My “coolest ancestor” kept people in slavery

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 “Quite Possibly My Coolest Ancestor.” Martha Bell was a nurse, midwife, and the richest woman in her county in North Carolina. Two of her children, John and William McGee, 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.

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—died fighting for the Union in the Battle of Fayetteville, 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.

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.

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 didn’t, I suddenly wondered.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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 “The Case for Reparations” for an excellent argument along this line.)

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.

William Burrow, 1833–1863

William Burrow’s headstone at the
National Cemetery in Fayetteville.

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.

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 William McGee. (Martha McGee and her granddaughter Martha Burrow were presumably namesakes of William McGee's mother, the Revolutionary spy Martha Bell.) James and Martha McGee Burrow came to Missouri from Tennessee in the early 1830s.

A few newly discovered nuggets lay out the case pretty well. Most important is a passage from a 1917 book called The Ozark Region, Its History and Its People, 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:

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].

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.

We have well established that Jane Burrow was the sister of our own ancestor Martha Burrow (who married Wash Vermillion and was Blanche's grandmother). Jane Moore would later be one of the people who regularly wrote to Martha's son Ira in prison. 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.

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.

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.

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 North and South magazine and reprinted here. Relying on a battle report in federal records written by commanding officer Albert Bishop, the author writes:

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. 

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.

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.

Not Quite Hatfields and McCoys, But Still Pretty Bloody

The New York Times wrote about the Turner-Howard feud in 1889.

Well, I certainly didn't expect to uncover a new piece of family history while reading Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, but that's exactly what just happened. Outliers 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.)

To illustrate how centuries-old cultural traits shape people to this day, Gladwell talks about one of my favorite subjects, 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 here, here, and here.) Gladwell uses as an example a feud between the Howard and Turner families in Harlan County, Kentucky, after the Civil War.

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 here; you can read Gladwell's summary on Google Books here.) 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."

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 here.)

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.

The Vermont Clarks and the Year Without a Summer

I'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.

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 get out of Arkansas in a hurry.)

So it was exciting for me to hear today about the Year Without a Summer in New England in 1816. I heard about this on an episode of Backstory, 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.

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 Chichester Canal was inspired by the golden sunsets caused by the ashy sky.

It is now understood that the cold weather was largely due to a huge volcanic eruption in Indonesia the year before, but no one knew that at the time, and, as the Backstory 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.

As it happens, my only New England ancestors, John and Marcy Clark (who I've talked about a little before), were married in Vermont in 1810. Eight years later, their son Ambrose 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.

Lancelot's Round Table

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.)

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.

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.

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.


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I Lancelot Branch 1836 Staindrop UK–1907 Horatio, PA

m 1866 Tynemouth UK Elizabeth Charlton

II Sarah Jane Branch 9/9/1867 Seghill, UK–1914 PA

m ca. 1884 John Commons 1858–1942

III Maude Commons ca. 1886 TN– July 1961 Meyersdale, PA

III Charles William Commons 2/24/1887 Meyersdale, PA–8/16/1966 Carmichaels, PA

m ca. 1916 Mildred Margaret Crossland 4/28/1893 Glassport, PA–6/7/1966 Carmichaels, PA

IV Charles Howard Commons 3/16/1917 Boswell, PA–7/4/1971 St. Petersburg, FL

m 2 Lydia Lorraine Bryan 7/12/1927 Columbus, OH–5/18/1967 St. Petersburg, FL

IV Marguerite M. Commons 9/28/1918 Boswell, PA–11/9/2001 Bedford, VA

IV George M. Commons 9/2/1920 PA–8/27/1981 PA in Carmichaels in 1966

IV Edith Jane Commons 12/7/1922 PA–9/19/2000 CO?

