#52Ancestors Week 14: May (McDaid) Atkinson

Time to fill you in on another of my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.  Can you believe this is the 14th week of 2014 already? 

Until 2008, I had no idea what my paternal great-grandma Atkinson looked like.  Luckily, I have a nice cousin who scanned the photos his mom has of her and he emailed them to me! She was obviously very young in this picture.  Her full name was Lilly May (McDaid) Atkinson, but she seemed to have always gone by May.  Even her gravestone is engraved "May L. Atkinson."

She was the daughter of Samuel and Mary E. (Wolfe) McDaid.  She was 28 years old when she married in 1898 and her husband, George Atkinson was 11 years older than she was.  Her first two children, my Pappap, Charles and his sister, Esther, were born early in their marriage, and then she had one more son in 1915 who was named George McDaid Atkinson. 

For a long time, I wasn't especially interested in May Atkinson.  According to what my Mom--who never met her--had heard, she was the mother-in-law from Hell and was the cause of some rocky times in my grandparents' marriage.  I don't remember Pappap ever talking about his mother, but Grandma told me once that May didn't want them to get married...in fact, according to Grandma, Pappap's mother already had someone else picked out for him to marry.  So I imagine it was a blow to her when they got their way and were married in 1926.  But I heard this story long before I was interested in my family history.  It's funny how things you learn about a person you never knew can taint your opinion of that person.  Wouldn't it be interesting to know May's side of that story?

This photograph must have been taken sometime before 1920...May Atkinson with son George, husband George, son Charles, daughter Esther, and an unknown girl.

 

#52Ancestors Week 9: My Pappap, Charles William Atkinson!

I think it's hardest for me to write about the people I knew and loved.  For week 9 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge, I'm going to try to tell you about my grandfather, Charles William Atkinson.  I'm a bit surprised to realize that I haven't written about him before.  I hope I can do him justice, and if I get anything wrong, I hope my family members will correct me!

This pattern is called "Moss Rose"

Grandpap worked at the Canonsburg Pottery. Most in our family are still interested in where our dishes  are made.  My sister says that you can tell an Atkinson because we always turn our plates over to see if there's a pottery mark!  I bought an almost complete set of china made at Canonsburg Pottery several years ago on eBay and while our place is too small for a full china hutch, you can see how I display a few pieces to the right.  A while back, the Jefferson College Historical Society posted a wonderful history of the pottery on their website which disappeared several years ago.  I saved a copy of the entire article along with the photos they posted and while writing this entry, I was inspired to ask for permission to repost that story.  I'll let you know if I hear back from them!

Pappap always seemed so dignified to me. The photo to the left is how I remember him most of the time, but he couldn't have always been so serious.  To the right is a wonderful picture of him with his brother George McDaid Atkinson who was 15 years younger than he was.  Grandpap was the son of Andrew and May (McDaid) Atkinson. He also had a sister named Esther Lillian Atkinson.  He grew up in West Finley Twp, a rural area near the West Virginia state line in Washington County, PA.  

Another more light-hearted photo of him
is this one with my dad, Jim Atkinson

Pappap loved roses and his backyard was full of the rosebushes he grew.  That's why this is my all-time favorite photograph of him.  That's me in his arms in the summer of 1959!  My mom always said I was Pappap's girl from my earliest days!

A short biography and more photographs can be seen on his Find a Grave Memorial.  He left us suddenly in the summer of 1987.  My dad and my brother were on vacation at the time and they were staying at his house.  One morning, Dad went up to check on him because he was usually an early riser.  He found Pappap lying on the edge of his bed, dressed for the day as if he had sat down to put his shoes on and had just fallen back dead.  I hope I can go like that someday. 

53 years ago today...

If you had been at the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Ruff Creek PA on this day in 1957, you might have seen this happy couple, my parents, Jim and Ann (Tolbert) Atkinson. And while the marriage didn't last, I feel fortunate to have a good relationship with both of them, and even better, they have maintained a friendship of their own. In fact, they both visited me at the same time for several days in the early '00s. When people ask them how it went, they both say that it was fine and that their divorce took away their "license to fight". There is one thing my mom wishes she could have changed about that day. She says that if she had realized at the time that April 20 was Hitler's birthday, she probably would have picked a different day. That year, April 20 was the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter, which is her favorite holiday!



