Maternal Lines - Gallup

When I first started researching my family history seriously…one of the families that really interested me was the Gallup family.  My great grandfather was the son of Edith Gallup and Orlando Gage.  Edith herself was a bit of an enigma herself.  When she married Orlando Gage, she was 28 years old – probably considered by most as an old maid schoolteacher.  By the time she married Orlando, she was pretty much alone in NY as most of her family had traveled west to Nebraska.  The story I always heard was that she was afraid of the Indians.  I think that marrying a widower with four children might have been a little scarier than the Indians in Nebraska.

I knew that Edith was the daughter of Silas Gallup and Phebe Montanye – but I didn’t know much about the family beyond that.  As my research began before the internet was a popular source of material, my only real place to research was my local library.  I have to admit that the research pickings are pretty slim here in Lewiston, ID and I had no access to a large genealogy library anywhere in the immediate vicinity.  So, I started looking through the books available and found some Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) books that had numerous entries about the Gallup family.  Since I really didn’t know much beyond Edith’s parents – it was a lot of information with little connection to what I currently knew.  I remember that it wasn’t too long after that when I had the chance to talk with my great uncle about the family.  He simply looked at me and asked me why I hadn’t looked at the Gallup Genealogy.  He got me his copy of the Gallup genealogy and a whole new world opened up.

This particular copy of the Gallup Genealogy was published in 1966 and I must say that this was the first professionally printed genealogy that I had seen.  My great grandfather had a copy of a Gage genealogy that I had poured over and it was likely a self-published genealogy judging by the paper and typestyle.  At the time – I was terribly naïve and inexperienced.  I had no idea that there had been researched, documented and published genealogies about several different families that had been professional published since before the start of the 20^th century.  The Gallup Association had published its first genealogy in 1896.  The one that I had in my hand had been published in 1966 and I was later to learn that another Gallup genealogy had been published in 1987.  So, I had in my hands a genealogy that answered my questions about my Gallup family ancestry.  I must say that I was glad to have a computer program to record the generations back…because there were a few too many cousins who married each other. 

So…here is my family line:

• John Gallop m. Christobel Bruschett
• John Gallup m. Hannah Lake
• John Gallup (III) m. Elizabeth Harris & Benadam Gallup m. Esther Prentice
• Nathaniel Gallup m. Margaret Gallup  & Benadam Gallup Jr m. Eunice Cobb
• Nathaniel Gallup m. Hannah Gore & Nathan Gallup m. Sarah Giddings
• Silas Gallup m. Sarah Gallup
• Ebenezer Gallup m. Susan Harden
• Silas Gallup m. Phoebe Montanye
• Edith Gallup m. Orlando Gage
• Ora Silas Gage m. Florence Christine Shawver
• Helen Marian Gage m. Frank Stewart Johnson

 I have been fascinated with the maternal lines in my family.  You are fortunate while doing genealogy to be able to find information on these lines.  Under many circumstances, the women’s maiden names are not recorded.  Sometimes you can make a guess on the surname because many times a son will have the first or middle name of the mother’s family.  The Gallup family was the first maternal family line that I researched…and I learned a great deal genealogy by exploring that book.  During the next six weeks, I spent hours upon hours every day entering the data into my genealogy program.  At the time, I was unemployed so I had lots of time.  By the time I had finished – I had entered 13,000 names into my database.  I learned several things of importance in genealogical research.

• Families tend to intermarry – there will be multiple families that you will have to pay attention to get the full picture.
• Pay attention to the siblings of your ancestor and their families – they are likely to pop up again in your research.
• There is always more to learn and there is always more to the story.
• Sometimes multiple children will have the same names in a family.  If a young child dies, very often the next child will have the same name. 
• Pay attention to the female lineages – you never know when one of them might lead you to a Mayflower ancestor (Eunice Cobb)

Not everyone is going to be as fortunate to find a family genealogy.  Even if you do, it is important to try to find the supporting information to see if you as a researcher come to the same conclusion.  When I first started trying to find out something about Edith Gallup – I never imagined that her family would be so complicated and so interesting.  I am always finding new stuff to look at and marvel at in this large and impressive family.