All My Ancestors

This past month, I spent a week at the glorious Samford Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research.  This was my 5th trip there and this time I chose to take the course on Military History taught by Christine Rose.  Of course, I learned a lot!  It was wonderful to see all those examples of the types of records left by our ancestors when they provided military service.

But I am a little sad, too.  And I was reminded of this as I was reading through many fellow geneabloggers’ posts about their Revolutionary War ancestors.  As far as I know, I have no direct Revolutionary War ancestors who were soldiers during that War.  I haven’t given up finding one, but so far, none.

I have lots of ancestors who provided patriotic service, including a 6th great-grandmother, Amy Williams Jackson.  She filed in June 1783 from Union County, South Carolina for reimbursement for various supplies furnished to the troops.  Her petition is under her own name rather than her husband Ralph’s.  I am curious about this as women weren’t usually listed under their own names.  Her husband had died the previous month, so perhaps this is the reason.  Amy and Ralph has sons who served in the Revolution, but not my direct ancestor, Ralph Jackson, Jr.

There are others–the Mitchells who were in North Carolina and then Maury County, Tennessee, my 4th great-grandfather, Christopher Osborne in North Carolina.  My husband’s 4th great-grandfather John Spindle in Virginia.  All these persons are listed in the DAR database as having provided patriotic service–supplying everything from forage to beef and brandy.

I do have an War of 1812 vet–a 4th great-grandfather John B. Cromwell who served in the Georgia militia.  His son, John Wesley Cromwell, served in the Confederate Army–First Cherokee Mounted Volunteers, Co. A.  I also have a Mexican War ancestor–another 4th great-grandfather, John Mitchel who joined up at the age of 56 (!) from Texas and died in Mexico in 1847.  A second great-grandfather, John B. Cooper, died in the Civil War, along with 3 of his brothers.

None of my grandfathers or great-grandfathers, as far as I know, served.  I have to get to the great-great grandfather level before I find direct ancestors who served–and those all in the Civil War on the side of the Confederates.  [My then 8 year old son asked me years ago if I couldn't find any "winners" who were our relatives in the Civil War.  I told him he was born into the wrong family if he wanted northerners.  He's since reconciled himself to this sad fact.]  :-)

I am grateful for the service provided by ALL of our ancestors.  I have uncles who served in WWI, WWII, and Korea.  God bless them for their sacrifice and their service.  My dad always said my brother and I were his “deferments.”  His brothers just older than him and just younger both served.  So once again, I’ve missed having a direct ancestor who was a veteran.  I guess I’ll have to be happy with the older generations having served AND the fact that some of my relatives may have enabled some of yours to serve in NC, SC, and VA by providing supplies.

Happy Independence Day to us all.  God bless America, from sea to shining sea!

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Today I am mailing in my husband’s SAR application.

I am both thrilled to be sending it in and chagrined that it has taken me so long.

When we first started researching his family, we discovered there were no Spindles registered as Patriots in the National Society for the Sons of the American Revolution.

My husband is not a joiner. Those of you who know him know that is probably the understatement of the century.

But he has wanted to be an SAR member for a very long time. I have worked through three different chapter registrars–one of them is now deceased. Sad, but true.

But through my work at the library at the Oklahoma Historical Society I met the most helpful man who was willing to do the bit of hand-holding that I needed.

And it was so much easier than I ever imagined. (Of course it’s not accepted yet but I’ve been given hope.)

I had the line back to John Spindle, Jr. who furnished beef and brandy to the Continental Army. What I did not have was a piece of documentation for each date and line on the application.  Documentation of John Jr’s marriage to Mary Barbee Sears has taunted researchers for years, for example.

Turns out, I may not need it. The application for SAR says very clearly, “Proof is needed only for individuals in the bloodline.” Between birth and death records, wills and census records and probates for each of the 7 Spindle generations back to John, Jr., it’s not difficult at all to document.

Another SAR member filed a Supplemental Application back in 1997, so while we aren’t the first to get John Spindle, Jr. on file as a patriot, here’s hoping what I’m sending in will work for Hubbo to finally get his wish.

