Gwen's Best Friend

I don’t exactly know how they met and why they were such good friends – but Richard Tannahill and Gwen Shearer were the best of friends and business partners.  Both were ambitious men and hard workers and loved hunting.  Perhaps they met when Gwen Shearer started his lumber mill up on McCormick Ridge and Richard’s father lived close by.  Perhaps they knew each other when Richard’s girlfriend and later wife was the school teacher at the Snow School which was also close by.  Whatever the case – they were best friends.  When Richard was killed in a hunting accident in 1947 – I’m sure Gwen mourned him as deeply as a family member.

My grandmother was heartbroken after her husband’s death.  She wrote in her diary on the day he died “Oh my darling Richard!”  and then wrote in the next few days about picking out the coffin and the details of the funeral service and then nothing for a few months.  When she started writing in her diary again, you could tell it was an effort for her.  In the springtime, she wrote about the delivery of the new car that Richard had ordered a few days before his death.  A bittersweet moment all its own.  It must have been harder for a widow back in the 1940’s, especially one with her own business.  Grandma ran a lumber yard with lumber from Gwen Shearer’s mill that had been hauled down by her husband, Richard off the mountain.  It was reassuring to some to see the husband in the background, but to be on her own had to be a challenge.  That isn’t to say that my grandmother couldn’t have handled herself or her business on her own.  She was a strong willed and capable woman who was raised to rely on herself and her own capabilities.  Grandma Cappy and Gwen Shearer married about a year later after Richard’s death. 

My mother was still a young child when Gwen Shearer became a permanent fixture in her life.  Gwen had never been around children and I don’t think the adjustment was easy for him.  Somehow he and my mother developed a close bond and Mom looked at him as her “Daddy!”  She always remembered her father…but Gwen was the one who was there.  Mom remembered several occasions when she would ask Gwen questions about her father and he would always take the time to tell her anything she wanted to know.  Mom said that there was never any jealousy on Gwen’s part when it came to Richard.  She got to know things about her natural father that she never would have learned except for Gwen. 

After I was eight years old, Grandpa Gwen was the only grandfather that I knew.  He was never easy to be around or easy to please.  Regardless, I adored him.  He was patient and loving towards me which I think were foreign character traits.  Mom always thought that he was someone who never really learned to love.  He had a father who was abusive and his mother did what she could to protect him and his brothers.  Grandpa Gwen was someone who expected the best out of himself and anyone else around him.  This probably made him an excellent businessman but a difficult husband and father.  For most of their married life, Grandpa Gwen and Grandma Cappy had a contentious relationship.  You had two strong willed people where neither one was ever willing to take the easy path.  They cared for each other deeply….but it wasn’t easy.  Only in their last few years did it become easier.  Both were in poor health and it seemed that they took a lot of pleasure in taking care of the other.  When Grandma died – Grandpa Gwen for the first time in his life didn’t seem so confident and sure of himself.  He was lost without her and seemed fragile and unsure what was to come.  Mom made an album of all of the sympathy cards so he could spend time looking at and reading the condolences of people.  I suppose he wanted to remember how well loved that my grandmother was.  One of the last pictures of her was always nearby for him to look at.  In his last days, he talked to her - calling “Little mama…come in!”

Gwen working at his lumber mill!

When his best friend died, I think Grandpa Gwen was determined to do the best he could as a husband and father to Richard’s wife and daughters.  There was always the thought of what could have been if Richard had lived.  However, I know that my mother loved the man that she called “Daddy” and my grandmother loved him – even it was difficult to for him to show the love he felt for his family.

DNA & Documents

I have been a member of the Pennington Research Association for about 15 years.  During that time, genealogy research has changed extensively.  Back when I started researching, the internet was very new and there wasn’t a great deal of information available on the internet.  Back then, the majority of research was still conducted in libraries and archives as well as courthouses and cemeteries.  Today, it is a brand new world of genealogy research.

