DNA Non-Answers #52Ancestors #Week17

Oh, Ancestry DNA (insert shrug).  I've learned some unexpected things, but the things I think DNA will HELP with, not so much. It doesn't help that the youngest person involved has been dead for about 150 years. 

About 2 years ago I found out some unexpected news regarding my many-times-mentioned great-grandfather Clyde Chamberlain.  He is well known among all of his grandchildren and great grandchildren as a serial skirt-chaser. Since DNA testing became popular, many of us have expected to find a few people descended from him in addition to his 7 children with his wife.  I mean, all of that activity, most of it before 1970, one would expect...

But no. As I've written about previously, Gramps was not the biological son of the man who raised him, and I'm reasonably certain he didn't know.  His biological father's family is both well-known and well documented, as the bio-dad in question had 9 children with HIS wife and in turn, several grandchildren and great grandchildren interested in their heritage.

The mystery that I want to talk about, however, is that man's mother and his maternal forebears.

Armilda Parker was born in Nov 1853, her son born when she was about 19. She is assumed to have died in childbirth as she does not appear in 1880 or after (if your're looking, she had a cousin with the same name - it's not her.  Her little son also was living with his grandmother in the 1880 census. Grandmother Parker in turn lived an exceptionally long life, both for the times and considering that she gave birth to at least twelve children.  Elizabeth Sheppard (the preferred surname spelling at the time) lived until probably about 80-85 years of age (her death date between 1900 - 1910 is assumed but not known at this time. She does not appear to have left much, if any information regarding her family of origin for posterity.  In the same vein as my cousin's statement, if you're not a genealogist you may wonder why I care about the identity of my 4th great-grandparents, but there it is.  Mystery Mr. and Mrs Sheppard, perhaps of Kentucky, perhaps of Illinois.  No one seems to know for sure, although there are a variety of guesses. The information that I find especially perturbing is that there are quite a few Sheppard marriages in the immediate area, around the same date as Elizabeth's marriage to Thomas Jefferson Parker, making many of them likely siblings, but I have been unable to determine parents for any of them!

It's my hope, at the moment, that if I chose the "shared matches" option and hit "refresh" enough times, the answer will pop from my computer screen, because not only are we dealing with burned courthouses, but some major flooding as well (insert fist shaking this time!)

*Likely burial place of both Armilda and Elizabeth

#52Ancestors: Week 17 - DNA: A Jigsaw Puzzle

I sent my DNA to Ancestry 5 or 6 years ago.  I did it more for the ethnicity estimates than anything else.  After the most recent update, my ethnicity looks more or less as I would expect:

46% Southern Italy

29% Sweden and Denmark

22% Norway

Various smatterings from a few nearby places.

Eventually, I started labeling my DNA matches by family surname using Ancestry's colored dot system.  No surprises as I combed through the 1st-3rd cousins.  When I got to the 4th-6th cousins, though, I came across people I could not easily attach to any family line...and yet they all connected to each other.  A DNA newbie, I didn't know what it meant to share 45 cM (the highest number of cM shared in what I labeled "Total Mystery matches), so I clicked the link:

Sadly, this did not help much in the way of clarification. 😂  However, as I clicked on Shared Matches for one of my "Total Mystery" people, I was surprised to see two identified DNA matches - 2 great grandsons of Cora Pearson, my great grandfather's sister!  

Sorry to disappoint, but this is not the part where I tell you how all the "Total Mystery" people are related...  You see, it's complicated (like a relationship on Facebook).  Cora Pearson married Bailey Arter, and Cora's great grandmother on her mother's side was also an Arter.  So maybe these mystery matches are descended from a Pearson...or maybe they're descended from an Arter - quite possibly both.

I have spent several days fleshing out peripheral Arter family members, but to no avail.  The surnames I seek (those frequently repeated in my "Total Mystery" matches) are nowhere to be found.  Now, at this point, someone usually inquires, "Why do you care?!  They are distant cousins, at best!" (It's usually my dad.  Dad, if you've happened to click this link, please read on to find out why I continue.) I don't know that I necessarily have an answer other than, I treat genealogy like a jigsaw puzzle.  These "Total Mystery" matches don't fit snugly into my puzzle framework, and I want to know why.  Is there a missing piece in the box or maybe on the floor?  Have I accidentally connected two pieces that don't belong together? I am continually inspecting them, rotating them, rearranging them, trying to determine where they fit, and waiting for that a-ha moment when I can complete the puzzle.

