Treasure Chest Thursday: Thanks to Ancestry.com, Another Cousin, Found!

My third cousin, Sylvia!

My cousin Monique is now the queen of all Internet searches.  It was her voracious searching that turned up my second great-grandfather’s Civil War era sword on ebay, a portrait of one of our ancestors at the Maryland Historical Society on their online database, and me on ancestry.com.  Now, she’s done it again.  Monique found another one of our cousins, again on ancestry.com.  (I think that internet genealogy site is going to have to start paying her soon – she’s a walking commercial for their services!)

Meet cousin Sylvia Smith Isabel.    She lives a short bus or train ride away in New York and is as passionate about uncovering our family’s history as Monique and I.

Keeping track of all these cousins can be confusing so here is how we’re all related:

The ancestors that all three of us have in common are Tempy Burton and Col. W.R. Stuart, aka The Colonel.  Tempy was a slave in  Elizabeth McCauley’s family.  When Elizabeth married the Colonel, Tempy was  given to the couple as a wedding gift.  Elizabeth couldn’t have any children but Tempy could and did have seven, probably all with The Colonel.  But two of her children were definitely The Colonel’s, documented through their death certificates.  They were Alfred Burton Stuart, Tempy and The Colonel’s oldest child and Josephine Burton Ford, their youngest child.  Alfred was Monique’s great, great-grandfather and Sylvia’s great-grandfather. Josephine Burton Ford was my great-grandmother.  Using the cousin calculator that makes Sylvia and Monique first cousins, once removed, Monique and I third cousins, once removed and Sylvia and I plain ole third cousins.

Two days after Thanksgiving, Monique and her family came over to our house and we had a few good hours of laughs over all the things we’ve found this past year and we were feeling pretty thankful, like we’d reached the peak of our genealogy mountain and could just take in the view.  Then, two days later, with the discovery of Sylvia, we had even more to be thankful for, and more history to uncover (her dad grew up on Alfred’s farm and told her stories of  Alf  working as an unofficial town vet – news to us!).  It feels like we’re at the beginning of another journey.

Check out the other cousin we found earlier this year, Renee Smith.

Obituary Sunday: Alfred B. Stuart’s death notice

Last week, my friend, Shannon Brock sent me a couple of death notices that she thought pertained to my family.  I’m not sure about one of them, but the following is definitely the death notice for my kin, Alfred B. Stuart. He was great, great-grandfather to  my cousin Monique and my great-grandmother, Josephine Burton Ford’s brother.  Here is the transcribed death notice as it appeared:

Times Picayune, Thursday, October 4, 1928:

STUART – On Wednesday afternoon at 4:45 o’clock.  ALFRED B. STUART, beloved father of Mrs. Lillian Boyd, Mrs. Temple Smith of New York,  one sister, Mrs. Viola Battle of New Orleans, LA. Remains to be shipped to  Ocean Springs, miss., Thursday morning, October 6, 1928 at 11 a.m. via L. & N. R.R. Funeral services Thursday afternoon 3 p.m. at St. James Church, Ocean Springs, Miss. Los Angeles, Cal. papers please copy.  Arrangement by the Geo. D. Geddes Undertaking Company.

The next week, the family published this follow up:

Times Picayune, Wednesday, October 10, 1928

Thanks

WE TAKE this method to thank our many friends, both white and colored, for the beautiful floral offerings, kind words and loving care during the illness and death of our beloved brother and father, ALFRED BURTON STUART who died October 3, 1938.

The bereaved family,

MRS. VIOLA BATTLE, A SISTER, MESDAMES TEMPY SMITH, LILLIAN BOYD AND BERTHA S. RICE, DAUGHTERS

Thanks again, Shannon for connecting us with more important family documents to help us in our research.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Friends from our Family Footsteps Tour

Ms. Lois celebrating her 89th birthday at the Jackson County Archives in Pascagoula, Mississippi where she works full time!

The first stop my cousin Monique and I made on our Family Footsteps tour was to the Jackson County Archives which had copies of court records, land deeds and wills pertaining to our family.  Our new friends “Ms. Lois” Castigliola and Linda Cooper  helped us navigate the books, gently nudged us out the door at quitting time, and let us share in Lois’s birthday celebration.  89 years young, Ms. Lois is still working full-time!

