Norma Jean Holley, 76, passed away Thursday morning, November 4, 2021, in Miami, FL.

Jean, as she preferred, was born in Pensacola, FL on November 18, 1944 to the late  Warren Theodore  “Ted” Peabody and Evelyn Burnham.  Ted, born near Ekalaka, Montana in 1920,  was son of Lawrence “Dick” Peabody and Bonnie Brandley. He met his spouse, Evelyn, in 1942 while on duty with the U.S. Navy in Pensacola.

Jean attended high school and junior college in Pensacola, and graduated from Florida State University in 1966 with a B.S. degree in elementary education. She enjoyed her ten-year teaching career in Florida and Mississippi public schools before moving to Miami, and she was undoubtedly cherished by her students. For several years prior to, and many years following the birth of her beloved only child, she held various employment positions in accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll in several Miami-based companies: Barbachano Travel Service,  The Flyer Publishing Co., Carnival Cruise Lines, World Ford Motor Co., Doral Golf Resort, and Garment Corporation of America.  Jean was an adoring and proud mother. She will also be remembered as an avid reader, a Scrabble and Jeopardy whiz, and a cat and bird lover.

She is survived by her husband of 55 years, Robert M. Holley, Jr. of Miami, FL; her daughter, Christina Holley of Conover, NC; her sister, Carol Peek of Tyler, TX; her half-sister, Mary Catherine Bonarirgo  of Pensacola, FL;  her aunt Madlon Brence, Ekalaka, MT;  her uncle Joseph R. Peabody, The Villages, FL;  her niece Julie Cole of  Whitehouse, TX;  and  her nephews: Michael Peek of Whitehouse TX; Jeffery Peek of Lonoke, AR ; and Jake Pigg of Decatur, AL.

In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death by her sister, Dolores Pigg and her brother-in-law, Richard Peek.

A private memorial service will be held at a later date. The family requests that remembrances be made in the form of contributions to Best Friends Animal Society (https://bestfriends.org),  Southern Scholarship Foundation (https://www.southernscholarship.org/) , Reading Is Fundamental (www.rif.org), or Police Officer Assistance Trust ( https://poat.org/ ) .

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Always a surprise in this family history business – expect the unexpected!

Faithful visitors to our website will note that there has been a big pause in my postings.  I am catching up just a little bit now in dealing with a serious family illness—  plus, more recently,  I am trying to keep my 80-year-old body fed and  alive here in Miami, living all alone during the  ridiculous pandemic crisis.

But, something unusual has come up that really should be noted and discussed with some dispatch.

On the morning of July 15, 2020, I received a comment from a visitor to our website whose grandmother had the middle name Askew.  She had noted the recent Facebook posting of a stunning photo [see above] of a person whom the contributor identified as Hilliard Judge Askew. The geography in the photo’s Facebook annotation (western Alabama) synched with the geography of her grandmother’s family, and she started looking for information on this Hilliard to see if he or his Askew family possibly could have had anything to do with her grandmother. That Google search for the Hilliard in the photo led her to  our website at yer-roots-tracker.com .

With my kind reader’s guidance, I was able to locate the Facebook posting  at “Alabama Confederate Images”  and stared at this Civil War era ambrotype image  that was purported  to be my gg-grandfather  Hilliard Judge Askew (1838-1898).

I was staggered. I had never seen a photo anything like that – surely not via my family. Damn, I thought, he certainly looks like the person I would  expect to see at age 25-30, during the time of the Civil War.

But I could not make that much of a comparison  or evaluation because the only other photo I thought that we had of my Hilliard  was taken when  he was maybe in his fifties, and then he was facing sideways  and had a beard.

I browsed on down in the Facebook posting and was astounded to find that someone had posted our family photo of a Confederate soldier that we had previously identified on-line as my ggg-uncle Jesse Bowden Hancock (1838-1912) , brother-in-law to our Hilliard.

Someone had also posted other family photos taken (improperly) from our Yer-Roots-Tracker website and was claiming that the photo we had identified as being Jesse Hancock was actually Hilliard Askew.   Kind of a shocker that someone would try to do that without contacting our family, but that seems to be the story with the likes of Facebook—  definitely not one of my likes!

But, leaving all that behind, and assuming  probable good intentions on the part of the Facebook contributors,  it suddenly dawned on me that they could very well be right about the identification of the uniformed soldier —  I  stared for hours at  our CSA soldier photo and the newly posted Facebook photo – side by side.  The facial resemblance is really remarkable!  I thought they very well could be the same person.

A review of the history of our photo evaluation/identification process, it turns out, supports the idea that they really are the same person—  I think now that our soldier photo is probably of Hilliard Askew, not Jesse Hancock.

About 2002, my cousin Keith Miller discovered that he had inherited a large cache of very old family  photos of persons from his Askew and Beach lines, who for the most part had lived in and around Gordon and Columbia, AL in Henry (and now Houston) Counties.

Working together  with Ann Wear Jacob, another cousin, the three of us labored almost two years trying our best to identify who was in the old photos and when they were taken. We had very little to go on, because unfortunately no one had ever marked identifications  on  the photos or left notes about their provenance.  Since there were a whole variety of photographic types in the collection, we also sought outside advice from an expert on photo dating.

Perhaps of  greatest interest among the old photos was this picture of a Confederate soldier. Who  could he be?  Who in our family was a known soldier and who would have been the most likely to be associated with other individuals we had felt reasonably confident in identifying from the photo collection?  We had inherited most of the then known Askew family history from my uncle Harry Askew, now passed on, who over forty years had compiled a quite admirable family history accounting– without the benefit of any computers or Internet— strictly courthouse visits and correspondence.

Another source of information came to us from Blanche Hancock Turlington, another cousin who had done  remarkable research on her Hancock family, which married into our Askews: Cow-pens and Plantations: Backtracking a Southern Hancock Family, published 2008. She was the granddaughter of Jesse Bowden Hancock.

We first searched all the files we then possessed for the Askew and Beach families.  We also contacted Blanche because her grandfather Jesse had departed his Georgia home after the Civil War and moved to  Gordon, AL to be near his sister, who in Spring, 1866 had married our Hillard Askew.

Jesse was quite the item.  He is memorialized at a 6th Alabama Infantry web site  Very badly wounded at Antietam (1862), after some recovery, he had  been assigned “special duties” by the Confederate  Army for the remainder of the War.  These involved a lot of morale raising, recruiting type activities.  Even post-War,  Jesse continued his support of the Confederate cause. He was involved in some sort of  major confrontation with occupying Federal troops sometime during Reconstruction, about 1872 and he had to flee Henry Co., AL  avoiding a  Federal warrant for his arrest.  He fled all the way to Arkansas, and Blanche told us that for some years he had even been afraid to have a mailbox  with his name on it in his new location.

So with all of this knowledge, Jesse was a definite candidate to be the unidentified soldier in our photo.  Blanche provided us with the oldest photo she had of  her Jesse (vintage 1875) and even with his beard there was a good resemblance to the mystery soldier.  I recall  also that she had conferenced with a facial  recognition authority who supported her contention that  the person in the soldier photo was Jesse.

We checked Beach family files and found that  a Charles LeBaron Beach (1839-1901) had been a carriage carpenter  with CSA  Fla Light Artillery, 1861-65. Charles moved to Georgia right after the War, and we could not discover any really close relationship that he had ever had with the group of Askew/Beach people we had found in our inherited photo collection.