Suggestions for how to go about completing this puzzle are most welcome.

#52Ancestors, Week 16: Should Be a Movie

 A collaborative effort between Cuzzins Rachel and Heather

Any letter excerpts included are from the compiled Letters to Raintree County by James B. Cash

In a country on the verge of being torn apart by war, two brothers - Virginians - must decide where their loyalties lie.  11 years separate Joseph Allen and Benjamin Everett Pearson, but will the divide become become more than just a gap in age?

Rachel's contributions in Verdana.

Heather's contributions in Courier.

Joseph Allen Pearson (Cuzzin Heather and I have decided he shall be played by Viggo Mortensen) was born in Franklin County, Virginia, on October 5th, 1814, one of the ten children of Thomas and Elizabeth Pearson. By the time his last sibling was born in 1829, rumblings concerning the role of slavery in the United States were increasing. In the late 1840s, it would seem Joseph did not want to be in Virginia when the conflict reached its crescendo.  It is uncertain exactly when he left the family homestead, but he stopped long enough in McCracken County, Kentucky, to marry Nancy Ann Fields and have a daughter, Lizzie Pearson.  By July of 1849, though, he had most certainly settled in Illinois.  A letter from his parents to his sister and brother-in-law notes, "Everett, my son, received a letter from Joseph A. Pearson some time I think in July and that he was living in Illinois and that he was doing well." With the Compromise of 1850 on the horizon and the serial publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin in progress, Joseph was probably congratulating himself on escaping a volatile situation in Virginia.

From 1849-1858, Joseph grew his family in the comparative peace of Pulaski County, Illinois. The population was just shy of 4,000 people by the 1860 census. In addition to Lizzie, Joseph and Nancy added John, Catherine, Nancy, Mary Ann, Joseph, and George to their brood, though not all of them survived.  Neither John, Catherine, nor Joseph lived to see a first birthday. In March of 1858, Joseph's cousins were engaged in a correspondence in which one wrote, "I know we received a letter from Joseph Pearson and he wrote that they were all well and he has had some deaths in the family." This was likely a reference to the loss of Joseph L. who lived less than a month, July 13 - August 6, 1857.  

No enlistment or service records exist for Joseph Sr.  He was 47 by the time war was declared, so it seems safe to assume he chose not to take part.  Joseph was arguably too old for war, and his only living son, George William, was certainly too young at only three.  Joseph's younger brother, Benjamin Everett, enlisted...with the Confederacy.  Many of Joseph's extended family would do the same. Joseph's wife and children, however, would remain more or less unscathed by the ravages of war.  They would add another son to their brood, Thomas J. (likely Jefferson) in 1862.

Back on the east coast...

Benjamin Everett Pearson, Joseph's much younger brother and commonly referred to by his middle name (here portrayed by mutual Cuzzin agreement by Sir Richard Armitage), was born in Franklin County, Virginia on April 6th, 1825. Like his older brother, he grew up in a part of the country where slavery was commonplace and where the rumbling of ending it only increased with each passing year. Everett married at a far younger age than his brother, to Matilda Robertson in 1844, and possibly shortly after that event, Joseph set out. Home in Virginia, when Everett received Joseph's letter telling of his new home and recent marriage, he can't have let too much time go by before discussing (or perhaps, telling) his wife and his parents of his plans to go to Illinois.  A July 1853 letter explains, "I am living in Nicholas, Va and have been since the first of November 1851. I sold my plantation in Franklin with the intention of going to Illinois." And yet, he was living a mere 150 miles from his birthplace.

