All My Ancestors

You just never know when you start trolling through newspapers.

With work in the library and client work I haven’t had much time for looking around my own lines, but this week I came down with a sinus infection that kept me in bed but not off the net. I’ve written several times about my “not very well-liked” 2nd great grandfather John Osborne who died in 1865 in Humboldt, Gibson County, Tennessee. Shortly after his death, some of the older sons moved to Texas, and my great-grandmother and the younger children moved as well.

The two youngest children in this family were daughters–Alice Massey Osborne and Lillie Lenoir Osborne. (I have this theory that the middle names for these girls came from the surnames of their older sisters’ husbands. The older sisters were from John Osborne’s first marriage to Violet Cathey–Martha Jane married Henry Carter Massey and sister Harriet married Walter Franklin Lenoir and these families remained in Tennessee after the war when most of the rest of the family went to Texas.)

Despite not being able to locate many of this group in Texas on the 1870 census, I do have a record for my great-grandparents marrying in 1871 in Grimes County, Texas.

But back to the girls.

Alice and Lillie were about 9 and 6 when their father died. Their older brother Charles W. was my great-grandfather who married Gertrude Susanna Mobley in 1871 in Texas. Alice married Alexander Franklin Brigance in 1874, also in Grimes County, Texas, and Lillie married Thaddeus S. Clark in Falls County in 1885. In 1880, Lillie is not living with her mother and brother John Morrison in Grimes County–I believe she is in Bell County boarding in the household of John and Clarinda Regans, working as a teacher. Both of her older brothers George C., now widowed, and Charles W. are also living with their families in this county.

I was prowling through various online sources such as Find A Grave, Texas death and marriage records at FamilySearch, and a couple of newspaper databases, tracking descendants of these two women. One of Lillie’s daughters lived in Waco and fortunately, the Waco newspaper is available through my NewspaperArchive subscription. I determined that Lillie’s daughter Rosa married William E. Thrash, and, based on several newspaper articles that their daughter Adelaide married a man named Lee.

Then this article appeared–

Pampa Daily News 8 Dec 1946

What are the chances of two people in the same family being involved in major hotel fires in the same year?

Further, I actually found this article in several newspapers, including the Dallas paper. But this one from the Pampa, Texas, paper is particularly interesting since this is where my great-grandfather Charles W. Osborne and his family “landed.” He died there in 1926 but several of his descendants still reside there–it’s the site of our family reunion every two years. I wonder if any of the family recognized the names–I’d certainly never heard the story through the usual family grapevines.

Neither of these hotel fires was familiar to me–so, of course, this sent me off on a whole other chase. At which time I found this picture! Again, it appeared in several newspapers since it went out on the AP wire but this one is from the Cullman, Alabama newspaper.

This is Langdon Thrash in an Atlanta hospital in December 1946, being ministered to by nurse Mrs. Gloria Horton. As the story indicates, he survived the Winecoff Hotel fire by putting his head out the window and closing the window so he couldn’t withdraw it. The firemen found him unconscious. All of his possessions with him were destroyed but his life was spared, unlike 119 of the other residents. The article on the Winecoff Hotel in Wikipedia indicates it remains the deadliest hotel fire in US history.

There were no such photos of Adelaide’s son Billy, but there were several stories about the fire at the LaSalle Hotel in Chicago earlier in the year, June 5. Many of the stories about the Winecoff Hotel fire indicated that if the lessons of the LaSalle fire had been learned, many of the fatalities of the Atlanta fire could have been prevented. Neither building had sprinklers nor effective fire escapes–building codes were put into place soon thereafter as a result of these tragedies. Billy evidently escaped with no severe injuries and lived long and well if he turned out to be who I think he was.

That’s for another post.

Bottom line, newspapers are wonderful resources and we are fortunate to live in the day of digital availability of SOME of the stories published in them about our ancestors’ lives.

1 Comment »

Hubbo and I are taking a vacation.  The criteria is that it has to be someplace cool but not high altitude.

So we’re going to Wisconsin.

And, interestingly enough, in my family of Southerners, I have something genealogical to research in Wisconsin.

