Is That Egg On My Face????

    

      In Thursday's blog I asserted that Jennie Jerome, mother of Winston Churchill was born in Palmyra, NY.  To set the record straight, it was her mother, Clarissa Hall, who was born in Palmyra, not Jennie herself.  So sorry about that...

Friday's Photo/Rufus & Sarah Ivory of Michigan

     I really like the relaxed, familiar way this little girl is leaning against her father, though she looks pretty bored with holding still for the photographer.  On the back of this picture...

     The names Rufus and Sarah Ivory and daughter Una are clear.  At first I thought Hadley might be the girl's married name after she had grown up, but in fact it is the name of the town in Michigan where they lived.  Una is the youngest child in the family, born in Michigan in 1880.  This probably explains the pose, I'd bet she was the apple of Daddy's eye.  Una married Fred Bartenfelder, and passed away in Michigan in 1941.

Those Places Thursday/The Cobbler's Shop

      The youngest member of my Ryan family from South Tipperary was Cornelius.  Born in Golden Garden just a year before the famine struck, and named for his father, Cornelius accompanied his parents to America in 1860, landing in New York that August.  Outside of church and census records, there aren't many others available in New York State for that time frame.  Church records show Cornelius marrying Ann Hennessy in 1869, and he appears in the 1870 census of Palmyra, NY with Ann and a 5 month old son named Oliver; his given occupation is shoemaker.

     I often wondered how Cornelius became a shoemaker, no other members of his family had a trade, and I wondered who he worked for and where in Palmyra?  Things began to make sense when I read the 1865 census in the Wayne County Historian's office.  There Cornelius was listed as an apprentice living with shoemaker David Rogers in Palmyra.  Another clue presented itself in the remarkable book "Palmyra and Vicinity" by Thomas Cook.  An elderly gentleman, before his death he recorded in this book everyone he could remember who ever lived or conducted business in Palmyra and their locations.  This is the section about David Rogers--

     Cornelius must have been the next apprentice after John Jarvis left for the war.  The last piece of the puzzle was found during my visit  to the Palmyra library a few weeks ago.

     Oddly enough, the parents of Jennie Jerome, the future mother of Winston Churchill lived in Palmyra for a time.  Her mother, Clarissa Hall, was actually born there.  It's true, look it up.  Next to a photo of Jennie was one of her great-uncle Hiram Jerome's old law office on Market Street in Palmyra.  Upon seeing that, something clicked--I remembered reading that David Rogers purchased an old law office on Market St. for his shoe shop.  I thumbed through Mr. Cook's book again, (you have to love those old local histories),  which confirmed this was the very building.  I'm not sure exactly how Cornelius made Mr. Roger's acquaintance, but I did learn he became an apprentice and then a shoemaker before his untimely death in 1877.  I can almost picture Cornelius climbing those steps to go to work each day.  I love it when it all comes together.

Persistence...Yes It Pays Off

    

 Google defines persistence as --
firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty...

   Merriam-Webster calls it--
the quality that allows someone to continue doing something or trying to do something, even though it is difficult...

     Sound like anyone you know?  Us, of course!  You and me-- if we didn't have persistence we'd never get anywhere with our never-ending search for ancestors.  Awhile back I promised to lay off Milo for a bit, but here at Ellie's Ancestors, we are drawn to Milo like a moth to a flame.  Though I haven't been blogging about him, my staff, (read my husband), and I have been hot on his trail.  

    One of the things I frequently do is run searches for Milo and the other Galloways, because new bits of information are constantly being added to the net. Yesterday I visited one of my favorite sites,  NYS Historic Newspapers.  This site is part of a larger one-- RRLC, Rochester Regional Library Council, and features digital images of newspapers from Rochester and it's surrounding counties.  The site is free, searchable, and easy to use. You can limit the search by town or county, and/or by years, it even has an advanced search function.  Luckily for me, they have digitized the Newark, NY newspapers, the nearest town to where Milo once lived in the wee hamlet of Hydesville.  

