The Ah-Ha of genealogy

I am reading all kinds of details, all the time.  You never know when one will stick in your mind.  There was a middle of the night memory which came to me, remembering 2 women who came to my grandmother's wedding from Houston to Galveston, and I had no way of knowing who they were.  When I had checked the siblings of her parents, and her husband's, there just wasn't anyone by the name of McCall, the one I remembered.

But recently I'd been looking at the various step-children and children of the Elizabeth Granger Sweet and Sidney J. Sweet household.  And there had been a step-daughter who married a McCall.  Frances Ada (Fannie) Sweet McCall.  Could she have been one of those visitors from out of town to the Galveston wedding? The other step-sister was Mary E. Minni Sweet King.

First I had to find the clipping of the newspaper notice of the wedding of Ada Phillips Swasey to George Elmore Rogers, Sr. in 1905.  Thank heavens it was still there on Ancestry!

The Galveston Daily News of June 7 described the gown, the setting, the flowers, and some of the people. There's this final paragraph...

"Among those from out of town in attendance were: Mrs. McCall and Mrs. King of Houston, aunts of the bride; Mrs. N. C. Munger and Mrs. W. A. Grant of San Antonio and Mrs. Sherwood of Houston

But Mrs. McCall was stuck in my memory cells, and suddenly I knew she had been the step-daughter of "Grand Aunt," Elizabeth Granger Sweet. On Ancestry a wife doesn't have listed the step-children who had been born to a first wife, unless you look under the listings of her husband. So it took me some real delving to find that when she had married Sidney Sweet she suddenly had 2 daughters.

I wonder if Grand Aunt Lizzy came to the wedding.  If her 2 step-daughters did (for Mrs. King was the other one) then perhaps her own children Uncle Chauncey Sweet and Aunt Lucy Sweet Chamberlain (living in Galveston) did as well.  Then I noticed Aunt Lucy died in 1905 so maybe she didn't make it to the wedding.  It was a small affair in the parlor of the house, after all.  I don't know who the Mrs. Munger and Grant and Sherwood are yet...  But to come all the way from San Antonio in 1905 was pretty impressive, so those 2 women must have had a connection to the Swaseys.

Uncle Chauncey Sweet had not only his own mother "Grand Aunt Lizzy" living with him in 1900, but the 2 nieces, Ada and Stella Swasey were also listed in his household. It is strange because they were also listed in the household of the Alexander Swasey parents, who at least offered Ada a venue for her wedding.

There was a rumor that my grandmother Ada's family disapproved of her marrying Poppy, George Rogers. Since he and his sister had been virtually orphaned, and had guardians as well as a mother that apparently had little to do with their lives, they didn't have an "established family" to speak for their heritage.  It's too bad, because they had plenty of ancestors from "first families of Virginia," but didn't know about it. And George Rogers had been working since a teen to support himself and sister (and perhaps mother as well.)

Ada's sister Stella Swasey, who was just a year younger than my grandmother, was her maid of honor.

Ada P Swasey Rogers with her first son, wearing her wedding dress.

And who was Charles Olgivy, the best man? I know Anna Lou Rogers as bridesmaid, as she was Poppy's younger sister.  Then a groomsman, Louis White, is also unknown.  It's likely that Charles and Louis were young friends who weren't part of my grandparent's lives when I knew of them.  Or even if they had been, I don't remember them telling me about their friends.  After all, do you know your grandparents friends?

But with the great internet as my resource these days, perhaps I can learn more about my grandparents' lives.

"Dear Nan" Zulie Granger Swasey (mother of Ada Swasey Rogers)

 Aunt Lucy Sweet Chamberlain (or maybe Zulie Granger Swasey ..or  Ada Phillips Sweet?)

I find my grandmother may have made an error on the 2 photos above, calling both of these Lucy Sweet Chamberlain.  They don't look like the same woman at all to me. I'm thinking the penciled description on the second one makes it more likely, because it was before she married.

This was "Auntie" (Ada Phillips Sweet) who was Chauncey Sweet's wife, and who hostessed the household of her mother-in-law (Grand Aunt) and nieces and nephew in 1900 Galveston.

Henry de Ferrers

Second Lord Ferrers of Groby, (1303-1343 he served King Edward III.

Married to Isabel de Verdun (1315-1349) before 1331.

Summoned to Parliament 1330-1338.   Accompanied the King to Ireland in 1331, but was among the disinherited who took part in Edward de Baliol's invasion of Scotland in 1332. He received a pardon in 1338 for all offenses, including the capture of Roger de Mortimer. He was with the King at the Battle of Sluys in 1340.

I don't know yet how, but ancestry includes links to the first 2 Anglo Saxon Kings and the early Kings of Scotland.

All that remains of Groby Castle is the Great Hall, the brick building pictured here.

 The link to the first 2 Kings of Anglo Saxony is something I haven't yet followed.

So this ancestor will take some more time and attention.

What if Martha Clack married A. Hightower?

Sometimes I find that plugging in information which isn't substantiated by facts/documents, will bring me to something that either a. proves it full of hogwash, or b. proves it to be true, or c. leaves me with egg on my face for even supposing such a thing!

