I Bequeath

#52ancestors
Week 8 Heirloom

I Bequeath . . .

By Myra Vanderpool Gormley (c) 2018

Taylor, I bequeath my class cake plate to you.

You may wonder why your grandauntie would leave you such an ordinary thing as a glass cake plate. It certainly isn’t worth any money. It’s not rare or a collector’s item, but it is an heirloom. It’s one of the few family “treasures” that I inherited and that is why I want to pass it along to you.

You see, there is a story behind this cake plate that makes it special.

Eufaula, Oklahoma in 1940

Once upon a long time ago — back in 1940 to be exact, a pretty, young mother was pushing her baby in a carriage. She was going to visit a friend who lived several blocks away. Her baby was a fat, dark-haired girl.

It was hot and muggy in Eufaula, Oklahoma that early summer day and the mother hurried along to get to her friend’s house so she could have some ice tea, visit   and show off her baby’s new tooth and pretty yellow dress.

She pushed the buggy down the uneven sidewalk by a vacant lot where an old mansion, at least by small-town Oklahoma standards, once stood. There was still some trash in the yard, waiting for the cleanup crew to come in and haul it off.

As she went by, she noticed a piece of glass sticking out of the red mud. She stopped to look at it more carefully. On closer examination, she could tell it was a dish or bowl of some sort. She grabbed the edge and began to work it gently out of the mire. It was much larger than she realized at first. Finally, she retrieved the item — a clear glass plate with a pedestal. It’s a beautiful cake plate thought the young mother who was just setting up housekeeping and did not have many dishes. What a lucky find.

She took one of her baby’s diapers and wrapped it around the cake plate and tucked it into the buggy. Off she went to her friend’s house — eager to show off her new-found treasure.

Later, back at her little house, she washed the cake plate and set it out to admire. “It is just perfect,” she thought. She waited eagerly for her husband to arrive home from work so she could share the day’s adventure and show him the plate.

“Next time I bake a cake, I’ll have a pretty plate on which to put it,” she said. And, so she did. Through the years — a half century in fact — she baked cakes for her husband, her daughters and her sons. Always on their birthdays, plus holidays and other times, the glass cake plate would hold a beautiful cake.

That young mother was my mother — and I was the baby in the buggy the day she found the pretty glass cake plate.

Through all the moves she made — in Oklahoma, Kansas and Washington — she took extra care of this cake plate and it has survived without a chip. It held my birthday cakes, your Grandpa’s and his twin’s (Granduncle Jim) and even your great-grandfather, Frosty Vanderpool’s, last birthday cake on 9 April 1984.

A few years before she died in 1991, my mother asked if I’d like to have the cake plate. Of course, I said yes. There are so many sweet memories wrapped around that little cake plate. This is why I saved it.

Taylor, perhaps someday you will bake cakes for your children’s or your grandchildren’s birthdays and put them on this little glass cake plate. If you do, serve them with lots of love and ice cream.

And, remember me and how much I love you — and the story about this cake plate -- our family heirloom.

Love in the 19th Century

#52ancestors
Week 7 — Valentine

Love in the 19th Century

By Myra Vanderpool Gormley ©2018\

When Nancy Jones’ beau died during the Civil War, she must have been heart-broken, though no diary or letter has been found that records her emotions — only a poignant note written by him (whose name has since  been lost) during a battle wherein he told Nancy  that he had
“Laid as close to the ground as ever a squirrel laid to a limb.”

At the time of the war, Nancy lived with her parents, Evan Jones and “Polly” (née Weaver) and some of her 10 siblings in Laurel County, Kentucky. Nancy, born in 1839, was one of the couple’s younger children. Exactly when or how Nancy met Ephraim Clayton (called E. C.) Anderson, a young man eight years her junior, who lived about 20 miles away in adjoining Clay County in mountainous southeastern Kentucky is another story that’s been lost in the passing of the years.

On February 14, 1868, Nancy took a sheet of lined paper, folded and cut it artistically. When she was done, she had four hearts. There were also four hands and four designs that appear to be flowers at the sheet’s corners. In the confines of the cut hearts, she wrote this valentine to E. C. Anderson:

Heart 1
Last lots ware (were) cast
From them I drew kind fortune
It must be you
Look at the first letter in every line to your right hand
I send my hart (heart) in hand to you.
You may think strange of this.