There were plenty of possible reasons why their Illinois objective was not immediately achieved. In that window of time from November 1851 to July 1853, the couple and their small children had sold a large farm (called a plantation in the letter but not seeming to own slaves, at least not in their household), packed trunks, and traveled by wagon. Most of Virginia was well populated at this point, but the journey at any time of year, especially with young children, could only have been arduous. From records in what later became West Virginia, they seem to have gone without any other family. Not too long after setting up home near Gauley's Bridge, Everett sat down to draft a letter telling of his good fortune - "300 acres of...good land with about 40 acres of improvements with a good comfortable dwelling." Certainly he knew that War was coming, but even temporary good fortune has its pull on a man making his living from the earth.

By 1860/61, when Everett was joining his neighbors in their preparations to fight with the Confederacy on behalf of "State's Rights" and preserve his family's right to own the enslaved, Matilda can only have been filled with fear. She had 4 sons (Thomas Jefferson, John W., George B., and William D.), the eldest only 12 years old, and Mary Jane, who was 6 in 1860. Their eldest, Lucinda, had passed away from whooping cough in 1853. Fayette County during the Civil War was a very active place, full of the noise, soil and smoke of battle, and people needing everything, everywhere. We are unsure at this juncture exactly how long Everett was away. The units he belonged to did serve in Maryland, but they didn't venture as far as many other troops. He also was home long enough that in 1862 and 1864, Matilda gave birth to 2 more daughters, Eliza and Bettie.

Matilda died of scurvy in 1869. Initially I thought that must be a diagnostic error, but with the deprivation of War and having given birth twice during that time, keeping 5 older children alive, and probably also caring for a worn-out husband and aiding neighbors, it is likely she neglected her own health. Her husband, although they'd been married 25 years, was married again approximately 9 months later.

Back in Illinois...

The war years passed more or less uneventfully for Joseph and family.  Several years after the war ended, he visited his ailing father in Virginia.  In April 1870, Joseph's older brother, Peyton, writes, "Brother Joseph and daughter [most likely Mary] was here last winter and left the area before Father's decease." Joseph likely visited with his extended family during this time as well.  Upon his return to Illinois, he writes to his sister and brother-in-law, Nancy and Aaron Ballard.  He shares news of his family in Illinois, but it is obvious he misses the brothers and sisters he left behind.  Specifically, he laments, "I have not heard anything more from Everett since I saw you."  In the same letter, he even encourages a niece of his to send a likeness of herself because he has "a charming beau picked out for her."  It seems Joseph is desperate to have his extended family nearby.  In the meantime, he simply adds to his immediate family.  In late April 1870, he and Nancy welcome another daughter, Mattie.  She would be followed by Lila two years later.

Post-war West Virginia to Illinois

Poor Everett, despite his pre-war letter of good fortune on the farm, 1870 didn't seem to be a happy time.  His decades-long marriage had ended in tragedy, he was on the losing side of an epic war, and his young wife, just a few years older than his eldest son, was having a baby (some good news!). However, in a letter from his brother Peyton to sister Nancy Ballard in November of that year, his siblings seem to not have heard from him recently, and to not yet be aware of the birth of another son, James Henry. While there is no further record of Theodosia Campbell Pearson after her marriage, and 11 months later the birth of her son, it isn't unreasonable to think that she died in childbirth or from complications a short while later.

Given Joseph's seeming anxiousness to have more family nearby, and Everett's previous desire to be in Illinois, the time had come.  Whether the journey was to be by wagon or possibly by train, packing commenced.  It is unknown how many of Everett's children departed with him, or when the departure took place, but the West Virginia Pearsons arrived in Illinois any time between James Henry's birth in Nov 1870 and Everett's third marriage (we know!) in August of 1873. It's not an incredible span of time, and given the other young children at home, including a newborn, my money is on 1872.

There would have been a joyous reunion of brothers, and certainly happiness among the large number of young cousins, at least one of which was becoming reacquainted.  Mary Pearson had been to Virginia/West Virginia with her father. And in a reversal of fortune from the aforementioned tragedy, the journey to the West either brought Cupid along or opened the door to that deity. Before long, there were three courtships of Pearsons with members of the Echols family, established in Illinois since the early days of the state.  Firstly, Everett and a divorcee of another (Union) Civil War soldier journeyed to the neighboring county's courthouse for a marriage license, securing a bonus mother for his youngest children still at home, and security for the bride and her two daughters.  Ann Elizabeth Echols Green joined the Pearson household. She was closer to Everett's own age and would become the only maternal figure that little James Henry would know. It is unknown if one of the other fledgling romances was underway before the above marriage, but soon both Everett's son John and daughter Mary Jane had found mates.  John's intended was his new stepmother's own eldest daughter, Emma Katherine Green.  Would this have shaken up the family, or were the norms of marrying within your social circle during those times a trivial detail? Mary Jane's soon-to-be-husband was another relative of her new stepmother, but not of her own household.  William A Hughes' mother and Ann's father were first cousins. The two younger couples were married on the same day, December 6, 1874.

