52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 20: Taking Care of Business

This week's title phrase can mean a variety of things.  It can literally mean taking care of one's means of supporting self and family.  Here on this blog, I've discussed businessmen and businesswomen in the family:  Emily [Hoyt] Packard, who was a milliner; Nelson Reed McKee, a jeweler and watchmaker; Frank A. Packard, Bloomington, Illinois, merchant; Perry Wilmer Reed, head of the Pensacola, Florida, Chamber of Commerce; my father, Arden Packard, and his brother Jack, advertising agency owners; Oscar Merry Packard, builder and developer; Walter Hetherington Packard, builder and developer, and stockbroker.

The phrase can also mean buckling down and taking care of the serious stuff in life.  Samuel Packard's religious convictions caused him to take his wife and their firstborn, a daughter, on a risky and most probably quite uncomfortable sea voyage in 1638, from their home in Suffolk, England to a hardscrabble new settlement in a wild land called Massachusetts.  There was Richards Packard, who did his part in taking care of a certain dispute with England at the end of the 1700s.  After that was settled, Richards began a northward migration that left him disappointed in Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire, on up into Canada, which was practically giving land away and not being terribly picky about who they were giving it to, even to those who had previously taken up arms against His Majesty, George III.  The succeeding three generations of my line were born in Canada.  Mathew Hale Packard, a member of that third generation, took a chance on what I call "retro-migration," going from Canada back to the U.S.  He took care of other grim business from 1860 to 1865, serving in two regiments of New York cavalry.  Farther west, at the same time, Charles Reed did the same in a regiment of Indiana infantry.  My father took care of the business of serving in the U.S. Navy, from his education at the Naval Academy to World War II service.

They all, with their brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts and all else, took care of the business of living, as best they could.

Looking for Complexity in all the Wrong Places

That describes my search for the brother-in-law relationship between my paternal great-great granduncle Major Wellman Packard and N. S. (Nathaniel Strong) Sunderland.  I was overthinking, which is something I tend to do.  It turned out to be very simple.

Major Wellman Packard was married to Ellen Harris, verified by their marriage record.  N. S. Sunderland was married to Rachel Harris. verified by their marriage record.  Just a few minutes ago, I found a hint as to who Rachel and Ellen's father may have been, each having that hint in the form of the same suggested father for both of them, on their Ancestry profiles.  One source listed in support of this relationship was the gentleman's will, which specifically mentions Ellen and Rachel, Rachel under the surname Sunderland.  Apparently, Ellen and Wellman Packard had not married at the time of her father's death.

Yes, N. S. Sunderland was indeed Wellman Packard's brother-in-law, and yes, Ellen and Rachel were indeed sisters, as set out plainly in their father's will.  I'm glad someone in our family finally died testate!

Case closed.

Not quite.  Still more sources to gather, especially a second ton of coverage of N. S. Sunderland's life and times.  Lots and lots of newspaper articles to transcribe, comb through for facts and clues, and analyze it all.  Lots of work still to be done.

But with all that ahead of me, I finally have the satisfaction that I am so Midwestern, I'm related to myself.  Hello, cousin self!

I'm so Midwestern . . .

. . . I'm related to myself.  Well, I grew up in the south, so how I have heard this saying is, "I'm so southern, I'm related to myself."  Cracker Barrel even sells t-shirts in this part of the country with that saying on them, in that form.

To rehash it briefly, there is a letter in the Abraham Lincoln Papers in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress to Lincoln in early 1860 from my paternal great-great granduncle Major Wellman Packard.  In it, he mentions his brother-in-law N. S. Sunderland.

Oooo!  Eyes pop wide, a big curiosity arises.  I have a bunch of Sunderlands on my mother's side, back to my fourth-great grandfather, Peter Sunderland, and his wife Nancy Ann Robbins.  Is this N. S. Sunderland, on my father's side, related to the Sunderlands on my mother's side?

Turns out, yep.  N. S. Sunderland -- Nathanial Strong Sunderland, so it turns out -- was the son of Peter Sunderland and Nancy Ann Robbins.  I have found absolute tons of newspaper articles about Nathanial Strong Sunderland, who was often referred to as N. S.  He was born in Ohio, in Centerville, in Montgomery County.  Nathaniel's father, Peter Sunderland, was apparently a pillar of Centerville, becoming established after he arrived there from the east.  His house, the house Nathaniel and his brother and sister grew up in, is quite the historic landmark in Centerville.

In addition to all the newspaper articles, there are also leads to military pension files, which I will order when I scrape up the dough for them.  There is Nathaniel's Civil War draft information.  There are some marriage and death records, but more are missing, especially marriage records.  I'll have to keep looking for them.