Linda Cooper, Archive Assistant and Ms. Lois in front of the books that contained information on our ancestors.

Treasure Chest Thursday: Six Degrees of Slave Owner Separation

It’s nice to be back from a great vacation where I unplugged from my computer and soaked up the surf and sun.

Even though I wasn’t blogging or researching, genealogy was never too far from me.  As we made our way down to Hilton Head, South Carolina,  we passed a town named Burtonville (Burton is my great, great-grandmother’s surname) and saw a sign for Nash County, NC where many of my ancestor’s slave owners were from.  If there is one thing I’ve learned on this journey, it’s that the genealogy world is small, and all relative.  And my ancestors’ world was just as small if not smaller and it seems their owners really were related.

A few months back when I realized that one of the women who owned my great, great-grandmother, Tempy was Judith Boddie, I started searching for information about the prominent North Carolina Boddie family and found a Google book with extensive information about their lineage.   The book, Lineage and Tradition of the Herring, Conyers, Hendrick, Boddie, Perry, Crudup, Denson and Hilliard Families shows the interconnection of all these families through marriage.  When I found it,  I didn’t know that another family listed in this book also owned my ancestors.  While Tempy was owned by the Boddies, her sisters, Polly and Liberia were owned by Dr. Robert Hilliard. Hilliard settled in Louisiana but was originally from Nash, NC.  The Google book shows generations of intermarriage between the Boddies and Hilliards.  There is even one family member named Tempe Boddie Hilliard!  (Tempe was a popular name among both families).

Six degrees of separation?  I think a lot less.

Can you connect yourself to the president through six people or less?  A woman at my gym works for him.  Your turn.

Sentimental Sunday: The Ancestor Clock

The handmade clock by my cousin, Monique Smith Anderson which includes images of my ancestors.

Check out the amazing handmade gift my cousin, Monique gave me today when she came over for a bar-b-que.

The picture hardly does justice to her ancestor clock.  It includes images of things we’ve found during the year that we’ve been on this journey together, decorated with her special flourishes and finished with a ton of love.   Originally, she was going to give me the quote in the bottom part of the clock and have it framed, but then she got inspired to give me something that I might one day pass down to my children.  I love that she gave me our family history in the face of a clock, something I can share with my family every day, and a constant reminder that my ancestors are always with me informing my future.

Wordless Wednesday: A picture of past, present and future

On my way home from jury duty in Newark, New Jersey yesterday, I noticed a cemetery crunched between a row of new houses on one side and an impending construction project on the other.  It struck me, past, present and future all shoved together on one urban city block.  So, today after fulfilling my jury duty, I stopped and took these pictures with my cellphone (so please excuse the poor quality):

A Jewish cemetery on South Orange Avenue in Newark, NJ with new housing on one side of it...

and a construction project on the other.

Stone plaque at the South Orange Avenue entrance of a Jewish cemetery in Newark, NJ

Monday Madness (the good kind): Freedom’s Child

I’ve just finished reading, Freedom’s Child: The Life of a Confederate General’s Black Daughter by Carrie Allen McCray.  It tells the story of McCray’s remarkable mother, the child of a former slave and Confederate general who goes on to become a lifelong activist for what she calls “full freedom” for black people.

Anyone following my blog knows that my great, great-grandmother Tempy Burton was a slave and had several children with her former owner, Col. W.R. Stuart, a confederate like McCray’s grandfather.  (Stuart wasn’t a colonel in the Confederate Army, however.  This honorary title probably came from his association with a fraternal order).

Our parallel ancestries are crazy on their own (the hypocrisy of fighting to preserve slavery while fathering children with slaves still makes my eyes cross), but the places where our own lives connect is really wild:

• The author spent most of her life in the same town that I live in now. I pass her family home just about every day.

• Before moving to New Jersey, she lived in Lynchburg, Va. I’ve been traveling to a town just outside of Lynchburg annually for the past four years as part of a writing retreat.

