational crime, the local press took pains to say that Wash was respected in the community and lauded him for standing behind their son throughout his trial. (According to prison records, Wash would be Ira's most faithful correspondent during his 13 years in prison, writing to him nearly 200 times.)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFqK29a6GNmDvT9ZdWucUDVbp3Hm4WfOu-dmW7kQpMS9O-U39ELzlLzyOfYhJ8VCDXmzgAVjRk9k0GP2UFDOP_U6RCVtcfh2R23MHYdsfDRzoDYEKDfssnqEdwniOnqnklfI9GmhnJC9c/s1600-h/800px-Franklin_County_Washington_Incorporated_and_Unincorporated_areas_Mesa_Highlighted.svg.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 160px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFqK29a6GNmDvT9ZdWucUDVbp3Hm4WfOu-dmW7kQpMS9O-U39ELzlLzyOfYhJ8VCDXmzgAVjRk9k0GP2UFDOP_U6RCVtcfh2R23MHYdsfDRzoDYEKDfssnqEdwniOnqnklfI9GmhnJC9c/s320/800px-Franklin_County_Washington_Incorporated_and_Unincorporated_areas_Mesa_Highlighted.svg.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5314253667763968386" border="0" /></a>The episode must have been difficult for Wash, and perhaps it contributed to the family's decision to move to the state of Washington in 1901. Wash and Susan, daughter Cora, and son Walter took up farming in a township called Mesa in Franklin County (see map at left: Mesa is the small encircled red spot within Franklin County). This is an arid country covered with sagebrush. Blanche Branch's mother Mollie Jicha went up to Washington to join Walter and marry him in 1902 or thereabouts; Blanche always said that a result of her time there, her mother couldn't stand the smell of sagebrush.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaqxgIDGKqTxLqeDePzgE1bezXj9opP4opa44qfuzAxg5k2338y8-jA2XGpQLHrgnP1fYDX7YFHgeJq-twi6VCt-_gz4E_HRuQ97qOLKgWHLTHC8TcOxNFknAemrt6PX9DNUZSx5gxDJY/s1600-h/AridSnakeRiver.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 260px; height: 149px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaqxgIDGKqTxLqeDePzgE1bezXj9opP4opa44qfuzAxg5k2338y8-jA2XGpQLHrgnP1fYDX7YFHgeJq-twi6VCt-_gz4E_HRuQ97qOLKgWHLTHC8TcOxNFknAemrt6PX9DNUZSx5gxDJY/s320/AridSnakeRiver.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316803948238900658" border="0" /></a> (Left: sagebrush on the Snake River in Franklin County, Washington, 1800s.)<br /><br />Blanche always spoke of the Washington venture as a sort of failed experiment. It wasn't long until most of the Vermillions returned to Indian Territory. Wash and Susan and Walter and Mollie were back in Wayne by 1906. It's not clear whether Wash's son John ever moved to Washington, and Ira spent all that time in, um, Leavenworth. Only Cora, who married Frank Lamb in 1906/7, stayed in Washington, learned to farm the country fruitfully, and begat a large flock of Lambs who are still in the area today.<br /><br />In 1907, Wash lost a second son: Walter died from tuberculosis, leaving a wife, Mollie, and children John (4) and Blanche (five months).<br /><br />On May 5, 1910, Wash and Susan were recorded in the census as living in the town of Wayne. Wash was not listed as a farmer; instead he had no occupation and the explanation "own income." Blanche said that he owned wheat combines. And in the years 1910 to 1912, Wash must have been busy with some sorts of ventures in southwest Missouri and northeast Oklahoma, as some of his letters to Ira have return addresses from towns in those areas.<br /><br />At the same time, something happened to Wash's marriage to Susan. Because in 1911, Ira began getting letters from another Mrs. J. W. Vermillion, a woman named Carey (I've also seen it spelled Cary) who was only 26 years old (about his daughter's age). I had always assumed that Wash and Susan's marriage ended in Susan's death, but I saw an online source recently that suggested that Susan died in Purcell in 1917. So that one may have ended in divorce.<br /><br />In 1912, Wash and Carey moved to Oklahoma City, where Blanche said he owned a furniture store. Some time between 1914 and 1920, Wash's third son John died, leaving a wife and a son, Leonard.<br /><br />I don't know much about Wash's later years, except that he seems to have lived in Wayne during his last decade. He died in 1928, when Blanche was 21. Wash lost so many people by the time he reached his three score and ten. He outlived his first wife and three of his four sons. His surviving son Ira lived in Washington and Arizona after his release from prison in 1914 (and did another stint in prison for counterfeiting), and his daughter Cora and her large family were far away in Washington. Though he had his young wife for company, Wash must have been surprised and saddened to be so bereft of family in his old age. I would think that he would have especially valued Blanche, John, and Leonard, his nearby grandchildren. It's no wonder Blanche remembered him so fondly.Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-67484036908766293122009-03-24T00:17:00.000-04:002009-03-24T00:18:22.378-04:00A Brush With Abe<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7li6icPeberHRG2bYjpY_8mYZ5aSLA9-T8LOOU0zQaoF7mE0N_o8TooW5LuYtOza2QrgBAltDSwRXmE5JZK77a4GcRNmmZcnGl7iavJWgwbXrK1TR1NsZ2iTZKcy36sP2wm0kIgwWvqg/s1600-h/Print_large_web.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 219px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7li6icPeberHRG2bYjpY_8mYZ5aSLA9-T8LOOU0zQaoF7mE0N_o8TooW5LuYtOza2QrgBAltDSwRXmE5JZK77a4GcRNmmZcnGl7iavJWgwbXrK1TR1NsZ2iTZKcy36sP2wm0kIgwWvqg/s320/Print_large_web.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312362860205204386" border="0" /></a>It's Abraham Lincoln's Bicentennial year, so here's the only thing I know about how Lincoln's life intersected with our family's (not counting that whole Civil War that he won). It's not much, but, you know, it's <span style="font-style: italic;">Lincoln</span>.<br /><br />Cal Jones's great-grandmother (father's mother's mother) was a woman named Salina Hash (you just <span style="font-style: italic;">have</span> to say it with an Arkansas accent), who married Ambrose Clark. Salina was born in Warren County, Tennessee, to Alvin (Josh) Hash and Esther Drake Hash in 1823; family legend holds that her parents moved to Illinois in 1825 so that they might free the slaves that they owned. Whatever the reason, we know from the census that in 1830 the family was living on a farm in Sangamon County, Illinois—the same county to which the young Abraham Lincoln came in 1830. The Hashes lived there until 1836, when they moved to Washington County, Arkansas, where Salina met Ambrose Clark.<br /><br />I heard the Hashes' Lincoln story from Marian Carter Ledgerwood, a Jones/Shumate cousin who is a well-published family historian. The details of the story vary with the teller, but it was set down in writing by Alvin and Esther's youngest son, Benjamin Franklin Hash. He wrote of his parents: "Abraham Lincoln surveyed their land. He made a mark in the door of the cabin so as to tell when it was twelve o'clock." Others fill in details by explaining that Lincoln was helping out after Esther complained to him that she didn't have a clock.<br /><br />It is well documented that Lincoln worked as a surveyor in Sangamon County starting in 1833, so this tale is certainly plausible. Too bad the Hashes didn't know what was to become of Lincoln--they might have taken that door with them when they moved to Arkansas.<br /><br />For what it's worth, Salina and her husband Ambrose Clark ended up being Union sympathizers when the Civil War broke out nearly 30 years later. They took in a wounded Union soldier named Charles Matthew (Matt) Jones after a battle near Fayetteville, and the story goes that Matt fell in love with their raven-haired daughter, Esther Clark. He came back and married her, and they became the parents of Silas Jones and the grandparents of Cal Jones. So I guess some of us have Lincoln's war to thank for our existence!Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-77349000206477176872009-03-19T14:37:00.007-04:002009-03-19T15:19:16.123-04:00The Jichas' final resting places<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoO5UdqyNtpAYucB-UVn4eWdD3GQ82LzDfSDjBgdEx8xHGMk4qrOggS-d_EMbXKY3K8T8wB4N9FlPb_57A70D0rph0uB5TRpJ0-mAw5CzgJcN-OKjzh-o4KcKV805C4279wxNNS6ZLJ0Q/s1600-h/catherinejicha.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 125px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoO5UdqyNtpAYucB-UVn4eWdD3GQ82LzDfSDjBgdEx8xHGMk4qrOggS-d_EMbXKY3K8T8wB4N9FlPb_57A70D0rph0uB5TRpJ0-mAw5CzgJcN-OKjzh-o4KcKV805C4279wxNNS6ZLJ0Q/s320/catherinejicha.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5314974525235393586" border="0" /></a>I wrote a couple of years ago about <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/04/katerina-jicha-pioneer-woman.html">George and Kate Jicha</a>, Blanche Branch's grandparents, who emigrated from Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic) in about 1881 and took part in the Oklahoma Land Run in 1889. George died in December of that year, and Kate died in 1897.<br /><br />I knew already that George was buried at Maguire-Fairview Cemetery, a secular cemetery east of Noble (see photo below). But I didn't know where Kate was buried until I saw online a photo (left, click to enlarge) of her grave marker, contributed by a third cousin. She is at St. Joseph's Catholic Church Cemetery in Norman, which is within the I.O.O.F. Cemetery north of the city. If you remember how she traveled five thousand miles, pioneered two prairie homesteads, and raised seven children, the words "At Rest" on her stone take on a little extra meaning.