N. S. did not stay in Centerville.  He ended up in Bloomington, McLean County, Illinois, where Wellman Packard, known in the family more by his middle name than his military-sounding given name, and many of his siblings had brought their families from Canada. Later, N. S. took his family to Larned, Pawnee County, Kansas.  I have no idea why.  But he became a man of renown in that town, serving multiple terms as mayor, as well as director of the town's school board, and key positions in the local Republican party.

However, in the edition of 8 April 1920 of the Larned, Kansas, Chronoscope, is this brief and puzzling article:


The rest of the article characterizes Herbert Porter as a candidate of "the young man's party" and continues briefly with a list of the other winners on the independent ticket. Those names are familiar as men who served in those offices in Mayor Sunderland's administrations in his terms as mayor.  Is the use of the phrase "passed off very quietly" a clue?  It is a phrase often used (though not always with "off" included) in obituaries.  Was this a tribute?  Or did some citizens of Larned, disgusted with the people who were actually running for these offices, conduct a write-in campaign to express their disdain, and their wish for a true-blue workhorse like Col. N. S. Sunderland, a longing for "the good ol' days."  The reference of Herbert Porter being a candidate of "the young man's party" may argue in favor of this theory.  These questions are legitimate, because the one and only Col. N. S. Sunderland died in 1909.  No junior to carry on the name.  It is a very odd little article.  The Midwestern sense of humor can be a puzzle to others, perhaps.

I still do not have the exact connection of N. S. to Wellman Packard as a brother-in-law.  That is the last piece in the puzzle.  There also now sits before me the duty to transcribe all these newspaper articles, as their presentation on Ancestry, ported over from Newspapers.com, is often totally unreadable!  I have my clippings of them on Newspapers.com, and I can zoom in or out as needed for readability.  Then comes the big step of carefully combing through these articles for all the clues that abound there, and conducting a proper analysis.  But at least I know where N. S. Sunderland plugs in with the rest of my mother's Sunderlands, whether this connection to my paternal side is true or not.  That in itself is a victory.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Descendants of 2nd great-grandparents

One of the genealogy web postings I have always enjoyed appears in Randy Seaver's prompts under the title Saturday Night Genealogy Fun .  I'm a bit late with this one; it's been busy around here!  So, without further ado:

1)  How complete is your family tree?  Do you have information about your cousins  - both close and more distant?  Today's challenge is to take one set of your 2nd great-grandparents and make a Descendants List (using your genealogy management program - e.g., Family Tree Maker, RootsMagic, etc.)

2) Tell us about your choice of 2nd great-grandparents, and tell us approximately how many descendants of them that you have in your family tree database. Share your answers, and perhaps a chart, on your own blog or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

 

Here is mine: it's rather long, and I apologize for the fuzziness of the image, but I just spent two hours trying to get it to work at all . . . I have NO talent in the graphic arts.

 

 

 

As you can see, the Reeds were indeed fruitful, and multiplied, until you get down to my grandparents, Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Reed and Ruth Nave.  They were married in 1913, and Frank was killed in a railroad accident in 1917.  Ruth remarried twice, but had no more children.  I have only 33 Reeds and spouses and children in my database, because I have not been able to work on it for a goodly while.  I have not by a long shot finished delving into all the collateral ancestors here.  I have no idea how many descendants of Charles Reed and Clarissa Haney Wright there may have been, up to the present time.  I have met only a few of my cousins, and very few of my uncles and aunts, and only two grandaunts. 
 

Maybe Sometimes I Should Make an Assumption

 I've been doing a little work on my latest mystery:  the existence of Sunderlands on both sides of my family, and efforts to discover if there is a relationship between these maternal and paternal Sunderlands.

Convinced that it would be wisest to pursue my maternal Sunderlands, I reviewed my documented information on them, going back about four generations.  I had only two little tidbits about N. S. Sunderland, and thought it a safe assumption that it would be futile to look him up anywhere.  But tonight, I thought, "Oh, why not?  Let me see if I can find anything on N. S. Sunderland, the one mentioned on my father's side."  N. S.  Sunderland is mentioned in passing in a letter my great-great-granduncle Major Wellman Packard wrote to his friend and legal colleague Abraham Lincoln early in 1860.  Wellman Packard mentioned that his brother-in-law, Sunderland, had been in Ohio, and recently returned to Illinois, and heard in Ohio some enthusiasm for the idea that Lincoln should run for President.

So I had some location information for N. S. Sunderland -- Ohio and Illinois.  Wellman Packard, and several of his siblings, lived in Bloomington, Illinois.  So I started there, in McLean County, where Bloomington is, with the 1860 census.  And there he was, not in Bloomington, but in Towanda, which is not very far from Bloomington.  I did a general search on Ancestry, and found quite a list of possible sources: a Civil War draft registration record, a marriage record between N. S. and Rachel Harris.  More census records; several of 'em.  An extensive and very informative obituary.  Land purchase records.  With maps.  