A few years ago I found this Tennessee Historical Quarterly with a copy of a water color painting on the cover.

I don’t remember how I found this particular subject, but it includes an article about the 12th Wisconsin Infantry in West Tennessee, authored by Dennis K. McDaniel.  The cover is one of the watercolors of James Gaddis, a member of the 12th, and this particular painting includes, down in the left hand corner, an image of the home and hotel of my great-great-grandfather, John Osborne, in Humboldt, Gibson County, Tennessee.

Alarm at Humboldt

I have contacted the Wisconsin Veterans Museum and the Research Archivist has confirmed that they do indeed have these watercolors.  I didn’t find them in the online catalog, but they have been cataloged, records generated, and the images and records are in line to be uploaded into the catalog of objects.  Some of them are on display in the Civil War gallery and I can make an appointment to look at the original.  I can also order a photographic reproduction I hope arrives in time for my Osborne family reunion early in August.

A few years ago I had opportunity to do some research at the Tennessee State Library and Archives about this time and place.  As with much research about topics during the Civil War, I didn’t find much.  I was able to read on microfilm extant copies of the Soldier’s Budget, a newspaper published by the Twelfth.  I hoped for a mention of the soldiers staying in the hotel, but I didn’t find any mention of my relative.  It did certainly give me a flavor of the place, though.  The soldiers had decided to publish their newspaper when they found the printing press in a chicken coop.  I thought it was interesting to have watercolors and newspapers from this unit stationed in Humboldt–they evidently had enough time for these ventures and I’m glad to have their records.

So I’m looking forward to seeing the watercolor up close and personal.  And to see if there’s any other info on James Gaddis’ time in Humboldt.  And to vacation in a place cooler than Oklahoma.

No Comments »

Earlier this month I attended the Federation of Genealogical Societies in Knoxville, Tennessee.

As always, I took the opportunity of being in another place to check out what might be there about my relatives.

I knew that my direct line, my great-great grandfather John Osborne (1808 NC-1865 TN) was actually in West Tennessee (one of Tennessee’s grand divisions, as we heard multiple times that week).  But I also knew his brother Thomas (1810 NC-1871 TN) had been in East Tennessee.

One of the sessions was at the Knox County Public Library, a building holding a wonderful collection of agencies for east Tennessee research.  The East Tennessee History Center is there, which holds the Knox County Archives and the McClung Collection, among other treasures.

The McClung Collection was where I hit paydirt.  In one of the “120 linear feet of genealogical manuscript collections,” I found a folder on the Thomas Osborne family.  Titled the “Rhea Alexander Collection,” it was obviously the papers of one of Thomas’ descendants.

In that folder, I found that there’s a good chance that the home Thomas Osborne lived in is still standing.  This home was a wedding present to him and his first wife, Mary Jane Wright (ca 1812 TN-1843 TN) from her parents.  This brick home is referenced in their son John Wright Osborne‘s (1841 TN-1922 AZ)  Tennessee Civil War Questionnaire he completed about 1920 from his home in Tacoma, Washington.  There was a photocopy of an old photograph of the house and there was reference to the folks who were living in the home in the 1970′s–the date of most of the papers in that folder.  It’s name is Sunnyside and I hope to return one of these days to visit the place.

The other treasures I found in that folder are photos of Thomas’s daughter Martha Osborne Siler (ca 1835 TN-1895 CA), the sister of John Wright.  In his Questionnaire, he references his nieces and nephews named Siler, and here was a photo of their parents!  There was even a note in that file that indicated that David W. Siler had been previously married, and that his previous wife had been identified as Catherine Osborne, a cousin to Martha.  I have yet to verify this and there was no indication as to the source of this information.

But, here are Martha and David.  It’s obvious these copies were made in Tacoma, Washington, but one of the letters in the Rhea Alexander file referred to the originals.  Another name to try to track!

And another example of what can turn up when searching the siblings of your ancestors.  I have no pictures of my line, but I am most gratified to have these.



Martha Osborne Siler and David W. Siler photos from the Rhea  Alexander Collection, 512.190,  McCLung Historical Collection, Knoxville, Tennessee.