Nowadays, researchers spend more time doing their research on the computer through online genealogy sites like www.FamilySearch.org, www.ancestry.com, as well as email and user boards.  These research methods are an addition to the previous methods of research.  I still think that people go to the libraries and archives and certainly they still haunt courthouses and cemeteries…but there seems to be a lot more contact via the internet.  Today, people make contact through social networking sites like Facebook or through a newslist that is surname or geographic specific as well.  It also seems to be cheaper to pick up the phone and talk to fellow researchers more often and to digitize and trade documentation through email. 

We believe that my ancestor, Levi Pennington b. 1794 is the son of Ephraim Pennington b. 1769.  You might wonder why I keep adding dates onto these names.  There are several Ephraims, Benajahs, Micajahs, & Levis…and the date is the only way to separate them.  The supposition is that our Ephraim b. 1769 is probably a son of an Ephraim b. 1745 who is also probably a son of an Ephraim b. 1724.  There is also some Benajah’s and some Micajah’s thrown in there to mess up the Ephraim soup.  The likelihood that there is a genetic tie-in is confirmed through DNA research.  The Pennington Research Association has had a DNA study that has been going on for some time.  If you are interested in learning about the DNA study, check out http://www.penningtonresearch.org/DNA_Study - Essentially there is a “super group” that includes Group 4, 7, 12, 30, 31, & 32.  This means that there is a shared family history going back at least 8 generations.  Now…that doesn’t mean that we know that actual family lines that connect back to that ancestor who lived 8 – 10 generations ago, only that we have a genetic connection.  Many of us have theorized that this past ancestor is probably Ephraim b. 1724.  My ancestor,  Ephraim b. 1769 and his descendants lived in the Ashe Co., NC region.  So, since we have the scientific connection, the question is trying to make the documentary connection – which in itself is a struggle and may not even be possible.  Many records of that earlier period have been lost or simply weren’t kept.  The only way to trace many of these families is through land records or wills and when you have so many similar names – it is hard to figure out which is which. 

So…even though we have the scientific proof, we still need to work on the documentary proof.  Guess what…this goes back to old fashioned genealogy research.  I have worked with two researchers in the past who have both made a valiant effort to puzzle out our lines.  One researcher looked at all of the land records from the late 1700’s to the early 1800’s and attempted to place these on a map.  Sometimes this isn’t that easy because the names of locations have changed.  He did a marvelous job though of placing these records on a map so it was easy to see the patterns.  Another researcher had the skill of platting many of these records.  She was familiar enough with the land and the locations that she could look at a record and draw out the plat and figure out who was next door or what happened to that specific piece of land.  

The Pennington land in Ashe Co., NC today.  This was passed from Ephraim b. 1769 to Andrew b. 1813 to Elijah!

For example, she figured out that a land record that had been Ephraim Pennington’s b. 1769 had been passed to his son, Andrew.  That specific piece of land was sold to Elijah Pennington in 1852 when Andrew Pennington left Ashe Co., NC and went to Laurel Bloomery, Johnson Co., TN.  Elijah Pennington was the son of my ancestor, Levi b. 1794 who was also Andrew’s brother and Ephraim’s son.  Even today, if you go to the Little Laurel area of Ashe Co., NC, many of those who still live there are descendants of Levi Pennington b. 1794.  There is a Pennington road, an old store with Pennington on front nearby, and a small church full of stained windows commemorating Pennington’s who had lived there.  I’m sure if you looked very closely and the inhabitants of the area, you would find that most have a connection to the Levi Pennington family.

The Little Laurel Church.

This only proves that science alone cannot fill in the blanks.  It can only be yet another clue in the research process.  Who knows, it may take a few more decades before DNA can give us any more clues.  Which means, we still need to do it the old fashioned way.  I’m not sure if my favorite part of genealogy hasn’t been the wonderful friends who I have “met” along the way.  