IV [Daughter]

Virginia Ruth Commons ca. 1929 PA

III Harry Commons 2/26/1889 Meyersdale, PA–2/1960 Detroit, MI

III Raymond L. Commons 8/4/1890 PA–10/29/1963 Ligonier, PA

III Ralph Edward Commons 3/23/1892 Summit Twp., PA–4/25/1961 Miami, FL

m 6/5/1923 Detroit MI Emma Leonora Flach 12/20/1894 Detroit, MI–12/10/1966 Ferndale, MI

IV Ralph Edward Commons 3/20/1924 Detroit MI–12/20/1990 Pinellas Co., FL

IV Lenore Ruth Commons 10/7/1926 Detroit, MI–8/31/1976 MI

m Edward Marckwardt 6/14/1923–5/1/2009 Cadillac, MI

III Ruth J. Commons 9/22/1893 Meyersdale, PA–7/2/1967 Berlin, PA

m 4/22/1933 John Adam Gruber 12/28/1901 Penn, PA–6/9/1999 Topton, PA

III John Roy Commons 1/14/1896 Somerset Co. PA–6/7/1952 Altoona, PA

m ca. 1923 Emma J. Finnegan ca. 1898 PA

IV John Roy Commons Jr. 12/2/1923 PA–1/24/1997 PA

IV [Daughter]

IV [Son]

III Byron Earl Commons 8/19/1898 Meyersdale,PA–1/30/1986 Escondido, CA

m Roseanna McCabe 6/27/1917 Ida Grove, IA–1/8/2000 Rancho Murieta, CA

IV Richard Earl Commons 11/3/1948 CA–12/13/1997 CA

II John George Branch 3/4/1872 Somerset Co., Pa.–3/4/1940 Horatio, Pa.

m 10/1896 Punxatawney, Pa. Margaret Jehu 6/15/1877 Providence Pa.–1/4/1971 Commodore, Pa.

III Clarence Milo Branch 8/6/1897 Horatio, Pa.–4/1968 Bristow, Okla.

m 1928 Okla. City, OK Blanche Idella Vermillion 4/6/1907 Wayne, IT–11/28/2003 Drumright, OK

IV [Son]

IV [Son]

IV [Daughter]

III Richard Branch 12/6/1900 Desire, Pa–1946 Youngstown, OH

m Bessie Elizabeth Johns 2/9/1903 Punxsutawney, PA–8/14/1993 Youngstown, OH

IV [Son]

IV Richard Branch 10/10/1925 Ohio–2/18/1997 Los Angeles, CA

III Ruth Branch 1903 Horatio, Pa.–1903 Horatio, Pa.

III Sarah Jane Branch 1/10/1906 Horatio, Pa.—7/22/2000 Hillsdale, Pa.

m 2/28/1925 Leonard Ball 9/10/1902 Elanora, PA–1/4/1983 Indiana, Pa.

IV [Son

IV Clarence Leroy Ball 1/11/1928 PA–May 15, 2006 Dixonville, PA

m 5/27/1949 Betty Mae Witherite 12/22/1927 Green Twp., PA–10/6/2001 Commodore, PA

IV William Eugene Ball 12/29/1930–7/10/1951 Cincinnati, OH

IV Gerald Wayne Ball 10/31/1935–7/27/2011

III George Branch 7/29/1908 Horatio, Pa.–7/1981 Greenville, Pa.

m 8/3/1929 Ruby Arlene Shovestull 6/14/1910 PA–5/1981 Greenville, Pa.

IV Robert Eugene Branch 7/15/1931 PA–11/8/2000 OH

IV [Daughter]

IV John George Branch 12/30/1934–3/1/2000 Greenville, Pa.

III Esther Branch 4/2/1913 Punxatawney, Pa.–1/1942

m Leroy Jones

III Harry Leeroy Branch 12/24/1916 Punxsutawney, Pa.–11/11/1994 Youngstown, OH

m 7/13/1942 Gladys Johnson 3/20/1923 OH?–8/1/2007 Poland, OH

IV Alice Esther Branch d. bef. 8/1/2007

IV [Daughter]

II Thomas James Branch 10/1874-5, Meyersdale, PA–1933 Arnold City, PA

m Annie Haddick b. Wrekenton, Northumberland Co., UK–1971, PA

III Leonard William Branch 6/4/1895–10/2/1966, Allen Park, MI

m 10/10/1928 Detroit, MI Mary Agnes Walsh 3/22/1902 Montreal, QC–8/31/2006 San Pedro, CA