2 Comments »

Another farm auction was held out in the Texas panhandle today.

It was the auction of my uncle’s farm equipment.  He’s my dad’s suviving sibling and tomorrow is his 82nd birthday.  He’s farmed my grandparents’ place since their deaths in the ’80s.

This was his last year to farm and when the family LLC voted to sell the farm, the bid submitted by my brothers and me was 2nd highest.

So the farm has passed out of the family.  And my uncle’s equipment was sold today.  It was probably very cold and my cousin said her dad was going to be there no matter the weather.  That didn’t surprise me.  That generation didn’t shirk from hard situations.

Tracing my family back to the 1700s shows no profession (with one exception) other than farming.  One of my two brothers would have loved to have farmed but couldn’t make it work.  Our other brother and I are not farmers.  This creates a little dissonance for me–I’m not willing to try to make a living farming, but it makes me incredibly sad to know that the end of farming has come for this branch of my family.  I think it would have been of some comfort if we’d been able to keep the land in the family, but that was not to be either.

4 Comments »

Randy‘s Saturday night fun challenge involves going to Public Profiler and checking the distribution of one’s surname.

When I checked my current surname,Spindle, that of my husband, I got the results I expected:

The concentrations of this surname are in Virginia and Texas.  Looking closer at Virginia, the deepest concentration is in Essex County, the county where we found my husband’s relatives still living back in the 1980s.

Only slightly behind Virginia is Texas, where my husband was born.  In fact, his great-great grandfather, born in Virginia right before the Civil War, came to Texas after the War, and populated the state with 12 children.  He died and is buried in New Mexico.  Others branches of the Spindle family also came to Texas and so this distribution is pretty much as I expected.

I wanted to investigate the prevalence of this surname in Germany as I suspect that the surname originated there–my husband’s immigrant ancestor came as a person sentenced to transportation in 1732 from the Old Bailey in London.  I was not able to get the Germany distribution to come up–perhaps not enough persons there with the surname.  But after the US, the United Kingdom was the next country.  The US was only 2.06 per million, and the UK was even less at .11 per million.

I then decided to check my own surname, Osborne.  It’s a more common name.  My line, as far back as I can trace, originated in North Carolina, migrated to Tennessee and then to Texas.

But it’s down the list according to frequency per million–Australia is first, then the UK, New Zealand and Canada.  The US is fifth with over 270 per million.  And Kentucky is the state with the highest concentration.  Which is interesting to me as I know of none of my fairly profilic Osborne line being in Kentucky.

But you can see that far more widely distributed and more prevalent than Spindle.  Not unexpected.  Usually, if I meet someone named Spindle, we’re related.  Named Osborne, not so much.  Osborne is a much more international name, though I still suspect it may have originated in the British Isles somewhere.

All in all, a fun exercise.  It’s always interesting to see who lives where and how it matches your own research.  I’ve had several inquiries re: Osborne from Australia–this explains it.

No Comments »

Charles Winfield Osborne and Gertrude Susanna Mobley Osborne

My great-grandparents

Fairview Cemetery

Pampa, Gray County, Texas

No Comments »

written for the 78th Carnival of Genealogy

Despite having grown up in a rural community, and in a family that had nothing but farmers, which inevitably included some livestock, I didn’t do lots of horseback riding. This is undoubtedly due at least in part to my own terror of most four-legged creatures–dogs, cattle, horses, you name it, with the exception of cats. I managed to negotiate the farm life without too much interaction with horses, except that the excitement and appeal of riding them sometimes overtook me and I had to try to ride. My aunt, only 4 years older than me, spent hours riding through the pastures. I wanted to be able to do that, but what if the horse saw a snake? or bucked me off? or saw a snake AND bucked me off? or was charged by a crazed bull? or stepped in a hole? or ran away with me, dragging me hanging from one stirrup and bumping me along the ground where I’d hit my head on a rock? or lightening struck me while I was out there all alone? The terrifying possibilities were endless.