We checked Uncle Harry Askew’s files – and, yes, there were two  Confederate soldiers there:

The first Askew  tree entry was:

Hilliard Judge Askew (10-9-1811 – 12-9-1889)

+m 1838 Nancy Pauline Simonton (1815-1895)

1st Lt. 11 Regiment, CSA Ala. – presented Palmetto Hat to Jefferson Davis for the ladies of Virginia;  buried Dayton Cem. AL

and the second entry was for a Thomas Williams Edwards Askew (1842-1894)

Thomas William Edwards was a younger brother of our great-great grandfather Hilliard Judge Askew (1838-1898)  and our Hilliard, and his brother appeared in Uncle Harry’s notes under their father Spire Warren Askew’s tree as follows :

Spire Warren Alford  Askew  moved to Henry Co., AL

born ca.1815 ; died ca.1858-9 yellow fever

+m 2-15-1836 Dicy K. Edwards  – dau. of Thomas & Barbary Edwards

2 Hilliard Judge Askew

born 6-7-1838 Henry Co. AL; died 10-5-1898 Henry Co. AL

buried Gordon  Cemetery, Gordon, AL

+m  5-10-1866 Henry Co. AL  Sallie Scaife Hancock,  Atlanta, GA

born 9-8-1840 ; d. 11-23-1916  buried Gordon Cem., Gordon, AL

dau. of William Garrison Hancock (1816-~1845) & Mary Bowden  +m. 1836

3 Thomas Williams Edwards Askew

born   1-18-1842;   d.  11-03-94;  buried FMC, AL ???

+m ??? Lizzie Justice;  m. second wife

fought CSA Gen. Beauregard/Hill’s Corp., wounded Seven Pines

For context now, there were TWO Hillard Judge Askews in our large family-  the eldest was Hilliard Judge Askew (1811-1889), who moved in about 1830  from NE Georgia  (Morgan Co.) to Dayton, Marengo Co., in SW Alabama.  The younger Hilliard  (1838-1898), our gg-grandfather, was second son of Spire Warren Askew, brother of elder Hilliard,  who had relocated from Morgan Co., GA to the Gordon, AL  area  about 1840.   So, the elder Hilliard was the  younger Hiillard’s uncle.

Until fairly recently, we were not that aware of any very close correspondence or interactions between these two parts of the family;  geographically they were separated from each other by about 180 miles.

So, looking back at what we were doing in finding possible candidates to be our mystery Confederate  soldier, this  is the point where things probably began to go really  astray.  Uncle Harry had  noted that there was a soldier in our Askew family named Hillard Judge Askew, but he had erroneously placed the defining Confederate service information under the wrong Hilliard’s name !!

I can only guess at how this happened.  Uncle Harry was a very careful person.  Did he have enough information about Hilliard’s Confederate unit that he may have been fooled by that (Co. D, 11th Alabama was conscripted largely from the Marengo Co., AL area).  Could Harry possibly not have realized that his own g-grandfather was a Confederate soldier?  There is nothing in his tree or notes to indicate that the younger Hilliard (1838-1898) was a soldier.  What is remarkable when we,  as cousins, recently discussed our  childhoods, none of us could remember being told that our own Askew great-great grandfather was a Confederate soldier—one indeed who had fought in many battles and been wounded at Gettysburg .  Other Civil War facts were briefly discussed like stories about Gen. Sherman’s March to the Sea, but nothing about our Hilliard.

I am not certain why, but during our soldier photo identification work we never paid much attention to the data Uncle Harry had compiled about Hilliard’s brother Thomas William Edwards Askew—a soldier, yes, but only a vague reference to his War service.  We still don’t know much about Thomas William, and what we do know  pre- and post-War put him somewhat out of touch with others we found in the photo collection. After his father Spire’s sudden death near Gordon, AL in 1858, Thomas William moved over to Jackson Co., FL  and he resided over there after the War.

Had we had ready access to digitized Confederate  records in 2002-2004, even with the vague military information  in Uncle Harry’s notes we probably could have located Thomas William’s service record, and had we done that, we likely would have discovered his brother Hillary’s service, and then had a completely different idea about who was in our soldier photo.

In late 2011, I happened to have a “catchup” conversation with my cousin Keith Miller, and he mentioned our gg-grandfather’s part in the Civil War.  I said  “no, Keith,  that is not our Hilliard; the soldier  was the older Hilliard.”  I was wrong.  Keith had discovered and accessed digitized Confederate records that had  recently become available.  When I checked those at  Ancestry.com’s  “Alabama Civil War Muster Rolls, 1861-1865,” I was stunned to find two Askews listed in consecutive lines in the roster of Company D, Alabama 11th Infantry. Both had enlisted in  the Confederate service on June 11, 1861—right after the War started.  And most intriguing they had joined up in Demopolis, AL, just south of Marengo Co.,  Their residence was listed as Dayton, AL…  Oh, so of course I knew these were our Marengo relatives.  Hilliard Askew, age 24, single, born Georgia. But, wait, the Hilliard I had thought was the soldier would have been 50 years old and was married.   What’s wrong here?   And then the  next line  Thomas  Askew, age 20, single, born Alabama, residence Dayton, AL.   I didn’t know about any Thomas Askew who was supposed to be in Dayton, AL.  In 1860, the Thomas Askew I knew about was a store clerk in Jackson Co., FL. Our Hilliard was an “overseer” for a plantation near Columbia, Henry Co., AL.

So, boom, it finally registered: my orphaned gg-grandfather Hilliard and his brother Thomas William had traipsed across the whole state of Alabama, taken up residence with the Marengo Askews, and had volunteered with a CSA unit in Demopolis.  Really strange..  Conversely, their kin-to-be, Jesse Hancock,  had left his Georgia home near Atlanta and moved to join up with Capt. John B. Gordon’s 6th Alabama Infantry Regiment in  Old Columbia, AL  Why, pray,  didn’t our Askew brothers join up near their home?

But all the data in the CSA roster data was perfectly accurate.  We discovered, in fact, that our gg-grandfather Hilliard had actually been born in Early Co., GA shortly before our family crossed the Chattahoochee  River and settled near Gordon, AL.  His brother Thomas William, however, was born near Gordon.

To make matters more intriguing, we discovered that the  elder Hilliard Askew, quite prominent in Marengo Co., AL, was pro-Union or at least anti-Confederate and had strenuously objected to his son Samuel being conscripted for Confederate service Hilliard suffered an undeserved indignity during Reconstruction  by being required to seek a Federal pardon for giving his soldier son clothing and food—they called it aiding and abetting the enemy.  Would our Askew brothers have taken the trouble to travel 180 miles to reside with a “Union man” for the purpose of joining the Confederate service? I wonder instead if they could have  moved in with Miles Green Askew (1807-1869), elder Hilliard’s brother, who also lived around Dayton.

After all that staring and comparing of photos, something else “clicked.” I had inherited a small treasure trove of old unidentified photos from  my mother.  Among those were two that really stuck out because they were the largest and best cared for in the group.  For some time, I had wondered  if these could be photos of her g-grandfathers because one of them, based on an earlier identifiable photo in Keith Miller’s collection, was almost certainly  her g-grandfather James L. Wilson ( 1827-1908  ).  Now, I feel certain that I know who  is in the other one.   Compare the three  photos side by side —  the new Civil War era Hilliard photo, the Confederate soldier photo, and my mother’s photo.

Just recently, we went back through all the old family photos that we had marked unidentified and happened on one we had discussed as a possible picture of Hillard Askew, his wife and a baby who was born 1867-68.  In comparing that one  to the other pictures,  we have  concluded that they all match.

We have begun to track the provenance of the newly appeared Civil War era photo of our Hillard Judge Askew. According to the person who posted it to the Facebook page,  he bought it from a Civil War memorabilia collector, Owner #1,  who had purchased it in an antique store in Kentucky. It was marked on the back–  “Hillman J. Askew.”

I don’t have the vaguest notion how an old  photo  of our Hilliard Askew might have made it to Kentucky.  As far as I am aware, our family has no connection whatsoever to Kentucky. In most  of the Confederate records, however, our gg-grandfather appears as H.J. Askew, but in one important file he is identified as Hilliam J. Askew— muddying this just a bit, you could have Hillman J. Askew.

