Hinds Catch-up

It has been two years since I have done anything with this blog. I find that amazing since at one time, it seemed to be much more important to me. However, the genealogy has gone forward, finding a new part of the family I didn't know existed and a trip this year to the Midwest to dig out more information. The story of my great grandfather's death that we were all told (including the new family) has been pretty much debunked only to be replaced by another story that is equally interesting.

As you go, your perception also changes. Basing what you believe to be the personalities of the people from the past on your relationships with your family, clouds who they really were. My great grandfather may have (and I suspect) been less perfect than I originally thought.

All the information gathered this year on our three week trip is going to take some time to process. I don't want to make the same mistakes that I did early on when I started this. My older entries are full of errors and conjecture. I know so much more now so as I wade through all the stuff I found, I will update the stories and correct the mistakes.

Changing the blog name

This started as Yeakley/Rhea, my parent's names. Then I changed it to Rhea/McCollum to add my grandpa's family. Now I see that it was wrong to begin with. I have a new blog called Yeakley/Jones which is my mom's parents. I see now it would have been more accurate to have started this one as Rhea/Farris for my grandparents. So on March 1, 2014, it will include my grandmother's Farris family too.

Genealogy is hard enough without confusing the families. Fortunately, I did the Yeakley/Jones right to start with. This blog is a hodge-podge of different families. In the beginning, I also did my husband's biological family but eventually created a website and blog for him. I switched to my great grandparents in 2013 for the Family History Writing Challenge. I have just completed the 2014 challenge and am satisfied that I now have the bones to write the story of Martha Jane McCollum.

Now that the Challenge is over, I am heading towards the Farris side of the family. I am also working on the Yeakley's on a different blog. I've spent a very long time on the Rhea's and am satisfied with what I have although I know it will never be completely done.

The Farris family, like the Yeakley's have been ignored while researching the Rhea's. On Ancestry, I have all the facts but none of the details that make them real people. It will be an interesting adventure.

Join me on the Blogging from A to Z Challenge - April 2014

While I finish the Family History Writing Challenge, I am getting ready for the Blogging from A - Z Challenge. If you haven't tried this one, click on the link and check it out. There is still time to sign up.

Last year I did California Destinations, picking a place for each letter of the alphabet. This year, I am attempting to do family history on the other side of the family. Since I am in the embryo stage of detailed research for the Yeakley/Jones family, this is proving to be difficult. I am writing about my aunts and uncles so we have some sort of record other than basic facts but filling in the other days is harder. To make it worse, I am also doing 52 ancestors in 52 weeks for the same family. I might have bitten off more than I can chew.

I am looking forward to the challenge. Not only does it stretch my skills as a blogger, I am looking forward to meeting new bloggers I haven't yet discovered. You should give it a try.

Day 15 - Laura Isabelle Rhea

Laura Isabelle Rhea was born on February 15, 1870. She was the second girl, two years younger than Leona. She had been a baby when the family moved to the Home Place.

She was five when Luvenia was born and seven when Della was came along. She had visited the Cliff House with Andrew hundreds of times and was glad they didn’t live there anymore. It was way too small and the bedroom at the Home Place was big enough for all the girls. By the time Lillie was born she was already 14 years old and had more concerns than just another baby moving into the bedroom.

Her daddy had been murdered and there were times when she thought she couldn’t stand it anymore. Fortunately, there were many tasks to do daily that helped her keep her thoughts at bay.

There were also cousins who came to visit. Carolyn’s kids were younger; Ida was 5 years behind her and a pain in the backside. She liked it when they came from Virginia to visit but Ida was closer to her brother Victor. It seemed the two of them were on a campaign to drive not only her and Leona crazy but their parents as well.

Caroline and Robert made the trip to Sneedville in the summer of 1890. Laura was 20-years-old by the time and had conned Leona into helping her make fruit pies for the guests. The apple tree next to the house had produced an abundance of apples and they needed to use them up.

