Pulling Up the Family Tree to Look at the Roots

Two days before xmas I finished up some work and kicked back on the internet to relax as is my wont of late.    Decided to look up some dates on an ancestor.   When I googled the name, I spotted information  about that person I never heard before.

"That person" was my father btw, whom I had not seen since 1961, whose birth and death dates I wanted to verify.  The information I found was about his family.   I knew they lived in  in New Mexico for much of the 20th century but the stories I heard had them moving there from Alabama, that my father was born in Alabama, on an Indian reservation, it was said.   Not so.   His family had been in Texas since possibly before 1840, moving from what would become Titus County to Hunt County to Erath County, then to Oklahoma where his father married, and then on, by covered wagon, to Quay County, NM. 

I visited his father's place in NM in the 1950s for a family reunion and saw an old wagon there with hoops for a canvas cover.   We played on that wagon, and on an old motorcycle rusting nearby;  rode a horse too.   (Who was that fetching young lady who got me to climb up on the horse behind her?  She would be 60-70 now.)

The genealogy bug bit.   I was off and running.   I spent the rest of the evening putting together a chart from info found on the internet.  What I did was to find the name of a known ancestor on somebody else's genealogical chart which I would then plagiarize.   Genealogizing on the quick and dirty.

There were more surprises.

A big surprise was this:  my mother's sister had married a Cowan.   I was astonished to find that 200 years ago a Cowan had married the daughter of the first identified ancestor in America to bear my father's name and that that very Cowan was the ancestor of the Cowans to whom I was related by my aunt's marriage.  

More than that;  both families had moved from Tennessee to Texas at about the same time, and lived in the same counties in Texas in the same sequence.   The father of the Cowan who married my mother's sister was born in the same county as my father's father.   And of course sons of each family married sisters then living in another county-- my mother and aunt.   And nobody realized the connection!

Seems that sort of migration, of extended families together, was common.   Not like today, when a nuclear family or individual moves alone from coast to coast.   (Well, there was John Downing who in the late 1850s left his family in Tennessee in order, it was claimed, to dig for gold in California;  he was not seen again.)

That movement, the migration, the patterns of it, and how it ties into history is most interesting.  I am much more conscious of being a product of history than before.   Reading about colonial and frontier times has distinctly more personal significance than before.  

Some oddities.   Several times, in different family lines over generations, the same name would crop up in marriages.   In my father's family, his mother was a Crane and so was his great grandmother born in 1800.   My mother's grandmother was a Carriker, but so was her greatgrandmother whose daughter married a Carriker.  My mother's other grandmother's antecedents had a daughter who married a Cloyse in Massachusetts, and then 2-3 generations down the line of ancestry runs through other Cloyes.   

The Smiths and Cloyes' were interrelated in NY long before a Smith married the daughter of a woman descended from Cloyses.  And the Smiths those Cloyes were peripherally related to included one Joseph Smith, who would go on to found the Mormon faith.   These were probably not related to the Smith who was my grandfather, mind you. Different lines.

I grew up being told that I was part Indian, that my father was born on a reservation in Alabama;  well, there were of course Indians in Alabama, though no reservations.  Later I would learn that Indian ancestry was looked on with disapproval.   (My mother said years later that if she knew that about my father she would not have married him.  She was, and is, quite racist despite having black friends.)

My father was it seems actually born in Oklahoma in Indian Territory, and while there are some candidates for Indian descent among his forbears (Brumbelow and/or Uzzel and/or Crane), it seems very likely on my mother's side.    I note that on her mother's side, a Downing married a Mayes.   Well, both Downing and Mayes were the names of Cherokee chiefs in Oklahoma in the late 1800s.   Quite possibly there was intermarriage in my family with Indians while they were in Tennessee or North Carolina.   The most likely candidate for Indianhood was on my mother's father's side, where internet sources say a bride known only as "Neoma Naomi"  is thought to have been Cherokee.

Names change over time.   Starring becomes Stearnes or Starns or even Stern.  Karcher becomes Carriker.   Baughman becomes Bachman.   (It is interesting that my mother pronounces "Bachman" as "Bawkman."  This is probably how you would have pronounced Baughman.  She of course knew her grandfather John Bachman Downing (1856-1944), who told her of being raised by his grandparents in Tennessee after his father left, and having gone to North Carolina to work when he was in his mid-teens, then marrying and traveling to Dallas with the Board family.)     Gerlach becomes Carlock.   Guthmann becomes Gutmann or Goodman.   Cloyes is variously Cloyse or even Clayes.    Some forms are artifacts of genealogists; for example you see the name listed as "Clayes-Cloyes," which is actually stating alternate forms;  it is possible that the name given as "Neoma Naomi" is like that.

