Category: Letters to Esther

I’ve spent a good portion of this weekend helping a my neighbor sort and move things around, in preparation for the installation of a temporary housemate at Chez Lea. Mostly, it involved hanging out and providing company and moral support while she did the dirty work. But, there was something in it for me, too. She’d read about my recent dissatisfaction with my printer situation, and that I was planning on eventually upgrading one of my printers to a black and white laser (not so very expensive, especially after the cost per page is factored in). Anyway, she had an older but perfectly functional laser printer sitting in her “to be sorted” pile, complete with extra cartridge. Both of which she gave to me, onna counta she’s such a spectacularly swell person. Wheee!

I just finished swapping it into the printer rotation and printing a test sheet, and it appears as if all systems are go. I win! Not only does this mean that I don’t have to worry about ink drying out, but I can now play around with toner-based transfers. I can’t wait. I’m having a geek-gasm just thinking about it.

This, boys and girls, is a prime lesson in why it’s important to let the universe know what you want. If you don’t, how will it know what to give you?

And now, I’m off to play in genealogy-land. I’ve found yet another collapsing branch on Esther’s family tree, this time in the form of first cousins marrying. What’s funny is that both collapses are in the same generation, but on opposite sides of her grandmother’s family.

I’m still having no luck with her paternal grandmother’s family. I know her name (Emma Pearson) and I now know her parent’s names (Jonathan C. Pearson and Nancy Jane Anderson), but it dies there. I’ve found what I think are some of Jonathan Pearson’s relatives, and a possible link to them, but nothing solid enough to be useful. If it does turn out to be his family, they were originally from South Carolina, moved to Ohio, where Jonathan was born, then to La Salle County Ohio, where he married Nancy Jane.

(Please, do not ask how many hours I wasted last night trying to get even that far.)

Oh, and I encountered another kick-ass name: Tamer Jane Cammack. She might (or might not) have been Jonathan’s mother. She had a son named Jonathan, but I could find no birth/death dates or anything else to indicate that they’re the same person. The dates are in the right ball park, and the migration pattern would be possible, but that’s obviously not good enough.

This is the Wakefield branch of Esther’s family tree. Elizabeth Wakefield was her grandmother.

I mentioned that I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time trying to sort out various anomalies in Esther’s family tree. I thought I’d provide a visual aid. It took me all morning to unsnarl this one once and for all. Part of the problem is that various researchers have conflated two of the women: Mary Jane Wade and Elizabeth Morton became Mary Jane Elizabeth Wade. Eeep! Another problem is that there are several Roberts in the line, and some of them have also become conflated and generally mixed up.

And, yes, if you look closely, not only are there distant cousins marrying (hint: family trees should branch out, not come together), but also a case of a woman marrying her nephew. That was the bit that nearly gave me an aneurysm, because it meant that the same set of ancestors were showing up multiple times, in multiple generations.

And also yes, I work out these snarls the old-fashioned way, using paper and pencil. I’ve found that graph paper is most excellent for family tree work, because it allows you to line up everything very neatly in two dimensions.

I apologize for the lack of attention, but I’m still off in genealogy land. I reached the Pilgrims, which was exciting. There should be a ton of info available on that strata, so I haven’t really bothered to explore it in depth or breadth. Right now I’m focused strictly on who begat whom. Just the names and dates, ma’am, please-and-thanks.

And what names they are, too! A few minutes ago, I encountered Thankful Loves Marsh. That has to be one of the bestest names ever. Alas, she is not related to Esther. There are, however, many fascinating names in Esther’s family tree:

1. Constant Southworth
2. Olive Brown (I think we call that Khaki these days)
3. Bethiah Beverly
4. Bethya Read
5. Brita Walraven
6. Remember Brown
7. Sinai Roberts
8. Beteryce Hewett
9. Euphemia Ross
10. Bartle Escheilson
11. Afreka of Fife

There is also the obligatory Native American branch of the family, comprised of Mary Little Dove Hyanno and her ancestors (and all manner of alleged “princesses” who were no such thing; you really can’t believe half of what other “researchers” post on these here Internetz).

And, while I find it depressing that so many men married women named Unknown Unknown, I did find a singular case of the reverse, in the person of one Widow Walker who married an unknown Englishman. You’ll note, however, that Mrs. Walker’s given name is conspicuously missing.

One of the challenges of tracking genealogical ghosts is that, until last week, folks weren’t terribly concerned with how their names were spelled. Often, it’s a case of a trailing letter or two being lopped off (Browne becomes Brown or Bastowe becomes Basto). Sometimes, though, Monroe becomes Munro, Wheatliegh becomes Wheatley, and Smythe becomes Smith.

I’ve also run into a few incredibly confusing family cluster-fucks. In one, the same parents showed up twice. That’s what happens when cousins marry. In another, two women were conflated into one by multiple researchers, because they both had related husbands with the same last name. In that case, it was further confused by the fact that their off-spring, who were some sorts of cousins aunt and nephew, married.

I’ve been continuing to research Esther’s family tree. I’ve never done any genealogical work before, so it’s been an interesting exercise. What I’ve found is:

1. It’s addicting.
2. It’s possible to lose an entire day without having any idea where it’s gone, and only four names to show for it. But, those four names make you very, very happy.
3. I now know more about HTML codes for ordered and unordered lists than is probably healthy.