IV Thomas Martin Branch 8/2/1929 Grosse Pointe, MI–11/1991, Troy, MI

IV [Son]

IV Robert William Branch 12/17/1932 Detroit, MI–11/27/1972 Los Angleles, CA

IV [Son]

III Margaret Branch ca. 1898 PA–aft. 4/1942

m ca. 1916 Frederick Homer Moors 6/26/1893 Butler, PA–10/12/1962 Somerset Co., PA

IV Arthur Gene Moors 6/26/1917 PA–5/18/1997 MI

m Hilda Blanche Arisman 5/15/1918–1/16/2000 MI

IV Dorothy M. Moors 8/10/1920 Boswell, PA–3/19/1985 Virgilina, VA

m Henderson Loftis 11/11/1919–4/1957

III Elizabeth Branch 2/11/1900 Punxsutawney, PA–2/26/1991 Clarion, PA

m ca. 1923 John Richard Baldwin ca. 1899 PA

IV Gloria Baldwin 12/5/1925 PA–12/17/2003 FL

IV [Son]

III Maude Pearl Branch 4/30/1903 Meyersdale, PA–8/1983 Bellevue, WA

m ca. 1925 Walter M. "Bus" McMillen 10/18/1903 Bridgeville, PA–4/13/1955 Bridgeville, PA

IV [Daughter]

IV Robert Branch McMillen 7/10/1935 PA–10/12/2002 Bellevue, WA

III Leona Louise Branch 11/22/1905–2/23/1997 Pittsburg, PA

m Edward William Schietinger 7/1/1894 Pittsburgh, PA–6/2/1985

IV [Daughter]

IV [Daughter]

IV [Daughter]

III Anna Branch 8/12/1908–4/21/2004

m Raymond S. Call 1901–1946

IV [Son]

IV [Son]

III Ruth Branch ca. 1912

m Robert Schmidt

IV [Son]

III Thomas James Branch 7/9/1915 PA–11/17/1978 CA

m Rose Lillian Caplan 8/29/1915 PA–7/1/1977 CA

IV [Son]

IV [Daughter]

III Irene Branch ca. 1921

m Glenn Wilhelm

IV [Daughter]

IV [Son]

IV [Son]

II Elizabeth Ann Branch ca. 1876

II Maggie Branch ca. 1879

II Joseph William Branch 8/26/1884-5 Meyersdale, PA–1947 OH

m ca. 1912 Mabel/Mable Lenora Burchfield 2/1/1893 PA–1/30/1974 OH

III Mona L. Branch 5/1/1913 PA–4/9/2000

III L. Irene Branch 2/4/1915 PA–1/30/1989 OH

III [Daughter]

Our Cousin in the White House

I read today that President Obama went to Arlington National Cemetery to pay his respects to Frank Buckles, 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.

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. (Huguenots 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.

Benois Brasseur was an ancestor of Stanley Dunham's on his mother's side, and an ancestor of Cal Jones's on his 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.

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.)

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.

Young Burton

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 Elisha Franklin Paxton and the Texas pioneer Sam Houston (both cousins of our Paxton forebears). Also, he published this nice picture of Burton Paxton and one of George that I blogged here.

Another family myth shot to hell

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 The Paxtons: We Are One 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:

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."

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.

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 genealogy listserv, Joanne writes:

[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.

But wait a minute. The Bishop of London and Lord Treasurer of England would have been an ally of the king's. So maybe "officiate" means something different in this case. Off to Wikipedia's entry on William Juxon (that's their picture of him above):

During the Civil War, the bishop, against whom no charges were brought in parliament, lived undisturbed at Fulham Palace. 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.

So he was that 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.

Putting a Face With the Name

I've written a few times before about Levi Overholser, my pioneering, railroad-promoting, gun-toting, alleged-bankruptcy-fraud-committing ancestor. But I don't ever remember seeing a picture of him. Now, from an Overholser cousin, here he is.

















Said cousin also sent this photo of Levi and Mary Overholser's graves at Fairlawn Cemetery in Oklahoma City. Thanks, Cousin!

