Not a family pic, but some pictures from my collection I thought appropriate for the new year. Newgrange, a “Megalithic Passage Tomb” I visited in Ireland in September 2007. Its interior chamber is only lit for about 15 minutes at the winter solstice. I feel privileged to have gotten to go inside and experience this place.
The nearby River Boyne
Entrance to the chamber
This is a map from the Savannah Memorial Cemetery in Rosemead, California.
The yellow highlighted portion at the left shows the burial site of Martha Jane Ball Cromwell, (1858 IA – 1938 CA).
She does not have a tombstone. Another thing on my “to do” list.
Next month is my birthday, maybe this goes on my wish list. 
You can read more about her on this blog or at www.findagrave.com.
Thanks to some generous researchers, I have in my possession a copy of a letter written by an attorney on behalf of a person named H. R. Mitchell. The letter is dated 4 September 1875 and is sent from the office of Weaver & Potter, attorneys at law in Gainesville, Cooke County, Texas. It is addressed to my 3rd great-grandfather, Ephraim M. Mitchell (1814-after 1870), who, if he were indeed living at that time, was in Shelby County, Texas. We don’t have a precise date of death for Ephraim–we have him on the 1870 census and then no more mention, and as far as we can tell, his grave is not marked. The letter cites H. R. Mitchell as a nephew of John Mitchell ((1791-1847), father of Ephraim.
This is part of the documentation establishing that Ephraim’s father’s name was John–do you have any idea how many John Mitchells were in Texas and Mississippi and Tennessee during this time period? (Those are the places we know this Mitchell family lived.) So I am glad to have one piece of confirmation that Ephraim’s father’s name was John, but tracking the right John is a task. And if H. R. is a nephew, then his father must be a brother to John, right? (Assuming that H. R.’s mother did not marry a man named Mitchell, which one of Ephraim’s daughters did.)
So I took this as an opportunity to try to expand my knowledge of the Mitchell family. First I tried to locate H. R. Mitchell on the census. Since he and Ephraim would be cousins, and Ephraim was born about 1814, I decided to look for a person with this name who was born about 1820. The letter was written from Texas so I started there. No luck in 1860, 1870 or 1880. Then I decided I’d better confirm that there actually were attorneys in Gainesville named Weaver and Potter. W.T.G. Weaver and C.C. Potter were written in very small print above the main logo on the paper. I was able to find attorneys by these names in Gainesville in both 1870 and 1880.
Back to H. R. Mitchell. Since he didn’t show up in Texas, I decided to look in Mississippi. In 1860, there is an H. R. Mitchell, age 37, born in Tennessee, living in Yalobusha County, Mississippi, who appears to be a good candidate. Also in the household, supposedly his wife and sons–Mary A., James R., Samuel E., Theodore G., and George. Going back another 10 years to 1850, I found H. R. Mitchell, age 29, living “North of the Yallobusha River” in Yallobusha County, Mississippi. He is in a household with a William Miles, age 49 and Ann Miles, age 48. Also in the household are Ferdinand Mills, age 11 and James B. Mills, age 2. These finds helped immensely as I had no idea where in Mississippi the Mitchells were and this gave me a place to begin. At his point, I wasn’t positive this was the same H. R., but I had not found anyone else with these initials or even who’s name started with H. that was about the right age.
Next I went to the message boards for Yalobusha County, where I did find some information about these families. H.R. evidently stands for Hiram Reed, and Mary A. Mills was his wife. [Note to self: Ephraim's middle name is provided as Miles, but could it in reality be Mills?] Looking through the message boards as well as the online family trees at Ancestry, H. R. is probably Hiram Reed Mitchell, son of David Mitchell and Mary Susannah Buchanan. David Mitchell was born in Shelby County, Tennessee in 1796. All this information matches what I have found about Ephraim and his father John.
I am treating all this so far as a working hypothesis. I was not able to find any information that links John to David. Yet. They are about the same age and they both have Tennessee and Mississippi connections. But so far, nothing definitive that ties them together as brothers.
I know that “relationship language” was not used in the same way we used it today. But what could “nephew” from 1875 mean? So far, the siblings I have found for John Mitchell include George, Andrew, James, Jane, Nancy, Susan, Margaret and Mary (who married Ephraim McCracken–is this the source for Ephraim Mitchell’s name?) Again, this information has not been proven or researched in original records by me–just a working hypothesis.
