They're Everywhere!

 Who are everywhere?  Cousins!

At the age of 60, in 2007, I decided to go back to college.  I wanted to do some genealogy research into the families of St. Augustine, Florida, which is about 36 miles from my house.  I knew my high school Spanish from all those decades ago would not be sufficient to understand and translate the documents I would encounter.  I ended up with a double post-baccalaureate major in Spanish and history.  And in one of those Spanish classes, there was a fine bear of a young man.  He sat on the opposite side of the classroom from me.  

The discussion was about kinship, in a broad sense, and our professor, Dr. Jorge Febles, used an expression that did not translate well in the literal sense into English.  I got the drift, however, and was about to give the English equivalent that Dr. Febles was asking us for:  The apple don't fall far from the tree, a phrase taught to me by a dear friend from the Appalachians.  Before I could say it, the phrase came from the bear of a young man, whose surname was Bowers.  

After class, I said to him, "You're from the Appalachians, aren't you?" 

"Yes, ma'am, I shore am," he said.

I asked him if he had any kin of a certain surname, and he said he didn't think so.   When I got home, I called my friend from the Appalachians, Amanda, thinking young Bowers might be related to her.  I asked her if she had any Bowers people in her lineage.  She didn't think so.

The next week, I received in the mail a book I had been waiting for -- Teter Nave, East Tennessee Pioneer: His Ancestors and Descendants, by Robert T. Nave and Margaret W. Houghland.  I was eager to look for my Nave kin, my mother's line, and I found a great-great grandfather whose name startled me:  John Teter Bowers Nave.  Maybe it wasn't Amanda young Bowers was related to.  Maybe it was me.

 The next class, I told young Bowers about my great-grandfather John Teter Bowers Nave, and he said, "Oh, yeah, we've got Teters and Naves all over the family!"  

Lately, I had found indications that I was related to the famous Carter family of country music, both to Maybelle Addington Carter, the "Mother Maybelle" of the Carter Family Singers, and to her brother-in-law Alvin Pleasant Dulaney (A. P.) Carter, leader of the troupe, country music songwriter, and "song-catcher" of the Appalachian Mountains.  My friend Amanda has connections to that family, and it made me grin at the idea that we might be cousins.

And indeed we are -- 16th cousins once removed.

Next year, it will be forty years I've known Amanda.  Never, until the recent revelations, did I suspect we may be kin.

Tread softly, friends.  You never know.  That stranger sitting next to you in the theater might be your cousin.

 

SNGF - 16 great-grands

Randy Seaver, whose blog is Genea-Musings, has what he calls Saturday Night Genealogy Fun. I'm a little late on this one, but it's been a busy weekend. This weekend's "assignment" is to list your sixteen great-grandparents and figure out their ethnicity. The first part is a little bit of work. The second, for me, is easy. There isn't much variety in my genealogy until I get back to the sixth or seventh order of greatness in grandparents!

Let's see. I'm supposed to list them in pedigree-chart order with places and dates of birth and death. Now, it says that if you don't know all 16 of the great-greats, which I don't, to do this for the last full generation. But I think I'll deal with some of the 16 that I do know, then go for the 8 greats, which I do know all of. Let's pause while I fire up The Master Genealogist and take a look . . .

1. Matthew Hale Packard, born 1822 in Bolton, Stanstead County, Quebec, Canada; died 17 September 1881, Bloomington, McLean County, Illinois.

2. Emily A. Hoyt, born circa 1823-24, in Bolton, Stanstead County, Quebec, Canada; died after 1881, Bloomington, McLean County, Illinois.

3 and 4: Next pair unknown.

5. John Rector Reynolds, Sr., born ca. 1826 in Vermont.

6. Caroline Elizabeth [?-], born ca. 1836 in Connecticut.

7 and 8: Next pair unknown

9. Charles Reed, born 28 August 1840 in Gallia County, Ohio; died 26 January 1920 in Portland, Jay County, Indiana.

10. Clarissa Haney Wright, born 19 July 1844 probably in Xenia, Green County, Ohio; died 21 November 1908 probably in Portland, Jay County, Indiana.

11. Nelson Reed McKee, born 2 February 1837; died 6 May 1908 in Beloit, Wisconsin.

12. Sarah Ann Sunderland, born 2o June 1848.

13. John Teter Bowers Nave, born 21 October 1829 probably in Tennessee; died 17 March 1888, probably in Tennessee.

14. Lorena Jane Jones, born 15 February 1833 probably in Tennessee; died 3 December 1888.

15 and 16. Next pair unknown.