The Pope Quarter

My grandmother never really got much of chance to meet her husband’s mother’s family when she lived in North Dakota, but she did receive a few letters.  One was written in 1945 from Verna Pope Johnson, my great grandmother’s younger sister.  There are all kinds of interesting details in this letter if you look closely enough.  One of which was when she talked about her daughter who had married and already had several children.  The married name of this daughter was unusual enough to merit some additional research.  I got online and found all the Zinggs I could in the area around Washburn, ND and wrote them letters asking them if they were connected.  I left my phone number and address…and one day, I got a letter back!

Sharyll Zingg Tweeten was a granddaughter of Verna Pope Johnson and she had been elected by her siblings to make the contact with us.  Soon, we were making plans to travel to North Dakota and meet this new branch of the family.  My aunt and her husband as well as their granddaughter and my parents, my niece and I began the long trip to North Dakota.  Along the way, we stopped at a few spots like Craters of the Moon, Yellowstone, Buffalo Cody Museum, and Devil’s Tower.  We had two teenagers with us and felt that they should see these places.  Soon enough, we had arrived at Washburn, ND and began making our way to the Tweeten home place.  After meeting Sharyll and her husband Clint, we felt as if we were meeting old friends.

The old pictures were brought out and we were seeing photographs for the first time of family members that we had only heard about as well as stories of a family we knew very little about.  It was interesting to me personally that Sharyll’s mother’s name had been Capitola…and it was my grandmother’s name as well. I brought out some documents that I had gotten online from the Bureau of Land Management site (http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/) that listed either Shirlie Pope or her father Winslow Pope.  On one of these records, Clinton (Sharryll’s husband) paused and read it more carefully.  He got out a platte book that had been published based on some early land owners of these lands.  As he compared the land entry and the book, he got a big grin on his face.  It seems that his uncle had bought a piece of land back in the 1920’s and had farmed the land.  He had always called it the “Pope Quarter” and now Clint understood why.  That document with the description fo the land that Winslow Pope had  - was what Clint’s family had always called the Pope quarter.  Clint had never imagined that this piece of land was his wife’s great grandfather’s original homestead. 

The BLM record for Winslow Pope

The next day, Clint took Dad and me over and showed us the Pope quarter…there was nothing all that impressive about the piece of land…but it was interesting to think that this was the piece of land that my 3^rd great grandfather had homesteaded nearly a century ago!

Aunt Doodles

I used to call my uncle Claude to ask him questions about the past and old family members.  He used to always caution me that he really didn’t know all that much because he was so much younger.  Claude was the youngest of three children and was 15 and 13 years younger than his older brother and sister.  However, Claude was my only resource so I would continue to question him.  One day I called him and asked him if he remembered his Dad’s sister, Julia.  Claude told me that he didn’t remember and then we got into a discussion about where they lived at Pomeroy.  During this story, he mentioned “Aunt Doodles”  - I asked him who she was and he replied “Pop’s sister!”  Ahh…I had my answer!

Julia Friddles was born August 27, 1852 in Lenoir, Caldwell Co., NC to Moses Friddles and his first wife.  She was the eldest of the 10 known children of Moses Friddles with at least 4 wives.  She married Sidney Plaskia Prestwood on September 14, 1876 in Jefferson Co., TN.  They had three known children two of whom survived to adulthood.  I’m not sure if she and her husband divorced or separated but after 1900, she is no longer with him and he has remarried.  Her younger brother, Albert, came west with his family in the late 1880’s and he encouraged his sister to make the move as well, and she came west in 1901.  Julia and her son both applied for a homestead up on Grouse Flats, Wallowa Co., OR near her brother’s place.   However, by 1920, she had abandoned the home place and had moved to Pomeroy with her son.  She is in the 1920 census with her son and two granddaughters through her daughter Rosie.  That time period between 1910 and 1920 is somewhat hazy.  Rosie was molested at some point by one of her cousins and the case became fairly well known in the early teens and is listed online as an early court case for rape in Oregon.  Rosie married and had two children but left them with her mother and I haven’t as yet been able to locate her in 1920, although I think I have found her in California in 1930.  That is still something I am researching.  Julia is found in Walla Walla, Walla Walla Co., WA in 1930 and she passes away on April 5, 1932 at her son’s home.