<br /><br />George and Kate were Catholic, of course; their children, as far as I know, all became Protestants (though some of their descendants today are Catholic). At first I thought it was curious that Kate had chosen a Catholic cemetery for herself but not for her husband. But then I remembered when they died: I think it's entirely possible that a Catholic cemetery had not yet been established in their area when George died, just eight months after the Land Run.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvjn_QueLSNGeC4IP2mvBuLXMhi6MF9mtO5LObnMk8CFCXB4SMU4LB8i7jREiW6JtIoae11rJPyrxnC7G9u9qeJe-HTDaNKyDGdYGTMPuYv0n_STb09ay9G0N5s8CsxqdreK03CQrw5zQ/s1600-h/19456390_117969005039.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 158px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvjn_QueLSNGeC4IP2mvBuLXMhi6MF9mtO5LObnMk8CFCXB4SMU4LB8i7jREiW6JtIoae11rJPyrxnC7G9u9qeJe-HTDaNKyDGdYGTMPuYv0n_STb09ay9G0N5s8CsxqdreK03CQrw5zQ/s320/19456390_117969005039.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5314974791726946994" border="0" /></a>Anyway, if you're ever in the area and want to give them a shout, here's how to get there:<br /><a href="http://www.okcemeteries.net/cleveland/maguirefairview/maguirefairview.htm">Maguire-Fairview Cemetery</a><br /><a href="http://www.okcemeteries.net/cleveland/stjoe/astjoe.htm">St. Joseph's Catholic Church Cemetery</a>Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-9311125434259168622009-03-10T23:24:00.008-04:002009-03-12T13:38:10.472-04:00Crank and WaltyDonald Rumsfeld said you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish to have. That's the way one should approach family history, too, but I sometimes find myself devoting time and attention to the ancestors I<span style="font-style: italic;"> wish</span> I had. I'm not the only one: in years of poking around the internet, I've found wishful and quite erroneous information shoehorning famous people into our family. There was the hopeful family tree that imagined that Daniel Boone's sister was an ancestor of Nannie Shumate, and another that substituted one brother for another in order to bring Mayflower passenger John Alden into Silas Jones's line.<br /><br />I don't want to make that mistake here, but I can't help telling you about an ancestor that I covet for our tree. George Lamberton was one of the earliest settlers of my adopted hometown of New Haven, Connecticut, which is reason enough for me to want to make that connection. But Lamberton was also central to a legendary episode in the early history of the New Haven Colony -- one that was immortalized in a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Lamberton apparently died at sea in 1646 while captaining a "Great Shippe" that the New Haven colonists had loaded with goods bound for England, hoping to reverse their colony's failing fortunes through profits from the trip. The ship was never seen again. Well, sort of. More about that in a moment.<br /><br />First I'll tell you a little about where he fits in: I've told you before about <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2008/05/about-ambrose.html">Ambrose Clark</a>, the great-grandfather of Cal Jones. Ambrose ended up in Arkansas but was born in Ohio to parents from New England -- the only New Englanders I've found in my family tree. I told you in my last post a little about Ambrose's mother, <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2009/03/marcy-marcy-marcy.html">Marcy Humes</a>. All we know about the origins of his father, John Clark, was that he was born around 1783 in Vermont and married Marcy in Middlesex, Vermont, in 1810.<br /><br />But I have reason to believe that John ties into a family of Clarks from Connecticut who are descended from George Lamberton. I'm not the only one to think so; a Clark historian in Vermont has also made the connection. But there is no proof and at least one "missing link" between the families. I'll explain all that at the end. Let's get back to the tale of the sea.<br /><br />So the New Haven Colony (which later merged with Connecticut) was founded in 1638 by English Puritans who had first planned to settle in Massachusetts, but who decided that that colony was both too crowded and insufficiently pious for their purposes. They came instead to a beautiful natural harbor on Long Island Sound, inhabited lightly by friendly Indians, and set about building a colony that would operate strictly under biblical law. They also hoped to make a lot of money, but that proved easier said than done. After some initial attempts at trade and agriculture didn't work out so well, they decided in 1646 that they needed to make a big score. They had a large ship built to sail to England and carry all the crops and merchandise they could produce.<br /><br />The ship, built in Rhode Island, was the first oceangoing vessel built in the colonies, and it was apparently of dubious seaworthiness. So the man they chose to be its captain. George Lamberton, was either brave or optimistic or burdened with low foresight. George, a former London merchant, was 42 years old; he had come to New Haven with his wife Margaret and four daughters in 1638. The Lambertons had three more daughters before his voyage. (Their names are worth noting: Elizabeth, Hannah, Hope, Deliverance, Mercy, Desire, Obedience.)<br /><br />George had been involved earlier in another scheme to improve the colony's fortunes: he led a 1641 excursion to Delaware to try to set up an outpost of New Haven for trade, but the party was chased out by the Swedes who had settled there. Along the way, he is said to have purchased the land that later became Phildaelphia from the local Indians -- when he sailed for England, he supposedly had a deed for this purchase with him.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmmN1PA62tZnJTHCA-mLUsIXL0AJL26N8pVpYiyXsPLZ4or7lKZFnamSDvbd9XeyG-iU7UvHL7GYSqFCtGt3FjPDJgVJp9SsZMGRAdJv0jVaU6zyz1luqPuPkADoo5Mo1o-A6zNQ4NIMQ/s1600-h/phantom_ship.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 217px; height: 156px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmmN1PA62tZnJTHCA-mLUsIXL0AJL26N8pVpYiyXsPLZ4or7lKZFnamSDvbd9XeyG-iU7UvHL7GYSqFCtGt3FjPDJgVJp9SsZMGRAdJv0jVaU6zyz1luqPuPkADoo5Mo1o-A6zNQ4NIMQ/s320/phantom_ship.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311974129095091618" border="0" /></a>The Great Shippe left New Haven Harbor in January 1646 (as depicted in the painting at left. Sorry it's so small--I'll try to find a bigger one). Colonists had to cut a path for the ship through the ice in the harbor. In addition to Lamberton and the cargo, there were passengers aboard who were going back to England, either permanently or to visit. More than a year went by without word of the ship, which never arrived in England. After a while, the New Haven colonists gave up hoping for their return. Being good Puritans who believed that God had predestined everything, they did not pray for the ship's miraculous return; instead, they asked that God let them know what had happened to the ship and its passengers. The answer came in an apparition in the harbor one afternoon.<br /><br />Here I should stop trying to tell the story and let Longfellow do it. His 1858 poem, reproduced below, was based on an account by Cotton Mather in 1702.<br /><br />The Phantom Ship<br /><br />By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow<p>In Mather's Magnalia Christi,<br />Of the old colonial time,<br />May be found in prose the legend<br />That is here set down in rhyme.</p> <p>A ship sailed from New Haven,<br />And the keen and frosty airs,<br />That filled her sails at parting,<br />Were heavy with good men's prayers.</p> <p><q>O Lord! if it be thy pleasure</q>--<br />Thus prayed the old divine--<br /><q>To bury our friends in the ocean,<br />Take them, for they are thine!</q></p> <p>But Master Lamberton muttered,<br />And under his breath said he,<br /><q>This ship is so crank and walty,<br />I fear our grave she will be!</q></p> <p>And the ship that came from England,<br /></p><p>When the winter months were gone,<br />Brought no tidings of this vessel,<br />Nor of Master Lamberton.</p> <p>This put the people to praying<br />That the Lord would let them hear<br />What in His greater wisdom<br />He had done with friends so dear.</p> <p>And at last their prayers were answered:--<br />It was in the month of June,<br />An hour before the sunset<br />Of a windy afternoon,</p> <p>When, steadily steering landward,<br />A ship was seen below,<br />And they knew it was Lamberton, Master,<br />Who sailed so long ago.</p> <p>On she came, with a cloud of canvas,<br />Right against the wind that blew.<br />Until the eye could distinguish<br />The faces of the crew.</p> <p>Then fell her straining topmasts,<br />Hanging tangled in the shrouds,<br />And her sails were loosened and lifted,<br />And blown away like clouds.</p> <p>And the masts, with all their rigging,<br />Fell slowly, one by one,<br />And the hulk dilated and vanished,<br />As a sea-mist in the sun!</p> <p>And the people who saw this marvel<br />Each said unto his friend,<br />That this was the mould of their vessel,<br />And thus her tragic end.</p> <p>And the pastor of the village<br />Gave thanks to God in prayer,<br />That, to quiet their troubled spirits,<br />He had sent this Ship of Air.</p><p>Here's a <a href="http://www.curbstone.org/index.cfm?webpage=87">prose version</a> of the Phantom Ship story. And if you really want to go deep into the story, the original telling begins on page 83 of <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=49JdS7NoSawC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Magnalia+Christi+Americana">this book</a> from 1702 by Cotton Mather.