Looking for an arcane historical fact to represent this date I found that Grandfather Opechancanough opened the Third Powhatan War on the Jamestown settlers on March 18, 1644. It was in this raid that Grandfather John Woodson was slain.
I have touched on this incident in a couple of earlier posts.
See
Historic Jamestowne National Park Service
String Too Short to Tie here and here.
Wikipedia Anglo-Powhatan Wars
Showing posts with label genealogy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genealogy. Show all posts
Friday, March 18, 2016
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Hunstable and Moore
But here is the mystery. Remember that I know nothing of Mr. Lawson's career other than the line in the obituary of his mother and the snapshots I am sharing. I attempted some online research and found that Hunstable and Moore established a bootery in Dallas, Texas about 1885 or 1886. As the only other leather works with a similar name that I could find was a Hunstable firm in Berrien Springs, Michigan, I might, correctly or erroneously, conclude that this picture was from Dallas. Now I do know that Mr. Lawson was born in Tennessee and died only a few miles away in Virginia. But I do not know that he ever traveled to Texas. But he might have done. So the mystery remains.
Any Lawson descendants who can shed light on my mystery?
The Moore of H & M died in 1894. Some shenanigans, apparently an outgrowth of admixture of business and personal funds, landed the firm in court, the proceedings and outcomes of which are much too convoluted for me to explain. Heck, for me to understand. Since I've no personal interest in H & M and since it happened over a century ago, I gave up reading the court documents long before the end..
Word of the day: admixture
Thursday, September 3, 2015
Old Times in Virginia
William H. Lawson, shoe repairman Big Stone Gap, Virginia. Mr. Lawson was my grandmother's uncle.As is often the case in genealogical research one finds many relatives not directly in ones line. Such a case, for example, would be great great uncles or a great aunt and their descendants. We are related, yes, but the pursuit of their lives and their offspring is not our primary concern.
A few years ago I received a packet of pictures which included a number of the offspring of my great great grandmother. William H. Lawson was among them. I know from his mother's obituary that he was "a well-known shoe repairman" in Big Stone Gap. From the photo I infer that he not only could sole your shoes he could block your hat and "French dry clean" your whatever, whatever that is. The picture is really cool though.
Word of the day: infer
STSTT post #2200
*French dry cleaning is a process whereby hand spotting and hand pressing and close attention to detail is employed. I looked it up.
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Resurrected and Reposted #T
Pulled out of the archives from six years back. Minor editing.
Genealogy led me to this bit of family lore, which I have combined with a bit of historic information I have gleaned from various sources. My maternal grandmother's grandfather served in the USArmy under Winfield Scott during the Mexican campaign. It is said that Grandfather, Spencer Lawson, was with Scott during the incursion into Mexico. It is historic fact that Scott took Mexico City. What role Private Lawson played in this is unknown, other than the fact that he survived and returned to his native Hawkins County, Tennessee.
Prior to this war and on a visit to New Orleans in 1846, General Scott was defeated at chess by nine-year-old Paul Morphy. He lost two games to the boy.. Scott was not amused. Though Scott was a Virginian, he maintained his loyalty to the United States when the Civil War rent the nation. He is credited with the "Anaconda" plan by which the South was eventually strangled into submission.
Meantime, when the War Between the States started, Grandpa Lawson said, as did his general of the Mexican campaign, "I will not take up arms against the flag I fought under." It is said that he joined the Union forces; but while home on leave, he was betrayed by a relative, captured by the South and imprisoned at Andersonville. I visited Andersonville a few years ago and sought to verify this. While I found Lawsons from Hawkins County, there was no record of Spencer Lawson having been there. It is a known fact, however, that wherever he was held he was paroled due to illness, records of which I have obtained. He died in military hospital in Annapolis in 1864. His widow was eventually able to draw a pension for his service in the Mexican War amounting to twenty dollars a month.
Scott was the Whig Party nominee for President in 1852. He was defeated by Democrat Franklin Pierce. He died in 1866.
[Sources: Morrell-Palmer Family Records, National Archives, Wikipedia]
Word of the day: loyalty
Genealogy led me to this bit of family lore, which I have combined with a bit of historic information I have gleaned from various sources. My maternal grandmother's grandfather served in the USArmy under Winfield Scott during the Mexican campaign. It is said that Grandfather, Spencer Lawson, was with Scott during the incursion into Mexico. It is historic fact that Scott took Mexico City. What role Private Lawson played in this is unknown, other than the fact that he survived and returned to his native Hawkins County, Tennessee.
