A Child Of Atom

Another rainy, nasty day in New York City, but I didn't want to waste my day so I decided to go down to the Library and do some genealogy work in their research room. I love going to the Main Branch on 42nd street. It's such a grand old building, full of high ceilings and sweeping marble staircases and arches and wood. It just FEELS like a place you go to do some serious learnin', you know? I'm also constantly surprised at what they have available in their genealogy section. This New York City institution has things like the book I was looking at today: a history of a relatively obscure and overlooked county in eastern North Carolina. Why? I have no idea, but I'm happy to have such easy access to it.

I have several branches that all came from Anson county, NC, so the biggest work today was sorting through the aforementioned book for references to my family. Now... I've made some interesting discovers about my family, a man with 40 children, a ancestor who claimed "benefit of clergy" in a murder case in Colonial Virginia (one of the very few times that ever happened in the United States), a member of the Virginia House of Commons, one of the founders of Hartford, CT... but no one really famous or historically important yet. I also know that once you get more than 8 generations back the lines become so numerous and convoluted that you can claim descent from just about anyone (yes, if you can find the right combination of ancestors you ARE descended from Cleopatra!)... but I still find the discovery I made today fairly titillating.

It seems that I share a common ancestor with royalty. Well, American Royalty. In fact, the King himself: Elvis Presley. In 1720 John Valentine Preslar came to North Carolina. He had 4 sons. I am descended from one of those sons, and from another came the line that eventually led to Elvis. So nearly 300 years ago my family and the Presley's were one. Pretty cool, huh? Think I can get in on some of the estate?

I've always thought that my name was fairly unique. I haven't met very many people who shared it. It was passed down to me from my father's side of the family, specifically from my grandmother (it was her middle name.) Tonight in my ongoing genealogy research I found another family member who also has my name. Oddly enough he was on my mother's side. He's a 1st cousin, three times removed, and would have been a contemporary to my great grandmother, but Eustice Cully Pope was related to me out there somewhere.

I'm back in New York City. It was a highly successful trip. I accomplished just about everything that I intended to do while I was there.

The biggest thing was clearing all of the old comics and toys out of my mom's so that she can sell the house. I posted earlier that I had decided to get rid of all the toys, and I had long ago decided to get rid of the comics. I walked away from the deal $250 richer. I got about $10 per box of comics, about 3 cents a book. It was an incredibly easy sell. I hope the guy finds some useful stuff in there.

My next task was visiting some family and several sources of family information, the SC State Archives, a genealogy library in Columbia, the Newberry County Courthouse... I came away with several new pieces of information, including my great grandmother's maiden name, which no one in the family knew. (It was Griffin.) Lots of confirmations of information that I already had, and a few new mysteries, plus about 2oo photos that I scanned from my grandmother's collection, my great aunt, and my uncle. Lots of stuff to process and add to the family tree.

I did my first "extreme" geocache, a night cache that required more adventure than anything I've ever done in caching. My first "paddle cache" and my first 5-5 hiking cache. I also racked up the oldest cache I've ever found, one that has been out in the woods since 2001.

Kid Flash has met the whole family now, and gets along with and likes everyone, (not that I expected differently) but that's a huge relief.

All in all, a damn good trip.

Meet John Joshua Beasley, and his wife Maggie and son Carleton. He is my great-great-grandfather. John was famous in his hometown in Georgia for having fathered 40 children over 50 years with only two different women. I found a newspaper article about him a few months ago, and mailed away for a photocopy. I was pleasantly surprised yesterday when it arrived to find that it contained a photograph! I had not expected an article from 1929 to have photos, and I hadn't seen this photo posted anywhere online.

My sister has been scanning family photos for me to add to my genealogy research. This is me, my great-Aunt Genny, and her daughter Stepheni, circa 1974.

In the research I'm doing on my family I'm starting to find some interesting things.

I've discovered my first immigrant ancestor, John Conner Shehee, who came from Ireland sometime in the mid 1700's. Almost all the branches of my dad's side of the family have been in America since at least the Civil War, and a few since the Revolutionary War. I have very few of my Mom's ancestors back that far yet.

I've discovered the first official slave owner. Balaam Bentley left the following decree in his will dated 1816: "To Vincy I give the Negro girl Rast that is now in her possession and to Kizziah the Negro boy Peter and to my son John I give my boy Harvey and my son Benjamin is to have a Negro from the increased use of this estate." That was to be expected coming from the south I suppose, but it's still pretty distasteful to know that my blood was directly involved. I had always hoped somehow that my family had been too poor or something to own slaves.