Joseph's daughter Lila, who sadly did not survive infancy, and little James Henry Pearson had been the family's youngest members, but at 51 years young, and his recent bride's 38, another child was born. Named after their native state of Virginia, and called Jennie, the Pearson brothers had tied up at 10 children each. With that event, the years from 1875 - 1880 in Illinois bore little of note except that John and Emma Kate (Green) Pearson journeyed back to Virginia to begin their marriage and family.

Brothers separated again

In 1881, Joseph and Benjamin's mother, Elizabeth, became ill.  Their sister, also Elizabeth, writes in early September, "Our dear aged mother, she is on her death bed I fear.  She has been down five weeks.  This morning she went out soon in the morning.  They say she could not tell why she went out so early before any of the family had arose from bed and fell and hurt her hip.  It seemed to be only the flesh but she is still helpless and her mind almost entirely left her."  Elizabeth (Heckman) Pearson died on September 30, 1881.  

More bad fortune was on the way.  Less than five months after the death of his mother, Joseph Pearson shuffled off this mortal coil as well.  A mention in the local newspaper read, "Joseph Pearson, aged 70 years, died at his residence near America, Pulaski County, where he had resided for about 40 years."  And so, the brothers were separated once again.  We are uncertain at what point Benjamin decided to return to Virginia, but it seems likely his mother's and brother's deaths were catalysts for the decision.  He had come to Illinois at the behest of his brother, and now his brother was gone.  What we know for certain is that when Benjamin's wife, Ann, is asked to give a deposition in regards to her ex-husband's request for a pension in 1886, their home address is Pearisburg, Virginia.

***In a rather odd turn of events, John W. (Benjamin's son) and Emma Kate separated, and Joseph’s son, George William, married her in 1883.***

#52 Ancestors: Week 15 - Leona's Solitude

For this week's prompt, I'm going to take a broad interpretation of the concept of solitude.  The generally accepted definition of solitude is "the state of being or living alone."  Other common definitions include "an absence of human activity" or "a lonely, unfrequented place."  All have a distinctly negative vibe. And yet, the ancestors I was considering seemed to bask in their single-ness.  One gentleman lived a long, unmarried life, but he brought joy to those around him with his voice.  One woman found herself divorced in her late 30s.  It was the early 1900s, but rather than marrying again, this woman took advantage of her "solitude" and spent the rest of her life making her way up and down the east coast of the United States.  Her name was Leona Deane 'Sally" (Green) Terpinitz, and this is her story.

Leona was born in Pulaski County, Illinois, in November 1878. She was the only daughter born to Thomas J. Green and Harriet A. Isaacs.  At the young age of 16, in August 1895, Leona married Charles C. Terpinitz in Union County, Illinois.  A single daughter, Jennie Grace Terpinitz, was born to them in April 1898. They are enumerated in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, in 1900 and then in Walnut, Kansas, in 1905.  Charles was a jack-of-all-trades, so there is no telling why they moved further west.  By 1910, however, they have returned to Illinois and are living in Centralia.  Various newspaper articles place Charles and family in Centralia in 1913 & 1914, but sometime before 1917, he and Leona presumably divorce, as Charles marries Sarah Pearl Leach in September 1917.  