</p> So these Puritans could rest easier knowing for sure that their friends and family had died in a shipwreck. One of the lost was the wife of Deputy Governor Stephen Goodyear (ancestor of the man who invented vulcanized rubber). The widowed Margaret Lamberton married the widowed Stephen Goodyear a year later.<br /><br />What makes me think we might be descendants of George Lamberton? It's all in the name Ambrose. George and Margaret's daughter Hope married Samuel Ambrose, and their daughter Abigail married John Clark. The Clarks ended up in Middletown, Connecticut, up the road from New Haven, and they had a son and several other descendants named Ambrose Clark. If some of these Clarks moved to Vermont -- which is perfectly plausible, as there was much emigration from Connecticut to Vermont in the 18th century -- our John Clark could be one of their descendants, which would explain the origin of "our" Ambrose's name.<br /><br />The line, with a gaping hole, might look something like this:<br /><br />George Lamberton (1604–1646) m. Margaret Lewen<br />Hope Lamberton (ca. 1636–ca. 1700) m. Samuel Ambrose<br />Abigail Ambrose (1666–1732) m. John Clark<br />Ambrose Clark (1696–1764) m. Elizabeth Ward<br />Ambrose Clark (1723–? ) m. Mary Kilbourn<br />[Missing Link]<br />John Clark (1783–1850) m. Marcy Humes<br />Ambrose Clark (1818–1896) m. Salina Hash<br />Esther Caroline Clark (1848–1922) m. Charles Matthew Jones<br />Silas Matthew Jones (1871–1940) m. Nancy Lucinda Shumate<br />Sherman Calaway Jones (1895–1967) m. Clara Paxton<br /><br />I don't know if we'll ever fill in that missing link. You'd think it would be hard to learn anything new about people who lived 250 years ago, but I hold out hope that someone has information in a family bible or a trunk in the attic that will clear all this up.<br /><br /><h1 class="pagetitle"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXE2PrZV6rfJapKmYSnZebPlaCDEjZXAFysDcVBHbMLbxa0676a3yYHrj_4_NDg_WWlnvXDE5c0nTkwoEEtjf6dBItKKx61-JcYrSZ78ik8mHtxCesHuq2rf2C-ul8byP_MvBlq9DI-PY/s1600-h/brockett+map.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 238px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXE2PrZV6rfJapKmYSnZebPlaCDEjZXAFysDcVBHbMLbxa0676a3yYHrj_4_NDg_WWlnvXDE5c0nTkwoEEtjf6dBItKKx61-JcYrSZ78ik8mHtxCesHuq2rf2C-ul8byP_MvBlq9DI-PY/s320/brockett+map.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311951567257673906" border="0" /></a></h1> There's a classic old map (left, click on it to enlarge) showing the land held by settlers in the nine-block grid of New Haven in 1641. George Lamberton's tract, in the lower left square near the red letter "C," is right across the street from our favorite Chinese restaurant. I think of him whenever we have sauteed string beans.Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-64095223872839168692009-03-10T23:22:00.001-04:002009-03-11T09:05:37.018-04:00Marcy, Marcy, Marcy!A while back (and it <span style="font-style: italic;">has</span> been a while -- guess I've been distracted), I introduced you to the Joneses' <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2008/05/about-ambrose.html">only known New England ancestry</a>, via one Ambrose Clark, whose parents John and Marcy were married in Vermont in 1810. I'll follow up on John Clark's family in the next post, but this time I'll fill you in on the knowledge we have -- sketchy and sometimes contradictory as it is -- of Ambrose's mother, Marcy Humes. She was apparently born in Douglas, Massachusetts, and moved up to Vermont with her brother, Ezra Humes. It's Marcy's family that connects by marriage to a lot of storied old New Englanders such as John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and John Alden (the Pilgrim who, as <a href="http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/poetry/TheCompletePoeticalWorksofHenryWadsworthLongfellow/chap10.html">Longfellow told it</a>, was urged to "speak for himself" by Priscilla Mullins).<br /><br />Marcy's father, Samuel Humes, and her mother, Marcy Thompson, were cousins, both descended from a Thayer family that settled in Mendon, Massachusetts. Marcy Thompson's grandmother was Mercy Thayer (so I guess the name Marcy is a corruption of the very Puritan name Mercy), and Samuel Humes's mother was Martha Thayer. Mercy was the granddaughter and Martha the great-granddaughter of Ferdinando Thayer (I love that name and have no clue how a 17th-century Englishman acquired it), who emigrated from England to Braintree, Massachusetts, and was among the first settlers of Mendon. Mendon is only 40 miles from Boston, but in the 1660s it was a wilderness. The town was attacked and burned by Indians during King Philip's war in the 1670s.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU3rsppcygcy_oDo04DHtWNHB9c1Up7-hh71K2OXbf-8VeXyMPulFKNc_BJKPdSL1uLclStQaEhh1okDUU-75iIontEckvuPWTRlOMtSxoH3lmr08A05sfTE2LSYdFQqBxtULa-EIWP5g/s1600-h/IMG_0721%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU3rsppcygcy_oDo04DHtWNHB9c1Up7-hh71K2OXbf-8VeXyMPulFKNc_BJKPdSL1uLclStQaEhh1okDUU-75iIontEckvuPWTRlOMtSxoH3lmr08A05sfTE2LSYdFQqBxtULa-EIWP5g/s320/IMG_0721%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311762375743365186" border="0" /></a>(Left: a monument to the founders of Mendon, Massachusetts. Ferdinando Thayer is the first name listed.)<br /><br />There is extensive documentation of more Massachusetts ancestors of Marcy's, but as I said, the various internet sources sometimes contradict themselves. Some of the trees have her ancestors going back to Cambridge, Massachusetts, as early as 1634. If I can ever sort out all the contradictory claims and find some proof for the lineage, this line would be our best chance of reaching that holy grail of American genealogical snootiness, a Mayflower ancestor. But in truth, I'd rather find some Native American ancestry -- as Will Rogers said, "My ancestors didn't come over in the Mayflower; they met the boat."Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-72545235227686509422008-08-19T12:36:00.009-04:002008-08-19T13:46:41.066-04:00The House Where Clara Grew UpSome time between 1910 and 1913, Clara Paxton went to Valley Falls, Kansas, to live with her Uncle Charlie and Aunt Sue Overholser, who had no children of their own. Her mother, Grace Overholser Paxton, had died in 1901, before Clara turned two, and her father <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/03/george-bailey-paxton-1862-1910.html">George Bailey Paxton</a> died in 1910. Clara and her brother Burton were living with their grandmother Paxton in Independence, Missouri, in 1910 (down the street from the future Mrs. Harry Truman), but some time before 1913 they left her home. Clara went to Valley Falls and Burton to his aunt Hattie Overholser Jones in Columbus, Kansas.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Z7ZsUQn95PfV6cAA_mO-ysChz55doXGSD285DQQJHWqsJl6d24CSLTnK_eFYS8MH8nK3q-VLYtCGzc9mtw9GZYf5fWCuun1LqWIn23HXIpSPQhoiU4iAauoKWi07V1xsYv2gOnyOaeU/s1600-h/main_st_valley_falls_1909.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Z7ZsUQn95PfV6cAA_mO-ysChz55doXGSD285DQQJHWqsJl6d24CSLTnK_eFYS8MH8nK3q-VLYtCGzc9mtw9GZYf5fWCuun1LqWIn23HXIpSPQhoiU4iAauoKWi07V1xsYv2gOnyOaeU/s320/main_st_valley_falls_1909.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5236285654891955538" border="0" /></a>(At left is a picture of Main Street in Valley Falls in 1909; the population in 1910 was 1150.)<br /><br />Clara lived with Charlie and Sue until she finished high school in 1918. Now, thanks to some recently posted newspaper archives online, I think I've found some information about just where she lived.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAhSQp8HJjj-l_JWoya9IUEmOwCdFuFsqvKPfICnZOCRDT4aCUgznIxvGhtPrP1PMl1oV6vx0Rq9gWLyI5z88cqMpePL1yN5vWyEVnmWYWLOFpfRnNDLFdzESjPZF73IFUGT-dCFTumq8/s1600-h/overholserhouse.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAhSQp8HJjj-l_JWoya9IUEmOwCdFuFsqvKPfICnZOCRDT4aCUgznIxvGhtPrP1PMl1oV6vx0Rq9gWLyI5z88cqMpePL1yN5vWyEVnmWYWLOFpfRnNDLFdzESjPZF73IFUGT-dCFTumq8/s320/overholserhouse.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5236286460003694018" border="0" /></a>The picture at left is from the front page of the <a href="http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/SingleIndexIndView.aspx?ix=stp_vfv&hpp=1&rf=*,z*&qt=i&zpage=01&zd=27&zm=July&zy=1906&highlight=overholser#centerapplet">July 27, 1906, issue</a> of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Farmers Vindicator</span>, the newspaper in Valley Falls. With the headline "An Historic Corner," the accompanying article talks about an old local hotel called the Cataract House (cataract being another word for waterfall--who knew?). Most of the article describes the hotel, which was built in 1857, but the last paragraphs touch on our family in explaining why the hotel is no longer there:<br /><blockquote>In 1880 the Cataract House was purchased by Mrs. Susan M. Gardiner, of Winchester, which under the management of J. J. Gardiner continued a popular hotel for 20 years. . . .About the end of the century the Cataract was closed as a hotel and the property was transferred to Susan E. Gardiner, now Mrs. Chas. L. Overholser. The work of removing and tearing down the old house began in the Fall of 1901 and in the year following the present modern cottage home of Mr. and Mrs. Overholser was completed.<br />Herein are illustrations of the old house and the new. The first lights in the Cataract House were tallow candles, then sperm, a burning fluid lamp, and later the Kerosene Chandelier. The Overholser home is brilliantly lighted by electricity in every room, and even out to the wood house and the hen house.