So there is a lot I don't know about my great-great grandparents. Most of them were from the midwest, around Ohio and Indiana. This is about as far back as I have gotten on many of these lines. As for ethnicity, the Naves were Swiss, the family name having originally been Näf. The name Teter Nave, reflected in my great-great grandfather's name, was originally Dieter Näf.

For the rest, pretty much English, though the name McKee hints at a Scots origin. The name Reed could be English, Irish, or Scots. My own unsubstantiated suspicion, based on some family behavior in that line, is that they may have been "lace-curtain" Irish. The Packard line is definitely English, Samuel Packard, Matthew Hale Packard's 4x-great-grandfather, emigrated from Suffolk, England to Hingham, Massachusetts in 1638. And I am happy to say that I am part Canadian!

As for the generation where I do know all or most of this information, my great-grandparents:

1. Oscar Merry Packard, son of Matthew Hale Packard and Emily Hoyt, born in 1848 probably in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; died after 1930 in Los Angeles County, California.

2. Augusta Hetherington, born circa 1851, in Ohio; died circa 1930 in Los Angeles County, California.

3. John Rector Reynolds, Jr., son of John Rector Reynolds, Sr., and Caroline Elizabeth [-?-], born April 1855 in Illinois.

4. Virginia Ferrier, born November 1858 in Missouri.

5. Francis Harvey "Frank" Reed, son of Charles Reed and Clarissa Haney Wright, born 17 November 1862 in Jay County, Indiana; died 26 February 1936 in Logansport, Cass County, Indiana.

6. Florence Elizabeth McKee, born 19 November 1862 in Indiana; died 9 November 1943 in Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, California.

7. Teter Nave, son of John Teter Bowers Nave and Lorena Jane Jones, born 7 January 1854 in Tennessee; died 28 December 1909 in Logansport, Cass County, Indiana.

8. Elizabeth Taylor, born probably in Tennessee ca 1860, died after 1930 in Logansport, Cass County, Indiana.

The farther back one goes, the more difficult it is to find information, of course. Then there is the sad fact that most of these people were not well off by any stretch of the imagination. Charles Reed, a pensioned Civil War veteran, died in poverty. Many of these ancestors of mine apparently died intestate, not having much of anything to leave to anyone.

I did get a little farther, as I reported in another blog entry, with the family of great-great grandma Clarissa Haney Wright, tracking down her father, Francis Marion Wright, and his father, Merritt Wright. That was a nice breakthrough.

Where are YOUR cousins?

I'm not talking about your first cousins, whose whereabouts you probably know. I'm talking about those distant cousins, descendants of your great-great (or further back) grandparents in one line or another. They pop up when you least expect it.

Like this:

As an exercise for a class in Canadian genealogy I took as part of my studies with the National Institute of Genealogical Studies/University of Toronto, I placed a query in a Canadian newspaper which had a genealogical column. This one was in Quebec, in the English-speaking enclave known as the Eastern Townships, where I have ancestral ties. Lo and behold, I got an answer, which led me to cousins there. They are descendants of my 4x great-grandfather Richards Packard, and they live on the same land he settled around 1798!

Or this:

As indicated in my "About Me" blurb to the left, I am, at the tender age of 62, a student at the University of North Florida. One day in the fall of 2007, as I sat in Spanish grammar class, we were discussing a phrase that does not literally translate from Spanish to English. Unfortunately, I do not remember the phrase, and I apparently did not make note of it. I had just figured out the English equivalent, a phrase my Appalachian-bred friend taught me, when a deep male voice off to my left said it first: "The apple don't fall far from the tree."

After class, I talked to the fellow, a big burly bear of a young man, probably in his 30s. I said, "You're from the Appalachians." He replied, "Yes, ma'am, I shore am," with a wink. Where was he from? East Tennessee. I asked him if he had any Carter relations -- the line of my friend who taught me that phrase, and who also hails from East Tennessee. He didn't think so, but he'd find out. Learning that his surname is Bowers, I asked my friend if she had any Bowers kin. She didn't think so.

During that time, I had done a little research on my mother's line, the Naves. It did not dawn on me that there might be a connection, for the Naves were also from East Tennessee. About two weeks after that event in class, having found out that young Mr. Bowers had no Carter connections, and my friend had no Bowers kin, I received a copy of a book I had ordered from its author. The book is Teter Nave: East Tennessee Pioneer -- His Ancestors and Descendants, by Robert T. Nave and Margaret W. Houghland. When I traced my mother's line back in the lineages in the book, I was stunned.

I had to go back to class the next session and let the young man know that it was not my friend to whom he was related. It was me. My great-great grandfather's name was John Teter Bowers Nave! Oh, yes, young Bowers told me, they had Naves all over the place in their line, too.

Now, that is an example of small world! So -- where are YOUR cousins?