More later as I continue to try to track down Ephraim’s origins. I’ve never seen any mention of a mother’s name. His father John died in Mexico, during the Mexican War, though Spurlin’s index (Texas veterans in the Mexican War : muster rolls of Texas military units) does not indicate he died of wounds. Also listed is a younger John Mitchell in the same unit–is this a son, a brother to Ephraim? or perhaps another “nephew?”
My great-grandmother, 2nd from left, Roxy Grace Cromwell Anderton (1887 AR – 1965 CA),
with 3 of her 5 daughters.
from the left, Katy, Grace Anderton, Elois, and Inez
probably at 7681 11th Street Buena Park, California about 1948 1952
where Auntie Lois lived for over 50 years
(thanks to Cousin Kitty, daughter of Katy, for the update)
My great “Uncle Jack”
Gordon Benton Cromwell (1898 TX – 1988 ?CA)
Olive Lawn Memorial Park
La Mirada, Los Angeles County, California
Tombstone for my 2nd great-grandmother Sarah Ann Davis Anderton (1841 AL – 1915 OK)
Buried in Blue Mound Cemetery
Beaver County, Oklahoma
Thaddeus Morrison Osborne, my grandfather, on the left, and George Merrimon Cooper his brother-in-law on the right. Probably taken in Roberts County, Texas, where both families appear on the 1920 census. Grandad was married to Uncle George’s sister Rachel and Uncle George was married to Grandad’s sister Eva.
Tombstone for Joseph L. Webb (1792 NY -1829 OH)& his wife Isabella Ball Webb Pickett (1798 NY-1874 OH)
Oak Grove Cemetery, Delaware, Delaware County, Ohio
The day after Thanksgiving I did what we genealogists recommend and support.
I interviewed my aunt.
A little background. My aunt is only 4 1/2 years older than I. She was born when my mother was 14 and their brother was 16. My grandmother was 40. Needless to say, she and I have always been more of the same generation than different ones.
My mother (her sister) and grandparents (her parents) all died in 1998–Annus Horribilus as Queen Elizabeth II deemed her 1992. My uncle (her brother) died last year. So in some ways, it’s just us now. We try to get together every Thanksgiving and this year I decided I would try interviewing her. I really didn’t think she’d go along with it and I thought it might be redundant since we shared so many of the same experiences. But I wanted to give it a try.
I started working on family history about 25 years ago, and part of the impetus was the stories that my grandmother told me. I felt like I had done a pretty good job of asking my questions and writing down what they told me. But the longer I’ve worked on a timeline for my grandparents’ lives, and examined photos, and tried to put the bits and pieces together, I’ve found I still have questions. So I decided to interview my one remaining source, Aunt Cheri.
I used some of the questions in “My Memories” from Holly T. Hansen and Jennifer Hunt Johnson’s “Capture the Memories” series as a starter. I was surprised at how pleased my aunt seemed that I was asking to interview her. She sat up a little straighter and though typically a rather shy person, spoke eagerly and forthrightly. I captured our conversation on an Olympus digital recorder–I have yet to transfer it to my computer, but editing will be done with Audacity, a free program I’ve used before. We stopped after about an hour, planning to come back to it. I should also say that I offered to send this book home with her so she could answer the questions in private, but she indicated she’d rather do it by talking.
One of the things I found out was that my grandad and his dad were perhaps WPA or CCC workers, something I never knew. This came up when I asked her about how her family handled money. The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl formed my granddad, her father. But I’d never known about the work off the farm–I asked her if she had any idea how they’d managed to hold onto their land out in Beaver County, Oklahoma. My grandmother had told me lots of stories about the window sills filled with silt and hanging wet sheets over the windows. My granddad’s father had asthma so this was bound to be so hard on him. [Read Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time for a fascinating account of this time and place.] I never heard Granddad talk about this time, though I did find that he kept fritzing when I told him I was reading the newspapers from the time and place. I remember finding that they were behind in their taxes a year or two, which in retrospect, was appalling to him. I should have been gentler with my approach and I might have gotten a little more information from him, not to mention being a little more comforting about the importance of the long view. My grandparents always had enough money when I knew them–Granddad was a very savvy money manager and never bought anything on credit.
Perhaps as important as the information I gained was the confirmation that interviewing relatives is important, even those with whom you have spent a great deal of time and who are “your” generation. I hope I get to do extend this interview and now I have plans to “corner” my younger brothers.
Just a confirmation of how important it is to talk to the living.