Julia's grave at the Walla Walla Cemetery.

Somehow she got the nickname of Aunt Doodles…Mom remembered that her mother mentioned Aunt Doodles several times, but she was never quite sure who she was.  Once Claude realized who she was, he was able to give me information that became very valuable in locating her.  He told me that he and his mother had boarded a bus and had gone to Walla Walla when he was a little kid to go and visit her.  She was ill, and Mom Friddle thought they needed to visit her.  Claude said that it was around Easter time when they made their visit and he thought he was about 7 or 8.  Years ago, I went down to Walla Walla and located the cemetery and found out where Julia was buried as well as her son, Albert and his three wives.  There I found her death date and was pleasantly surprised at how close Claude was on the date of when she died.  I went to the library and got a copy of her obituary.  While it didn’t give me much in the way of further information, it did give me a location to look at more closely; Lenoir, Caldwell Co., NC.

Julia’s family continues to be a topic of research for me.  Every once in a while, I find something that somehow leads me into a new direction.  As I have never located in record concerning her father before 1858, I was anxious to get a copy of Julia’s death record.  Her brother Albert’s record had not given any further information on death location or the identity of the mother.  Julia’s death record lists a mother with the name of Munday.  I still don’t have the full name, but perhaps it is a clue.  It bothers me that I have never been able to locate Moses Friddles in the 1850 census nor anything else on his background.  I had always hoped that I might make progress by searching through these two older children.  While there are clues, I’m still not quite there yet.  However, I am much closer than I was years ago before I had the conversation with my uncle.  I am glad that we had that talk so long ago…he has since passed away and there is no one else to ask.  Aunt Doodles only existed in the deep recesses of his memory from his childhood – but after questioning him on other topics, he was able to remember quite a bit.  All I can say is if you have the opportunity to talk to your older generations about family members, take the opportunity and do it now.  You may never have the opportunity again!

Presidential Trivia

One of my curious activities a few years ago was writing an article for the Pennington Pedigrees on Presidential genealogy.  I have to say that it was a fun article for me to write.  If you are interested in Presidential genealogy, the first and best resource that you should look at is the work of Gary Boyd Roberts.    I believe that he is the expert on all things genealogy related to our Presidents.

Here are some interesting facts to consider…there are two presidents who share more lines in common than any other with 18 lines.  It is no surprise that it is George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George W. Bush.  They probably share genealogy with a lot of people.  I share several ancestors with the two of them including: John Gallup & Hannah Lake, John Howland & Elizabeth Tilley, Thomas Pope and Sarah Jenney.  When you throw Barbara Pierce Bush into the mix, I also share the ancestors of Fernando Thayer and Huldah Hayward. 

Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Gerald R. Ford share 17 ancestral lines in common.   I share a common line of Edmund Rice and Thomasine Frost with Calvin Coolidge.  It is no surprise that many share lines with Franklin Delano Roosevelt – I have the following: John Howland & Elizabeth Tilley.  I also share a line with Gerald R. Ford (aka Leslie Lynch King) of William Wilbore and Martha Holmes.

I could go on with several Presidents and common ancestral lines…but you will find if you have New England ancestry then you probably can connect to a President of the United States. Also of interest is that the fact that there are several who share no common lines with any other President.  These Presidents include:

• Thomas Jefferson
• James Monroe
• Andrew Jackson
• James K. Polk 
• James Buchanan
• Andrew Johnson
• Chester Arthur
• William McKinley
• Woodrow Wilson
• Dwight David Eisenhower
• John Fitzgerald Kennedy
• Ronald Reagan
• William Jefferson Clinton

You might find it interesting that our current President shares ancestral lines with seven other Presidents including:  James Madison, Harry Truman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Our Presidents have come from a lot of backgrounds and families both wealthy and poor.  They have been lawyers, Police Commissioners, Generals, tailors, and farmers.  You may like some better than others – but they are an interesting lot to look at.  You might find it curious that President Obama is not the first President to have his nation of birth questioned.  Chester Arthur was thought by some to have been born in Canada and not the United States.  Chester Arthur’s father owned a farm 15 miles across the border and some speculated that he was not a natural born citizen.  Chester Arthur went so far as to change his birth year to 1830, since his father was well established in Vermont at that time.  