Why do the names change?  On reason is that some ancestors were illiterate and knew pronunciations but not spellings.   Another is that spelling rules were less fixed than today.  Another was the anglicization of names. 

Some interesting names crop up in my ancestry.   I didn't know about Eisenmann or Goodman or Goldman or Gould or Yerton.  Some of these may have been Jewish.   An ancestral Gould in England had sons named Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph.  A Solomon Carriker married a Rachel Yerton.   But if any were Jewish it did not last, which casts doubt on my hypothesis;  surely Jews would not be marrying not-Jews and dropping their faith so often.      [Added:  more interesting names have cropped up, for example  Goldschmidt and Dagon in the Bachman/Bachmann ancestry in Switzerland.]

A Veare in old England was likely of Normon origin.    Paschal cropped up in one line.  There was a Jonson in England;  could there be a relationship to rare Ben Jonson?

I had heard about forebears in Georgia and Pennsylvania and Mississippi, but never about Massachusetts or New York or Virginia.  Nor North Carolina, where along with Tennessee nearly all branches of the family lived at one time or another, sometimes within miles of other families they would marry into generations later in other states.  I can't recall how many ancestors lived in Mecklinberg County or Cabarrus County or Anson County from the late 1700s to the mid 1800s.  Or in eastern Tennessee.     [Added:  Ruchard Borden was an early settler in Rhode Island before 1640;  his son Benjamin moved on to New Jersey in the late 1600s.  And there were at least a half dozen ancestral lines in Virginia from 1610-1800.]

Several lived in the Shenandoah Valley or Clinch Mountain region, some of the prettiest landscapes in the USA!  Why they moved on, to Texas of all places, is a mystery to me.  The change from eastern Tennessee to the barren near desert landscape of Quay County, NM, is quite a step down, scenically at least, from the Blue Ridge or Shenandoah or Eastern Tennessee.

I recently saw the 1992 movie "Last of the Mohicans" for the first time.  While the movie was set in New York it was filmed in North Carolina, amid the Blue Ridge mountains.   I was on the edge of my seat when I learned that;  my ancestors, I thought with shock, moved from that to this?  I came out with the short end of the stick!

I was surprised how many ancestors were in the colonies early, but none as far as I've found were original Jamestown settlers or passengers on the Mayflower.  1624 in Virginia is the oldest immigrant to the New World so far, that being Willam Bullock. 

I am only about 2/3 finished.   There are what look like dead ends.  Who knows where a John Smith came from; he is lost among many of that name in the Piedmont.    Smiths, Downings, Cranes,  Sams, Lewis, Guthrie, all peter out in the early 1800s.   The Pools in the 1700s.    Either their names were too common or they immigrated late or they were too poor or were illiterate and left no clear traces.  For a Miss Uzzell, one doesn't know which Uzzell in early Texas the lass was descended from.  And so on.   Except for skinning and tanning of hides, the hunt for ancestors is pretty much over.

On literacy, I found on the internet a transcription of a probated will signed with marks.  They apprently had a not insubstantial estate, but could not sign their names.   If I recall correctly, they were Paschels. 

The lines traceable back into the 1500s or earlier in Britain are the Bordens, the Cloyes, and others. 

No famous people so far.   No generals, presidents, or senators were an ancestor.  For most of the names in my chart there is no indication of what they did or of how they spent their lives, only hints of their movements or lack of movement revealed in places of birth and death.  Sometimes deeds or lawsuits or wills are described or transcribed on the internet.    Occasionally a bit of history comes through. 

For example, an ancestral Brumbelow is said to have been a carpenter on the Richmond county courthouse about 1700.    Lawsuit records and other court information about that Brumbelow has been found. 

A Brumbelow in the early 1700s is referred to as "judge" as was a Nichodemus Keith around the time of the Revolution.  No support for the proposition that Nichodemus was a real judge; could be a mistake or a form of respectful address.