Recently, owner #2  sold the photo to a different collector, Owner #3), who claimed he had seen an earlier  photo with the subject in Confederate uniform (very likely our family photo of the Confederate soldier).  Possibly Owner #3  has posted the photo  at our great-great grandfather’s grave site at Find-A-Grave.

I was fortunate to discover via Keith that there are two astoundingly  detailed accountings of the Civil War activities of the 11th Alabama Infantry Regiment.  I am currently living the day-to-day life of a Confederate soldier from recruitment, marches, encampments, diseases, through all the major battles of Gen. R.E. Lee’s  War campaigns.  Fortunately, our Hilliard was wounded and removed to a hospital the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, July 2, 1863, or it’s fairly likely that I would not be alive to write this.

The post IS THE MAN IN MYSTERY PHOTO OUR GG-GRANDFATHER HILLIARD ASKEW ? appeared first on Treasures from the Tracker.

Prior to Tennessee, we had been able to trace our Hearn family from Johnson Co., NC to Sumter Co., SC,   where we discovered an association with the family of Obediah Watson (ca. 1765- 1820s).  Obediah  had at least five children including some whom we have identified: Thomas, Dempsey, Nathan, Sarah, and Mary Jane. Mary Jane Watson (ca.1790-1860s),  who married Benjamin Hearn (ca. 1786-1860s), is believed to  be our great-great-great grandmother.

The family stay in Sumter, SC  was a short one lasting from around  1810 to the  early 1820s.  When I visited Sumter, SC in summer 2005 and discovered the Hearn-Watson relationship, I became quite puzzled. Over years the families were involved together in various Sumter Co. land transactions, but they just seemed  to  vanish soon  after 1820.  Right after my return to Miami, I unexpectedly received word from Susan Nash, a descendant of Thomas Watson, who independently had  been studying Obediah,  that the Hearn and Watson families had left South Carolina  in the early to mid 1820s and headed for Texas in pursuit of free land.

Thomas Jefferson Watson (ca 1790-ca 1826), was a farming/business partner of our Benjamin Hearn, and they planned the migration to Texas together. Unfortunately, according to oral history, Thomas Watson fell off his horse along the way and was killed, leaving  a widow and several children.  The plan to go to Texas fell apart for all but one of the Watson brothers (Dempsey).  Thomas Watson’s widow and children by 1830 migrated  back to live with relatives in Pike Co., GA.  Benjamin Hearn eventually made it back to Georgia,  but his  whereabouts were  a real mystery between 1830 and  1850.

Based on one iffy 1830 census report for a Benjamin Herrin, and census information about Nathan Watson, we believed that our Benjamin had possibly settled  in Bedford Co., in south central Tennessee, but apart from the one census report, no Hearn records could  be found. We assumed that early records had been destroyed in a Bedford Co. courthouse fire in 1863. We stopped looking for Benjamin.

This last summer (July 2018), I was astonished  to hear from Andy Benefield, a descendant of Thomas Watson,  who reported that he had discovered in  Macon, Georgia’s  Washington Memorial Library a Tennessee Will Book containing the  1826-27  abstracted probate record   for Thomas,  who  apparently died in Maury Co, TN  then adjoining Bedford Co.  This record was for a few years  earlier than the 1829 death we had previously heard about from oral history, but three of  the buyers in Thomas’ estate sale were his brothers Nathan and Dempsey, and none other than our Benjamin Hearn!

Just  few days later, via LDS resources , Susan Nash was able to find the actual Thomas Watson estate records, one of which is portrayed here.  Via Ancestry.com, Susan also discovered and sent me a copy  of a Bedford Co. TN  land deed for  a thirty acre plot owned  by Benjamin Hearn.  The deed description places the land  on Sinking Creek about eight or so miles west of the county seat at Shelbyville. The land was surveyed in May 1835 and recorded in July 1840.   Apparently, some of the early land deeds were filed with the State of Tennessee as well as with the individual  counties, so a copy of the Hearn deed escaped the courthouse  fire.

With these exciting new document finds, the oral history concerning the untimely death of Thomas Watson is verified, and the mystery of the whereabouts of our Hearns, and the birthplace of some of them, is very  likely solved: our folks  resided in or near Bedford County, Tennessee from  1826 to some date in the 1840s.

The post Early Tennessee Records Locate Our Hearn-Watson Families appeared first on Treasures from the Tracker.

That led to extensive  conversations with Steven Connolly, who had carefully documented  the life of his  2nd great uncle  Martin (1814-1874), a very well-to-do Pittsburgh baker/grocer. Taking into account Steven’s previous efforts to identify Sarah Connolly’s maiden name, we were together able to deduce for certain that  it was McDonough, and  that Sarah Connolly was a daughter of Hugh McDonough (ca. 1790-ca. 1843), and granddaughter of our Thomas McDonough (ca. 1750-1828). Sarah’s father, Hugh McDonough, was brother and brother-in-law of my gggg-grandmother  Alvy McDonough (ca. 1778-aft. 1830) and  my gggg-grandfather  John Keenan (1775-aft 1830), the parents of  my Mary Ann Keenan.

Check  the Thomas McDonough Family Tree in “Our Irish Roots” Appendix  V, and you  will readily see how MaryAnn Keenan and Sarah Connolly were first cousins.

Steven and I had lengthy conversations about members and associates of Martin Connolly’s family who were enumerated in the 1850 Pittsburgh. PA census.  Listed there were some McDonough household members:  Hugh McDonough (baker, born PA, age 22) ,  George McDonough (baker, born IRE, age  22), and  Rebecca McDonough (born PA, age 51).

I have already commented on the life of Sarah Connolly’s mother, Rebecca McDonough, in my post of 12/5/2017.  Steven has identified the George McDonough as a relative of a Connolly-associated McDonough family, not ours, which arrived in  the U.S. during the 1840s.

I was very fortunate to get a good lead on the person whom I believe to be the young 1850  baker Hugh McDonough  by my chance reading of the 1897 Pennsylvania will of Sarah Connolly, who died in 1899. Therein she states:  “[Item] 12 – To Sadie, Francis Rebecca, and Mary McDonough, daughters of my brother Hugh, I give five hundred dollars each.”  So it’s reasonable to assume that the 22 year-old Hugh in 1850 was most likely the one who was  Sarah’s brother.

In  the 1860 Rock Island, Illinois census,  there is a Hugh McDonough, age 31, born PA, journeyman baker,   with wife Bridget, born  Ireland 1830,   with children whose names very closely match those mentioned in Sarah Connolly’s will. Given the children’s ages and birthplaces, this family arrived in Illinois between 1854 and 1857.

The children and/or  wife of this 1860 Rock Island, IL  Hugh McDonough are in the 1870, 1880, Illinois censuses, and 1880-1910 Rock Island city directory and  newspaper reports, but, with one single exception, Hugh is not.

What I did find for the post-1860  whereabouts of our 1850 census Hugh are Civil War service/enlistment  records showing that he was born Greene Co., PA  ca. Oct 1828.  An 1887 record from the U.S. National Homes for Volunteer Soldiers, Leavenworth, KS  shows  a Hugh McDonough,  born PA ca. 1829, who enlisted  ca. 11-30-1861 at Central City, CO Territory  into  Co. K of the 1st Colorado Cavalry, and later 1-1-1864  at Ft. Lyon, CO Territory into Co. A of the 1st Colorado Cavalry. He was discharged in Oct 1865 at Denver, CO and subsequently was living in El Paso TX . “.Status: single; religion:  Catholic,  Occupation:  Baker.”  Most significantly, his nearest relative is listed as “brother  James McDonough, Jacksonville, Oregon.”