It is also interesting to note that when Grover Cleveland first became President, he was bachelor.  He married a younger woman named Frances Folsom who was 21 years old and the youngest first lady we have ever had.  They had five children and four lived to be quite old, the last one died in 1995.   We know of the two sets of fathers and sons (Adams & Bushs) but there was also a grandfather and grandson – Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of William Henry Harrison.  

There was also one President who was administered the oath of office by his own father in a Vermont farmhouse.  Calvin Coolidge’s father was the local notary public and the oath was done early in the morning after hearing of Warren G. Harding’s death.  Everyone knows that John Fitzgerald Kennedy is buried at Arlington Cemetery, but did you know that William Howard Taft was as well.  Taft was also the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after his term as President and he himself administered the oath of office to two Presidents.

So as many of us enjoy a day off on President’s day – you might look up one or two on your computer and learn something about them.  You might be surprised at what you find!

Johnson DNA

Since it is President’s Day weekend coming up, I thought I would talk about my relationship with one particular President, Andrew Johnson.   Andrew Johnson was born in North Carolina to Jacob Johnson and Mary McDonough and moved to Tennessee as a young man where he married Eliza McCardle.  He became Abraham Lincoln’s Vice President in the 1864 election and after Lincoln’s assassination, he became President.  He also became the first President to be impeached.  President Johnson was definitely not one of our more successful Presidents.  However, the story how we proved our connection to him is rather interesting.

We had had circumstantial proof of the relationship for several years.  Around 2001, I received an article published by Hugh B. Johnston which quoted a letter written by Henderson Johnson, my great great grandfather’s older brother.  The letter mentions all of the family members and is addressed to Cousin Andrew.  Not too long after that, I got an actual copy of the letter from a descendant of Henderson Johnson.  Fast forward to 2009…I was contacted by the Johnson DNA group wanting to know if I knew of anyone who could be tested as a direct male relative of President Andrew Johnson.  When DNA is researched on a specific family line, you need a direct male line to test.  There is no direct male line that traces back to Andrew Johnson.  He had sons, but only his daughters had children.  So, therefore the Y-DNA test wouldn’t work on a direct descendant of Andrew Johnson.  However, it would work if someone could find a descendant of Andrew’s brother, William Patterson Johnson or through a descendant of one of his father’s brothers.  I offered up my father as someone who was descended from Moses Johnson, a younger brother of Jacob Johnson.  I was questioned if I had any documentation.  I offered up a copy of the letter and the research including census records that record members of the family up until my grandfather’s lifetime.  While I agreed that the connection was circumstantial, it was pretty convincing.  Now someone might have been offended that their research was being questioned…I was not.  Mostly because I already had the research to back it up and I was well aware of how many people claimed to be related to someone famous and had nothing to back it up.

After some thought, they decided to test my Dad for free.  His DNA test would be the one they could use to test a connection to Andrew Johnson.  They still wanted to get someone tested who was descended from William Patterson Johnson, Andrew’s brother.  They asked me if I could help and I said that I would do what I could.  Soon after they sent me some information that they found that listed the children of William Patterson Johnson.  I thought that the information looked very familiar and then looked at the source of the information and found my own website listed as the source.  I personally found this incredible funny…to have my own research sent back to me as a source.