Nichodemus' origin btw is unknown;  there are suppositions that he came from Scotland;  a little more support for his emigrating from Ireland; a hint from genealogical savant Larry Keith who wrote books on that family that Nichodemus may have had a brother and sister in Virginia and might have been Irish and that is all.   His father may have been a William Butler Keith who was born in Ireland.   That family may have been among the many Scots who emigrated to Ireland and lived there as Scots-Irish fighting with the native Irish then emigrated to the colonies in the 1700s where they fought with Indians.

An ancestral Smith in Georgia married a Pool whose mother was a Bullock.  She was descended from Hugh Bullock born in the 1500s who was a prosperous Englishman and owner of a small fleet of ships that supplied the Virginia colony in the 1620s.   Hugh's son William settled in Virginia in 1624, right about the time when the charter was cancelled and Virginia became a Crown colony.  Hugh was a big landowner and in the House of Burgesses in 1631.  Did he acquire lands through the "hundreds" grants under the charter before 1624, bringing over people as well as supplies?

The Starnes (Stearnes) have a most interesting frontier nexus.   The family was Palatine German, coming to New York on British ships in 1710.   The second and third generations moved to Pennsylvania then to Western Virginia.   One family patriarch, Frederick Stearnes, Jr.,  was killed by Shawnee along with his brother and son-in-law a short distance from Boonesborough while exploring for new land in Kentucky.   ne account says the son-in-law's heart was removed.    A couple of Frederick's sons lived at Boonesborough prior to 1779 and may have helped Daniel Boone build the fort.    Another, a Capt. John Stearnes, may have been killed in 1780 when Gen. Gates was routed by the British at Camden. 

Frederick Starnes, Jr., seems to have been rather prosperous, a constable, and was involved in supplying the Virginia militia with beef.  There was an officer in the militia around that time named Lt. Col. George Washington;  did they ever meet?  Who knows?

Frederick Starnes, Jr., last settled near the Holston River in Washington County, Virginia.   That locale around the branches of the Holston that led into Tennessee and to the location where Knoxville would be founded was known for being the jumping off point of men who were called "The Longhunters."  While Frederick was not one, two witnesses of his 1778 will, Bird and Bounds,  may have been longhunters.

Most immigrants were poor, and had to work off their passage in ways not dissimilar to the Chinese illegals working in sweat shops in New York City basements.  I don't know how many in the family tree were indentured servants.  (The following person, though he was 37 when he and his large family took passage to Massachusetts, may have had to work to pay off the costs of transport which kept him in one place for the better part of 10 years before he was free to move on to another location.) 

Another surprising nexus with history.   William Towne, Puritan, born 1599 and a resident of the port town of Yarmouth, England, immigrated to Massachusetts in 1637 with his wife and six children.   For a time they lived in Salem, then moved onto a farm in an adjoining county.  Two daughters had married and stayed behind in Salem.   A third moved with the family to a place called Topfield.   The daughters were Rebecca Towne Nurse, Mary Towne Estey and Sarah Towne Cloyse.  

In 1692, some years after their father's death in or about 1685, all three were accused of witchcraft.   Rebecca (who was elderly and an invalid) and Mary were hanged, while Sarah, who stormed out of a church service when the minister declared there was a devil in the congregation, was imprisoned.  A thing of pride that they did not confess and attempt to throw blame on others to save their lives;  if they had confessed they would have lived.    I am not a descendant of any of these women but of their brother Jacob, 9 or 10 generations back.   For those who have not read Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible" based closely on records of the time or Alexander Mackay's book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" (he has a chapter on the witch mania) there is a lot of information on the internet includng transcriptions of the trials themselves. 

By coincidence, when I was a pre-adolescent, I read and enjoyed a children's book called "Tinker's Tim and the Witches" that was set in Salem during the witch mania period.   "Tinker's Tim" like "The Crucible" was written at a time when America was embarking on other witch-hunts.   "Tinker's Tim" has been a great influence on me, turning me into the contarian anti-religious cuss that I am.

Here's a review of "Tinker's Tim and the Witches" by, one presumes, an evangelical concerned about the liberal content of the modern school curriculum.  http://homeschoolblogger.com/homeschoolbookreview/757301/    While I agree that whitewashing the past to remove objectionable content is a dispicable practice and turns school books into bland pablum, my own opinion is that "Tinker's Tim" is quite timely and that all around us there are imaginary witches being subjected to persecution, including minorities, aliens, Muslims, atheists, and gays.  The spirit of 1692 Salem is alive and well in America.   The whips and stocks and gibbit are oiled and ready and waiting, for us.