N. S. was born in Ohio; I now have the place and the date.  I'm pretty sure this is the N. S. Sunderland mentioned in Wellman Packard's letter.  He is the only N. S. Sunderland in McLean County in 1860.   He had a farm in Towanda, 375 highly productive acres.  He had four horses, four donkeys, 3 milch cows (cows giving milk), 3 other cattle (type unspecified), and 18 swine.  His livestock was valued at $1,200, which in 2023 dollars, would be $21,837.89.  His farm, exclusive of livestock or crops, was valued at $11,000, or $200,180.65 in 2023 dollars.  Not bad!

According to the 1860 census agricultural schedule, N. S. grew wheat (1700 bushels in 1860), Indian corn (1000 bushels), Irish potatoes (50 bushels), barley (200 bushels), and 30 tons of hay.  Unfortunately, there is no valuation of these crops.  He was prosperous.

I have the information, and have made notes on legal pad or on forms I use to gather preliminary information on people who may or may not be related.  Now to determine how N. S. Sunderland was Wellman Packard's brother-in-law.  I haven't yet found a sister of Wellman's married to anyone named Sunderland.  I'm going to have to look at Rachel Harris's siblings, providing I find her verifiable in census records.  And I need to bone up on middle-19th-Century notions of what constituted a "brother-in-law.  Was that term used as loosely as "cousin" has been in some regions?  Then to investigate whether there actually is any kinship between N. S. Sunderland's family and my mother's Sunderlands.  My mother's people were from Indiana, so the possibility is there.  And maybe I should make a wild assumption now and then.  Never know what I might find.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2024 - Week 19 - Preserve

 This week's prompt for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2024 is Preserve.  What do I preserve?  I preserve paper.  I am from the 20th Century; I spent the first 53 years of my life in the 20th Century.  I believe in paper.  Paper is solid, paper exists, paper can be preserved with archival materials and methods, which I learned in my scrapbooking hobby.  Paper doesn't get evaporated in a computer crash.  Yes, it can be damaged by fire, or water, or insects.  But properly preserved and protected, it can last for decades.

I do have a lot of my paper documents digitized; I am really quite belt-and-suspenders.  But when someone suggests that I digitize everything and toss the paper away, I cringe, my skin crawls, and I stand up and say, "No!"

My dilemma is that my photos for the past couple decades are digital.  I have, from time to time, sent some of my digital photos to Shutterfly to be printed.  I did that a lot when I was scrapbooking, something I hope someday to get back to.  I want at least to finish the ones I had to box away when other matters had to take precedence.  But paper uber alles!

Some preservation I have done has been in storytelling, especially to our grandson who is now 19 and in college.  He has enjoyed tales my husband and I have told him of our experiences in the Coast Guard.  He has enjoyed stories of ancestors' antics.  I should record some of these stories. 

Right now, I am engaged in digitizing a whale of a lot of photos and other documents from my husband's family, a request made by our nephew Paul, who visited recently.  He lives in Australia, and was returning there with some items he retrieved from storage after he left his last U.S. dwelling.  However, he had second thoughts about shipping the photos to Australia in a box with the other items.  He has left them here for me to scan.  On a future visit, he will claim his paper photos.  But I will have my own copy of this digital trove of my husband's family photos and documents to add to my genealogical information on his family.  And I can send some of my digital copies of these to Shutterfly, too.

Finally, a significant part of my ways of preservation involve photos and paper documents and storytelling.  These all find their way into the scrapbooks I have made and those I am hoping to complete when things settle down for us.  In these scrapbooks, preservation is the chief goal, and paper is king.

A to Z Challenge 2024 - All Wrapped Up

 This year I got farther into blogging in the A to Z Challenge than I have ever got before.  Maybe next year, life will have simmered down and I might complete the whole program.  This year,  our daughter's illness has overshadowed everything.  

I wish to thank everyone who read my blog and who commented.  The poor thing has been somewhat neglected in the past several years, and the A to Z Challenge was a great way to rejuvenate it.  All of you helped me in that effort, and you have my gratitude.  What seems funny is that my participation in this challenge has been in the last three presidential-election years!  I won't wait four years before doing it again!

I am also participating in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge, created and curated by Amy Johnson Crow.  I got into it late, again due to the stressful events mentioned above.  I'll do my best to keep up with it! 

Delving into my ancestors' occupations and professions was an interesting journey, especially the discovery of a female journalist of the early 20th Century in the family.  

So many times, our findings about our ancestors may puzzle us in some of their practices, beliefs, and opinions, and the ways they conducted their lives.  It is wise to remember, as we historians do, that "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."  (L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953))

Thank you again!