 

With a bit of work and luck – we did eventually find that descendant of William Patterson Johnson and he was also tested.  He and my father’s tests matched and provided us with a scientific confirmation of the relationship.  Along the way, a descendant of Silvanus Johnson was tested.  It was always thought that Andrew Johnson was possibly descended from Silvanus and this was a line that was in most genealogies or histories about Andrew Johnson.  Unfortunately for us…DNA told us that there is no connection. So, here we are with a line that probably only traces back to a William Johnson who was probably the father of both Jacob Johnson and my great great great grandfather Moses Johnson as well as a few other brothers.  As of right now, we can’t take it any further but there are some tantalizing DNA similarities with some other Johnson lines that might lead us further back.  DNA research in our circumstances has proven a valuable tool.  It has confirmed the lines from William Johnson down and dismissed the line going back.  Who knows what we will ever find?  Andrew Johnson’s family was not wealthy and there isn’t a wealth of data to search on that will give us many answers.  You might say the paper trail is cold.  Perhaps science will provide us more answers as we learn more about DNA results.

An Educational Pioneer

Rev. Ralph Wheelock is someone of importance that I imagine most people know very little about.  He was born in Dorrington, Shropshire England on 14 May 1600 and attended Cambridge and was a contemporary of John Milton.  He got a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1626 and a Master of Arts in 1631. Rev. Wheelock married Rebecca Clarke on 17 May 1630 in England.  Their first three children were born in England and they immigrated in 1637 to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and set out like many others to build a new life.  (According to some there were about 20,000 immigrants in the Great Migration years from 1630-1640 – for more information check Puritan Migration to New England (1620-1640)

Rev. Wheelock and his wife settled in Watertown, MA and later joined in a plan to create a settlement further up the Charles River later to be called Dedham.  Rev Wheelock was involved with helping to found the town, involved in its early government and various other governmental functions.   In 1651, Rev. Wheelock and his family moved to the town of New Dedham, later called Medfield.  Rev. Wheelock is counted upon as one of its founders.  All of these duties and activities make Rev. Ralph Wheelock significant in the early years of these communities; however what I find to be truly significant is his role as an educator.

One of Rev. Wheelock’s early activities was raising money to help fund the new college at Harvard which was founded in 1636.  Rev. Wheelock was a minister by profession but he was an educator at heart.  According to some records, he was probably one of the first public school teachers in America.  In 1644, Dedham established the first free school in Massachusetts that was supported by taxes, and Rev. Ralph Wheelock was the first teacher at this school.  He was an enthusiastic teacher and supported of education in early Massachusetts.  Reverend Wheelock died in 1683 in Medfield, MA surviving his wife by three years (she died 1 Jan 1680) It must have been an important part of his family philosophy because his great grandson went on to become the founder of Dartmouth College.  If you are interested in more info on Rev. Wheelock check out the Biography of Reverend Ralph Wheelock on Rick Sullivan’s website.

My particular line to Rev. Ralph Wheelock is the following:

• Rev. Ralph Wheelock m. Rebecca Clarke
• Benjamin Wheelock, Sr. m. Elizabeth Bullen
• Benjamin Wheelock m. Huldah Thayer
• Jonathan Wheelock m. Martha Wight
• Asa Wheelock m. Rachel Drury
• Mary Wheelock m. Winslow Pope
• Francis Pope m. Belinda Willey
• Winslow Lonsdale Pope m. Nancy Ann Marie Lyons
• Shirlie Louisa Pope m. Ulpian Grey Johnson
• Frank Stewart Johnson m. Helen Marian Gage

Frank and Marian were my grandparents.  When most of us have early American history, most teacher gloss over these early years.  We are taught a bit about the Pilgrims and maybe a little about the foundation of the other colonies.  We don’t learn about some of these early pioneers to our country.  As a nation, we celebrate the pioneers in our heritage, but I bet the image that comes to mind are those brave souls who traveled with their wagons across the Oregon Trail.  These early immigrants to the New World left behind everything and while some were pursing financial opportunities, many of these early pioneers were pursing the freedom to practice their own faith the way they chose.  Some like Rev. Wheelock also took the opportunity to help start a free school so that all children would have an opportunity for an education.  I wish all of those students today who bemoan the fact that they have to go to school that it is a privilege to have the opportunity of an education and to take advantage of that opportunity instead of squandering it!