Leona explained to her husband how Laura needed to learn some basic baking skills and needed her help. Columbus only smiled and said he would spend the day with their year-old-daughter, Bobbie, while she went off to bake pies.

Laura and Leona spent the entire morning working together to make enough pies to serve at the big family dinner planned. The fact that Caroline and Robert brought all eight of their children added to the overabundance of family already gathering at The Home Place. 

The kitchen smelled delicious and although it seem cliched, they set the pies on the window sill to cool. They were proud of their handiwork and were looking forward to the compliments they knew they’d receive.

What they didn’t count on was Victor and Ida. When they were smaller, they took delight into dumping the older girls into the river from the boat. The older girls had learned never to get in a boat with them.

Leona took off to check on Bobbie and Columbus. Laura made the trek to Polly’s house. It was her job to make sure her grandmother got to dinner safely. Neither gave any thought to the pies left out to cool.

Victor and Ida had been watching. They were hoping to get a piece of pie but the girls had shooed them away. The stalked away, taking up a hiding place to watch. If they had a chance, they were going to get some pie when no one was looking.

The opportunity arrived when they watch them leave the house. The kitchen was empty and the pies were on the window sill. They crawled to the window and snatched a pie. Sitting with their backs to the side of the house, they took a slice each. It was so good and before they knew it, the pie was history. In fact, it was so yummy, they decided another taste was in order and grabbed one more. They polished that off in no time flat and were reaching for the third when they heard voices. Scrambling through the bushes that lined the house, they disappeared from view.

It was Jane who noticed that there were only six pies on the window sill. Surely Laura and Leona had made enough for the whole family. She set off to find one of them. Six pies were cutting it close. As she came around the side of the house, she noticed two empty pie tins on the ground below the kitchen window and knew immediately who had taken the pies.

When Laura came back with Polly, Jane pulled her aside to tell her about the pie theft.  Laura was mad. Ida and Victor had crossed the line. It was too late to make more so Jane decided that when it came time for dessert, the two of them wouldn't get any. They needed have worried; Victor and Ida didn’t eat dinner. After consuming both pies, neither of them was hungry.

As they got older, Laura and Ida became good friends. In letters Ida wrote letters to family, she shared several things she and Victor did as kids usually at the expense of Laura and Leona.

Laura looked back on those times with fondness. Two years after the pie fiasco, Laura married Hamilton Green. He was 10 years her senior and had grown up in Sneedville too. His farm was not far from theirs and he was a family friend. They first eight children were born in Sneedville and the ninth when they moved to Narcissa, Oklahoma in 1910.

Hamilton died at age 60 in 1920, ten years after they moved. Laura lived to age 95. 

The Greens of Tennessee

As I write this, I can look out my window and see the dried vegetation in the field across the street. Further out, our hills are covered in tan and the mountains that loom over our small valley, are different shades of brown. Except for the trees and plants watered daily in our valley, our summer colors are brown and tan.  

Tennessee was a revelation. Never do I remember seeing so much green. Everywhere you turn, the greens are overwhelming. It was like being transported to a different planet.

This is the view from where the home place stood. This is where my grandfather would have played as a child and farmed as a youth. All of the land between the road and the house to the river was planted. In the center of the picture is the Clinch River. I didn't have a visual from the older pictures but now see that the river was very much a part of their lives. My great grandmother talks about flooding and now I see why.

 

This photo was taken in 1982. My dad, on the left, is with two of his cousins. This was his first trip to Tennessee and the first time he saw the home place. Somewhere between then and now, the house burned and is no longer there. What is left is the foundation. 

This appears to be what is left of the pump house, which was on the left in the picture above. The forest is taking back its own and this is all that's left. What struck me is that although the house is gone and those who lived here are gone, the foundation of our family still stands. And while the forest may eventually obscure all,  the mark they made on this land will never diminish.

I am in Tennessee - Finding roots

The house place in Sneedville is long gone. Sheldon Livesay, a 2nd cousin and head of the Of One Accord ministry in Rogersville, says he thinks it burned down. There is only the foundation of rocks. I am disappointed but we walked on the farm. It was very large and the original land grant was 1000 acres.