I was really fascinated that this guy was in the Colorado Cavalry for  most of the War.  I  had  no idea Colorado was even  in  the Civil War,  but apparently the Union found it necessary to station  troops there in the newly formed Territory to prevent the Confederates from getting their hands on  gold and silver that had been mined there.  The cavalry units saw quite a bit of war action, but mostly against Indians.  One of  the companies of  1st Colorado Cavalry (not Hugh’s) was responsible for the infamous Sand Creek (Chivington) Massacre in 1864.

We do know for certain that the above Colorado Union soldier was the Hugh McDonough described by Sarah Connolly as heir in her will because it’s a known fact  that our McDonoughs were in Greene Co., PA in the 1820s, and their brother James McDonough (1826-1901)  relocated to Jacksonville, Oregon in 1851-52.

What we cannot be absolutely certain of, however, is if the Colorado soldier was the same Hugh McDonough with wife and children who was  in the 1860 Rock Island, IL census.  It certainly does appear that he was that person and left his family and joined the military at the outbreak of the Civil War.  It is possible that the family did not know where he was for many years,  but then he briefly resurfaced in Illinois.  Bridget McDonough is listed simply as widow in both the 1870 and 1880 census, and also in the Rock Island, IL City Directory from 1882-85.   But, in 1888, a Hugh McDonough shows up in Rock Island City Directory at exactly  the same address as for the 1882-85 “widow.” In 1888, he is residing there with Daisy—no mention of Bridget. “Daisy” is the nickname for Mary C. McDonough, the youngest McDonough child listed in 1860 census. Thereafter, from 1892 to her death in 1899, Bridget McDonough is listed in the Rock Island City Directory as  (wid of Hugh).

During the post-Civil War period, the only other Hugh McDonough finding we could discover was his presence  periodically 1887-1897 in the US  Hospital for Disabled Veterans, Leavenworth, KS.  On 8 Jul 1889, he filed for a veteran’s  pension – as invalid- “eye problems.” This Hugh McDonough’s vintage 1890 US Civil War pension file (Colorado) for the appropriate Colorado military units show that he deceased Oct 12 1897.  There is a gravesite that we believe to be that of Hugh at the Colorado State Veterans Cemetery/ (Homelake Cemetery, Soldiers and Sailors Home Cemetery) in Monte Vista, Rio Grande County, CO.

Bridget McDonough died in Rock Island, IL in 1899.  By tracking her child Frances Rebecca, I discovered that Bridget’s maiden name was  McCaffery. The McDonough children, whose names totally synch with those in Sarah Connolly’s will, lived in Illinois for a while after their mother died, became nurses, and eventually ended up in Pasadena, CA,  where newlywed Francis Rebecca McDonough was in Sep 1914 brutally shot in a very bizarre and sensational  murder-suicide episode.

Connecting suspect Hugh McDonough from Pittsburgh to Rock Island, IL  is problematic because I can find no record whatsoever of his marriage or his pre-1860 whereabouts after the  1850 census.  Other than the children’s names in the Pennsylvania Connolly will, the only Pittsburgh connection I have been able to find to the Rock Island McDonough family is a 1903 Rock Island newspaper report that two of the daughters (Mary and Frances) were in Pittsburgh “visiting relatives.”

The post Cousin McDonough Serves With Civil War Union Cavalry In Colorado appeared first on Treasures from the Tracker.

That led to extensive  conversations with Steven Connolly, who had carefully documented  the life of his  2nd great uncle  Martin (1814-1874), a very well-to-do Pittsburgh baker/grocer. Taking into account Steven’s previous efforts to identify Sarah Connolly’s maiden name, we were together able to deduce for certain that  it was McDonough, and  that Sarah Connolly was a daughter of Hugh McDonough (ca. 1790-ca. 1843), and granddaughter of our Thomas McDonough (ca. 1750-1828). Sarah’s father, Hugh McDonough, was brother and brother-in-law of my gggg-grandmother  Alvy McDonough (ca. 1778-aft. 1830) and  my gggg-grandfather  John Keenan (1775-aft 1830), the parents of  my Mary Ann Keenan.

Check  the Thomas McDonough Family Tree in “Our Irish Roots” Appendix  V  , and you  will readily see how MaryAnn Keenan and Sarah Connolly were first cousins.

Steven and I had lengthy conversations about members and associates of Martin Connolly’s family in  Pittsburgh who were enumerated in census reports in 1850 through 1880.  Of particular interest were the 1850 census, which listed Pennsylvania-born household members Hugh McDonough (baker, age 22) ,  and Rebecca McDonough (age  51), and  the 1860-70 censuses,  which listed Sarah F. Coyle (age 8 and 18).  [The life of Hugh McDonough, the young baker in 1850, is another fascinating discovery which I shall treat in a separate post].

Early on, we strongly suspected that 1850 census Rebecca McDonough (ca 1799-ca 1859) was Sarah’s  widowed mother, and that turned out to be the case.  Because of the long-time (cousin?) association of Sarah Connolly and Sadie Coyle Rogers  with an unmarried lady by the name of Isabell Clark (1836-1926), we believed that Rebecca’s maiden name could have been Clark.

What  we did not know at all, however, until  I just happened to read  the recently available Pennsylvania Wills & Probate Records posted by Ancestry.com  was that Rebecca McDonough had a daughter named Catherine (ca. 1832- ca.1858), a younger sister of Sarah Connolly.   Catherine had apparently married an unknown Coyle in the early 1850s and she died just before Rebecca.   In Rebecca’s will, probated 1859, she left pretty much everything she  possessed to eldest daughter Sarah Connolly and then said:  “…am solemnly requesting  (Sarah) to  be kind to and take care of my grandchildren Sarah Francis Coyle and Edward Coyle, children of my daughter Catherine…”   So, Sarah F. Coyle was NOT a Connolly as Steven had previously believed, but surely was one of our McDonoughs!

Steven had determined in his research that Sarah Francis, who also went by the name Sadie F., had married a Rogers.   At one time in about 2004, I had tracked her (SF Rogers) to a 1910 address in New York City (NYC) —  never understanding  at all why an aging widow would want to relocate to NYC.  I cannot recall if Steven had  then identified any of Sarah Rogers’ children, but the will of our Mary Ann Keenan, probated  in 1898, named as heirs Sarah Rogers  (”widow of John Rogers”) and her children:  Francis C. (Frank), Mary, and Kate. Although I was able to find only a 1900 census record of the widowed Sarah, I discovered that she had married in about 1877 a prominent Pittsburgh attorney, John P. Rogers  (1851-1891), who is listed in the 1874-1878 Pittsburgh City Directory and in a September 1891 obituary in the  Pittsburgh Dispatch.

I decided to look back to New York City to find out more about Sarah Rogers’ life there, and I found her in a 1915 City Directory living with her daughter,  Mary C. Rogers “artist.” That occupation note on Mary kind of piqued my interest because my own father was in a few decades later a well known New York City artist .

What I had uncovered largely by accident— just happening to read some old wills– is really rather remarkable–  I really didn’t believe it for a while until I found a clipping about Mary C. Rogers’ fame in a 1921 issue of the Pittsburgh Daily Post.  Details of Mary C. Rogers’ life and work are also presented in a moving 1921 testimonial by her sister Catherine–  “Mary Rogers- Sister and Artist” .

Sarah  Coyle Rogers’ daughter, Mary C  “Maizie” Rogers (1882-1920)  was an astoundingly talented and well regarded artist who studied with and exhibited  with some of the best in both the US and  Europe.  I feel rather certain the reason that Sarah  moved  to NYC  was to be with her daughter, who was probably living the typically bohemian existence of a talented painter.

Mary C. Rogers unfortunately had some sort of incurable disease and totally shocked the art community by dying in 1920 at  only 38 years of age.