Alien V, or Homosolecism

Today I was skimming through a short article telling how common planets seem to be around the universe.  The article mentioned "alien worlds."   That got me thinking.

Visualizations followed.     "Who you callin' an alien?"  an angry E.T. shouts at a mob of earthlings?   Or a yoda like being sittign cross-legged comments "Me an alien?   Why, am I not a resident of the same universe that you are?" 

It's our tendency to think and verbalize in those terms:  US versus THEM.  Whoever THEM are.  

So our close neighbors to the south are ALIENS!   Or ILLEGAL ALIENS!    "Look ma, there's an ALIEN walking in the street!"  Somebody get the roach spray.  Or an assault rifle.   Or call the Border Patrol.

It's easy to forget we are of the same species and are nearby residents of the same hemisphere on a little planet we call earth.  Divided when it comes down to that by mostly imaginary and somewhat meaningless lines called "borders." 

Not too different really from the way we used to make maps, with our city, or nation, or continent at the center of the world map.   WE, whoever WE are, call ourselves ":the People,"  while all other humans are "Barbarians" or "Others, or "Them," or "Hey You!"   Or ALIENS.

We didn't stop there.   We believed the sun circled the earth;  how could it be otherwise when WE are so important?    So crushing to the ego to learn that our earth circles an incredibly large sun, and is only one of nine or so planets, and not the biggest one either!    

Neither is our sun located at the center of the universe, but out on one arm of an ordinary galaxy that is one of millions of galaxies.   Sort of like living in a cardboard shack in Podunk, Appalachia, with an outhouse in back.

I guess if there is a point to this, it is to observe that truth has a way of defeating inflated self importance.  That humility is a law that nature teaches, while self-grandiosity is a law of human nature.  Science advances, but himan nature is still with us.

Hottest Actresses

Of course the list changes.  But currently it is Holly Hunter, Frances McDormond, Sandra Bullock, and Helen Mirren.    Hunter's southern accent is most fetching.

Second tier and currently out of favor are Julia Ormond, Judy Davis, Kate Beckinsale, and Linda Hamilton.

Past faves were Whitney Blake, Carol Lynley, and Kim Novak.

Fav from an early era is Jean Arthur.  

Crystal Persuasion

In the future, politics and religion will be pharmaceutically alterable.

Which will have all kinds of amusing consequences. For example, if you don't like your spouse's ideology, you just obtain a pill on the black market and slip it into his/her OJ. Imagine if you will, an unhappy couple each dosing the other at the same time with a drug that changes one's religious/political ideology. They wake up with positions reversed and still incompatible!

Instead of political advertising, campaign managers will have spray planes flying overhead on election day, misting atomized drugs down on the populace. Complications arising when the same voters are engulfed by pharmaceuticals from competing candidates.

Same for evangelism. Evangelical churches will be using atomized mist on the streets, and trying to sneak their own chemical brew into the water supply.

Better living through chemistry!

Random Reflections. To be updated.

There is nothing more dangerous to your morals than hanging around like-minded people.

The internet is a cold and lonely place.  If you are looking for a friend, adopt a dog. 

All places are cold and lonely.  If you are looking for a friend, adopt a dog.

Not Quite Matinee Idol Looks

What do directors and casting agents look for in an actor?  Obviously, resume and experience.  Suitability to the role.   But what is also marketable is distinctiveness.  Memorableness in appearance or voice.  

It's not always the handsome actors who stay employed.  Often it's the reverse.   Actors unusually marked or homely may find roles not available to others.   For example:

Ron Perlman.  One of my favorite actors, beginning with his role on the TV series "Beauty and the Beast."    Liked him in "City of Lost Children" too.  Haven't seen the "Hellboy" series.

Richard Lynch, burn victim, who found himself more in demand after his accident than before.  Arch villain of the B movies.

Tommy Flanagan, the recipient of a "glasgow smile" as gangsters slashed his mouth;  you will remember from "Gladiator." "300," and "Braveheart," among others.    I don't know if plastic surgery could hide his scars but if so, he'd probably have more trouble finding work.

Billy Drago, who is almost handsome in an eerie psychotic bent way.   Like Lynch, he has made a comfortable living playing psychotic, homicidal bad guys.   Remember him as the hitman in "The Untouchables"?

