Happy birthday Great-grandmother Zulieka Granger Phillips Swasey

A repost of blog from last year's birthday with additions!

On July 30, 1858, Zulieka Granger Phillips Swasey was born.  Her mother Mary Phillips, had been a Granger before marriage.  Her father, William Phillips, was raised by a stepfather, Samuel Gainer in Georgia.  Her mother went from Texas back to Georgia to give birth, and I'm not clear whether she was with her own mother or her mother-in-law.

Baby Zulie was given a slave girl at her birth, with the papers written by hand by her paternal grandmother, Mary Phillips Gainer.  I wonder if any of them knew that the Civil War would be starting in just a few years.

She returned with her parents (Mary and Willian Phillips) to Sabine Pass, Texas or Beaumont, Texas, at a time when there were cotton plantations where now oil wells drill, and cities stand.

Front and back of Zulie G. Swasey portrait, mother of Ada Phillips Swasey Rogers

GG Zulieka was know to the family as "Dear Nan."  Her mother, Mary, had another child two years later, and Mary died within a year of that birth.  Julie's father William Phillips may have been sick, may have been grieving, or some other reason had him leaving the homestead, and sending his daughters to relatives in Galveston.  Within 6 months of his wife's death, he joined the Confederate forces, fighting early in the war with other Texans in a company from Alabama, and dying.

GG Zulieka and her younger sister, Ada Phillips, were raised by Granger and Gainer relatives who were the sisters of either their father or their mother.

When Zulieka married at age 24 to Alexander John Swasey, also of Galveston, she then had her own two girls, naming her first Ada Phillips Swasey, and her second Stella Zulieka Swasey.  Ada Phillips Swasey Rogers became my grandmother on my father's side.

Zulieka Swasey (Dear Nan) and her granddaughter Ada Mary Rogers. (Ada Mary Rogers died as a child)

And how do I know more than is available by census and city directory documents?  My relatives somehow kept copies of letters written by Zulieka's mother, her father, her grandmother Gainer, her grandfather Granger, and her uncle Marion Granger.  I've transcribed them into records for these people on Ancestry.com, which kind of makes these people more real.

The letters just before and during the Civil War are the most precious, because of the lack of true information that was available to people, and the privations they endured.  Letters were written on both sides of folded paper, then across the original writing at a 90 degree angle, as well as in the margins.  See HERE for some of the letters.

I've never known why GG-Grandmom Mary Phillips traveled to San Marcos, Hays County, TX from Galveston to give birth to my G-grandmother, Zulieka Granger Phillips Swasey on July 30, 1858.  Then she had her second daughter, Ada Pulsifer Phillips in Beaumont (or more likely Town Bluff) on Sept. 15, 1860. The second daughter, Great Aunt Ada, went by Auntie to the Swasey and Granger relatives, while Zulieka became Dear Nan.

The story my grandmother Ada Phillips Swasey Rogers told was that Dear Nan had been a 10 month pregnancy by her mother. I later learned that midwives were familiar with a second pregnancy actually starting within the first month of the earlier one, where a woman would lose the first pregnancy but keep the second one, and thus think she was pregnant 10 months.

Since GG Zulieka and her sister had been orphaned during the civil war, I don't know of any relations that might have lived in San Marcos.  Her Aunt Lizzie Granger Sweet who helped raise the 2 Phillips orphans, continued living in Galveston for many more years. As a matter of fact, when Zulieka was listed as living with her brother-in-law, Chauncey Sweet, Zulieka's 2 daughters were counted on the census as living with the Sweets, though they were also listed in Galveston living with their parents at another address.

So San Marcos remains a mystery.  I only know that her own mother, Mary Granger Phillips had traveled from Texas back to Georgia to give birth to Zulieka with her in-laws, but not with the second child.

Great grandmother Zulieka (aka Dear Nan) was a Christian Science practitioner, as was my grandmother Ada Swasey Rogers.  G-Gran Zulieka worked out of her apartment home in Houston and was listed in the city directory, as was her accountant husband, Alexander John Swasey, who may have gone by "A.J."

A.J. Swasey died in 1913.  GG Zulieka continued her practice until that year (1913.) In the 1920 census she was living with Chauncey Sweet in Galveston, but in 1930 she was back in Houston. She died in an automobile accident near Rosenburg, TX on April 21. 1935, and is buried in Galveston.