</blockquote>So from reading this and later newspaper items about Charlie and Sue, I feel fairly sure that the house pictured is the one where the Overholsers lived while Clara was with them.<br /><br />More nuggets from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Vindicator</span> to come.Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-79962128335432574002008-08-19T10:46:00.004-04:002008-08-19T11:50:47.790-04:00Finally! We're a Persecuted Minority!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqlUtV9PI5qWQCdj62Zzd0C_Qyx7oAgOwNsT5TmPfhO5lx_Rb7CbIWTbAOLOPGUQiLusNYskxS4yEhusrbVw2xxtq87wSRg4X2fzWqodXX_OFKfg85Z_P5lmlNLXCBu-e8VMPIpz53k3E/s1600-h/American1346.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqlUtV9PI5qWQCdj62Zzd0C_Qyx7oAgOwNsT5TmPfhO5lx_Rb7CbIWTbAOLOPGUQiLusNYskxS4yEhusrbVw2xxtq87wSRg4X2fzWqodXX_OFKfg85Z_P5lmlNLXCBu-e8VMPIpz53k3E/s320/American1346.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5236243620506958818" border="0" /></a>I suspect a lot of you are like me in that you never really had much of an answer to the question "What are you?" (i.e. Irish, German, etc.) Except for the dash of exotic Czech on Blanche Vermillion's mother's side--and Miles Branch's Welsh mother--I thought of my family as just a bunch of indistinct white Americans.<br /><br />And I'm not alone. When confronted with the box asking for their ancestry on the 2000 census, 7.3 percent of Americans said simply "American" in 2000. While you might think that this is a widely varied group of people who didn't know any more about their ancestry (or didn't consider it the Census Bureau's business), there's actually a distinct geographical pattern to those responses. You can see it in the map above, where the counties with the greatest percentage of people answering "American" are darkest.<br /><br />The shape that emerges is a map of Appalachia, a region whose first white settlers were the group known as "Scotch-Irish" or "Scots-Irish." Their real origins are in the border region between England and Scotland, though many of them lived in Northern Ireland before coming to America in the 1700s. I have slowly come to understand, with the help of a couple of good books, that the Scots-Irish were and are a very distinct cultural group--and that much of my family is part of that culture. It is a culture that overlaps with a lot of better-known segments of American society: born-again Christians, NASCAR fans, and, at least in this year's primaries, Hillary Clinton voters. (The map of the counties where she won by more than 65 percent looks a lot like the one above.) But it's also a culture that doesn't have a strong sense of itself as being different from other Americans--thus the answer to the census question.<br /><br />One of the things I've learned is that the Scots-Irish culture in its early years was open to people of other nationalities who were willing to adopt its (protestant) religion and values. So even though I have found French, Dutch, and Swedish people in my backcountry ancestors, they all seem to have signed on to the Scots-Irish culture.<br /><br />Cal Jones's parents were both very much of this culture. Blanche Vermillion Branch's father was, too, as was Clara Paxton Jones's father. (Her mother's family had some Scots-Irish blood, but they were part of a German-American culture that existed alongside the Mid-Atlantic Quakers.<br /><br />One of the books I'd recommend if you want to know more is called <span style="font-style: italic;">Albion's Seed</span>, by David Hackett Fischer. Fischer breaks down the migration of people from the British Isles before the revolution into four distinct cultural groups: New England Puritans, Virginia elites (and the indentured servants who came to serve them), Mid-Atlantic Quakers, and the Scots-Irish who populated the hills and backcountry. Fischer's book is written for a scholarly audience and can be slow going sometimes, but it opened my eyes to a lot of American history that I'd never understood.<br /><br />And it explained some things about the people we call hillbillies or rednecks. For example, the stereotype of the hillbilly in a tumbledown shack (or more recently, the mobile home) isn't necessarily a sign of laziness: the Scots-Irish, living on the border, were constantly in the midst of war between England and Scotland, and whatever they built was sure to be destroyed. This state of war also led them to develop close affiliations with family-based clans that were allied with one side or the other: the Hatfields and McCoys were continuing a very old tradition when they were a-feudin'.<br /><br />A more readable book is <span style="font-style: italic;">Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America </span>by James Webb, a U.S. Senator from Virginia. Webb is a former Marine, and his take on his Scots-Irish heritage is less scholarly and more of a celebration and a rallying cry. He wants his fellow Scots-Irish to be aware of their heritage and think and vote more like a group. He also recounts a lot of history of the Scots-Irish before they came to America, which is enlightening.Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-45867904793220119282008-05-28T21:14:00.007-04:002009-03-12T13:43:53.043-04:00About Ambrose<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqZab6GGee17LYdoyCeVzffUC7UIfn2YtVYgQpS_XCIU3eR81vqBbURRHfkno5yklqwyJ8hYQFKzZOV6yVMlwy9t1N-7sc85V57EQWvk-P_40LgN4WGI9uWVvm-z6JVcdXDneuQDLeurQ/s1600-h/ambroseclark.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqZab6GGee17LYdoyCeVzffUC7UIfn2YtVYgQpS_XCIU3eR81vqBbURRHfkno5yklqwyJ8hYQFKzZOV6yVMlwy9t1N-7sc85V57EQWvk-P_40LgN4WGI9uWVvm-z6JVcdXDneuQDLeurQ/s320/ambroseclark.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5205611071570878738" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:georgia;">Wow. It's been a really long time since my last post. It's not that I've been holding out on you; I just haven't been learning much new. But due to overwhelming demand from readers (I actually did hear from two of you!), I'm going to try to post some things that </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;" >aren't </span><span style="font-family:georgia;">new, at least to me. First up: a little exploration of my one strand of New England ancestry.</span> <span style="font-family:georgia;">As I may have said before, most of my family either emigrated to the U.S. after the Civil War or spent 300 years or more migrating across the hilly, woodsy middle of the country. The pattern is the same in several families: initial settlement in Virginia or Pennsylvania, migration into the hills of Western Virginia, Kentucky, or North Carolina, then west to Arkansas or Missouri before the Civil War.</span> <span style="font-family:georgia;">The one ancestor who traced his roots back to Puritan New England was Cal Jones's great-grandfather, Ambrose H. Clark. (That's him above.) Ambrose was the father of Cal's grandmother Esther Caroline Clark. The family legend—which I mentioned in an <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/03/joneses-civil-war.html">earlier post</a> on the Jones family in the Civil War—holds that Cal's grandfather, Charles Matthew (Matt) Jones, met Esther when he was injured while fighting for the Union in the Civil War and was taken to Ambrose Clark's house to recover. They were the parents of Cal's father Silas Jones, the one who would ultimately be run out of Arkansas for killing a dog. (More about that <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-were-not-razorbacks.html">here</a>, <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-were-not-razorbacks-part-ii.html">here</a>, and <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/08/why-were-not-razorbacks-part-iii.html">here</a>.)<br /><br />So most of what I know about Ambrose comes from an 1889 <span style="font-style: italic;">History of Northwest Arkansas</span> published by Goodspeed Publishers. Goodspeed's books were more or less a racket. They published some history about a county or region, along with biographies of leading citizens—i.e. people who pre-ordered a copy of the book. The biographies were submitted by the subjects themselves, so Ambrose was presumably responsible for his entry. It's not that terribly long, so I'll reproduce it here:</span><pre style="font-family: georgia;"><blockquote>Ambrose H. Clark, who is one of the old settlers of Arkansas, and<br />was first identified with the interests of Washington County in<br />1841, was born in Ross County. Ohio, April 28, 1818. His parents,<br />John and Nancy (Humes) Clark, were born in the "Green Mountain"<br />State, the former's birth occurring in 1783 or 1784. He died in<br />Dade County. Mo., in 1849 or 1850, his wife's death occurring in<br />Indiana in 1841. They first emigrated from their native State to<br />Ohio, and thence to Indiana, and then to Illinois, and afterward<br />to Missouri. They were members of the Christian Church, and became<br />the parents of eight sons and one daughter, only two of the family<br />now living. Ambrose H. Clark only remained at home until fourteen<br />years of age, and then began working on a farm in Ohio, but<br />afterward went to Indiana, where he lived four years, and then<br />came with a family, by ox team, to Arkansas. He has ever since<br />made his home in Washington County, where he has a good farm of<br />300 acres, a portion of which is under cultivation. He started out<br />in life with no means, but being of an ambitious and energetic<br />disposition, and having a true helpmate in his wife, he has<br />surmounted many obstacles, and can now enjoy the fruits of his<br />labor. His wife, who was a Miss Selina Hash, is a daughter of<br />Alvin Hash, one of the old settlers of Washington County, and was<br />born on the 20th of October, 1823. Her father and mother died in<br />Illinois in 1844 and 1878, respectively. Mr. and Mrs. Clark became<br />the parents of eleven children: Mary, Frances, Martha E., Esther.