My granddad religiously read the American Quarter Horse and could recite horse genealogies like I can recite my own family members. He talked of sires and dams and which horse was “out of” which–following these bloodlines and their accomplishments was his passion. Once when I was taking him to visit what was then the National Cowboy Hall of Fame here in Oklahoma City, a college friend asked me if he knew any of the cowboys enshrined there. I answered that he probably knew some of them, but he was more likely to know their horses. Sure ’nuff, he recited the names of their steeds, along with their “out of’s”.

This picture is undoubtedly from one of the traveling carnivals that came to town each year. That’s my brother in front of me, in the hat. He was considered “good” with horses. and cattle. and various other four-legged critters. Still is. Note my moccasins. I was never able to wrangle a pair of boots from anyone, but I did have several pair of moccasins.

My maternal grandparents lived on a ranch in South Dakota. They had an old gray mare called Sedan, named for her original home in Sedan, New Mexico, as I recall. She was gentle when everyone else rode her but she knew my terror and managed to act up every time I was on her. When we were young teens, Granddad bought my brother and I a paint pony–he was brown and white and part shetland. My whole life I’d heard how onery and sometimes just plain mean shetland ponies were. Ours certainly lived up to that reputation, at least when I was aboard. My grandmother named him “Flip” because I was always getting flipped off, so to speak. He managed to trot hard enough to bounce me off when he saw the barn OR he would ride close enough to the fence to brush me off. He only behaved that way when I was riding him. Or at least my brother managed to get his bluff in on him so that he would behave when Thad was riding him.

Here’s Flip behaving beautifully with my brother aboard–my brother in his hat and boots, once again.

And here’s an older picture in my collection. I don’t know the name of the horse in this picture, but I do know the kids aboard. They are my uncle Pete and his cousin Winifred. This photo must have been taken about 1922, probably near Pampa, Gray County, Texas. It could have been at either of their homes or the home of their grandparents–at this time, they all lived northeast of Pampa, if I’m correctly remembering my dates.

So there were always horses around. But it was better for me to not be around horses. They just weren’t my friends despite my wanting to be a good rider. I can tell you how to do it, but I can’t actually do it.

Sort of like dieting.

4 Comments »

Last week’s Genea-Blogger prompt was to ask a guest to blog.  This suggestion came at an opportune time since my youngest son had just accompanied me to family reunion.  AND he agreed to write this week’s post for me.  Thanks, Dave.  Here it is:

Notes on the reunion in Texas

It had been months since I declined my mother’s request to attend family reunion.  Dad usually accompanied her to these things; and besides, I hadn’t any but the faintest of notions how I was related to the other folks attending.  Indeed, the labyrinthine familial chains binding me to them were reflected in cumbersome titles like “second-cousin-once-removed,” or “third-cousin-once-over-on-your great-great grandmother’s side,” etc.

In any case, my father took sick the week of the reunion thereby leaving my mother without a date.  So, I offered to go.  We left on Friday, July 31st, for Pampa, Texas. Soon into our trip, I was glad I’d gone.  My grandparents lived in Perryton – which is about 60 miles due north of Pampa – so I spent a lot of time as a boy in west Texas.  The sky and farm and ranchlands seem to stretch out into forever in part of the country, and seeing it again brought back pleasant, nostalgic memories.

On the way we stopped in Miami, Texas (pop. 588) so mom could take a picture of her Uncle “Scoops” Osborne’s gravestone.  While looking for Scoops, I noticed an inscription on a gravestone which said “May he rest gently forever and forever gently on our minds.” Standing there in the town cemetery, encased by high hills on either side, feeling a slight breeze on my face, I could think of no more gentle a place to rest.

We arrived in Pampa that evening and settled into our room.  After a nice dinner at “Texas Rose Steakhouse” (I kept calling it “Tokyo Rose Steakhouse” for some reason) mom went to bed and I went out to a bookstore.  Buying a Cormac McCarthy novel, I came back to the room to read the rest of the evening away.