     Although the Newark papers on the site only go back to the 1870's and Milo passed away in 1857, all is not lost.  Fairly often these small, home-towny papers did interviews with older citizens asking them to recall what the town was like back in the day.  They gave these articles cute names like, "Looking Back", and the  interviews can be quite useful to family historians whose stock in trade is "looking back".  For instance, I found descriptions of several of my Irish ancestors in the "Shortsville Enterprise", a paper published in the O'Hora's area of New York, (not available on the website), and yesterday I found an interview mentioning Milo.

     I'd been doing a general search on, "Galloway", when this came up--
    I recall that in my boyhood days, old residents were wont to tell how the pioneers came up Mud Creek in boats and settled along the banks of that stream and of course such water power privileges as at Mud Mills, and that about a mile west of Hydesville, early known as Galloway's Mills, were the first appropriated for saw milling purposes, and afterwards grist mills and woolen mills were added.
    Mr. Galloway was at a later period, a prominent enterprising citizen of Newark, living upon the north side of what you now call the Park, but which in early days was known as the Public Square, and was devoted to ball games, militia and general trainings and other gatherings of a public nature.  Quite a manufacturing era was inaugurated when Galloway Mills added a woolen roll carding machine to their outfit...

     If I had not bothered to look at newspapers published after Milo's death, I would have missed this.  You notice, his forename is mentioned nowhere in the article, which is why I didn't find it when I searched for "Milo Galloway".  I know it's him however, he was the only Galloway in Newark, and the only one who owned saw, grist and woolen mills near Hydesville.  This remembrance of an old gentleman named Dagget, published in 1909, confirms that Milo was well known and well off, and even gives me the general area where he lived after amassing his fortune.  Sadly, it offers no clues about how he lost his money or what caused his demise.  But that's OK, I will find that information, 'cause I have persistence.

The Warners of Packwood

St. Giles Church in Packwood, Warwickshire

     In the rolling west midlands of England, to the north of the River Avon, once laid an ancient wood known as the Forest of Arden.  Majestic oaks flourished there, squirrels and sparrows frolicking among the treetops.  Dappled sunlight filtered through the branches and glinted off small streams at their feet.  From April through May the forest floor was a beautiful sea of sweetly perfumed English bluebells. As the years passed, small hamlets grew up from clearings in this forest-- Knowle, Hampton in Arden and Packwood among others.  They were home to minor landowners and numerous landless cottagers.  

     It was there in Packwood, in 1754, that John Warner, the son of William and Elizabeth Doston Warner, married Mary Kirby.  John's son William Warner, named for his grandfather, was baptized there at St. Giles in 1763.  William became an agricultural laborer like his father, and later married Sarah Payne who gave birth to their eleven children!  The youngest child, born in 1820, was James, who came to America in 1870.  James, along with his wife Ann Greenway and their sons, was the only Warner who left England; you saw his tombstone in yesterday's blog.  Why did James choose to immigrate?  Why leave his remaining family, the grave of his only daughter Maria who died at age 14 of pneumonia, and all he knew to come to America?  Especially at his age--he was 50 years old when he immigrated.  Today that is not considered old, but in 1870 the average life expectancy was less than 50.

    After much research, I believe James really had no other choice.  During the mid to late nineteenth century, the structure of English agriculture was changing, to the detriment of laborers. Landowners were converting their fields from grain production to pasture for the raising of cattle which required fewer laborers, and the industrial revolution, which I'm sure you recall from high school, was having dramatic effects even in the farming community where mechanization was growing, again displacing workers. The result was unemployment, migration to towns and cities, and immigration to America.  James had seen the writing on the wall years earlier when he sent his two oldest sons ahead to facilitate the family's move to New York. 

     James' older siblings who never left England were likewise forced from the countryside, becoming factory laborers and one a baker in larger towns.  Not one of the eleven children of William Warner remained in Packwood.  Not one of them did as well as James either.  He purchased his own farm in New York and prospered, his sons did even better becoming quite well off.