<br />William. John. Mestlina, Josephine, Ida, Lydia and Augustine, all<br />of whom reside in Washington County. One child died in infancy.<br />Mrs. Clark and four of her children are active members of the<br />Christian Church. Mr. Clark is a Republican, and takes an active<br />interest in all enterprises for the public weal. During the late<br />war, although he was not a regular soldier, he was in Price's raid<br />and participated in the battle of Richland. </blockquote></pre>The New England ancestry of his parents makes Ambrose unique among my ancestors. It also helps to explain why he might have been a Republican and a supporter of the Union during the war.<br /><br />Working backward from this information, various researchers have tried to place Ambrose's parents in Vermont (the "Green Mountain State" to which the biography refers). The best lead is a marriage record from Washington County, Vermont, from May 27, 1810, listing groom John Clark and bride <span style="font-style: italic;">Marcy</span> (not Nancy) Humes. Was Nancy really Marcy? On the one hand, if we assume Ambrose supplied the information to Goodspeed, he ought to have known his mother's name. On the other hand, Goodspeed books are known to be riddled with errors, and Marcy could easily have been mistaken for Nancy in handwriting. Many of us have come to believe that this John and Marcy are in fact Ambrose's parents.<br /><br />Next post: more about Marcy.<br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span>Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-38061419276309576282008-01-22T12:26:00.000-05:002008-01-25T12:02:43.390-05:00The Uncle So Nice They Named Him Twice<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKt6DPhKOWqkmp9DvPdiaRbfTDGgXaqfclmYwfUH9jz7U00YlB9SKVdkd33FetKyWSrxjeK5SndD5ou5v0qHq1gRr5zGnJq-2hNILXHBtQmrVMA6JLrD-gYL-grdFVtvGCEl6L4eD-ZtI/s1600-h/jehu_theatre.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKt6DPhKOWqkmp9DvPdiaRbfTDGgXaqfclmYwfUH9jz7U00YlB9SKVdkd33FetKyWSrxjeK5SndD5ou5v0qHq1gRr5zGnJq-2hNILXHBtQmrVMA6JLrD-gYL-grdFVtvGCEl6L4eD-ZtI/s320/jehu_theatre.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5158376968067315234" /></a>Okay, so I actually don't know how nice Jehu Jehu was. But as of last week I now know something about Mr. Jehu, who was Clarence (Miles) Branch's uncle--a brother to his mother Margaret Jehu Branch (1877-1971). I found the picture above (click on it to enlarge) among Blanche's Branch's photos. It was labeled on the back "Grandpa Jehu Theater in Pennsylvania." I'd made a few half-hearted attempts to find out more, but had no luck until I heard from a cousin whose father is a Jehu--Miles Branch's last living cousin on his mother's side. <br /><br />This man, who is 92, is a son of Albert Jehu (1881-1972), Margaret's younger brother. I spoke to him and his daughter last week, and he had the nicest things to say about Margaret, whom he called Aunt Maggie. He grew up in Sykesville, Pa., about 16 miles from Horatio, where Margaret and George Branch had their farm. He remembers taking the train to visit his aunt and uncle, where he always enjoyed himself. "Every day there was like a party," he said. He remembers Margaret as someone who liked to laugh and who baked bread for him.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdxU326ueh3XUrSqEC2tRjpTZyjiyKtG4XSJeQRVOf0dWlLg1LBz_nGoNrqY4QfY4gxSQ2MZ-xPhAD5W-ofSHnpo2VuCFm5D3MDcjg_GclE5MGU2rNabokR3rMOpcZr5R4EXaUT4lQFLU/s1600-h/margaret_branch.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdxU326ueh3XUrSqEC2tRjpTZyjiyKtG4XSJeQRVOf0dWlLg1LBz_nGoNrqY4QfY4gxSQ2MZ-xPhAD5W-ofSHnpo2VuCFm5D3MDcjg_GclE5MGU2rNabokR3rMOpcZr5R4EXaUT4lQFLU/s320/margaret_branch.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5158376856398165522" /></a>At left (click to enlarge): We thought the woman at left in this picture was Margaret Jehu Branch, and her nephew agrees. We don't know who the other people are, but the Jehu cousins think the young woman next to Margaret looks like a Jehu.<br /><br />He said his Uncle George was good to him, and he remembered playing with his cousin Harry Branch in the mines on the Branch farm. (Miles, 19 years older, had already left home.) He remembers George walking him to the railroad tracks at the end of his visits and waving his lantern to get the train to stop and pick him up. <br /><br />Now, back to the theater picture, which must have been taken in 1920 or shortly thereafter, since the movie advertised at right is <span style="font-style:italic;">The Kentucky Colonel</span>, which was released in 1920. Our cousin recognized the man standing in the center as being his uncle Jehu Jehu (1867-1935). He said that Jehu owned the theater, and that his father (Jehu's brother) Albert owned a pool hall next door. "All the Jehus were salesmen," he said, adding that Richard Jehu (1846-1919), the father of Jehu, Albert, and Margaret, had been a fishmonger in Wales and, in addition to mining coal, also sold fish in Pennsylvania. <br /><br />For the record, Richard Jehu and his wife Elizabeth Thomas came from Wales right after the Civil War. Richard's father was also named Jehu Jehu, and his mother was Mary Jervis. After his parents died, Richard and his six living siblings emigrated to America. Most of them settled around Scranton, Pennsylvania, but Richard and Elizabeth went to Sykesville, near Punxsutawney. In addition to Jehu, Margaret, and Albert, they had two more daughters: Mary Jehu (1872-1966), who married William Platt, and Elizabeth Jehu (1879-1965), who married James J. Jeffries.<br /><br />I won't lie to you--I love accumulating the facts and dates and data about my family. But it doesn't really come alive until you hear memories like those our cousin shared about his Aunt Maggie. That's when you start to be able to paint a picture of those who came before us and how they shaped the people we do remember. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7_yaPIwTmcNS7kfx3CMqhir9z744UIGyJj1nFhr3qzZGw1vpD6Dl6ul6msfvlt_9kyvW6vTQx5koR84mtwij_hJmHfWeDlZt5eecRUTKBhY13xoUQPALS-YqZ0hFCQvm1tSG-2fA1An8/s1600-h/pennsylvania_wagon.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7_yaPIwTmcNS7kfx3CMqhir9z744UIGyJj1nFhr3qzZGw1vpD6Dl6ul6msfvlt_9kyvW6vTQx5koR84mtwij_hJmHfWeDlZt5eecRUTKBhY13xoUQPALS-YqZ0hFCQvm1tSG-2fA1An8/s320/pennsylvania_wagon.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5158376761908884994" /></a>One last picture (click to enlarge): This was taken at George and Margaret Branch's farm, some time in the late 1930s. At least some, if not all, of the kids in the picture are their grandchildren.Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-60242463936292746472008-01-15T10:05:00.003-05:002009-03-24T00:16:28.280-04:00Ira's Life on the Outside (Mostly)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPSbe5_Hbg7pSdcvkAkA5HhdCLjaTgWWqmscBWOr70ttSZpQeeJZoT2kJgHIOkWkTLJm56nUaTAqfFqFbsH9uzDeeJkLAwcu8h70FUtnOXaeEqzImJzmRcwBnrWlpsroLFj9nHp67s-NI/s1600-h/iravermillion.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPSbe5_Hbg7pSdcvkAkA5HhdCLjaTgWWqmscBWOr70ttSZpQeeJZoT2kJgHIOkWkTLJm56nUaTAqfFqFbsH9uzDeeJkLAwcu8h70FUtnOXaeEqzImJzmRcwBnrWlpsroLFj9nHp67s-NI/s320/iravermillion.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5152731461189989874" border="0" /></a>I love this picture (at left; click to make it larger). This is Ira Vermillion, presumably some time after his release from prison in 1914. On the back is a note addressed to his niece, Blanche Vermillion. It says “Dear Little Neice I may be there Xmas. Your Loving Uncle Ira.” So I guess it was some time when Blanche might still have been considered “little”; considering she was born in 1907, I’d guess it was taken before 1920, when Ira turned 39.<br /><br />What I love about the picture is the symbolism, which seems obvious to me: with Ira standing in front of an open window, doesn’t the picture just shout “freedom”? (There’s not even any glass!) I wonder if Ira chose this scene on purpose to celebrate his freedom, or if it was just one of the photographer’s stock sets that appealed to him for reasons he couldn’t explain.<br /><br />So what happened to Ira after he was released? His prison file obviously is not nearly as informative about his life on the outside, but it does provide some clues, and a surprise.<br /><br />The Vermillion family had never been spared tragedy: Ira’s mother died some time in the 1880s, when Ira was still a young boy. His older brother Will died in 1899 at the age of 20. While Ira was in prison, his oldest brother Walter died of tuberculosis (after losing two of his children). By the time he got out, his family consisted of his father, his youngest brother John (who would die before 1920) and his sister Cora.<br /><br />The first thing we hear post-release is a letter from Ira to a parole officer at Leavenworth dated March 12, 1917, and written from Mesa, Washington, where Cora and her family lived. He is writing to ask for the proper form “to petition the president to have my sitizenship restored.” He goes on: “If I can get my sitizenship restored, I have a good chance to take a home-sted of 640 acres of grass land. . . . I have lived in Washington ever since I left there. The wadges are twice as much here as in Okla. I am working on big wheat ranch getting $45.00 per month and board and room.”