The next day we got up and made our way to the First United Methodist Church.  It was funny meeting these folks and struggling to figure out exactly how we were related to one another; it was as if the struggle brought us together more than any ancestral ties could.  In most cases we simply accepted as fact that we were family, and promptly dispensed with the rest of  the details.  After lunch, mom gave a presentation about the earliest (discovered) male relative, a John Osborne from Tennessee.  He apparently was something of a rascal, leaving his children with not much more than a series of failed business ventures and personal debt.
After the reunion we went to the town cemetery, our last stop before heading home.  It was a lovely place, with long walkways shaded by tall trees.  Mom snapped her pictures and we got into the car for the ride back to Oklahoma City.  We briefly entertained going through Perryton so we could see my grandmother and grandfather’s graves.  We decided against it, with mom saying “Mamaw and Papaw would understand….they know what its like to travel in the Panhandle.”

Thanks, Dave, both for going with me and for the guest post.

1 Comment »

This past weekend I traveled out to the Texas panhandle to my family reunion.  Sometimes I forget how beautiful those wide open spaces can be.  The reunion was held in Pampa, about an hour south of where I grew up on the high plains.  Just this much further south, there are lots of draws and buttes and canyons.  Any romantic thoughts I had of the place, however, were put into perspective when we stopped at the Miami Cemetery gate–the sign reads “watch out for snakes.”  It made my search for my aunt and uncle’s graves a little more tenuous, but I had help–an intrepid brother and son.  Thanks, guys.  Brother T. won the prize for spotting the actual graves.

Lowell Cooper "Scoops" Osborne 1914-1989

Fannie Blanche Tolbert Osborne 1918-1998

….and the view north from the cemetery

Miami, Roberts County, Texas

1 Comment »

Read this at your own risk.  It’s a twisted tale.  As in dna double helix twisted.

Christopher Osborne is my brickwall.  I have his will dated 1789, probated in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.  He mentions sons Jonathan (c 1771-1826) and Christopher, Jr. (1785-1854), as well as his 8 daughters.

Oh, and by the way, his wife Sarah might be pregnant, he says.

Son Jonathan marries, remains in western North Carolina, and has 10 sons with his wife Martha.

Christopher Jr. marries about 1802 to Elizabeth Kizor in Cabarrus County.  In 1807 he marries Catherine Furr, and they move to Dallas County, Alabama in 1818.

Despite lots of Osborne families in western North Carolina about this time, I cannot place Christopher in one of them.  DNA at the Osborn/Ausburn has turned up two more matches.  One is a known descendant of Christopher, Jr, who varies on two markers on a 37 marker test from my brother, a descendant of Jonathan.  This is apparently within the scope of acceptibility for these two men being 3rd and 4th great-grandsons.

The other match is for a man in Georgia named Ausburn.  He is descended from a James Osborne who appeared in Georgia about 1875, married, fathered a child and then disappeared, building railroad depots, according to family lore.  Ausburn and Osborne match precisely on 37 markers, and James was known to be from North Carolina.  This leads me to believe that James and Jonathan are perhaps more closely related than are James and Christopher Jr.

Enter Moses.  To further complicate things, there is a Moses Osborne (c1785-?) in the same neighborhood as Christopher Osborne, Jr., both owning land near Rock Hole Creek in current day Rowan County.  Moses is the brickwall for another branch of Osbornes, many of whom remain in North Carolina.  Unfortunately, the person most interested in solving the Moses-mystery is not an Osborne and cannot be tested to match Christopher.  I was able to track down another descendant of Moses-she was not really interested in knowing more about the family history.  She did provide some tenuous male Osborne leads that I need to pursue.

My current theory is that James, progenitor of the Ausburn line, is related to Moses.  This James would have been born about 1850 in North Carolina.

But who is Moses?  A brother to my brickwall Christopher?  Or is he the son born after Christopher’s death?  Or could he a child of Christopher, Jr. from his first marriage?  If the dates we have for Moses and Christopher, Jr. are correct, Moses is probably too old to be Christopher Jr.’s son.  Or is there any relationship at all?

I feel like we are so close to solving the Christopher mystery, and yet, so many unanswered questions!  Writing this summary helps–I’ll just keep working.  May the dna gods be kind.

3 Comments »