Heart 2
Kind sir if this you do refuse
Then burn the paper and be excused
Answer from you I will expect
Say answer by a line
Will you be my valentine?
Beauty is but a flower
And may be wilted in an hour

Heart 3
[Taking the first letter of each line and reading vertically, it spells out her name]

Nature
and love will
no (know) that we must
consult our minds
youth and beauty will
Just do for a flower
one is all we trust
nothing else can we study but
each other. You are
so far away.

Heart 4
My bosom swells
with deep concern
I love but cannot love but one.
I guess I’ll never love another
so let us live in love together.
If this Valentine you do refuse
please burn the paper and be excused.

Obviously, he did not burn the paper. E.C. and Nancy were married Nov. 19, 1868. They had six children, but only three survived to adulthood.

More than a hundred years later, in 1977, when descendants were selling their ancestral home and dividing up the furniture, one of the heirs took a small wooden table with one drawer. It had sat in a combination room that served as both bedroom and living room.

Later, when she and her sister were going through things with a purpose — to leave some old papers to Berea College — they found the valentine. It was among old photos, receipts, Confederate money and memorabilia, folded up in a little square. They read it, made a copy and then folded the original back into its small square.

E. C. and Nancy (Jones) Anderson died within six months of each other with Nancy going on December 26, 1917. Nancy was 78. Ephraim lasted six months longer, dying June 5, 1918, at the age of 71. They are buried in Pine Hill Cemetery in Marydell, Laurel County, Kentucky.

Tombstone photograph by the kind permission of Hank Cox. Photo Copyright 2010, Hank Cox, originally uploaded to Find-A-Grave.

Thanks to my cousins, Mary Martin Cheek and Shirley Martin Chandler, for sharing this story and other family information with me.

See also: “Treasures in Old Letters: I Have Taken me a Woman . . . “
https://shakingfamilytrees.blogspot.com/2014/11/31-52ancestors-treasures-in-old-letters.html

Help! My Ancestors Have Turned Green

#52Ancestors
Week 6 — Favorite Name
2018-02-08

Help! My Ancestors Have Turned Green

by Myra Vanderpool Gormley © 2018

At first I thought it was just one of those naming fads our families went through. You know, where all the girls are named for flowers or jewels. I always think of my Grandaunts — Lily and Pearl — who weren’t my grandaunts at all, but rather cousins, but in my childhood, everyone over 20 or so was called “aunt” or “uncle” if they were even distantly related. And if they were “old” (like 40+) you tacked on the “grand” in front of aunt or uncle to show your respect.

However, a particular given name keeps popping up in various branches of my family tree. Who on earth names their bouncing baby boy — GREEN?

Naturally, as a seasoned genealogist, I assumed there had to be a valid reason for this colorful name — perhaps a maiden name of someone or in honor of a famous military hero or a local celebrity? My family is a bit eccentric, to be polite, as well as creative, but this Green given name keeps showing up so often, there has to be a story behind it. Or so I thought.

I snickered when I first encountered Greenberry Autry (Awtrey) — an older brother of my ancestor. Naturally, he was called “Green” for short. Thank goodness, my 4g-granny chose to name my ancestor just plain old Eldridge. This Greenberry, was born about 1803 in Georgia and I spent considerable time searching for someone with the surname of Greenberry because why else would my 4g-granny pass along the name? It had to be a family name.  If it is, it is hidden well.

When additional research revealed someone named Green Nathaniel Bankston in another of my Georgia families, it appeared he most likely was named in honor of the Revolutionary War soldier, General Nathanael Greene, and his parents transposed the given names. His son was named Young Green.

Gen. Nathanael Greene

But were these other “Greens” named for the general also? I really don’t know. There simply is no rhyme or reason that I can determine as to why so many of my families on non-connecting branches and different generations chose to name their sons Green.

One of my relatives was John “Green Bottom” Connally, but that was just a nickname based on a topographic name. He built the Green Bottom Inn near Huntsville, Alabama about 1815. However, typically, for my family, his genealogy is in dispute, so I’m not sure about our relationship.
 https://www.normalhistoricdistrict.org/alabama-am-university-collection?lightbox=image22j7

I’ve even found a couple of boys named Green Hill in my tree. That made me smile, but when I discovered Olive Green on a gnarled branch, I snorted coffee on my computer monitor. So far I’ve counted 30 Greens. Can’t you just hear their mothers yelling for those sons to come home for supper?