And here, you see my most recent photos of me with each of them, with Mom last November, and with Dad last May.

(Nearly) Wordless Wednesday

A picture of my dad, sometime during his grade-school years!.Wasn't he a cutie? He just celebrated his 75th birthday last Sunday!

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

68th Carnival of Genealogy: A Tribute to Women

From Destination: Austin Family comes these instructions for the 68th Carnival of Genealogy:

And now it's time for a Call for Submissions! In keeping with the month of March being National Women's History Month, and March 8th being International Women's Day, the topic for the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy will once again be: A Tribute to Women. Write a tribute to a woman on your family tree, a friend, a neighbor, or a historical female figure who has done something to impact your life. Or instead of writing, consider sharing a photo biography of one woman's life. Or create a scrapbook page dedicated to a woman you'd like to honor. The next edition will be hosted at Creative Gene. The deadline for submissions is March 15th.

My entry is not a tribute, but rather a call for information that is inspired by the hope that someday I will be able to understand the decisions of a mystery woman.

For this subject, I have decided to write about a woman in my family who is almost completely unknown to me, my maternal grandmother, Mattie (Tobert) Shrewsbury. My mother's earliest memories are of living with her grandfather William Tolbert and his second wife. Her grandfather died when she was 6, and she continued to live with her "Grandma Anna" until Anna died, and after that, she lived with Anna's brother so Mom had no contact with her birth family until 2001 when she was finally able to reunite with her two sisters who remembered her as a baby.

My mother's only memory of her "real" mother happened not long after William Tolbert died. Mattie came to visit her, perhaps to see about getting her daughter back. She came with a man who was never introduced to my mom. He scared Mom by telling her that Mattie was her real mom, causing my mom to run to Anna and say "This is my mommy!" Mattie and the man left after that and she was never heard from again...at least by anyone we've been in contact with since. My mom has often remarked that the experience must have been very hurtful for Mattie if what she wanted was a relationship with her daughter.

Grandma was born Mattie Tolbert in August of 1897 in Carroll County, Virginia. She is mentioned in her parents divorce (filed in 1898 in Carroll County and granted in 1903) as Mattie Haner Tolbert. I've often wondered if the name "Haner" might have been a phonetic misspelling of the name "Hannah". In the 1900 census, Mattie was living with her mother, Rhoda, and Rhoda's mother, Sarah Webb. The other three living children of William and Rhoda lived in William's home. Despite the fact that William and Rhoda had divorced in 1903, they reconciled sometime before 1910. In the census for Trap Hill District of Raleigh County, West Virginia, the couple was living together and had another son, Claud, aged 3 and born in WV. That's the last written record of Mattie that I have found. She seems to be completely absent from the census in 1920 & 1930, I have found no record of her marriage to the father of her children, George Shrewsbury, and none of her 4 (known) children had birth certificates. Sometime after my mother was born, she left George and took my mother to William and Anna. Her other children were farmed out to other relatives. George remarried to a woman with sons, one of whom shot George to death in 1950, claiming that George was abusive and the 17 year old step-son had feared for his life.

The circumstances of George Shrewsbury's death gives some credence to a story I was told at the reunion of my mother and her sisters in 2001 by one of my new-found cousins. She told me that some people in the family had always believed that George, thinking that Mattie had been unfaithful and that my mother was not his child, had murdered Mattie and her baby and that he had hidden their bodies so that they had never been found. Obviously, I am extremely grateful that it didn't happen that way, but it also seems that an anecdote so horrible wouldn't have been passed down if there wasn't something about George Shrewsbury that made it credible.

My mom still has a lot of anger towards Mattie for abandoning her, and can't understand how Mattie could have left her other children, either. The rumor that George had killed Mattie gives me some compassion for a woman who might have left in fear for her life.

I would love to someday find someone who could tell me where Mattie went after my mom last saw her. That encounter had to have occurred after 1939, which was when William Tolbert died. My hope is that she was able to move on and have a peaceful and productive life after she disappeared from her family.

(Nearly) Wordless Wednesday

For this week's (Nearly) Wordless Wednesday, I'm selecting something that is covered with words. When my cousin Russell lent me the papers and photos that came from my grandparents' house after Pappap died in 1987 so that I could scan them, I was touched to find the following letter. It was the first I ever wrote. It was a class assignment, way back in second grade, I believe. And I think this proves that I inherited my packrat tendencies!