I’ve managed to link her to two lines that (allegedly) trace back to the 13th century, one to England and one to Scotland. Another line traces back to Ireland in the 17th century. We’re talking “came over on the Mayflower.” One line allegedly descends from Robert I King of Scotland (yes, that would be Robert the Bruce). I expect most folks, if they look that far back, are related to someone important.

This is all based on other people’s research. Or “research.” Aside from the entertainment value, I would recommend taking it with a grain of salt.

More progress! I spent the last couple hours installing WordPress on the Esther sub-domain. Actually, it took about two minutes to install. The rest of the time was spent in my other favorite pastime–not!–template tweaking. It’s done, though. I’ll post there whenever I upload new files or add substantially to existing ones. That way, those following along won’t have to try to keep track of what’s new and what’s not.

Good lord, could it get any more windy? Seriously. And we’re under a tornado watch until 10pm. I really am not amused. I really, really don’t like Indiana weather. The winters aren’t cold enough and the summers–which apparently begin in March–are too hot and muggy. O ick. It’s 85F inside right now, which is way too warm, but I’d feel like a total wimp if I turned on the AC, onna counta it’s March! Hrmph.

But the good news is that the Almond Dishmate Fairy visited in the wee hours, placing a bottle of dish detergent–the good stuff from the co-op that doesn’t leave a gross residue on dishes–on the driver’s seat of my car[1]. Thank you, Ms. Lea! I think part of the reason I kept forgetting to pick up dish soap was that I didn’t want to use any of the gross “ultra” varieties. They all stink to high heavens and no matter how thoroughly you rinse, there is still a residue that just won’t come off. It’s especially bad on plastics, because they absorb the chemical-y odor and taste.

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[1] Since graduating to a grown-up car, I no longer leave my keys sitting on the dashboard. I do, however, still leave the car unlocked when at home. I’m far enough off the road that no one is likely to bother it, and if they did, there’s not really anything useful in it. And, leaving it unlocked makes it much easier for folks to drop off things without having to stop if they don’t want to. Even the UPS guy seems to like this arrangement. He always leaves packages in my car if it’s home.

Yes, I’ve been thoroughly useless. I spent the entire weekend trolling RootsWeb and World Connect and trying to make sense of what I was able to find out. I’m not a genealogist, by any stretch of the imagination. A lot of the thought processes involved are disturbingly like math story problems, so it doesn’t take long before I get brainache. There are about eleventy ways to go at establishing any given link, and unless you hit on the correct combination of parameters, you’ll come up with bupkis. And then, you can look at something twelfty times and on the twelfty-eleventh, the penny suddenly drops, and everything falls neatly into place. It’s frustrating as all hell, but when you stumble across an important key bit of information, it’s also rewarding.

I’ve spent several years, on and off, trying to pin down Esther’s family tree. I had a small amount of information from the letters themselves, and will likely have more as I go continue reading and transcribing them. However, there are huge gaps, especially on her father’s side. Odd that I should stumble upon her mother’s data, when so many women show up as Unknown in family genealogies. I think the saddest, though, is Esther’s paternal grandmother, who thus far is Unknown Unknown. She was someone, damnit, and deserves better than that. So, I spent the weekend trying to figure out who she could’ve been. A fool’s errand, that, as all I know is that she probably came from the Dayton, Ohio area and that she married an Unknown Munro who probably came from the Seekonk, Massachusetts area. They were probably married prior to March 1864 (their son’s birthday is 14 January 1865). I don’t know where they were married, but I’m guessing it was either near her family’s Dayton area home or in La Salle County, Ohio, where their son was born. That’s a lot of maybes. I feel like I’ve been chasing myself around and around in circles, because I keep running into the same false doors and brick walls.

All I can say is that I’m thankful that I don’t feel much of an urge to do this sort of research on my own family, because it’d be every bit as frustrating.

EEEEEP! And, just to show how fickle this whole process is, I justthisverysecond found, via an LDS records search, that Esther’s paternal grandparents were Warren C. Munro and Emma Pearson. I’m tellin’ ya’, this genealogy thing could drive a person to tears.

I ought to know when to leave well enough alone. I tried adding a search tool to the Letters to Esther site, and ended up temporarily breaking the front page. So, my apologies to anyone who tried to access it and was confronted with a broken and totally useless search page. Everything is back to normal now, whatever normal is. I’ll have a go at the search tool at a later date.

While I’m on the subject, everything that was on the old Esther blog has now been added to the new site. About half of those transcripts now have scans. This weekend, I’m hoping to finish scanning the stragglers. Then, I can start transcribing new material. Wheee! And, the About, Biography, Resources, and Notes sections are now functional. I’ll fill them out as I have time and come across material. Right now, the About and Resources sections are the most extensive.

I’ve also created a little envelope favicon which is very simple but kinda cute. It doesn’t work in IE, for some reason, but those of you who use Firefox or Opera should be able to see it. I’ll try to trouble-shoot the IE problem–it’s always an IE problem, it seems–as soon as I have time.

Now, if my patience holds out, I’m off to troll RootsWeb.