I have several Civil War soldiers, and now at least two Revolutionary War soldiers, John Conner Shehee fought in the Revolutionary War, as did Balaam's father William Bentley.

I've found a man who had 40 children by two wives, the first born when he was 17, the last when he was 71.

I've found a man who married his own step daughter (and was prosecuted by the state for adultery for it.)

And I may have found a relative who sold the Confederate Army 61 pounds of soup. Or possibly soap. It's hard to read, and I'm not sure it is my ancestor yet. But I just like to think about this guy selling the army 61 pounds of soup.

Long ago, before I started researching my own family I developed a fascination with old photos and papers, diaries, general ephemera. I have a fairly large collection of that sort of thing.

I have a large diary of a teacher from upstate New York, full of newspaper clippings, love letters, even a list of the grades that she gave her classes on semester. I have 5 years worth of diaries from another gentleman that detail everything from his daily life, including his sex life (he was a college student in the 40's for most of the time that the diaries cover.) I have boxes of photos, including one very large box that was literally found on the street in Manhattan. It contains over 200 photographs going back 50 years or more.

Now that I'm researching my family I realize what a treasure trove this stuff would be for a researcher. So I've started gathering what information I have from the items and researching those people, in the same way that I have looked at my own ancestors, and trying to contact the families that might be interested in these old treasures. Some of the people are turning up easily, mostly names from the photos, others are proving a bit more elusive. I haven't found anyone that would seem to be worthy of the diary (I'd like that one to go to a direct descendant if such exists) and no one seems to be researching the family that the large box of photos belongs to. I've made a few posts in message boards here and there, and contacted a few people who have published research about the pertinent people. No one has responded yet.

I hope this works as sort of a genealogical karma. I could use a few hints on some of my own research.

Thanks to my sister I now have this image to attach to my research about my oldest known ancestor. All I know about her is that she appeared in SC for the first time around 1880, with a daughter in tow. The daughter managed to have two children, but never lose her name. An interesting pair to say the least.

My sister has agreed to be my "legs" in this research effort. She lives in SC still, and has access to all of these libraries and records, and she has agreed that if I can stock up two or three at a time she'll be willing to go to the library and look them up for me. She's going to be a great help I think, as what I can discover from the available online records is quickly becoming thin. I'm not sure what I want out of this quest really. I've lamented before my lack of ethnic identity. Maybe that's what I'm looking for? Maybe it's just a connection to the larger world. I'm not sure. But the quest continues.

Is this my Great-great-great grandfather? According to one online genealogy source it is. I know that the name they assign to this picture matches. I know that several others have accepted this as him... but no one lists a source for that info so the researcher in me is doubtful. Regardless, it is exciting.

I've done practically nothing in the last three days other than dig through census records online and try to track various members of my family around the country. It's been quite fun. I don't know how much more I'll be able to do than what I've done now until I get some information from relatives or get to a library or something to get my hands on some different information different from what I've got now though.

One of the most interesting parts to me is the names. Have you ever heard of anyone named Permilia? One of ancestors was, and I'll tell you it was a pretty common name in the 1880s. Lula, Lilia, Lura, Luria... I've seen them all in the past few days, but never before now. Hosea, and his daughter Hosalee. A Dallie. A Murtice. An Elnora.

The weirdest of all... seems my grandmother's maiden name came from an ancestor's middle name. His original surname? Sheehee. I'll leave that one without comment.

Okay... I missed my deadline for today (yesterday) I did not post on Feb 26. Though... I'm still awake, and I'm posting now, so does that count?

I have spent the day engrossed. After all of my talk about not knowing what my genealogy is and where my family is from, I decided to do something about it. I remembered that years ago after my grandmother's death my Uncle had given me what he knew about her side of the family. (I guess I've been talking about this for a long time.) So I went through my old papers yesterday until I found it. I spent a big chunk of today transferring that info into a tree at a genealogy website, as well as a program on my own computer, and trying to research connections. In just the few hours that I have been researching I've turned up lots of information from references in census records, and other public places. I have the WW1 draft cards for both great grandfathers and I have already been able to push my father's family back two generations further than what my uncle had given me. That research connected me to this branch of the family which has already brought some drama into my research. Two unmarried women who may have been mother/daughter, but may have also been aunt/niece, both of whom gave birth out of wedlock? Shocking!

I need to stop digging through the past and get to bed, but the last record I found tonight may be the most interesting of all I've seen today. My great great grandfather, on my father's side was listed as mulatto in the 1920 census. I'm fairly certain it's a transcription error though... what they are reading as an "m" just looks like a plain ol' "w" to me. Though wouldn't that be fun?