Tombstone Tuesday: Batte Peterson Clark

This is the gravestone of my husband's great-grandfather, Batte Peterson Clark, Jr. John and I visited this grave at Fairlawn Cemetery in the fall of 2005. We planned a trip to Dallas for John's 25 year high school reunion, and I talked him into adding a few extra days so we could drive up into Oklahoma to look for his family graves. It was a fun and fruitful trip to a part of Oklahoma that I had never visited before.

B. P. Clark has a family legend attached to him, and so far, I haven't found anything to confirm or disprove the following story that I found in some notes made by John's Uncle Terrence who passed down some of his genealogy research to his family.

My grandfather Clark

Batt Peterson, 4th child of Batte and Mary Clark, born in 1855, when about 16 years of age rode out of Alabama to La [Louisiana] to avenge the murder of his brother... He rode from there into La. soon afterwards the body of the man who killed Albert his brother was found behind a stump on a La road. Batt Clark never did say that he killed the fellow, but he did say enough to his son Albert to make him believe that the fellow was trying to waylay his papa as he had his papa's brother. Grandmother Watts always said that Batt killed the fellow and then road into Panola County, Texas. In those days one could commit a crime in La and get into Texas and be safe from the law.

Batte Peterson Clark was born in Alabama, lived in Texas for much of his adult life, and spent his final years in the area around Comanche, OK. His entry in my database can be seen HERE, and you can also visit his entry on Find a Grave.

Resolutions

I'm gonna get this one in on time :)

Here's the description for the next Carnival of Genealogy project:

The topic for the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy will be: New Year's Resolutions! What plans do you have for your genealogy research next year? How about for your blogging? No groaning or whining now. Write 'em up and let us know! The deadline for submissions is January 1st, 2009.

See: Creative Gene: Carnival of Genealogy, 62nd Edition

I'm such a procrastinator, I always have tons of things I should be doing, so it's easy to come up with a list of things I NEED to get done!

1. My little sister, who was adopted by my dad, tracked down her biological father and now has a relationship with him and his wife. About a year ago, I offered to do some research on his family for her, and then promptly forgot what she told me his surname was. I finally got over my embarrassment enough to ask her again, and I fully intend to fulfill that promise! It'll be good practice for me, by coincidence, he lives about 50 miles from me here in NC, and I'm very close to the NC State Archives. I have little reason to visit to research my own relatives there.
   
2. One of my long-time goals has been to scan all my paper records into PDF files and organize them. Last Spring I upgraded my Adobe Acrobat to version 8, which supports a paper feeder. My old version was 3, which made it necessary for me to feed the sheets one at a time to scan. Now I have little excuse to keep putting it off.
3. One of my worst habits is doing research and not getting it entered into my genealogy program. I have pages that I copied and notes that I made from two week-long visits to Salt Lake City in 2007 and 2008 that I still haven't organized and entered. It's about time, don't you think?
4. In 2005, I borrowed 10 boxes of slide projector carousels from my dad that I want to scan. Each one holds up to 80 slides, and most are full. These are photos from my young childhood and my teen years, family pictures and vacation slides. I think I've scanned 10, total. That's another thing I need to get to work on.
5. I have tons of photocopies of wills that need transcribed. That's something I find so frustrating, though, that I'll probably NOT get around to them this year!
   

I think that'll be enough to keep me busy for at least a year, don't you think? What about you?

Christmas Memories

What your seeing here is a letter written to Santa Claus by my grandfather in 1908...sort of, anyway. If you look closely, you'll see that some of the presents, and the signature at the end were erased and re-written. This letter was originally written by Pappap's elder sister, Esther, but I guess he was too lazy to write his own, so he took hers. The original is in my aunt Charlotte's possession now, but I was lucky enough to get to scan it a few years ago. It's hard to imagine him as a child, so it's nice to have something that reminds me!

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

Today, my grandma would have been 107 years old. She died in 1977 of some kind of cancer. I'm a little ashamed to admit that I don't really know for sure what kind, I've been told that it might have been kidney or bone cancer. All I know is that she was clear minded the last time I talked to her in June of 1977, just days after I graduated from high school. The year before, she and my grandfather had celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and she seemed completely healthy.

To the right, you can see her as a teenager. I have always liked this picture because she looks a lot like my cousin Sally in it.