So today I'm going to suppose Martha Kennon Clack could have married Austin Hightower.  And when I look at how many different dates are given for the siblings of Spencer Clack, she has some Ancestry trees giving her date of birth as 1741 to 1745 and as late as 1751.  The only catch to these earlier dates is that her mother, Mary Kennon Clack, was born 1n 1728, and got married in 1743.  That would put Martha's birth until her mother was at least 15 years old.

One set of trees uses Richmond, Wise County VA as her birth place, while another set says Brunswick County, VA.  Since all the other Clacks of her generation were born in Brunswick, that would be my first preference.

There is one record which lists Austin Hightower as marrying Martha (no maiden name) in 1861.  Austin was born in 1698 on this one record that a exists for Martha.

Austin has records of a marriage to Jane Oldham, in 1744. And they had 3 children.

So I'm fortunately visiting the Chatham County seat in Pittsboro NC, and today (the 23rd) will go to the library and talk to a genealogist.  Since Martha Hightower, as well as Auston, has been listed as dying in Chatham County NC, maybe I can find out where their graves would have been located.

And I did find a bit more information about the son of Auston Hightower, named Henry.  He was part of the American Revolution, but on the Tory side, and was hung for having "murdered" a patriot.

I saw the original will of Auston Hightower (and he signed his name spelling it that way.  So I've changed my records to reflect that spelling (though of course nobody else will probably.)

And since my guess is that Martha is a sister of Spencer Clack, then she's only my aunt six times great.

Heym Family Tree

NOTE: a repost from my other blog...gathering the more recent blog posts into one place for access and organization!

A belated posting of this blog, which I wrote a few years ago...
Well this 75 year old me (Barbara Rogers Heym, divorced all of 48 years from Doug Heym) remembered someone was named Faxon, (about 3 years ago now) and wasn't he/she on the family tree which I've been putting together for my Heym sons...over on Ancestry.

So I did some playing, and Gertrude E. Shultz Hillyer didn't have a maiden name, so I put in Faxon for a trial, and sure enough, that's who she was from early census reports.  AND that gave her Faxon parents into the tree as well.

Today's search (3 years ago) was only 15 min. but I added about 6-7 facts, changing a birth year when I got a complete birth date here, and adding a lot of cousins there...but it would have gone on and on, so I know it's time to quit.

I wish I had the Heym Family photos with Rick's comments together, but somehow I've got original sheets from the photo albums, and I wanted to use one that has a tractor from the Faxon farm in Clinton MI...which is why I started today's search.  Got it.

"A Bit of History and The Heym Family Photo Album (by Rick Heym, 2012)
"This album collects the photos kept by our grandmother, Gertrude (Gammie - gah-mee) Faxon Hillyer and those maintained by our mother, Mary Margaret Edtha Hillyer Heym, and father, Norman Francis Heym: the first relates to early history of the family farm and their friends and also includes images of the Heym family as it grew;
the second chronicles the Heym family and our lives, first in the midwest up until 1945 and then in Connecticut.

"The Hillyer farm was purchased by Francis Faxon in 1831 according to a deed authorized by President Martin Van Buren and was passed from Francis to his son John and thus to his daughter. Gertrude Faxon was raised in nearby Owosso, MI where she studied art and music. This lead her to Boston, MA to study at the New England Conservatory of Music. At some point she met Louis Schultz and toured in vaudeville for a number of years. The name Schultz did not play well in theater, so Louis chose to use his mother’s maiden name, Hillyer, which seemed more acceptable. They were married in 1906. Our mother, Mary, was born in New York City, NY in 1907; it was
not until at least two years later that the couple left the theater to relocate to the family farm.

"Our mother was first educated in a one-room schoolhouse near the farm (see map next page, corner of Ohlson farm) [not included] and then in Owosso where she also studied dance, then for two years at Michigan State University where she studied Interior Design and taught dance before heading to NYC for work in the theatre and to dance professionally. After some time she returned to Michigan and took a job at the Hudson department store where she was working when she met our father, Norman. They married in 1932 and moved after my birth in 1934 to Cleveland, OH, where my sister was born in 1936; they moved to Owosso shortly afterward. Our brother, Doug, was born there in 1939.

"The farm was sold upon the death of Louis in 1954, after which Gertrude returned to Owosso, where she died in 1959. We have had a recent photo of the house at 6494 East Colony Road in Elsie, so the family homestead, ‘The Maples’ still exists although much modernized and without the outbuildings. See inside back cover for photo. [not included here] Our father had four brothers who appear in the album on various pages - Earle, Hal, Ray and Carl - and I will try to give bits of their history as I move through the album.I am sending a CD of this album to the broader family in case anyone wants to make a copy of their own."

The photos of album pages look like this before I spend a while cropping and saving each individual photo digitally.  I haven't don't many yet.

2018 June: Since I wrote the earlier part of this blog a couple of years ago, I've updated my Ancestry family tree which I've made for my Heym sons.  It is visible to other Ancestry members, and Doug asked to have the background for their connection to the Mayflower from it.  I was pleased to include him as an editor of the tree, after all it's his family.  So he's been doing a little with it.  And I only am doing my other families research at this time.  Thus I'll go ahead and share this to my blog, rather than keeping it in draft form like I have for all this time.

It's wonderful that these photos and comments have been saved.  Thanks to those who care enough to take time to comment while it's in their memory, in order to share with generations to come.  Most of them may not care at all, but some of them probably will!