In tracking down Sarah “Sadie” Rogers, who died on Long Island, NY in 1931, I also stumbled onto the 1926 death record of Isabell Clark, who had been living with her in New York. Isabell’s father was listed as William Clark and mother as Isabel  Crable.  I have not yet been able to identify that married pair, but we suspect that  they are related to Rebecca McDonough. We theorize that Isabell Clark was Rebecca McDonough’s niece and thereby Sarah Connolly’s and Sadie Rogers’ cousin.

Another avenue of investigation  lies in wait.  Catherine Rogers, Mary C.’s younger sister (born 1886), who accompanied her in many of her artistic endeavors, is completely missing.  We can find no trace of her after 1930 at which time she was living in New York City with mother Sadie.

The post Pennsylvania Wills & Probate Records Yield Stunning McDonough Discovery appeared first on Treasures from the Tracker.

Last summer (2016), I was fortunate to get published  my first contribution to a printed genealogical publication–  Itawamba Settlers: The Quarterly Journal of Itawamba County, Mississippi History & Genealogy.  This describes in some detail the 15-year search for my missing HOLLEY third great grandfather.  I have included the text of this article here on this site under the title HOLLEY FAMILY HISTORY.

Since last fall, I  quite unexpectedly discovered some rather remarkable new  things about my Keenan / McDonough ancestors.  They include major findings about the Pittsburgh life of my fourth great uncle  Thomas Keenan (1810-1888), and the discovery of the large Arthur Meegan family sired by descendants of Thomas McDonough’s (1750-1820) daughter Catherine (1783-1870).  Full details are in the Updates Section at the very end of the OUR IRISH ROOTS pages,  and I have appropriately updated the skeleton Family Tree of my fifth great-grandfather Thomas McDonough.

The post Back To Blogging appeared first on Treasures from the Tracker.

One of the most challenging and satisfying searches I’ve done since getting into this business took place over a period of ten years and involved turning one tiny shred of evidence into a largely successful “find.”   This was the case of my gg-aunt Mary Hearn, elder sister of my g-grandfather Buckner Mason Hearn, and first child of my gg-grandfather George Washington (GW) Hearn .

By late 2001, when I first started doing family history, my cousins had already made great progress tracking the families of GW’s children.  The only one who remained a mystery was Mary Hearn, born a few years before my g-grandfather Buckner.  The only clue we had for her existence was the same scrap of paper  that Emma Maydell Caldwell had used to scribble down very brief remarks about what she knew about each of GW’s children.  We had already used Emma Maydell’s list as a jumping off place to search for Joseph Hearn—step brother of our George Washington Hearn, and coincidentally to help track back our Hearn family to the 1700s.

The clue aunt Emma Maydell  left us for Mary Hearn was toward  the top of the page:

Mary Parks  1856 –     —- Meigs (Midway

The format for the others listed on the page was generally:  name, DOB, place of death, but Initially I had absolutely no idea what the last words on the line meant;  if “Meigs (Midway” was a place,  where was it – Alabama, Georgia, Florida– where?

The only thing at all on “the web” that had both a Meigs and a Midway was the Midway Baptist Church Cemetery a little east of U.S. Route 19, just outside Meigs/Ochlocknee, GA.   Somewhat later I learned that several of the older Hearns had supposedly located Mary’s grave either “on the road to Camilla” or “near Camilla.”  GW’s daughter Minnie Lee (1868-1956) had married John Richard Caldwell, and they eventually settled in South Georgia near Thomasville.  If  it was the Thomasville  Caldwells who were hunting Mary, and they wanted to go north  to Camilla, GA, the shortest road route (Route 19) and railroad route goes right a bit east of a little town called Meigs.  The Midway Church Cemetery, a little southeast  of Meigs, would be about half way between sizable towns– Thomasville and Camilla— so maybe that’s where the name “Midway Church” originated.

[Thomas, Mitchell, and Grady Counties, GA border each other near Meigs, which is right on the border of Mitchell and Thomas.  Camilla to the north is in Mitchell County. Some of Mary Hearn Parks’ family, whom I eventually located, lived near Spence on the Grady Co. side. Others lived around Ochlocknee, and Chastain, just east over the border on the Thomas Co. side.  The Midway Church Cemetery would be a natural place to serve all these tiny communities.]

In May 2003, I had some time to kill while staying with my daughter in Tallahassee after her graduation from Florida State University, so I decided to take my very first genealogical cemetery trip about 55 miles up north to Meigs/Ochlocknee, GA.

According to the cemetery keeper, Mr. Allan Hayes, whom I managed to contact before my trip, the adjacent Midway Baptist Church has no burial records for the older interments.  Further, at that time, it did not seem that there was any record of any Parks family in the church records. So, this novice grave explorer was pretty much “on his own.”

Thinking back on it, I had no idea what to expect at the cemetery —notepad, tape recorder, camera, umbrella, hat, bug spray—what else do you bring?

On the way up Route 19, just south of the cemetery location,  I stopped at a railway siding in Ochlocknee–   a place  seemingly stolen right out of times far past-

The church and cemetery seemed a bit more millennial, but not much.

Midway’s cemetery graves are laid out in rows running roughly north to south. Headstones/inscriptions face east.  I spent quite some time walking through three acres– a few hundred graves—looking for PARKS stones–  babbling into the tape recorder as I want along.  The only graves of any real interest were in the southwest corner of the cemetery, not far from the road/parking area.  There were two adjacent sets of PARKS graves, and there was one set of apparently associated graves of a PALMER family.

The first PARKS plot contained six marked graves; these were all flat mortar stones with imbedded metal plaques:  two adults and four infants.  The second plot close by contained five graves—seemingly four adults and one child.   No sign of a Mary Hearn (b.  ca. 1856), but fortunately I was still taking copious notes.

The second PARKS plot was of more interest to me because there were two adult –looking graves that seemed older than the rest— one of those, a crumbly brick-topped affair, was completely unmarked.  The one to its left had a badly worn inscription cut into the flat moldy mortar.

What did that inscription say?  How could I possibly read something so faint?  I spent some minutes trying to decipher it… Not having much luck, I noticed that there was some kind of construction site about fifty feet west.  I got a small clump of Georgia clay and a small plastic broom that someone had providently left there and worked the clay into the moldy grave top.  Miraculously, part of the inscription emerged.    I  read:

Mrs  Maggie  ??  ??obels

Born in Marion County

Georgia  Sept 6 1875

Died  Sept 20 1934

No harm that ?????

together made shall

be a sure ????  word

[the pink letters were very doubtful]

However I might have read it, at that time the deciphered surname made absolutely no sense to me. Seven long years later, however, we were able to figure out exactly who was in that grave.  No such luck, though, with the brick-topped one just to the right— it remains a mystery even until today.

Overall, I was a bit disappointed after doing a few hours’ hard work—it seemed that there was no obvious Mary Parks in that cemetery. Along with voluminous notes, some photographs, and a few death certs I pulled at random  (@ $10 each) for some of the marked grave names, I would soon be back in Tallahassee with nothing but a whole set of new mysteries.  Who were all these Parks people in so many graves?  And maybe Palmer people too? I really wondered–  were they associated with our Mary Hearn at all?

After pulling three Parks death certs at a state office in Thomasville, I got to visit a few hours with the lovely Charlotte Hicks Kanning Hungate, who filled me in on all she knew of our Hearn family.  I believe she might have been the one who said the Caldwells felt that Mary Hearn Parks was buried up the road “halfway to Camilla.”

Charlotte, was a great-grandchild  of GW Hearn, and thereby   gg-grand-niece of the sought-after Mary Hearn.  She was grand-daughter of Mary’s sister Minnie Lee Hearn (1868-1956), daughter of Kate Rebecca Caldwell Hicks (1903-1965), and thereby niece of  Emma Maydell Caldwell (1891-1975), who had written down the family history list.  Charlotte, aged 73, with her older brother John, then aged 78, was still running the famed Hicks clothing store (est. 1936) on Broad Street in Thomasville. [As I write this blog, I was greatly saddened to discover that both John and Charlotte are no longer with us.  Charlotte died in Tallahassee on Christmas, 2015.  Definitely one of a kind—she will be much missed!]