At this time, Leona would have been in her late thirties with a daughter in her late teens.  Jennie Grace started attending the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in 1916, and it would seem that Leona moved with her. In the 1920 census, both Leona and Jennie are rooming with the family of Lillian Osborn in Champaign, Illinois. Leona is a saleslady in a dry goods store and lists herself as a widow even though Charles is alive and well with his new wife. Maybe he was just "dead to her." 😆 

Jennie Grace marries in 1922, and she and her husband move to Nutley, New Jersey.  And what of Leona?  Why, she moves to Brooklyn, New York, and becomes a corsetiere!  Various newspaper ads indicate she was in this business from roughly 1923-1928. She stays close to her daughter, however -  Nutley, New Jersey, is only around 20 miles away.  Solitude when she felt like it, and company when she didn't!

Although Leona and Charles had divorced, separated, considered one another dead...whatever, Leona still visited with her in-laws.  Here, in The Miami News, she is mentioned as one of her brother and sister-in-law's honored guests.  Also mentioned in this article are Leona's daughter, Jennie Lambert, and relatives of Jennie's soon-to-be second husband, Peter Amey. (Charles, by the way, was on his third wife by this time - seems he couldn't handle solitude.) 

 

Jennie marries Peter Amey in Florida in 1936, but the 1940 census finds them back up in Fine, New York.  Leona is with them, too, but as I envision it, Leona was a fashionable elderly woman who probably had her own rooms and occasionally joined her daughter and son-in-law for dinner on the veranda.  I have no way of knowing if this is accurate, but at 62 and having made a living as a single woman for the past 20+ years, I feel as if she wouldn't want to be beholden to anyone, even her own daughter.

In 1941, Jennie is at it again.  She divorces Peter Amey and marries Elmer Johnson. Like her father, she seems unable to find long-lasting relationships, but she insists on remarrying.  I wonder what Leona thought of it.  Did she advise her daughter, who was an extremely well-educated woman for the time, that there was no reason to depend on a man? Perhaps, but she must have at least gotten along with Jennie's husbands.  The 1945 Florida census indicates Leona was living with Elmer and Jennie.  Again, I like to think of her spending the day in her dressing gown, enjoying a good book and a cup of tea.  Maybe she even made an occasional dinner for the three of them.

As with Jennie, I have very little information about Leona after 1945. All I know is that Leona died in Oyster Bay, New York, the 24th of May 1955.  She was 78 years old and had lived more than half her life as a single woman.  But, in those 40 or so years, she saw so much more of the country than the Midwest view her husband had afforded her.  Maybe she hobnobbed with important clients during her time as a corsetiere. Maybe she enjoyed the salt breeze through her hair as she walked the beaches of Florida.  One thing is certain (to me, at least). Leona's solitude was not lonely, but it was most definitely on her own terms.

#52Ancestors #Week15 William Field - Solitude?

 Whether we wished it or not, whether we accepted or fought it, the Pandemic taught each of us lessons about solitude.  There was hardship, but there was beauty, if one chose to see it.  A good friend gave me a greeting card, which I have framed, of two friends in side-by-side treehouses, passing a basket on a clothesline.  They are apart, but breaking bread.

When I examine the tree and the ancestors and relatives I share with Rachel, I don’t feel I know enough about most of them to decide if some felt or chose solitude.  Little facts, and even fewer anecdotes remain.  But one person stood out, and it’s come to me in the last few days that if I can manage a few short paragraphs, especially about those that seem most forgotten, then I have done what I can in my work to record them all.

William Field was the only son of John and Jane (Staton) Field to be recorded and to have reached adulthood.  He was born in Kentucky and lived near the Ohio River, which was likely a huge part of his life. As a teen, he lost his father, and sometime shortly after 1850, he and his mother appear to have followed his sister Nancy across the river to Pulaski County Illinois where all of the members of the immediate family lived the rest of their days.

Probably around 1856 or 57, William (age about 27) married Parilee, or PL Lowe, who was about 15. In November 1857 or 58, they had a baby daughter with a very big name: Josephine Emeline Matilda Field. She may have been their only child, and it certainly seems so. There is no further record of her mother after the 1860 census, when little Jo is a year old. She may have died of any number of causes, but this is the only record of her.

The Civil War intervened, and William enlisted in the 11th Illinois, Company H. No known relatives of his, be they cousins or in-laws, served in this unit, so it appears he did not necessarily set off in a band of brothers. Also, after his young wife leaves the narrative, it appears he didn’t remarry, or not for any length of time, as he never appears in any Pension rolls or as the veteran in a Widow’s application.