<br /><br />The next we know of Ira is in the 1920 census, when he was recorded as living on a dairy farm in Creighton, Arizona, where he was listed as a laborer. He doesn’t turn up at all in the 1930 census.<br /><br />In reading about Ira, I had found myself wanting to see him as a good kid who got drunk and made a single, terrible mistake that ruined his life. But that view is hard to square with the news in another document from the prison file: On March 23, 1933, the U.S. Attorney in Tucson, Arizona, wrote to Leavenworth asking for information about Ira, who had been “arrested in this district for counterfeiting.” A similar request came from the Secret Service the next day.<br /><br />So Ira got himself into trouble again, and again with the Feds! Another slip of paper was later received at Leavenworth indicating that Ira Vermillion was received at the U.S. Penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington, on November 21, 1933, to serve a three-year term for counterfeiting. I haven’t yet tried to track down any more about this crime, but I’ll keep you posted.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisw2O0vmzdaeRHABwd_AIRGlXqXPzJm5TyDohoQyzT4qbDNmnllBc3mrm-HHH9L1UC__PVa6DXMI_UbVfxiSWgXpQfERcLpelFk1PSpaK7LPSuwSTd8OhGcxQvpAfmsdtUKMTuw8vOsQs/s1600-h/McNeilIslandPrison.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisw2O0vmzdaeRHABwd_AIRGlXqXPzJm5TyDohoQyzT4qbDNmnllBc3mrm-HHH9L1UC__PVa6DXMI_UbVfxiSWgXpQfERcLpelFk1PSpaK7LPSuwSTd8OhGcxQvpAfmsdtUKMTuw8vOsQs/s320/McNeilIslandPrison.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5151836342760863202" border="0" /></a>(At left: the McNeil Island prison in 1937. I’m sure the view was better than Leavenworth.)<br /><br />After that, I know little, except that Ira evidently ended up in Arizona. Blanche Branch’s younger son remembers her mother stopping to call him while they were driving through Arizona in the 1940s, and her older son visited him in the hotel room where he lived in Tucson in 1960. "I believe I got the address from Mom and she asked me to visit him," he writes. "He was very frail and did not want to talk very much, so I didn't spend much time with him. . . . I knew at the time of the visit he would not live much longer." Social Security records indicate that he died in Arizona in March 1965. As far as I know, he never had a family of his own.<br /><br />I haven’t hidden very well my excitement at uncovering all this information, but at the same time it saddens me to write about it—partly because it’s dreadful to think that anyone you’re related to could have done such a terrible thing, and partly because Ira ended up so alone, but also because I know how much shame Blanche carried around over what her uncle did. (And remember, the victim was the grandfather of several of her cousins.) Almost 90 years after the murder, she still cried at the thought of her grandchildren finding out about it. But just as sure as we can't live vicariously through the noble or celebrated deeds of our ancestors, we can't bear the burden of all they did wrong, either.Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-75867539899615336562008-01-11T14:51:00.002-05:002009-03-24T00:14:57.276-04:00Life in Prison<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF0Oht_88EJ3V5u2zsXs-2xR42TCjntDR7abQ68fbwlmoK11tuPvRUCGqJRVjDkNVqqi7OgLJSbvUbJDouUb8Y9NAJorSNiLQm5-IFWCH8F3Z_Vlqvr0yhIg4vNKtkuEnL2Fg-W2GpGGM/s1600-h/iramugshot.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF0Oht_88EJ3V5u2zsXs-2xR42TCjntDR7abQ68fbwlmoK11tuPvRUCGqJRVjDkNVqqi7OgLJSbvUbJDouUb8Y9NAJorSNiLQm5-IFWCH8F3Z_Vlqvr0yhIg4vNKtkuEnL2Fg-W2GpGGM/s320/iramugshot.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5151017103518954898" border="0" /></a>In May, 1901, 19-year-old Ira Vermillion (left, click on photo to enlarge) walked into the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, where he had been sentenced to spend the rest of “his natural life at hard labor.” That was too bad for him, obviously, but in a way it was good news for a family historian. As far as I know, my ancestors weren’t avid diarists or record-keepers, and so information about them and their daily lives is pretty thin. But for 13 years, prison authorities kept track of all kinds of things about Ira: when he was sick, what work he did, when he misbehaved, with whom he corresponded. The prison file I requested from the National Archives turned out to be a treasure trove not just about Ira’s life in prison, but also about his family in general. Through correspondence records I can see where various family members lived at different times and narrow down death dates for some of them. And in a couple of cases the correspondence confirmed some family relationships I was unsure about. So before I get back to Ira, here is some general advice for family historians: find your black sheep and check his prison record.<br /><br />If you’ve read the last <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2008/01/what-ira-did.html">two</a> <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2008/01/vermillion-murder-trial.html">posts</a>, you know that Ira was convicted of the murder of Joseph Nemecek. He was sent to Leavenworth because he was tried in federal court—Indian Territory did not have territorial courts. Leavenworth started out as a military prison and was converted to civilian use in 1895. Starting in 1897 and over the next 20 years, a new prison was being constructed with convict labor. Ira was there during much of the time the new prison was being built, and records show that he worked in the stone sawmill, on a construction crew, and briefly—apparently as a punishment—in the brickyard.<br /><br />When he was received at the prison on May 11, he was examined by doctors who took a very detailed inventory of his appearance, any distinguishing marks, and his health. We learn from the forms they filled out that he was 5 foot-5, 132 pounds, had medium chestnut hair, violet blue eyes, and a medium fair complexion. He could read and write, identified himself as a Baptist, and acknowledged that he chewed tobacco, drank, and smoked.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_-rhEeoKfIDN8DqSwN5busY4QMg3EHr3n1tv0hvLRJeGlpbClt5Z3rahMl3qoO1AGHDhdgnamPif3nkLC6GP4o5CjeS2wMoB9vf44fA7fk2t8P_1Qllo4TYOEa3W3-o-XHB9S5l-qjDA/s1600-h/Leavenworth_prison_dorm_c1910.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_-rhEeoKfIDN8DqSwN5busY4QMg3EHr3n1tv0hvLRJeGlpbClt5Z3rahMl3qoO1AGHDhdgnamPif3nkLC6GP4o5CjeS2wMoB9vf44fA7fk2t8P_1Qllo4TYOEa3W3-o-XHB9S5l-qjDA/s320/Leavenworth_prison_dorm_c1910.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5151698654699288002" border="0" /></a>(At left: a prison dorm at Leavenworth around 1910. Click on photo to enlarge.) His smoking would be the cause of the little trouble that he got into in prison. The first violation for which he was written up—in October 1901, was for “having a box of matches and cigarettes in his possession.” A more serious offense—making cigarettes—actually caused him to lose nine days “good time.” (Although he was serving a life sentence at the time, the prison still kept track of behavior in terms of days that could be reduced from his sentence. Typically, an inmate could be released after serving two-thirds of his term plus any days he had “lost” for misbehavior.) But mostly, Ira was written up for small offenses: “talking in ranks,” “foolishness on stairway,” “refusing bread crusts and holding hand up for more bread,” “skylarking and talking so that they could be heard from one end of the cellhouse to the other while count was being taken.”<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbO-irKD4QS1RVqMIuZCT-lI5s6m-6mtN2HasLt6mw2qWQm8BPt20zjVDr0qOQV-K5tMwnU8gacFXCVqUMi5P350gWHZrCJ7BZPa366aEywOSmH5iywNd9CPEku8kaJ8wJwDf0ai0jVe4/s1600-h/Leavenworth_prison_c1910.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbO-irKD4QS1RVqMIuZCT-lI5s6m-6mtN2HasLt6mw2qWQm8BPt20zjVDr0qOQV-K5tMwnU8gacFXCVqUMi5P350gWHZrCJ7BZPa366aEywOSmH5iywNd9CPEku8kaJ8wJwDf0ai0jVe4/s320/Leavenworth_prison_c1910.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5151689755527050674" border="0" /></a>(At left: Prisoners marching to dinner at Leavenworth in 1910. If Ira’s in that picture, he’s probably talking. Or maybe skylarking. Click photo to enlarge.)<br /><br />The records also tell us something about Ira's health during this time, most notably that he had tuberculosis in 1908 and 1909 and was frequently put on "special mess" because of his condition. I don't know a lot about TB and its treatment at the time, but the fact that he survived seems somewhat remarkable, and a bit ironic. His brother Walter, a father of two living in Indian Territory, had died of the disease in 1907--is it possible that Ira survived because of the superior medical care he received in prison?<br /><br />The list of letters sent and received shows that Ira did not ever go more than a month without news from home, most often from his father, Wash, who wrote to him nearly 200 times. His sister Cora also wrote frequently. Other letters came from his brother John, his aunt Jane Moore (his late mother's sister) in Aurora, Missouri, and his aunt Mary Burns (his father's sister) in Wyoming.<br /><br />It's kind of touching to me that after Ira's brother Walter died in 1907, his widow, Mollie, wrote to him about twice a year. Mollie, you'll remember from the first post, was related to Joseph Nemecek, the victim of Ira's crime. But I imagine she felt a sense of familial duty to keep in touch with Ira on her late husband's behalf (though Walter himself had been none too good about writing).