52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 4 "Education"

 

This week's keyword for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge is "Education." One story immediately came to mind. "No," I thought, "that story's tie to education isn't strong enough. Keep thinking."  I keep coming back to the same story in my mind so I've decided to share it. 

It all starts with a rather unremarkable event . . . in 1816, in Vincennes, Indiana, the estate of John McCoy settled an invoice from a young teacher, Samuel Risley, for the education of John's children after his death. The administrator of that estate was John's brother, Robert McCoy [1].

Robert McCoy's signature, 1812 (from author's collection)

A fairly common event, right? Nothing out of the ordinary.

 

What makes it a special moment in our family history is that about 150 years later, Robert McCoy's 4th great grandson and Samuel Risley's great great granddaughter were married . . . and eventually became my grandparents!

Each of the men, Robert McCoy and Samuel Risley have stories worth telling so I guess this week is a bonus . . a 2-for-1 of sorts with this ancestral tale.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 3 “Out of Place”

 

“Out of Place” is this week’s theme in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. What a great theme. I’ve given this one lots of thought but keep coming back to the same story which involves the oldest brother of my great grandfather, John Samuel Davis. 

Leroy Sherman Davis & Mary Etta Sult Davis with their family. My great grandfather, Theodore, is on Leroy's lap. John Samuel is the ghostly figure in the upper right corner. 

Just like his image in this photo, John Samuel has been a bit apparitional in the family history. I had never dug too deep into his story. About a year and a half ago, a very distant cousin reached out to me via Ancestry because he had matched to my grandmother whose test I also manage in their database. The match was estimated at 4th to 6th cousins between this gentleman (who I will call Mr. E) and my grandmother.

This led to a story I like to call "Hoosier Daddy?"

We quickly determined that the match was to my grandmother's father's family - the Davis and Sult lines. Mr. E sent off his grandfather's dna and that helped to narrow things down a bit more. That's where the story really begins as the mystery lie with Mr. E's grandfather's family.

Mr. E's great grandmother (his grandfather's mother) never knew who her father was. She was born in New York City in 1920; her parents never married. Family lore always said that her father was killed in a trolley car accident when she was very young. Mr. E felt this was just a myth to cover up the shame of not knowing her father. 

What a conundrum though . . . as we narrowed things down, the dna match seemed to point to one of my grandmother's uncles being the father of Mr. E's great grandmother. But as far as we knew here in the midwest, none of the men ever left Indiana.  How did a man who never left his home state of Indiana father a child with a woman who had never left NYC?

John Samuel Davis was certainly "Out of Place."  He was born in Sullivan County, Indiana in 1895 and grew up with a large family of siblings. He married a local girl, Iva Tennis, is September 1914. The young couple had 2 sons - one in 1915 and one in 1916. Then, in 1917 or 1918, John joined the Army and was sent overseas. When he returned from war service in January 1919, his army transport landed in New York City.  It seems as if John Samuel never returned home to Indiana. Iva filed for divorce in September 1919. 

Mr. E's great grandmother was born in May 1920. According to an online "Pregnancy Conception Calculator" it seems very likely that John Samuel and her mother were together within a week of the finalization of John's divorce. 

With the DNA evidence and the paper trail proving that John Samuel Davis was indeed "out of place" it is reasonable to conclude that he is indeed the father of Mr. E's great grandmother. 

And one more surprise . . . John Samuel Davis died in New York City 22 Aug 1924 as the result of an accident with a trolley! 

There are a few more mysteries about John Samuel Davis to explore . . . even though he was with Mr. E's great great grandmother in September 1919, he married another woman, Elsie Soina, on 9 October 1919!

And DNA evidence shows that Leroy Sherman Davis was NOT John Samuel's father . . .

Superstitions

 

I received a beautiful new knife set from my sister-in-law and niece for Christmas. Lovely shades of purple, with matching cutting boards. While using one of them to chop onions for our chili supper the other evening, I cut my finger pretty badly. It's been a few days, but it is still incredibly painful. It's been a bit of a hassle between the tenderness and trying to keep the band-aids dry.

Today I thought "Well, Papaw tried to warn you!" You see, my granddad has always been the most superstitious person I know. I can remember so many oft-repeated warnings and cautions when I was a child.

Top of the list - don't accept a knife as a gift without paying something for it. Even a penny. This will keep you safe and keep you from cutting yourself with it. Maybe I should have listened!

Others that I recall include:

Don't walk under a ladder - it's bad luck.

And other things that cause bad luck:

    Opening an umbrella in the house

    Crossing the path of a black cat (or crossing the road after a black cat has crossed)

    

Never sing at the dinner table or you'll cry before bed.

If you play with fire, you will wet the bed.