Prior to this war and on a visit to New Orleans in 1846, General Scott was defeated at chess by nine-year-old Paul Morphy. He lost two games to the boy.. Scott was not amused. Though Scott was a Virginian, he maintained his loyalty to the United States when the Civil War rent the nation. He is credited with the "Anaconda" plan by which the South was eventually strangled into submission.
Meantime, when the War Between the States started, Grandpa Lawson said, as did his general of the Mexican campaign, "I will not take up arms against the flag I fought under." It is said that he joined the Union forces; but while home on leave, he was betrayed by a relative, captured by the South and imprisoned at Andersonville. I visited Andersonville a few years ago and sought to verify this. While I found Lawsons from Hawkins County, there was no record of Spencer Lawson having been there. It is a known fact, however, that wherever he was held he was paroled due to illness, records of which I have obtained. He died in military hospital in Annapolis in 1864. His widow was eventually able to draw a pension for his service in the Mexican War amounting to twenty dollars a month.
Scott was the Whig Party nominee for President in 1852. He was defeated by Democrat Franklin Pierce. He died in 1866.
[Sources: Morrell-Palmer Family Records, National Archives, Wikipedia]
Word of the day: loyalty
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Who is Gracy Parmer?
or, Why genealogy is so much fun.
Genealogy is fraught with puzzlement which may be why some people choose to get entangled in it. I tried it for a time.
I hope I can condense this enigma to an understandable example of the stuff family researchers come up against. The one common factor to be found in researching this person is a statement of birth year, 1728, and that she was born in Virginia. Nothing else has been verifiably established, but that has not stopped the family tree builders from asserting her position as matriarch of a Parmer/Palmer clan, the one to which I belong.
William Branham, a.k.a. William Parmer, born about 1743 in Albemarle County, Virginia, who died in 1822, is verifiably recognized as progenitor of the Palmer line into which I was born. It is asserted that his mother was Gracy Parmer and his putative father was William Branham. In seeking records, though, one will find that it is almost as though, having need of a mother for Mr. Branham/Parmer, one was posited by someone. She came into existence of necessity and disappeared conveniently, leaving no footprints.
Yet if you look at various family trees, there you will find her, including one in which it is stated that she died in childbirth at William's advent, and another in which she supposedly gave birth to two additional children, one when she was fifty years of age, and the other at age 59!
William went by the Branham name for the first fifty plus years of his life, then he filed for legal change of name to William Parmer. An affidavit by acquaintances asserted that William "was illegitimate" and he was "fair born" to a woman with red hair. Come now the family researchers yet again. One I read after went into a long and detailed historical analysis showing why, in his opinion, this tidbit points to the likelihood that mother Gracy Parmer was a Monacan Indian, and that she was in fact married to Richard Branham, and hence William was not illegitimate at all, but now he was seeking to evade a recently passed law in Virginia requiring inhabitants of mixed race to register as such.
And so it goes.
Again I ask, Who is Gracy Parmer?
Genealogy is fraught with puzzlement which may be why some people choose to get entangled in it. I tried it for a time.
I hope I can condense this enigma to an understandable example of the stuff family researchers come up against. The one common factor to be found in researching this person is a statement of birth year, 1728, and that she was born in Virginia. Nothing else has been verifiably established, but that has not stopped the family tree builders from asserting her position as matriarch of a Parmer/Palmer clan, the one to which I belong.
William Branham, a.k.a. William Parmer, born about 1743 in Albemarle County, Virginia, who died in 1822, is verifiably recognized as progenitor of the Palmer line into which I was born. It is asserted that his mother was Gracy Parmer and his putative father was William Branham. In seeking records, though, one will find that it is almost as though, having need of a mother for Mr. Branham/Parmer, one was posited by someone. She came into existence of necessity and disappeared conveniently, leaving no footprints.
Yet if you look at various family trees, there you will find her, including one in which it is stated that she died in childbirth at William's advent, and another in which she supposedly gave birth to two additional children, one when she was fifty years of age, and the other at age 59!
William went by the Branham name for the first fifty plus years of his life, then he filed for legal change of name to William Parmer. An affidavit by acquaintances asserted that William "was illegitimate" and he was "fair born" to a woman with red hair. Come now the family researchers yet again. One I read after went into a long and detailed historical analysis showing why, in his opinion, this tidbit points to the likelihood that mother Gracy Parmer was a Monacan Indian, and that she was in fact married to Richard Branham, and hence William was not illegitimate at all, but now he was seeking to evade a recently passed law in Virginia requiring inhabitants of mixed race to register as such.
And so it goes.
Again I ask, Who is Gracy Parmer?
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