<br /><br />The return addresses on letters from his father reveal approximately when Wash returned to Oklahoma from the state of Washington (1906), when he married again (1911), and when he moved to Oklahoma City, where Blanche Branch said he owned a furniture store (1912). Wash's second wife, whom he had married in 1894, must have died some time around 1903, as that is the last time there was a letter to or from her. [UPDATE, 3/24/09: Turns out I was wrong about this. Despite the lack of correspondence, Susan was still alive--and still married to Wash, as of the 1910 census. I had assumed that their marriage ended when she died, but I've seen online sources that say she didn't die until 1917. More on that in a later post.] Once Wash married Carey in 1911, she wrote to Ira at least once a month. She also wrote at least once on Ira's behalf. On November 30, 1912, she wrote to the warden to ask if, as Ira's pardon attorney had told her, Ira was due to be released right away. "You will pardon us for jumping at the idea—as a drowning man would cling to a straw," she wrote. (It turned out that the attorney was mistaken. He still had nearly two years to go.)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghhs9BON6JhLfIyJGoB0DH4kb16RRN32z9wIUu8phXReW6MaTGZcYvyAg46f6Gq-OIKtwinxCa-ow7Jh95N1ynQ8e5ZdniU0fqJSA9aIypKQVAVmz2-8ycnFEHeu2JCLbFqoIL2BdEONo/s1600-h/iracommutation.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghhs9BON6JhLfIyJGoB0DH4kb16RRN32z9wIUu8phXReW6MaTGZcYvyAg46f6Gq-OIKtwinxCa-ow7Jh95N1ynQ8e5ZdniU0fqJSA9aIypKQVAVmz2-8ycnFEHeu2JCLbFqoIL2BdEONo/s320/iracommutation.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5151699182980265426" border="0" /></a>The prison file doesn’t include an account of how and why, but in 1909, President William Howard Taft commuted Ira’s sentence from life to 20 years. (At left: the commutation certificate with Taft’s signature.) I read up and discovered that Taft was unusually generous with pardons and commutations. Ira’s commutation came just a few months after Taft became president—I wonder if his attorney had tried the previous president, Teddy Roosevelt?<br /><br />Once the sentence was commuted, Ira had every incentive to keep his nose clean, and except for ticking off a guard now and then, he seems to have done so. After working in all sorts of jobs, in 1912 he finally settled into a job at the corral which seems to have suited him, as he kept it for the rest of his term. (The Vermillions may have run a farm, but they seem to have had a lot of cowboy in them. And Ira's brother Walter was a horse trader.)<br /><br />Near the end of his term, those nine days good time he had lost back in 1905 for making cigarettes must have been haunting him, for in July 1914, the month before he was to be released, the warden wrote to the U.S. attorney general on Ira's behalf. "Vermillion has a splendid record. He has not been reported for any offense whatsoever for more than nine years and his influence upon other prisoners is decidedly good. I respectfully recommend that the nine days lost commutation be restored to him in order that he may be released August 31, 1914."<br /><br />The request was granted, and Ira was released after more than 13 years in jail.<br /><br />Next post: what little I know of Ira's last fifty years.Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-50168102888470903742008-01-07T09:08:00.001-05:002008-01-07T20:12:21.533-05:00The Vermillion Murder Trial<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKhkK8-jiFxpGJh0AC6-fieAFhXY6TzArSlCmGEPg6njp0JhHjeYVgpAfvzSIZ68xnxhHe5IwzZRtOTUBughw7Z_BcduvjkucpjhiBvGR1TbchV0TxKXvB9CKeGEf36CYDoDh1rtZ0E1g/s1600-h/walnutbridge.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKhkK8-jiFxpGJh0AC6-fieAFhXY6TzArSlCmGEPg6njp0JhHjeYVgpAfvzSIZ68xnxhHe5IwzZRtOTUBughw7Z_BcduvjkucpjhiBvGR1TbchV0TxKXvB9CKeGEf36CYDoDh1rtZ0E1g/s320/walnutbridge.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5151078001860244898" /></a>(At left, the bridge over Walnut Creek, scene of the murder of Joseph Nemecek, in September 1900.)<br /><br />In September 1900, 18-year-old Ira “Pete” Vermillion was bound over without bail for <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2008/01/what-ira-did.html">the murder of Joseph Nemecek</a>. I’ve found no indication that he was released any time before the trial began in March 1901, so he presumably spent six months in jail waiting for his day in court. <br /><br />Because the crime took place in Indian Territory, the federal court sitting at Purcell had jurisdiction. Indian Territory had something of a reputation for lawlessness, and the judge’s instructions to the grand jury addressed this in a way that a modern defense lawyer might see as prejudicial. According to the <span style="font-style:italic;">Purcell Register</span>, the judge remarked that “there seems to be in the territory a lawless element, the chief education of which consists in knowing how to carry pistols and to discharge them. The greater number of such people are hanged, said he, the greater would be the number of lives saved.”<br /><br />Jury selection in the case began on March 19 and was complete by the next day. The trial itself took just two and a half days. Ira had entered a plea of not guilty, his lawyer arguing that all the evidence against him was circumstantial. <br /><br />Indeed it was, but there was plenty of it. He had been seen in town—drunk and trying to rope people with his lariat—just before the crime took place. And he was last seen heading south toward the scene of the crime. When he was found in a drunken stupor not long after the crime and not far away, he was missing a shoe, which was found in his stirrup nearby. That shoe had a piece missing from its heel, and a piece found at the crime scene was a perfect match. <br /><br />The case attracted more than local attention: the <span style="font-style:italic;">Dallas Morning News</span> ran three short articles on the trial, noting that "the peculiar circumstances surrounding the case make it especially interesting."<br /><br />The jury didn’t take long: they returned a guilty verdict, but decided that the crime did not merit capital punishment. Ira was sentenced to life in prison. “The prisoner and his relatives received the verdict very calmly,” wrote the <span style="font-style:italic;">Register</span>, “though it was a severe blow to them, especially to the parents, who stood by their boy during his time of trial.”<br /><br />And surely standing by their boy had a cost for the family in the community. By the time Ira entered the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth in May, his father Wash, his stepmother Susan, and his brothers and sister were living in the state of Washington. They may have been planning the move anyway, but the timing makes me wonder if they left out of shame. <br /><br />Next post: Ira’s years in Leavenworth.Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-45953261777874548332008-01-02T16:36:00.000-05:002008-01-02T20:40:42.105-05:00What Ira Did<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF0Oht_88EJ3V5u2zsXs-2xR42TCjntDR7abQ68fbwlmoK11tuPvRUCGqJRVjDkNVqqi7OgLJSbvUbJDouUb8Y9NAJorSNiLQm5-IFWCH8F3Z_Vlqvr0yhIg4vNKtkuEnL2Fg-W2GpGGM/s1600-h/iramugshot.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF0Oht_88EJ3V5u2zsXs-2xR42TCjntDR7abQ68fbwlmoK11tuPvRUCGqJRVjDkNVqqi7OgLJSbvUbJDouUb8Y9NAJorSNiLQm5-IFWCH8F3Z_Vlqvr0yhIg4vNKtkuEnL2Fg-W2GpGGM/s320/iramugshot.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5151017103518954898" /></a>“On September 15 1900 I became intoxicated and while in that condition I threw my lasso in a spirit of mischif dragging Joseph Nenecles [sic] from the buggy in which he was riding and he was dragged 250 yards receiving injuries from which he died Can give no reason for the crime except drunkeness”<br /><br />So wrote Ira Monroe Vermillion (above, as seen in his prison mugshot; click on photo to enlarge) around 1910 when he was applying for “trusty prisoner” status at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. He had spent all his adult life in prison as a result of his reckless action, which killed a Czech farmer named Joseph Nemecek. (The spelling error must have been that of the clerk who typed up Ira’s application—surely Ira knew his victim’s name well enough.) In fact, he had been sentenced to life in prison for the crime, but President William Howard Taft commuted his sentence to 20 years in 1909.<br /><br />I’m going to spend this and perhaps one or two more posts telling you what I’ve learned about Ira, his crime, and his punishment, largely from two useful sources: newspaper accounts reprinted in a volume of family history by a member of the Nemecek family, and Ira’s inmate file from Leavenworth, which I ordered this fall. <br /><br />First off, though, who was Ira to us? He was Blanche Vermillion Branch’s uncle, a brother to her father Walter. He was the middle of five children born to John Washington (Wash) Vermillion and Martha Burrow. He was born in Lawrence County, Missouri, where both his parents had grown up. When he was still a boy—some time around 1885—his mother died, and around 1889 his father moved the family to the vicinity of Wayne, Indian Territory, and raised his children on a farm there. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrmrE1Txs16hC4TPI-8HF4QFbXa3o4BueyLKyhnZQcBguc_cla7sL6eo075fINAwytNQu_AUVhrjg2NPoSDhbkB5LvRrckFyWpr5jtRBMbw1MrZ7Y1QZLMK5gY79LCz8HXqW2ZkYbSVto/s1600-h/jwvermillion&children.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrmrE1Txs16hC4TPI-8HF4QFbXa3o4BueyLKyhnZQcBguc_cla7sL6eo075fINAwytNQu_AUVhrjg2NPoSDhbkB5LvRrckFyWpr5jtRBMbw1MrZ7Y1QZLMK5gY79LCz8HXqW2ZkYbSVto/s320/jwvermillion&children.