• The person who lent me the book was my minister.  It was a present to him from the writer. While McCray did not belong to my congregation,  research for her book brought her there.  Her mother collaborated on many anti-segregation causes with former ministers in my congregation.

I’m sorry I didn’t know about Ms. McCray before she died two years ago.  How wonderful it would have been to meet her, perhaps here in our own town or down in Lynchburg during one of my writing retreats. I would have liked to thank her for her book.  It’s both a moving tribute to her mother whose tireless efforts I continue to benefit from, (among other things, she helped integrate our town’s movie theaters) as well as  an important addition to our country’s history.

You can read her obituary which includes a summary of her book here:

S.C. author Carrie Allen McCray Nickens, 94, dies | The Herald – Rock Hill, SC.

Madness Monday – Was My Ancestor Lynched?

Yesterday, I shared how my great, great-grandfather escaped the Ku Klux Klan.  Well, not all of my relatives may have been so lucky.

A few weeks ago I heard a new family story – that one of my great, great-grandmother’s sons was lynched.  The news came from a 92 year-old man who actually met my great, great-grandmother, Tempy Burton when he was a child.  He remembered hearing that her son was lynched, but nothing more.  I don’t know why he was lynched, if it was the Klan that lynched him or someone else. I don’t even know which of Tempy’s sons may have been lynched.  Besides her oldest boy, Alfred, she had two:  Warren and Louis born in the late 1860s probably in New Orleans, Louisiana or Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Both boys probably died sometime after the 1870s when they last show up on the Jackson Educable Index cited on oceanspringsarchives.net.

Investigating a lynching is not exactly what I signed up for when I started this blog  less than a year ago. I just wanted to find out what happened to my great, grandmother, Josephine Burton Ford.  But, now that I have this clue, I have to follow it.  This man was Josephine’s brother. His history is my history. He deserves to be found too even if it’s exceedingly painful to see where he ended up.

So far, I’ve checked the following databases that list lynching victims in the United States:

http://people.uncw.edu/hinese/HAL/HAL%20Web%20Page.htm

http://ccharity.com/lynching/

http://www.americanlynching.com/main.html

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlynching.htm

Anywhere else I should look?

Thank you for always sharing your stories.  It gives me the courage to share mine, even when they’re not pretty.

Carnival of African American Genealogy: Honoring my Great-Grandfather’s World War I Service

My great-grandfather, Lifford Emerson Coleman's World War I draft registration card

From my brother to my great-grandfather, four generations of men in my family have served in the United States Armed Forces.  I grew up not far from the New Jersey Air Force base where my father and grandfather were stationed and the Army base where my brother was stationed before being deployed to Iraq. (He’s back now with more stripes on his arm and ready to serve again if called). But I never met or knew much about my great-grandfather who served in World War I, so this month’s Carnival of African-American Genealogy theme honoring our ancestors who served gave me a great opportunity to learn more about him through some research.

My great-grandfather, Lifford Emerson Coleman was born in Tennessee on July 28, 1890, something I first learned when I came across his World War I draft card shown above.  I’d always assumed that he was born and raised in either Oklahoma where he met my great-grandmother and had two children with her, or in Texas where my great-grandmother was from.  Lifford was 28 when he registered for the draft and had a wife and two young children at home.  My granny, Louise Coleman Walton was just 2 at the time and her younger brother Bill may have just been on the way. This draft card also shows Lifford’s signature, the only one of his that I’ve ever seen.

This draft card alone isn’t proof that Lifford was actually enlisted.

As stated on Ancestry.com where I found this record, “On 6 April 1917, the United States declared war on Germany and officially entered World War I. Six weeks later, on 18 May 1917, the Selective Service Act was passed, which authorized the president to increase the military establishment of the United States. As a result, every male living within the United States between the ages of eighteen and forty-five was required to register for the draft…but not all the men who registered actually served in the armed forces.”

But I know from my grandmother’s stories that he did in fact join the Army.  She remembers her baby brother being dressed up like  a soldier as well as a photo of her father in his actual Army uniform.  (If only the ancestry fairy is listening and will make that photo appear!)  But even better proof of Lifford’s service is the money she and her  brother received from her father’s Army pension.