Grandma was a fun person, a big contrast to her husband. Pappap always seemed so serious to me. Here they were not long after their marriage.

While I cannot say for certain that Grandma was interested in equality for women, when I think of her, I always remember a particular incident that I believe said a lot about her opinions on the "superiority" of men. I must have been 7 or 8 years old, and Grandma was washing dishes while I wiped down the counters. I picked up a dishrag and tried to squeeze the water out of it by bunching it into a ball. Grandma took it from me and showed me the proper way to wring out a wet cloth, laughing at me while explaining, "You were trying to do it like a MAN. They THINK they're strong enough to squeeze the water out like that." (I also shared that story on her Find-a-Grave memorial.)

I wish I had listened more when Grandma had talked about her family. On our last talk together, she was describing this photo of her and her siblings. I wasn't paying attention, and so much later, when I finally got interested in my family history, I didn't have her stories to share. You can see a larger version of this photo with my caption for it here. Grandma is third from the left.



And let me end this with two pictures of Grandma looking the way I remember her. To the left is Grandma and Pappap's last studio photo, taken just before their 50th Anniversary. To the right is a snapshot that shows them dressed to go out, not long before Grandma died.

My family and the military

I remember as a child in school, we'd stop what we were doing to stand with our hands on our hearts for a moment of silence at 11:00 AM every November 11. And although the holiday was changed to "Veterans Day" before I was born, I also remember having at least one teacher in elementary school who called it "Armistice Day".
I have always disliked the idea of war. In fact, although I never realized it until I was grown, the church I grew up attending is considered a pacifist church. Although I feel like I've been a lifelong agnostic, I loved my church as a child and I guess it's natural that something rubbed off on me, huh? And yet, as a realist, I know that not all wars are avoidable and sometimes we have to fight for things we care about.
I am grateful to those who served in our military. My belief is that any soldier who follows the legal orders of his superiors has served honorably, no matter the outcome of the action in which he participated. Defeat cannot make a soldier dishonorable.
As a genealogist, I am very grateful for the records that war and the military has provided me. In a previous post, I wrote about the Civil War pension files that I have viewed at the National Archives in Washington, DC.
Like most Americans, I have many ancestors who fought in wars. For example, here is a list of my known ancestors who fought in the American Revolution whose burial places I know.
Josias Brown
William Faris
John Fife, Sr.
William Fife, Sr.
William Fife, Jr.
John Supler
These links all go to Find a Grave
As far as I know, I only have two ancestors who fought in the Civil War, Michael McDaid and his son, Samuel, who were my 3rd great and 2nd great grandfathers. I did have dozens of collateral relatives who served. I find it interesting that on my mother's side of the family, my g-g-grandmother's husband, a man who was not my ancestor, died in the Union prison, Camp Chase, during the Civil War. John J. Webb died of typhoid. All three of these Civil War soldiers are also listed on Find a Grave:

Michael S. McDaid

Samuel S. McDaid

John J. Webb
Since then, only my father enlisted. He wanted to go to Korea like his brother, my Uncle Dave. Dad ended up spending his Army years in occupied Japan. Below are some pictures taken of him during those years:



He looked so young, didn't he?
My "little" brother, Willie, also spent several years in the Navy. I can still get a rise out of him by saying how cute he looks in his "sailor suit".



I know we owe a lot to our Veterans. I hope everyone gets a chance to thank them today and every day!

Family photo

I've been meaning to try creating new posts for this blog, but I've been waiting to feel inspired.

I have another blog that I use for posting my pictures for various Photo Memes I've found. Recently, one of the sites I visit, gave us a theme of "Nostalgic". That was a tough one, mainly because I think of the past when I'm nostalgic. I have hundreds of scanned photos of my family that I've been able to collect from relatives, but they aren't "mine" technically because I didn't take them. I hope you'll visit Cherie Takes Pictures: Nostalgic to see what I posted because it's somewhat genealogy related, or at least it's family related.

After I posted it, I thought someone might be interested in seeing what those "kids" looked like when they were children, so I'm posting the photo you see below.





From left to right: Charlotte, Elizabeth, Jim (my dad, in front), Louise, and David. On the back of the photo is written the year, 1939. Uncle Dave died in 1987. On my other blog, the order is Jim, Elizabeth, Louise, and Charlotte.