Ntes on Marion Phillips and George Granger

repost from When I Was 69, 8/4/13 

 Finding Uncle Marion:

The data on my site didn't have his death date or place.
I had his birth date and the state of Georgia, but no details.

Uncle Marion had lots of background material.  He was the elder brother of my grandmother's grandfather, William Phillips, who died as a Confederate soldier.  (I don't know why Marion Phillips didn't fight in that conflict).  Uncle Marion was old enough that when his mother remarried to Samuel Gainer, he might not have continued to be part of the household.  That is unknown.  But he did stay close to them as they moved into Texas.

I also was looking for details of George Granger's life.  The Grangers were  from Newburyport, MA.  One transcriber had given his mother's maiden name some real twists, which used to be why people weren't connected up with their real life events.  Lucy Pulsifer was changed into Lucy Ressiler.  It's easy for me to read her correct name in the handwritten document.  But if you've never heard of the Pulsifers who surveyed the land originally for Beaumont Texas, I guess anything is possible.  They donated land for the city center, and probably some of their descendents received some profits somehow.  Not my family, however.  I think my grandfather and grandmother went from Houston to Beaumont during some property settlement, but came home empty handed. In case you don't know, Beaumont is the site of oil.

Anyway, Marion Phillips never married. And since he was my grandmother's great uncle, I didn't spent much time looking for information on him.  It's hard enough to find out who's parents are whose...and when they lived, and did they marry the same person according to the various census records they appeared in.  Seriously, I'm in the midst of trying to get George Granger's wife (or wives) birthday straightened out.

But, (you know that was coming, didn't you) Uncle Marion was the recipient of many letters, as well as wrote many, between himself and his sisters and parents and brothers and their children from around the Civil War till afterward.  Uncle George, not so much.

The Phillips/Gainer family moved to Texas, sometime around the beginning of the Civil War.   Uncle Marion lived in Galveston as well as Tyler Texas, and I finally found his grave in Woodville, Texas.

I actually have a picture of the grave marker, so now I know when he died, and where.

I've transcribed many of the Uncle Marion letters that were part of the Rogers family genealogy records.  I'm adding them to his site on Ancestry.com. 

And when I get a minute (more like an hour) I'll tell you more details about the letters, the family, and poor Uncle George Granger.  (The Granger family raised my grandmother's mother and sister when Mary Granger Phillips and her husband William died early.  Remember William was Marion Phillips' brother. And Mary was George Granger's sister.)

OK, confusing, I know, and I look at the family tree all the time.

I'll try to be more coherent next time.






What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset - Crowfoot, a leader of the Blackfoot nation