Once back in Tallahassee, via my daughter’s computer with a horribly slow dial-up Internet line, I did a quite thorough job of census hunting for Georgia  Parks and Palmer families.   It got to seem like kind of a fruitless task at the time, but thank goodness I was unusually careful writing down everything I found because eventually it paid off.

After some months back in Miami, poring over the cemetery data and trying to connect it up to real people, by 2004, I had concluded that we just could not determine for certain if our Mary Hearn was in the Midway Church Cemetery, and, for that matter, we could not even be really sure that she had been married to someone named Park or Parks.

What did emerge, through looking at census and other Georgia records, and via data kindly supplied by a Parks family researcher, Kathryn Parks Vann, is that a W.A. (William Augustus) Parks, enumerated in 1880 and 1900 censuses, had by 1920 relocated his family south from Columbus, GA,  down to Marion Co.,  and thence down to Spence in Grady Co. just west of Meigs.  There were  12 graves (including three for the nearby Palmer family) on the forward edge of  the  Midway Church Cemetery that  definitely belonged to the family of that Augustus Parks– half related to children of his first wife, Mary Elizabeth Hobbs, and half related to children of a second wife . Only two of the graves—the crumbly brick one, and the one with the faded inscription could not be definitively identified.

I was able to trace back Gus Parks’ family quite thoroughly and found that he had been married at least twice. According to one source, his second wife was purported to be a Mollie O’Hearn [tantalizing, but hardly definitive].  I wrote some letters requesting information from some people who were supposed to have known this Augustus (Gus) and Mollie Parks.  I never heard back from anyone.  So, that’s where the mystery lay in 2004— for the most part, unsolved.

In April 2010, I received a message from one of my cousins about a lady we had previously eliminated as a suspect for our missing Mary Hearn.  This got me to thinking about Mary again.   I realized that the State of Georgia Archives had recently put on-line all GA death certificates from 1919 thru 1927 AND had also made available microfilmed images of many counties’ marriage books. I wondered if this new data could possibly give us some more clues.  The best look we had at the second wife of Augustus Parks was in the 1900 census.  Gus was in Pine Knot District of Marion Co., GA, married 20 years to a lady named M.J., born in March, 1858.  The wife’s first initial was good and the DOB was reasonably good, but those damned initials– what was this lady’s full given name?

I searched the GA death certs but could find no Mary Parks in the then available 1919-27 time frame.  So, I decided to check for marriage certificates.   The 1900 census indicated that Gus had been married for 20 years, so I decided to look at marriage certs for 1880. The 1880 census for June 3, 1880 shows Gus Parks listed as a widower in Columbus, Muscogee Co., GA with three small children by his Hobbs wife.  The children’s names matched those in the Midway Cemetery.  Judging from the children’s ages, the first wife must have died around 1877.  The 1880 census does not show up our Mary (or any of her siblings), but her parents G.W. and Mary Byrd Hearn were living in Columbus on June 8, 1880.

Were there any Parks marriages in Muscogee Co. in the last part of 1880?  WOW, there it is on the bottom of page 266 of the 1873-1881 Muscogee Co. Marriage Book, dated June 13, 1880 —  the marriage of William A. Parks to one  MARY A. HEARN !

This 1880 marriage seemed like a certain proof that our Mary Hearn became Mary Hearn Parks, but there were some lingering doubts mainly because of the way she appears or does not appear in census reports and other documents – “M.A. Hearn” in 1880 marriage cert, “ M.J”  in 1900 census report, 1910 census  – none for certain found;  not listed with husband in 1920 census report, and “Mollie” in the 1930 census report .   The initials M.A. made sense because her mother was Mary Ann Byrd; the initials M.J. also made sense because her grandmother was Mary Jane Watson, but which was it– M.A. or M.J.? There were also small discrepancies between 1900 and 1930 census reports as to the age and place of birth of Gus Parks’ wife. It surely would have been nice to find her in 1910 or 1920 census, but she didn’t seem to show up.

Facts in favor of our Mary Hearn being married to Gus were the following:

(1) Emma Maydell’s  family list had proven to be absolutely correct in almost every instance involving her immediate family —  for her, our Mary Hearn had become a Parks and was associated with the Parks people in the Midway Church Cemetery.

(2) The 1880 marriage was a sensible family intersection.  William Augustus (Gus) Parks came from a then prominent and fairly well-to-do family in the Columbus, GA area. Gus’ father, John Gildersworth  Parks (1830-1911), was enumerated  as a “lawyer”  in the 1860 census, and in 1880 he was listed as a “house builder.”  In 1880, son Gus appeared as a “teamster.”  Gus’ uncle William Gildersleeve Parks was a carpenter.  George Washington Hearn, Gus’ “father-in-law to-be”, was listed as a “lumber dealer.”

(3) Around 1930, a lot of the Parks folks – Gus’ second set of children– who had been living around Spence/Meigs, GA removed to the vicinity of Umatilla in Lake County, FL.  Since the 1930 census had Gus and Molly living in Spence with one of their children, I decided to start looking for the old couple in post-1930 Florida.  Good move.  I soon located an abstract of the Florida death cert for William Augustus (Gus) Parks, who died in Umatilla Dec 30, 1933.  He was listed as “married” with spouse named Mollie, and he was buried in Umatilla.

Lacking information on what happened to Mollie Parks after 1933, on an impulse, I decided  to try to look at death certs for Gus’ children who had moved to Florida.  And there I hit real pay-dirt.   Gus’ and Mollie’s first child was William Chester Parks (1881-1928). His Florida death cert abstract lists:  Birthplace:  Columbus, GA;   Father:  William A. Parks – birthplace:  Georgia;  Mother:  Mollie Hearn – birthplace:  Motts, Alabama.    Motts Alabama is a tiny little place in Lee Co., AL; it’s located on the railroad very near Salem and Smith’s Station, precisely where we know GW Hearn and his family were living in 1860-1870!

Rather mysterious that there seems to be no record anywhere of our Mary Hearn Parks’ death. She would have been about 76-78 years old if she was living when Gus died the last few days of 1933, so I do not expect she outlived him by much.  Some of her children are buried in Umatilla Cemetery  and the Glendale Cemetery in Lake Co., FL, but so far our check with record keepers of these cemeteries to see if there are possibly other Parks burials has turned up nothing for Mollie.

I wondered if Mollie Parks could have even wandered north in 1934 and died there with her people in South Carolina.  While I was studiously compiling a very complete record of the Parks family going all the way back to its origin in North Carolina, I discovered quite by accident that:

Maggie (1875-1937), Gus Parks’ daughter by his first marriage, married about 1899 a South Carolinian, William John Jacob Nobles (1863-1936).  Maybelle (1890-1957), Gus Parks’ daughter by his second marriage, married about 1911 Thomas Ben Nobles (1874-1959), brother of the above.  By 1910, Maggie and her husband are found in 1st St. Johns Twp., of Berkeley Co., SC., north of Charleston.  They are there through 1930, and her married half-sister Maybelle is nearby in 1920, 1930, and 1940. In the 1910 census, a Willis J. Nobles and Maggie are right next door to a Willis A. and Margaret Parks.  There are definitely age and birthplace discrepancies in the Parks data, the name Margaret does not make sense, and no children are listed as might be expected, but I really have to wonder if this is not our William A. and Mollie Parks, who do not seem to appear anywhere else in  1910 census data.