     It never fails to amaze me how much can be learned today about individuals who lived well over 100 years ago.  We have the internet to thank for much of that.  It was there I discovered the existence of the book, "The Forest Of Arden", by John Hannett with it's detailed descriptions of Packwood through the years, and also found the bookstore in England that would mail a copy to me.  Online I found other descriptions of the area, and the catalog of the LDS library on their website leading me to the microfilmed records of St. Giles church.  How much longer would it have taken me to find this information if I found it at all?

     I often wonder what my ancestors thought of all the inventions of "modern" technology that came to pass in their lifetimes.  Did they soon take them for granted, or were they as blown away by those innovations as I still remain by the internet?  I sometimes think how much fun it would be to pack Great-Great-Grandma and Grandpa into the old horseless carriage, show them around our world, and watch their reactions.  Thanks to genealogy I feel that close to them, and would love to know what they would think of it all.
     

     

    

































 

Tombstone Tuesday/ Warner & Greenway from Packwood England

     
     James Warner and Ann Greenway were my 3rd great-grandparents on my Father's side.  They were born in Warwickshire, England and came to America in 1870.  They died within three months of each other in upstate New York.  Both are buried in Brookside Cemetery in Shortsville, New York.  Ann went first, below is her obituary:

     “Mrs. James Warner departed this life at 11 pm on Friday February 3^rd after an illness of a little over one week with pneumonia, the result of la grippe.  The funeral was held from her late home one mile north of the village on Monday.

      A large concourse of people gathered to pay their last tribute to a kind neighbor and friend. Twenty-eight years ago the deceased left her native country, (England), and came across the broad Atlantic to live in America.  Two of her sons preceded her to Manchester.  James Warner and family came at once to this village where their two sons had a home prepared for their arrival.  After about two years of village life they purchased the farm opposite their present home, and have since resided there.  The faithful labors of Mrs. Warner were a great help to her companion in securing so pleasant a home.

     She is survived by a husband, who is very sick with pneumonia, and six sons with their wives and fifteen grandchildren.  Her age was seventy six years and two months.  She was a very devoted wife and mother, and greatly endeared to her six sons, who were bearers for their sainted mother.  The floral tributes were very beautiful for this season of the year.  She was a mother in whom can be truthfully be said; her children rise up and call her blessed.

     Her husband's obit was quite a bit shorter:

      James Warner Sr. died at the home of his son James north of the village on Wednesday afternoon, his death resulting from complications of diseases.  Deceased was aged 79 years, and is survived by six sons: John, Thomas, William, Joseph, James and George.  Mr. Warner was born in England, and came to this country in 1870, taking up his residence near this village where he has ever since resided.  The funeral will be held from his late home this (Saturday) afternoon at 2 o'clock, Rev. M. W. Covell, pastor of the Baptist Church officiating.  The interment will be in Brookside Cemetery.

     Tomorrow I will tell you more of their story.

Friday's Photo/ Pieter Mol and Cornelia VanOeveren

Pieter Mol and wife Cornelia VanOeveren

     This photo was given to me by my mother-in law, and is of my late husband's great grandparents who  came to America from Zeeland in the Netherlands.  They and their five youngest children boarded the ship Obdam in Rotterdam, sailed to Boulogne, France, then down the English Channel into the Atlantic, arriving in New York on May 25, 1893. The manifest says they were headed for Falmouth, but somehow they ended up in Williamson, New York where Pieter purchased a farm.  He passed away there in 1905 at the age of 72.  Cornelia outlived her husband by ten years dying in 1915.  Both are buried in Ridge Chapel Cemetery in Williamson.

   The photo at right was taken around 1910 and shows the widow Cornelia seated in front of her daughter Maria Izabella, who was herself  a widow by then. The boys are Maria's children, Harold Smith on the left and on the right Edwin Smith, my husband's grandfather.  The name "Moll" still appears in the phone book for Williamson and the surrounding areas, no doubt some or all of them are descendants of Pieter and Cornelia.