For the first time, there is a visual of the home place. My grandfather played in the field and the river. I finally have an understanding of the topography. I was disappointed the house was gone but at the same time, delighted to see the river from the road. They lived in an incredibly beautiful spot; a small river valley between two hills. I understand all those things that my great grandmother mentioned in her letters.

Now my cousin and I are off to Nashville and beyond. The adventure continues.

Footnotes - Day 12 of the Family History Writing Challenge

Martha Jane Rhea was no stranger to tragedy. Losing her husband in 1884, when she was pregnant with her ninth child, must have difficult. When you plan for a baby, whether it is the first or the ninth, it is a joy for the parents. When she found it was a girl, John was not there to share with her.

Joseph Andrew Rhea was their oldest child. He was born in 1866 and is in the 1880 census at the age of 14. Then he disappears. One researcher thinks he might have been her grandfather but it appears to be incorrect. There are some name differences in the research. My mother found a family Bible when she visited Sneedville in 1982 saying Joseph died young and never married. We don’t know if he was still living when John Rhea was killed. That’s as far as it goes for him. A fire destroyed the 1890 census, which would have given us a better guess for time of death, so we may never know. The National Archives article "First in the Path of the Firemen: The Fate of the 1890 Population Census" has additional details.

Luvena Finetta Rhea was the 5th child of Martha and John Rhea. Born in 1875, she died in 1913 at the age of 37. There is not a death certificate available on-line so I don’t know how she died.

Washington Floyd Rhea, the 4th child, died in 1929, a month before his mother. His death certificate is not legible so there is no cause for his death. Washington Floyd Rhea is not a footnote. He had a large family with seven children to carry on his legacy. In fact, one of his grandson’s is a sitting judge in Sneedville, Tennessee.

We tend to ignore the footnotes. Joseph and Luvena did not marry and did not have children. The day they died, their history ceased to exist. To some extend, that happens to all of us but we forget they were real people.

My grandfather played with his older brother and sister. Then skinned their knees and stubbed their toes. They played tricks on each other. They probably got mad and called each other names. They were happy and sad and everything else in between.

Their lives have meaning. Even after they were gone, they lived on in the hearts of their mother, siblings, and other family members. They had friends who cared about them.

Anyone who researches their family history runs across these footnotes. They are only asterisks in a list of family members. They are in everyone’s family.

My cousin Gary died when he was 14. He is a footnote. He never married and died young. There is no more history for him either. However, he is not a footnote to me. He was younger than his sister and I and a nuisance like any other little brother. He was a real living person who bravely lived his life. To think of him as just one of those who left no legacy is incorrect. When I document him on Ancestry.com, there will be pictures and stories so that future generations understand that he was a very real person who lived on in our hearts.

Need to find out who James Northcross McCollum really was

Finding that James Northcross McCollum left his family in Tennessee while he went off to the gold mines in California was interesting enough. Then to find out that in the 1880 Census, Mary Polly McCollum listed her marital status as divorced, added another wrinkle. I don't have the records to back the divorce but have written to the Hancock County Historical Society for help.

I had great success with other historical societies in Wisconsin when researching my husband's family so I am hoping for similar results. I have lots of questions. Most of the historical societies do research for reasonable prices and can often find the backup documentation. The hardest part is waiting.

Kendall/Gaulthier family

I have a lot of information for future family to share. Not only did I do my immediate family that is Rhea/Yeakley, I did the Dowland/Galbraith for my kids to include their dad's side of the family. Then I started on the Kendall/Hinds family knowing that my husband was adopted but doing the family who loved and raised him. These people may not completely be his biological family but they are family nevertheless. In the mix of the Kendall family is Gary's biological mother. She was his adoptive mother's cousin. Lydia Mary Gaulthair had many children. Gary was always aware of the two closest in age because we have a picture of them. He always wondered what happened to them. This is a big puzzle to put together and is getting bigger the more we find. We did find Frances and Enrique but then learned from other family members that there was a least one more.