“When I was older, around 12 or maybe even 14, a man came by and told Mother that she could get benefits because her husband was in the Army and to get herself a lawyer.  Sure enough, she did,” my granny said when I asked her about her father’s service in World War I.  “I thought I was rich.   I’d never seen so much money.”

A teacher told her she should save it, so she took it to the post office to deposit it.

The woman at the post office at first told her, “I don’t think they let colored do that,'” but Granny was patient, let the woman check with her boss and was granted a safe heaven for her benefits.

“I gave them my fingerprints, my money and from then on I always put my money in savings,” Granny said.

My great-grandfather died at a young age and met a violent end, but not in the Army.  My grandmother once told me he was stabbed to death in a bar.  But the other day when I asked  her about it, she could only remember that someone killed him.  Since he was taken from her when she was so young, she doesn’t remember much about him or what kind of work he did.  On his draft card, under occupation it says “labor” and his employer is listed as a railroad company.  I only noticed this after I got off the phone with my grandmother, so I look forward to being able to give her some information about her dad and hope that it will cheer her.

Armed with Granny’s recollections and this draft card to guide me,  I’m sending a request to the National Archives for Lifford’s military records including any pensions received.  I can’t wait to see what else his service records tell me about this World War I veteran.  Thanks to Lifford and to all who served and thanks to this carnival for prodding me to find out more about my great-grandfather.

Tombstone Tuesday: A Cemetery Celebration

My husband and daugthers at Gordon, Lucille and John Kurtti's tomb at Gate of Heaven, Hawthorne, NY.

This year, we spent part of Mother’s Day at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, NY.  That’s where my brother-in-law, Gordon Kurtti is at rest with his grandparents, Lucille and John Kurtti.

It was our daughters, 7 and 10 who made the request to visit.  They never met their uncle Gordon.  They thought since it was his birthday on May 4th and Mother’s Day on the 9th, we ought to spend some time with both their Uncle and grandma Claire.  That meant our double party would have to take place at the cemetery.

Gordon  died in 1987,  years before I met and married his brother, but I’ve always felt as if I knew him.   25 years after his death, he remains a large presence in the Kurtti family. There is always a place for him at every family celebration whether it’s through some physical symbol (like the  plaque below bought for his birthday as a child) or  stories at family gatherings, like the time he was honored at his high school graduation for a mural he painted and showed up wearing overalls and a Panama hat, quintessential Gordon style.  In our home, one of his sketches is a focal point in our living room hanging on the wall.  Upstairs, one of his fashion paintings now resides in our youngest daughter’s bedroom.  Every year on Christmas, we hang ornaments that belonged to him.  A gifted artist, his creations are still sprinkling beauty in our lives.

At the cemetery, my husband let our daughters pick out something to bring to their uncle’s grave and instead of the more traditional flowers, they choose balloons and a happy birthday marker. They ran with excitement through the rows of tombstones looking for the Kurtti grave.  I was nervous that the girls were having a little bit too much fun at the cemetery, but my mother-in-law was delighted at their excitement.

“I’m so happy they brought balloons,” Claire said just as I was worrying over this choice of remembrance for her deceased son, the fifth of her seven children.  “They’re good for a young person. Flowers can seem so somber.”

But there was nothing somber about that visit to the cemetery.  The girls found rocks for all of us to leave on the grave.  Grandma Claire shared a few stories about fun times with Gordon and explained how everyone had wrongly believed that his birthday was on the 5th like it says on his tombstone, but it was really the 4th. Before we left, we sent Gordon prayers and our daughters led us in a little happy birthday conga line around my brother-in-law’s grave.  The cemetery police never showed up to bust us for having too good a time. Both his mom and brother agreed, Gordon would have liked their dance.  I’m only sorry neither my daughters nor I got to dance with him in person.

I hope you all enjoyed Mother’s Day as much as we did.

Do you have any special traditions for keeping the memory of your deceased ancestors alive in family celebrations?

40 year-old "happy birthday" plaque bought for Gordon Kurtti and used to commemorate Kurtti children's birthdays ever since.