Dyrk Ashton, who has a hell of a resume in the theater and movie business and sometimes, thanks partly to his unique appearance, acts.    Check out his myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/dyrkkhan

We might also mention Danny DeVito, John Malkovich, Richard Kiel, and Christopher Walken.  Many others.  I'll try to add them as I think of them.

ADDED--
Point being that what keeps you employed as an actor is not so much a pretty face which are a dollar a dozen with inflation, but a distinctive memorable face that fits in with the characters being played.   

Eyeglasses Rant

Who's a good optometrist? Where is a good place to buy glasses?

As for optomotrists, I've been to a half dozen starting with Craig Wallace years ago and have no complaints with any. Eyeglasses are a whole other story.

Many complaints are about the frames. Overpriced, mis-labeled junk.

Perhaps the best looking frames I ever bought were some preppie-looking Geoffrey Beene tortoiseshell plastic frames. Had them a month and stooped over to pick something up, brushed the frames against the handle of a lawnmower, and the glasses fell off my face in two pieces. Problem was, the plastic consisted of differently colored resins (tortoiseshell, duh), and the frames tended to break on the lines where the resins were inadequately bonded. I explained this at the place where I bought them; they didn't buy my reasoning that the frames were defective; had to buy new ones, which lasted six months with care before breaking in exactly the same place.

Super glue didn't work for me. I stuck the glasses back together by heating a length of paperclip red hot and mashing the glasses halves back together on that. Not pretty, but functional.

My current frames are metal. One pair was labeled "Titanium." Guess I was taken in by that label, because they sure weren't titanium in color. Nor in durability. They are corroding on my face. I have to take sandpaper and sand off the corrosion to keep the temples from wearing grooves in my skin. Another pair bought at the same time was labeled "Marine." I imagined this was an allusion to their durability under salt-water conditions. Nah! The temple piece corroded in two, and I had to splint it by slipping on part of the ink tube from a ball point pen. Then the hinge broke.

Been shopping for frames online. After my experiences, I want either of two materials, nylon or stainless steel. I looked up "stainless steel" at Frames Direct and found a line called "Casino Stainless Steel." In the description, the frame material is stated to be ... plastic. Stainless steel plastic.

No listing found for nylon. But nylon frames have been used by those in the military and by athletes. If you are jumping out of an airplane or kicking doors on a SWAT mission, or competing in the decathlon, you don't wear ordinary crummy glasses frames.

Lenses. My last glasses were bought at Eyeglass World, where I was guaranteed fast service, 24 hours, something like that. Turned out, they had to send the Rx to Austin or Houston or someplace and it took weeks. When the glasses got in, I checked the lines of the trifocals and found they were not in a straight line, in fact, one lens was turned about 35 degrees in the frame and the other about 20 degrees the other way. I sent them back. Waited another couple of weeks. Checked the new lenses, same thing, had to return them. After six weeks to two months, I got two pairs of glasses I could live with, not perfect, but acceptable. Until the frames started to decompose.

I wonder though: about those bifocals and trifocals without lines-- is that a way of hiding errors in the way the lenses are ground? How many eyeglass wearers are going around unaware that the reason they don't like their glasses is because the inset lenses are at the wrong angle? You can test this by moving your head horizontally while looking at a small object.

And there can be errors within a lens. Years ago, I discovered that by looking at an object and moving my head the object would "jump," because of a blip in the lens where the grind was not uniform. The lady at the optical company was not happy, but did replace the lens. Since then, I've checked each pair for "blips."

The other day I broke a lens that fell out of the frame. Glass lenses, breaking them is not news, like a dog biting a man. But this lens was plastic. Didn't know plastic lenses would break straight across like that.

Then there is the service. Years ago, I would be fitted by a lady who was not afraid to get close to my face and microadjust everything without being told. We're talking face to face, breath to breath, eye to eye; it was like being on a date. Now, the young ladies just hand me the glasses and ask me how they fit and stay well away from my face and my person (Is it bad breath? That I hadn't bathed in a week? Because I forgot to shave that day? Am out of deoderant? Or just old and unattractive? Bet Pierce Brosnan gets his glasses fitted right). If I can communicate a problem, they grudgingly bend and twist and hand the glasses back to me as though ridding themselves of something distasetful. And wanting to be rid of something even more distasteful.

When a pair of new Wal-Mart purchased glasses broke on me, I went back to the place where I bought them and was ignored by three employees who were busy discussing something among themselves. Disgusted I went to a different Wal-Mart and encountered a quite different employee, who took care of my problem with concern and speed.