I suppose I shouldn’t complain. They could have chosen another color — like puce.

#52ancestors

No. 5 — Jan. 26 2018

Census

Using the census to track a family in its Dust Bowl migration

By Myra Vanderpool Gormley ©2018

 

Dorthea Lange photo (public domain)  of a family arriving in California from Oklahoma ca 1935.

When Elmer Hodge Blair married Attelia Pryor in the summer of 1914[1] in Oklahoma, times were pretty good and the future looked bright because Oklahoma was bubbling in oil, and its businesses and farms were thriving. He was 23 and she was 19. Elmer was a farmer, though it is doubtful that he ever owned one. He registered for the World War I draft[2] in Muskogee County, Oklahoma where he then lived and at that time claimed he was married with two children. Apparently, he never actually served in the military.

His father died in early 1918, leaving Elmer with a younger sister as his nearest relative. He also had several half siblings via his father’s second marriage. In the 1920 census[3] of Choctaw County, Oklahoma, Elmer and Attelia and their three sons are renting a place and he is farming. Their sons — Elmer Leroy, Marion Floyd and Paul Vernon — were born in 1915, 1917 and 1918, respectively.

By 1930, Elmer and family had moved again — to Eufaula in McIntosh County, Oklahoma.[4] About this time there was a global economic slowdown and one of the worst and longest drought in America’s history hit. The drought created the Dust Bowl period in the 1930s with the most intense years occurring in 1934 and 1936. While eastern Oklahoma where the Blairs lived was not as severely hit by the dust storms, the area also was impacted by great economic losses and the Depression. Like hundreds of thousands of others, the Blairs joined the so-called Dust Bowl refugees and went to California.

In 1940, Elmer, his wife and two of his three sons were enumerated in Taft Heights, Kern County, California. He had been unemployed for 16 weeks, was renting a home for $15 a month, and had an income of $350. The 1940 population schedule[5] asked an additional question that helped to pinpoint the migration of this family. It asked: “In what place did this person live on April 1, 1935?” Additionally, if it was a different place than in 1940, the enumerator was to enter the name of the city or town. The Blairs lived in a rural area (farm) in McIntosh County, Oklahoma in 1935.  

So sometime between 1 April 1935 and 18 April 1940, the Blairs had made the trip along the famous Route 66 to California.

Elmer is buried in Fairhaven Memorial Park, Santa Ana, and Orange County, California where he died in 1950, and Artelia purportedly died there in 1959.[6]

However, they made at least one more trip back to Oklahoma because in 1942[7], Elmer is found in the “old men’s draft” of that year for World War II, living in McAlester, McIntosh County, Oklahoma. How long they stayed before returning to California I have yet to determine.

---

[1] Elmer H. Blair married Artelia Pryor, 9 Aug 1914, Muskogee County, Oklahoma.

Film Number: 001312360. Oklahoma, County Marriage Records, 1890-1995 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.

[2] Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Registration State: Oklahoma; Registration County: Muskogee; Roll: 1851890. Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. Original data: United States, Selective Service System. World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. M1509, 4,582 rolls. Imaged from Family History Library microfilm. 

[3] 1920 U.S. census. Choctaw County, Oklahoma, population schedule, Wilson, Enumeration District [ED] 80.  Roll T625_1456, p. 13A. United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Original data: Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920. (NARA microfilm publication T625, 2076 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C.

[4] 1930 U.S. census, McIntosh County, Oklahoma, population schedule, Eufaula, Enumeration District [ED] 14. Roll 1914; Page: 4A; FHL microfilm: 2341648. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls.

[5] 1940 U.S. census, Kern County, California, population schedule, Taft Heights,  Enumeration District [ED] 15-59; Roll: m-t0627-00214; Page: 14A. Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.  Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1940. T627, 4,643 rolls.

[6] Find-A-Grave Memorial (no sources cited). Elmer H Blair Birth 1891. Death 1950.

Burial: Fairhaven Memorial Park, Santa Ana, Orange County, California, USA. Memorial ID 58489865.

Find-A-Grave does not show a burial record for his wife; and I’ve found no documentation to prove exactly when and where she died.

[7] World War II Draft Cards (4th Registration), for the State of Oklahoma. The National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Records of the Selective Service System, 1926-1975; Record Group Number: 147. Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
© 2018, Ancestry.com.