Several people involved in these 1910 enumerations, including the male Parks, were involved in saw mill labor, and that got me thinking. A bit strange that these Nobles brothers apparently wandered way down to Georgia and met/married the Parks girls. Very Interesting that they seem woods/lumber oriented.   Maggie’s father-in-law, James Riley Nobles  (1827-1890), was a barrel maker.  In 1930 census,  Maggie Parks’ husband William Nobles  is clearly listed as a “woods rider for a lumber company.”  Now, think about it.  My g-grandfather Buckner Hearn, a lumber tycoon operating all over three states, employed almost everyone around him as an agent for his empire–  many of his in-laws eventually got involved with lumber..  so why not his older sister Mary and her husband ? My guess is that Berkeley Co., SC was for a time Buckner’s northernmost outpost!

Whatever the South Carolina connection to Gus and Mollie may or may not have been, the marriage of Maggie Parks to a Nobles cleared up one issue at the Midway Church Cemetery.  The person in the moldy grave on which I rubbed clay to read the faint inscription is none other than Maggie Parks Nobles (b.  1875). She seems  to have died in September 1937 rather than 1934 as I thought I read on the stone marker.  She died in Thomasville, GA and was thereby not buried with her Nobles husband (d. 1936) in South Carolina as was her step-sister Maybelle. The family evidently felt it would be more appropriate for Maggie to be with her natural brother (Homer) and sister (Ennis) in the Midway Church Cemetery rather than being shipped all the way back to South Carolina.

So for the Midway Cemetery, that leaves only the strange old brick grave w/o any legible inscription or hint of whom is therein interred.

I am 95% certain that our Mary Hearn was married to William Augustus Parks, but we still have no conclusive proof for where she died or where she is buried.  From the Florida death certificate abstract of Gus Parks, it seems quite reasonable to believe that Mollie was still alive at the end of 1933 and living in Florida.  But, there is no death record or cemetery record for anyone named Mollie or Mary Parks in Florida, Georgia, or South Carolina.   I suspect that she is buried with Gus in or near Umatilla, FL.  It does not seem reasonable to believe that Mary Hearn Parks would be transported all the way back to Meigs, GA to be interred with her stepchildren, UNLESS perhaps she was accompanied by Gus. Could they both be buried in that brick grave?

Another possibility:  if you look closely at the way the Midway graves are situated, the weathered brick one is well aligned with the three just to the right– those of the family of Homer Parks (1877-1950). He and his second wife Lula (1882-1960) are buried side by side, and young child Maggie Alene (1904-1916) is interred just to the left of them (marked with oval topped headstone); so, could there be another young child interred just to the left of Maggie Alene—one who was alive in  Homer’s first wife’s 1908 obituary,  but not enumerated in 1910 census?   Photos show that Maggie Alene’s grave seems to be raised slightly and underlain with brick; its flat top only has a thin veneer of mortar.  The face of our crumbly brick mystery grave shows a few spots where it looks like an original mortar veneer top wore away.

The official copy of Gus Parks’ actual Florida death certificate arrived yesterday.  The INFORMANT for the death certificate information was George Parks, Gus’ and Mollie’s son, who later appears in the 1935 Lake Co., Florida state census and who eventually (1965) was buried in the Umatilla Cemetery.  As fate would have it, the undertaker and burial information on the certificate is scribbled and hard to read.  The best I can tell, the BURIAL place is Umatilla 12/31/1933; For UNDERTAKER it is written: “No Undertaker,” and for undertaker address it says: .. X Rev. Varnard, Umatilla Cemetery.  The boxes for BURIAL and UNDERTAKER are stamped “SEE SUPPLEMENTARY ATTACHMENT.”  The SUPPLEMENTARY ATTACHMENT, which I also received, has exactly the same information as on the certificate itself EXCEPT for the boxes for UNDERTAKER and FILE DATE.  The supplementary information for UNDERTAKER is totally illegible—something apparently scratched out with heavy marks.  The FILE DATE appears to be February something.

So, the mystery lives on.  Was Gus Parks permanently buried in Umatilla Cemetery perhaps with no official interment or headstone?  Who is  Rev. Varnard, and why does there appear to be no one by that name in Umatilla in 1933? And, why was there a later SUPPLEMENTARY ATTACHMENT to the death certificate, which seems to have had something to do with Gus’ burial?  And, of course, where is our Mollie Hearn?

The post The Search for Mary Hearn Parks appeared first on Treasures from the Tracker.

After some weeks of effort, I have managed to restore my “Askew Family Website” more or less to the condition it was in when I lost my Florida International University site hosting in late 2015.  This website depicts the history of my mother’s Askew family, including marriages into the Alford, Hancock, Hearn and Beach families.  In addition, it provides a place to show off some of the fantastic collection of very old family photographs passed down to us via Beach family descendants.

For those of you who have never visited our “Askew Family Website,” we welcome you “aboard” and trust that you will enjoy some fascinating histories as well as narratives on just how we developed the histories.

For those who have looked at this website prior to 2015, please note that I have already done some much needed updating and I plan to do more.   For example, I can now present fairly convincing evidence that my earliest known Askew ancestor was Casey Askew of Virginia.  That evidence was collected over some ten years — including on-site visits and studies in Hancock and Morgan Counties, Georgia.  Most revealing in those ventures was a day-long visit to Sparta, GA and the beautiful Hancock County Courthouse pictured above.

Also, much to our surprise we discovered via cousin Keith Miller that my gg-grandfather Hilliard Judge Askew (1838-1898) fought in many of the significant battles of the Civil War and was wounded and  (fortunately for us!) temporarily withdrawn from the battle lines the second day at Gettysburg.  Heretofore, we had assumed that Confederate enlistment/battle records were referring to our gg-grandfather’s uncle, who had exactly the same name as his nephew.  On close inspection, we found the older Hilliard Judge was actually pro-Union and sat out the War in Marengo Co., AL.

For some future updates at “Askew Family Website,” be looking for the following:

Complementing the research we’ve done on our own particular Askew family, I’ve compiled detailed information on all Askew families (15+) that had residence in, or origins in, pre-1850 Georgia.   This work was done to better understand the true origins of our own Joshua Askew family and to exclude other possible origins by the process of elimination.

Although it is currently in various states of archiving and usability, I likely have amassed and organized more Georgia Askew genealogical data than anyone else on the planet. In just two of the lines we have best archived, for example, I have identified over 3500 individuals related to each other and/or to Askews.  Over time, I hope to make some of this information available to others in at least brief descendant tree form like what we prepared for our Joshua.  In the meantime, if you are a Georgia Askew and would like a trace on a relative, or you have family information you would like to share, I would like to hear from you.

In September 2013,  we were astounded to find, digitized on-line, the complete 183-page Henry Co., AL  Probate Court file of my ggg-grandfather Spire Warren Alford Askew who died in the Spring of  1858— this courtesy of the LDS Church at familysearch.org .  Considering that widower Spire died intestate, and that we previously knew virtually nothing about him, this was a major, major find about which we will be writing up a summary report.  By reading through the very detailed probate documents, among other things,  I found  Spire’s slaves’ names, exactly how his orphan children were supported and adopted, and, from digitized bills & debt receipts, pretty much what the family was eating for breakfast in 1858.We even turned up his long missing brother Robert G. Askew (ca.1819-  ca. 1859), who was apparently farming with Spire in Henry Co., AL when he died.

On the Hearn Family side (my mothers’ mother’s people), we conducted several quite lengthy inquiries that turned up detailed information on two of the oldest missing relatives we had been seeking.  Those were James Hearn (ca. 1835 – ca. 1865), brother of my gg-grandfather George Washington Hearn (1834 -1882) and Mary Hearn (ca. 1856 – aft. 1933), first child of George Washington Hearn.  Those studies in turn led us to establish very detailed family histories for Georgia families related to James and Mary by marriage – namely those of Elizabeth Curlee (1845-1924), John W.Hall (1843-1912), and William Augustus Parks (1852-1933).

The post “Askew Family Website” Is Restored appeared first on Treasures from the Tracker.