Never gift anyone a wallet or purse without some money in it. 

If you spill salt, you must scoop it up and throw it over your left shoulder.

Are there any superstitions in your family? 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 2 "Favorite Photo"

 

The theme of week two for the "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" challenge is "Favorite Photo."

This is another fun theme for me, but I'd like to share a little background info first. I have always been fascinated with history. Especially local and family history. When I was a little girl, my sister and I spent our lovely summer days with our grandmother while our parents were at work. Oh, the adventures we had!

One outing that I looked forward to each summer was the Clark County Historical Museum. What fun to explore their collection which is housed in an historic home that was the first post office for our hometown. 

I did a few small family history projects during my elementary and high school years, but nothing too in-depth. After the birth of my oldest son, I really felt driven to explore his ancestry. I began building a family tree and spent over a decade working diligently to collect ancestors and the facts of their lives. Census records, birth & death registers, and photos of their grave sites. 

About 12 years ago, I realized that I had very few photographs of our ancestors and that became a major focus of my research efforts for the next several years. I found some online, shared by distant family members, and others in local and county history books. And I began asking older relatives for any photos they might have. We now have a prized collection of family photographs. I'm not sure I could ever choose just one favorite - each one is special in it's own way.

The one that I would like to share today features my 3rd great grandmother, Ida McCoy Shaner. Ida was born in January 1880 in Knox County, Indiana to William McCoy and Nancy Wilson McCoy. She married Charles Shaner 12 Sept 1897, also in Knox County. Ida and Charles had 9 children, with 8 still living at the time of Ida's death in January 1934 at the age of 54. 

The photo came from an album of my great grandmother, Bonnie Edgin. In Bonnie's handwriting, the photo was identified as "Grandma Shaner with chicks."

The first time I saw the photo, I felt such a closeness to Grandma Shaner. I love animals and the farm life. I grew up in a small town, but my husband and I bought his family farm a few years ago and have been building a small homestead on these few acres. The fact that Grandma Shaner loved her chickens enough to pose with them for her portrait just really spoke to my heart. Like Ida, I have spent my life in the county I was born in  - getting married and raising my family here. 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 1 "I'd Like to Meet"

 

I learned recently of a genealogy challenge to feature 52 ancestors in 52 weeks this year, organized by Amy Johnson Crow.  What a great challenge! This really piqued my interest. I have been collecting the stories of my children's ancestors, both mine and my husband's families, for nearly 25 years now. It's about time that I get serious about sharing those stories with everyone else. I need to record them instead of keeping them all in my head or buried between the lines of the multitude of records that I've collected in both digital and paper format.

The challenges are emailed to participants each week. Here's the info on Week 1: 

This week's theme is "I'd Like to Meet." Most of us have an ancestor who we'd like to meet (even if it's to ask, "What are your parents' names?") This week, write about that ancestor or why you'd want to meet him or her. Feel free to be creative!

What a great way to begin the challenge - a nice, easy question for me! 

The ancestor I would most like to meet is my 3rd great grandmother Sarah Mills Pargin.

Sarah (1866 - 1907) was the mother of Goldie Pearl Pargin, my great great grandmother. Goldie was Sarah's oldest child and is the one standing behind her mother on the right hand side of the photo.

Sarah married Peter Pargin in Lawrence County, IL. Peter is my 3rd great grandfather and father of Goldie Pearl Pargin. Or at least that's what we've always been told . . . I have always had serious doubts about him actually being Goldie's biological father. Goldie was born in 1888; Peter and Sarah didn't wed until 1891. The 1890 United States Census was destroyed in a fire decades ago and birth records were not reliably recorded in Illinois until 1916. Every other paper record of Goldie's life lists Peter as her father.

The family lived in Lawrence County, Illinois but traveled west to southwestern Missouri/northeastern Arkansas around 1905. Sarah passed away there in 1907. Her husband, Peter, and most of the children returned to Lawrence County by 1910. The youngest child, Maude, was born in Missouri and was raised by family members there after Sarah passed away.

I have taken a DNA test, along with my grandfather (Goldie was his grandmother), and the DNA results show that Goldie was not in fact a Pargin. I believe I have narrowed the suspect down to one father and son in another local family, but I'm not certain if I'll ever fully solve the mystery.

I would love to sit down with Sarah and talk with her. Who was Goldie's father? Was it a romantic, secret affair? Or something darker? What prompted the family to move to Arkansas? What was life like there? Was her marriage to Peter, who was quite a bit older than her, a happy one? Did they marry by choice or because of the shame of an out-of-wedlock child for Sarah?

I like to think five minutes is all that I would need with her. Just five minutes... but I think we would have so much to share and would certainly talk for much longer than that.