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5150999854930294146" /></a> (At left is a picture of Wash and his five children; they're not labeled individually, but my guess is that Walter, the oldest, is at far left, Will, the second oldest, is at far right, Ira, the third child, is seated on his father's left, and John, the fourth, is standing behind Ira. Cora, the youngest, is easy enough to spot. Click on photo to enlarge.)<br /><br />The victim, too, was connected to our family. Joseph Nemecek, who also lived in the Wayne area, was the father of, among others, Andrew and James Nemecek, who each married sisters of Mollie Jicha, Blanche Vermillion’s mother. Before Nemecek’s murder, all these families were apparently on good terms, and Andrew Nemecek was even boarding with the Vermillion family when the crime took place. The family connection would later be a source of pain for Blanche, who grew up with the knowledge that her uncle had killed the grandfather of many of her closest cousins. She rarely if ever spoke about this until late in her life, and even then it was difficult for her—even though it all happened before she was born. I learned from Ira’s prison file that Blanche’s mother Mollie—whose brothers-in-law were sons of the victim—was one of Ira’s frequent correspondents in prison after her husband and Ira’s brother died in 1907.<br /><br />I can't tell you too much more in terms of setting the stage for what happened. Just imagine Ira, who was nearing his 19th birthday and working as a "farm laborer" according to the census taken a few months earlier. And imagine Joseph Nemecek, a 64-year-old immigrant from Czechoslavakia and the father of eight sons, working a farm in Indian Territory.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4Qm-CV0HxImwhNlRVaxJ_Dpfc7bfd1YK0JplNjYOSeo5xLrwdMlxPVQoPH_weP2gv1zl3FJ5rRr-dVaq4QMOthdAiPtNAI3mUcUxvvzHz67e1jZ8cKbkZ82t0wp4zPfZFZ0QHzEr1pTM/s1600-h/vermillionbrothers.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4Qm-CV0HxImwhNlRVaxJ_Dpfc7bfd1YK0JplNjYOSeo5xLrwdMlxPVQoPH_weP2gv1zl3FJ5rRr-dVaq4QMOthdAiPtNAI3mUcUxvvzHz67e1jZ8cKbkZ82t0wp4zPfZFZ0QHzEr1pTM/s320/vermillionbrothers.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5150999708901406066" /></a>(At left, the Vermillion boys a few years later. From left to right: John, Will, and Ira. Click on photo to enlarge.)<br /><br />On the Saturday afternoon when the murder took place, Ira (who was actually known as Pete, apparently) was seen by several people in downtown Purcell, eight miles north of Wayne. As the Purcell Register put it, "he gave evidence of being strongly under the influence of liquor," and he was "seen swinging his lariat rope quite freely and had struck one man on the head in throwing the rope at him." Meanwhile, Joseph Nemecek was returning home from a visit to his oldest son, Anthon, and his wife and children, who lived on a farm across the river from Purcell near Lexington. <br /><br />There were no eyewitnesses to exactly what happened next, but around six o'clock, word reached Purcell that a body had been found in Walnut Creek, below the bridge on the road that ran between Purcell and Wayne. Someone recognized the body as being Joseph Nemecek's, and his wagon and mules were found nearby. A coroner's jury determined from looking at the scene and the injuries to the body that Nemecek had been caught by a rope around his right wrist, pulled from his wagon, and dragged for some distance near and on the bridge. The body appeared to have been thrown from the bridge into the creek.<br /><br />When the body was discovered, a pair of deputies went looking for the perpetrator; they soon found Ira Vermillion asleep by the side of the road, in a "drunken stupor" and missing a shoe. He claimed not to remember what had happened. He was taken to jail in Purcell. <br /><br />Andrew Nemecek, Joseph's 24-year-old son, got the news about his father by telegram when he was sitting at the supper table of Ira's father and stepmother, where he was a boarder. He and Ira's father Wash jumped into a wagon together and reached the scene at about the time the deputies found Ira.<br /><br />In reporting on the crime the next week, the Purcell Register said that Wash Vermillion was "well known as an honorable, upright gentleman" and that "the best of feeling existed between the two families." Indeed, no motive besides drunken mischief seems to have been raised during the trial. <br /><br />In my next post, I'll talk about Ira's trial the following spring.Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-49876196465008489372007-11-19T14:54:00.000-05:002007-11-19T18:06:14.309-05:00Did Henry Overholser steal the seal?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTMEd-jBRMpX1xfUKgAU_zgGdejifOQKqJPUKFNLWI9LHSOeAXe8Zy1X_85xohfUJwch1jNZRQLAFvBR5017vEU0c40DBqS5LBrpkIAjkK_AwIOxLq4u2LvzEJDUL07XCIGrMbB9dPSds/s1600-h/071112_A1_NoArt04125_A4seal12.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTMEd-jBRMpX1xfUKgAU_zgGdejifOQKqJPUKFNLWI9LHSOeAXe8Zy1X_85xohfUJwch1jNZRQLAFvBR5017vEU0c40DBqS5LBrpkIAjkK_AwIOxLq4u2LvzEJDUL07XCIGrMbB9dPSds/s320/071112_A1_NoArt04125_A4seal12.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5134643568436950770" /></a>A cousin writes: "Seems there is some story about an Overholser stealing the state charter from Guthrie and moving it (thus the capital) to OKC. You got anything on that?"<br /><br />My reply: Hmmm, I've never heard anything about an Overholser connection to this story, but Guthrie residents have long maintained that Gov. Haskell "stole" the state seal from the capitol in Guthrie in the dark of night and took it to OKC. But from what I can make out from various sources, the story is exaggerated at best. There was an election to determine whether OKC or Guthrie should be the capital in June of 1910, and OKC won. Gov. Haskell sent his secretary for the seal that night, but the clerk there handed it over willingly. The election and the move were questionable legally, since an earlier law said that the capital could not be moved until 1913, but the courts ruled in OKC's favor.<br /><br />This <a href="http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=071112_1_A1_NoArt04125">Tulsa World story</a> sums it up pretty well.<br /><br />I'm sure that Henry Overholser was a proponent of moving the capital, as it would have been good for his real estate interests. But there's nothing to suggest that he took the law (or the seal!) into his own hands. . . .Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774793659210816914.post-18468770027937292262007-11-16T09:32:00.000-05:002007-11-16T14:45:05.072-05:00Happy 100th, Oklahoma!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6G9vuEbhThFRgu_SH6sjNkC7CwxejfvBGVh5AB55R0WxPYhR2uEv4O_-fsDQqUVrrEvuZflBmEiA0M4d4uGl_BAEBaNvCb9kpzkq7rP2lSPIoBHZHVs4ZTBOtLiVWtaOryaeQb8hGvls/s1600-h/ok_bf_statehood.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6G9vuEbhThFRgu_SH6sjNkC7CwxejfvBGVh5AB55R0WxPYhR2uEv4O_-fsDQqUVrrEvuZflBmEiA0M4d4uGl_BAEBaNvCb9kpzkq7rP2lSPIoBHZHVs4ZTBOtLiVWtaOryaeQb8hGvls/s320/ok_bf_statehood.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5133455760871503586" /></a>Although I haven't really lived there for more than 20 years, Oklahoma is still home for me. Besides the fact that I was born and raised there and much of my family is still there, it's the one common denominator in my mongrel lineage. Oklahoma is where the daughter of a Czech immigrant and a French/Scotch-Irish horse trader met the son of English and Welsh coal miners, and it's where an orphaned English/German/Swiss/Scotch-Irish schoolteacher met a bookkeeper from the hills of Arkansas whose ancestors had been in America and inching west for 300 years.<br /><br />So what parts of our family were in Oklahoma by November 16, 1907?<br /><br />Clara Paxton was still an 8-year-old girl in Missouri and would not move to Oklahoma for another decade, but her grandfather <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/05/other-overholser.html">Lee Overholser</a> had lived there since the time of the Land Run, and her uncle Will and aunt Ella Overholser were living in Oklahoma City at the time. (Her brother Burton, incidentally, was born in Oklahoma City in 1896.)<br /><br />Cal Jones was a 12-year-old boy whose family was probably living in Boynton, Indian Territory, on the day that it became Oklahoma. His parents Silas and Nannie had <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-were-not-razorbacks.html">left Arkansas</a> four years earlier.<br /><br />Blanche Vermillion was seven months old, having been born in Wayne, Indian Territory, in April. She was living with her mother in Wayne, and the celebration of the new state must have been muted for them, as her father Walter Vermillion had died in September. Blanche was surrounded by cousins in the area, most of them grandchildren of George and <a href="http://familyhistorybites.blogspot.com/2007/04/katerina-jicha-pioneer-woman.html">Kate Jicha</a>, who had settled across the river in Oklahoma Territory in the 1889 Land Run. Blanche's one living grandparent, John Washington Vermillion, also lived in the area, where he had settled as far back as '89 also. <br /><br />Six generations of our family have lived in Oklahoma so far, and Clara's sons' families are on their seventh. It's probably not any kind of record, as a lot of Oklahomans reproduce more rapidly than we do. But considering our earlier family history of heading west every generation or two (always in search of farmland, something that's not so much an issue now), it's a pretty good run. <br /><br />I wish I could be in Oklahoma today, but I'm there in spirit.Heinz 57http://www.blogger.com/profile/06178946209639651250noreply@blogger.com0