Cousin Conclave

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.

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.)

Let me know by comment or e-mail if any of those faces look familiar. Whoever they are, it's a great picture!

John Washington Vermillion, 1857-1928

Someone 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.

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.)

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."

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 William McGee and great-great-granddaughter of the Revolutionary spy Martha Bell. 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.

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.

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.)

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 here, here, here, and here) 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.

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.

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.)

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.

(Left: sagebrush on the Snake River in Franklin County, Washington, 1800s.)

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.

In 1907, Wash lost a second son: Walter died from tuberculosis, leaving a wife, Mollie, and children John (4) and Blanche (five months).

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Brush With Abe

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 Lincoln.

Cal Jones's great-grandmother (father's mother's mother) was a woman named Salina Hash (you just have 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.

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.

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.

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!

The Jichas' final resting places

I wrote a couple of years ago about George and Kate Jicha, 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.

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.

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.

Anyway, if you're ever in the area and want to give them a shout, here's how to get there:
Maguire-Fairview Cemetery
St. Joseph's Catholic Church Cemetery

Crank and Walty

Donald 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 wish 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.

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.

First I'll tell you a little about where he fits in: I've told you before about Ambrose Clark, 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, Marcy Humes. 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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

The Phantom Ship

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In Mather's Magnalia Christi,
Of the old colonial time,
May be found in prose the legend
That is here set down in rhyme.

A ship sailed from New Haven,
And the keen and frosty airs,
That filled her sails at parting,
Were heavy with good men's prayers.

O Lord! if it be thy pleasure--
Thus prayed the old divine--
To bury our friends in the ocean,
Take them, for they are thine!

But Master Lamberton muttered,
And under his breath said he,
This ship is so crank and walty,
I fear our grave she will be!

And the ship that came from England,

When the winter months were gone,
Brought no tidings of this vessel,
Nor of Master Lamberton.

This put the people to praying
That the Lord would let them hear
What in His greater wisdom
He had done with friends so dear.

And at last their prayers were answered:--
It was in the month of June,
An hour before the sunset
Of a windy afternoon,

When, steadily steering landward,
A ship was seen below,
And they knew it was Lamberton, Master,
Who sailed so long ago.

On she came, with a cloud of canvas,
Right against the wind that blew.
Until the eye could distinguish
The faces of the crew.

Then fell her straining topmasts,
Hanging tangled in the shrouds,
And her sails were loosened and lifted,
And blown away like clouds.

And the masts, with all their rigging,
Fell slowly, one by one,
And the hulk dilated and vanished,
As a sea-mist in the sun!

And the people who saw this marvel
Each said unto his friend,
That this was the mould of their vessel,
And thus her tragic end.

And the pastor of the village
Gave thanks to God in prayer,
That, to quiet their troubled spirits,
He had sent this Ship of Air.

Here's a prose version of the Phantom Ship story. And if you really want to go deep into the story, the original telling begins on page 83 of this book from 1702 by Cotton Mather.

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.

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.

The line, with a gaping hole, might look something like this:

George Lamberton (1604–1646) m. Margaret Lewen
Hope Lamberton (ca. 1636–ca. 1700) m. Samuel Ambrose
Abigail Ambrose (1666–1732) m. John Clark
Ambrose Clark (1696–1764) m. Elizabeth Ward
Ambrose Clark (1723–? ) m. Mary Kilbourn
[Missing Link]
John Clark (1783–1850) m. Marcy Humes
Ambrose Clark (1818–1896) m. Salina Hash
Esther Caroline Clark (1848–1922) m. Charles Matthew Jones
Silas Matthew Jones (1871–1940) m. Nancy Lucinda Shumate
Sherman Calaway Jones (1895–1967) m. Clara Paxton

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.

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.

Marcy, Marcy, Marcy!

A while back (and it has been a while -- guess I've been distracted), I introduced you to the Joneses' only known New England ancestry, 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 Longfellow told it, was urged to "speak for himself" by Priscilla Mullins).

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.

(Left: a monument to the founders of Mendon, Massachusetts. Ferdinando Thayer is the first name listed.)

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."