In the 1870 census (see below) he lists his daughter by one of her middle names, but she is also listed by her first name (the name she used as an adult) a few households away on the same page, living with a sister-in-law of her aunt. Given the situation at home, with no mother for a young girl and the absence of her grandmother, who had lived with Jo as an infant but died shortly after the war ended, my interpretation is that William was largely alone. Certainly not alone by choice, and perhaps with the happy benefit of family nearby, but he is also unlisted in any further mention in newspaper or official record, although many family members do appear. 

Another clue to William’s theoretic solitude is Jo’s marriage to Gideon Castle. She is not quite 16, and perhaps the same age as her mother when marrying her father. Was she leaving her aunt’s home? Was her father present? There is no further record of William. Several family trees that include Jo (presumably some by her descendants) estimate William’s death as 1874. He would have been only 44 years old.  

He had one sister, who married before he came of age. His wife and his mother appear to have died within the cloak of War and the immediate aftermath, and I imagine him having been unable or unwilling to cope with a young daughter on his own.  And then he is gone.

But rather than the presumed death date, I like to see him seated on a strong horse, wishing his newly married daughter well, and riding west. It's much nicer to imagine that he had a future on the horizon, that perhaps there were colorful letters. Perhaps an owner of one of those online trees knows a bit more about him.

E is for Ella

 My great great grandfather Chamberlain had 2 baby sisters, the older one, closest to his own age, was Ella.  According to both the 1870 Census, taken when she was just a month old, and a family letter written just a few months later, she was named Nancy after her grandmother, but called by her middle name, Ella.  Perhaps this was to differentiate between the little girl and her Gran, who lived just a short ways across the fields of Pulaski County.  

Almost nothing at all is known about young Ella, except she was described as a blue eyed baby, and as an older daughter of the family, she no doubt was helpful to her mother, especially as several siblings joined the family: a sister next and a few more brothers were younger.

I imagine Ella helping with farm chores or chasing her younger siblings, long skirts damp from long grasses or from wading in the Ohio during low-water summers.  I imagine her mother Elizabeth handing things to her or braiding her daughter’s hair.  I imagine her older brothers, Albert and Lawrence, probably teasing her, or perhaps one of their friends had an eye on 16 year old Ella.

In the spring of 1886, Ella was very ill.  We don’t know how long she may have been ill, or what might have been tormenting her. She was 16 (records have her as 17 1/2, but according to her age as 1 month old in June of 1870, I believe her to be within a week or 2 of her 16th birthday. She was also unmarried, so far as we know.

She died in May 16th, and her death was listed as puerperal (missing the notation of “fever”). Was she pregnant, or had she delivered a baby, alive or stillborn?  Nothing further is noted, but I have seen a large number of death certificates and find it difficult to believe there was another cause.  Even old death certificates tend to leave accurate medical assessments.

There’s no real way to know, as the surviving records are sparse.  Ella was buried in a (currently) unmarked plot in the Smith Cemetery, which is near where her parents lived. There is no known connection between the others buried in the cemetery and the Chamberlain family, but there are a couple young men interred in that spot who certainly could have been a love interest to a young 16 year old…

#52Ancestors, Week 14: Begins with a Vowel

This prompt seemed like a no-brainer. Every part of Ann Elizabeth Echols’s maiden name begins with a vowel. Her two married names connect mine and cousin Heather’s families. Ann’s first marriage was to Thomas J. Green, the father of my great great grandmother, Emma Kate Green. Ann’s second marriage was to Benjamin Everett Pearson, one of Heather’s direct line ancestors. He also happens to be my great great great grandfather’s brother.

Ann Elizabeth Echols, born 1839, was the eldest daughter of Benjamin F. Echols and Sarah Rebecca Arter. According to Thomas Green’s Civil War pension file, he and Ann were married in 1854. She and Thomas had two daughters, Emma Katherine and Dora Isabella, before Thomas answered the call to fight in the Civil War. Unfortunately, like so many others who had experienced the grisly realities of Civil War combat, he returned from service a changed man. By 1869, he and Ann had divorced. Ann’s deposition given for his pension request described the deterioration of their marriage. “After he came from the army, he got to drinking pretty hard, and that is the reason we separated. The fact is he was never like the same person after he came home."