Such is the case for recent discoveries I have made about my father’s achievement of success.  But for a fortuitous sudden decision by a fellow artist to weather the Depression “Down South,”  I’m not certain at all that my Dad would have achieved anywhere near what he did, or done it where he did .  He arrived in Tallahassee, Florida at age 13 or so, a native of eastern Oklahoma.  His father, an educator, had taken a position there as Florida’s Supervisor of Trade and Industrial Education.   Even at an early age, Dad’s artistic ability had begun to show, and by the time he was only 16, he had his own sign shop on one of the capitol city’s main streets.  At about the same time, a fellow named Kenneth Hansen, six years older than Dad, was struggling to get his art career together.  In the 1930 Leon Co., FL census, Kenneth’s occupation was listed as “theater advertising.”

By the first days of the Depression, Kenneth got himself to New York City (NYC), where he became acquainted with an up-and-coming young artist by the name of David Lax.  David was having real troubles making ends meet, and Kenneth suggested that maybe he could survive better by moving South awhile; he could stay at the Hansen farm outside of Tallahassee for just $25 a month.  David–  no hesitation whatsoever–  jumped on the idea, and  about  1931 shortly after  the time my father graduated from high school and started college, Lax arrived in Tallahassee, where he painted for most of the next  two  years.  I cannot be certain how Kenneth and David met my father, but surely they did.  There was an art association in town, and it sounds like those with talent all found a way to “hang out” together.  What did they talk about?  What ideas did the older guys put in his head?  Had my father always planned to run off to the big city?

Fast forward a year or so, and I find my father earning money traveling from town to town in backwoods South Georgia talking theater managers into letting him draw/paint one-time entrance-way/lobby posters to advertise their currently playing movies.   Sounds like that’s exactly what Kenneth Hansen was doing in 1930.  Did Kenneth put that very novel idea into Dad’s head?  Did Kenneth perhaps participate?

Move forward another year or so; Dad has dropped out of the University of Florida, eloped to marry his sweetheart (just a junior at FSCW ), and moved off to study art in New York City.  David Lax in the meantime has temporarily moved back to NYC and gotten back on his financial feet.  Just after his arrival in the big city, and while Dad was still an art school student, David hired him to work in the art department of Mills Artists, Inc.  As David describes it, “It was another world. The company acted as business manager and agent for many popular orchestras and performers: Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Ina Ray Hutton, Lucky Millender, and others.  At Mills Artists, we had to get out all sorts of ‘paper’ for the attractions we managed—24 sheets, ads, press books, lobby displays, window cards, and so on. With publication deadlines to meet and the first rate technical finish required for ‘mechanicals.’ it was a difficult and demanding job.”

Undoubtedly this was the launch pad for my Dad’s career— at the age of only 20, he was doing publicity for many musical folks who were already, or eventually became, “greats.”  As if that was not enough, at the same time, Lax had hired another associate:  “Working with me in the art department were various artists of ability. One was Sol Immerman, who later became art director and vice-president of Pocket Books, Inc. Another was Bob Holley, whom I had met in Tallahassee.”  A few years later, Immerman, with formidable and unique connections into the jazz world, became my father’s business partner in a very successful NYC art studio that specialized in illustrating sheet music.

So, what if Dad had not met Kenneth Hansen whose farm family had come to Florida from Nebraska just a few years earlier than the Holleys?  Or what if Kenneth had not met up with David Lax in New York City?  Or what if David had not decided, just on the spur of the moment, to move to Tallahassee to bunk with the Hansens?  Or what if Dad had never hooked up with Immerman?   Serendipity for sure !

Until about a year ago, I knew nothing about my father’s earliest adventures in New York.  And, had it not been for a fortunate choice of “Google” search keywords, I might not ever have discovered them.  The search result was the above passage about Mills Artists found on page 103 of David Lax’s moving 1976 autobiography:  One Man Show: A Personal Adventure in American Art.   As referenced at the conclusion of my “Tribute to Artist David Lax” , I composed a biography for David which summarizes to the best of my ability the key events he related in his book, but I can’t really do it justice. If you are interested in art or have any notion of becoming a professional artist, PLEASE, PLEASE obtain a copy of One Man Show and read every word.

I am not an artist—never will be–  can’t even draw a decent stick figure.  That God-given talent skipped a generation and passed (largely intact) to my daughter, but, through David’s book, for the first time, this son of an artist really began to grasp what it was like to try to make a living, as well as to feel fulfilled, in that challenging world.

For many of the years that I never knew anything about Lax or any of the influences he had on my life, a clue had been hanging right in front of me on the vestibule wall of my Long Island home.  I know I looked at this watercolor quite a few times—  unique– something surely done in the South I figured— signed “Oh, Susannah don’t you cry for me”  David Lax ’35.   Stupid boy… never occurred to me to ask Dad where it came from.  But when the Google search turned up that Lax name, it was immediately familiar to me —  I went and found my watercolor in storage still wrapped in paper— just as it had been when Mom passed away 20 years ago.  Now it’s hanging right on the wall right beside me as I type.

And the Kevin Bacon business—

I’ve not yet been able to exactly locate the site of the large Hansen Farm where David Lax lived and painted for years, but I do know it was out on the Old St. Augustine Road southeast of the Capitol Grounds.  Seems odd now; but that particular road was for certain one of my favorite places during the thirteen years I lived, worked and went to school in Tallahassee–  especially  while I was courting my wife.  It was quite rural and changed very little over time.  Over scores of weekends, Jean and I took in many of the same sights that David had thirty years earlier— many of which he so skillfully put to canvas.

Even more  eerie and as unlikely a circumstance as one can imagine—-     while I was researching Lax’s career,  I found that he had first gained artistic fame at age 14, by sculpting a fantastic nude snowman on the streets of East Harlem.  Someone took a photo of it, which got in the newspapers, and the press notoriety led to an art scholarship for him at a prestigious school.  Now, take a deep breath! I also discovered (quite by accident, many months later) that the model for that famous snowman was none other than the father of one of my good friends and football teammates at the Wheatley School in Old Westbury.

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I’ve been searching back through a large group of documents we collected during our quest to discover my great-grandfather Keenan’s family history.  As I mentioned in the first part of Our Irish Roots, we had quite a hard time in the years 2001-2004 discovering much of anything on-line about Bruce L. Keenan (BLK).  Maybe that dearth of information was just a coincidence— maybe not.  Some of my cousins wonder if over some years BLK was deliberately ignored in Oklahoma print because he was rather outspoken and had made enemies championing Native American and African American rights while he was Commissioner of Cherokee Nation and later as an attorney after statehood.  But also, let’s not forget that more and more printed historical information is being digitized every single day, and Google is in the forefront of that activity with its “Google Play” free E-books program.

In any event, as time moved on after 2004, more and more information on my g-grandfather became available to us without having to search through brick and mortar libraries and courthouses.  Much to our amazement in July 2009, a random Google search suddenly unearthed a very revealing biographical sketch on BLK published  in a 1908 volume of  A History of the State of Oklahoma.  From the style and content of the piece, we are almost certain that it was written by my g-grandfather himself and then contributed to the author of the volume.  And there it was, in graphic detail, all the facts that BLK had written down for my grandmother in his 1937 letter about the family history— and there was  much much more—his memory of the family was 30 years fresher!

It surely was a bit frustrating that critical detailed information it had taken us three years of hard work to dig out had been right out there all along printed in a history book , but it was also quite satisfying that we had been good detectives— most of the history we had rewritten for ourselves was pretty darn accurate.

As a big plus, there were moving accounts in the 1908 blurb about how my ggg-grandfather Hugh Keenan’s family had split– one faction relocating west in 1845 to eastern Iowa, the other (mine) remaining in SW Pennsylvania/West Virginia.  There were also facts revealed there about my gg-grandfather John Paine Keenan (who ventured out to Iowa but came back East) that we might have never known had we not kept Googling.

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