After the Civil War and the death of his second wife, Theodosia, Benjamin Everett Pearson (who had fought for the Confederacy) moved from West Virginia to live near his brother Joseph Allen Pearson in Pulaski County, Illinois. On August 28, 1873, he married Ann Elizabeth (Echols) Green in Alexander County, Illinois. This union was likely a contributing factor to the marriage of Benjamin’s son, John Winston, to Ann’s daughter, Emma Kate in December 1874. Ann inherited quite a few stepchildren when she married Benjamin, but they also added a child of their own to the mix. Virginia M. Pearson was born April 13, 1876, in Olmsted, Illinois.

In 1880, Ann Pearson and family were still living in Pulaski County, Illinois. It is unknown exactly when Benjamin decided to move back to Virginia. Perhaps the catalyst was his mother’s death in Franklin County, Virginia, in 1881, or maybe he left Illinois after his brother, Joseph, died in 1882. Regardless of the motivation, in 1886, when Ann gives her deposition regarding her ex-husband’s pension, her address is Pearisburg, Virginia. Ann lived her whole life in Illinois, so I have to imagine it was difficult to leave behind all she had known.  I think it’s fortunate she had a young child of her own to raise when her husband decided to pull up stakes. Emma Kate remained in Pulaski County, Illinois, and Ann’s other daughter, Dora, was living in northern Illinois.

Ann Elizabeth (Echols) Green Pearson died in Pearisburg, Virginia, on New Year’s Day 1896.

#52Ancestors #Week13 Light a Candle

 As a person with a genealogist’s obsession with history, I often think that I must have been born in the wrong time, but then I enter mortality details, of disease that is now rare or non-existent, or of someone gone too soon, and thing again. I’m right where I’m supposed to be. If the plague hadn’t taken me out, surely the amount of grief wouldn’t have been survivable.

We’re meant to light at least a metaphorical candle this week.  Today I’m going to light 4 tiny little candles, for my Granny Greenwell (my Grandma’s Grandma, whom lived with them and who is remembered fondly for her recipes and her ability to keep her family together), and whom I never knew, but I think of often when thinking of the words “survivor” and “fortitude”

Granny was born Mary Alice Elizabeth Pfeffer, and called Bettie. Her parents had owned some property due to circumstances unknown, sold off what little they had, moved to Missouri where they were known to have been poor sharecroppers, and Bettie’s father and youngest sister died in an epidemic in 1899. Just a month later, Bettie was married. Necessity, as she was the second oldest child?  Certainly a possibility.

George and Bettie had a baby girl during the week of Thanksgiving, 1899. She lived only 3 weeks and was probably buried in the churchyard in town. Such tremendous loss inside 10 months!  

During the next 8 years, the couple had 3 more girls and their first son. Evelyn, followed by Pauline, then Bill and Hazel.  In the autumn, right around the time Bettie would learn she was expecting Bill, little Pauline died.  She was probably about a year old, as no birth or death record exists and she likely came about 12-18 months after Evelyn.  

Life went on in the Bootheel of Missouri, and George and Bettie eventually had 7 more children, 3 sons and 4 daughters.  In February 1915, diphtheria was at large in the community, taking newborn Burnice. Then in the fall of 1918, 1 year old Christine was an early area victim of what would later be known as the Spanish Flu Epidemic.  Bettie wasn’t yet 40 when she gave birth to her last child the following February.

I have been told many times how Granny Greenwell called the names of her 4 daughters when she was at daughter Hazel’s home in 1949, receiving her own last rites. Some family members telling this story are incredulous, “imaging remembering those little babies for so long!”  I think, I can’t imagine ever forgetting their faces!  And longing for decades to be reunited with them.

So today I light a candle for each of Granny’s little angels, because they have not been lost to history, their names are written for posterity:

Sue Ella Greenwell 🕯️ 

Pauline Cecelia Greenwell 🕯️ 

Lucy Burnice Greenwell 🕯️ 

Eva Sally Christine Greenwell 🕯️