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written for:

Carnival of African-American Genealogy

Restore My Name – Slave Records and Genealogy Research

Restore My Name – Slave Records and Genealogy Research, will kick-off this African-American themed carnival intended to be a gathering place for the community to share and learn about African-American genealogy.

This first CoAAG theme will deal with how records of slave ownership are handled by the genealogy researcher. Contributors will be asked to write a blog post (at their own blogs) on one or more of the following aspects:

What responsibilities are involved on the part of the researcher when locating names of slaves in a record?

Does it matter if the record(s) are related to your ancestral lines or not?

As a descendant of slave owners, have you ever been pressured by family not to discuss or post about records containing slave names?

As a descendant of slaves, have you been able to work with or even meet other researchers who are descendants of slave owners?

Have you ever performed a Random Act of Genealogical Kindness involving slave ownership records? Or were you on the receiving end of such kindness?

One of the first documents I found when I started working on my husband’s line was a division of slaves when his great-great grandfather Mordecai L. Spindle died in Virginia in 1857.  I remember being stunned.  I was sitting in the Virginia Library and looking at microfilm and just couldn’t move for a while.  My own family had stories of slave-ownership but I’d never seen any corroborating evidence.  But here was name after name after name, including, ironically enough, two enslaved men with the names of my husband and his brother.  With values assigned out to the side of each name to be sure that each of the 6 heirs received an “equal share.”

This is the page that shows the portions for Thomas M. Spindle (at the top) and his sister Alice M. Spindle.  There were 4 other similar lots, one for each surviving child–James E., Margaret B., Sallie, and Mordecai L. Jr.

Later, as I collected more documents on this family, it became apparent that some of these people had been inherited from a previous generation.

So what was I to do with this information?  I chose what I thought were the right moments to share the info with family members and I encountered no push-back.  The news was received solemnly and with not a small degree of discomfort, and we soon changed the subject.  But I felt an ongoing sense that this information might help someone.

In reality, the descendants of the persons names as property in this division may already know about their heritage.  IF, as some evidence indicates, some of the persons assumed the surname of Spindle at emancipation, many of them stayed in the same area of Virginia.  As far as I can determine, very few descendants of this family left the original area of Virginia.  Spindle is not a name that is widely spread.  Looking at the surname distribution for this name at  World Names Profiler shows the concentration of the name is still in Virginia and Texas, where Thomas M. migrated (and had 13 children!) after the Civil War:

So I determined to try to make the information available where I could.  When I collected the wills of additional persons in this family, including the females, that contained the names of enslaved persons, I transcribed the documents and contributed them to the appropriate webpages at the Virginia USGenWeb sites.  (Remember when that was the main way we had to share records online?)  And later I typed up the names and contributed them to AfriGeneas, though I have been unable to find them posted there.

My mind kept going back to these documents when I was reading Edward Ball’s Slaves in the Family. And the story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.  And Francois Furstenberg’s In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation–one of Washinton’s homes was right across the Rappahannock from where these people lived. Sharing the documents I have is what I know to do.  I’ve also educated myself about doing research on African American families–I took the first African American research course offered at Samford’s IGHR.  On a weekly basis, at my place of work, I assist persons of color looking for their families in the census records.  My finding those early records fit right into my curious nature and insured that I learned more.  And as a teacher and a librarian, I hope some of that learning helps persons looking for their ancestors.

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A few weeks ago our youngest son announced the time had come.  He was going to propose to his sweetie and they were getting married in the summer.

I thought about it for a while and wrote both sons telling them I had their maternal grandmother’s wedding rings, and while there was only one diamond, they were welcome to think about using the stone and/or rings if they and their beloveds agreed.

They talked and the rings were examined while everyone was here for Thanksgiving.

In the end, the oldest son agreed that since son #2 had firmer plans than did he, he should have first crack at the rings.

So #2 son brought his beloved over to check out the rings.  My mom had saved the original 1950′s Zale’s settings when she had her diamond reset into newer gold  rings about 1975.  When Ang viewed both the updated gold set and the old white gold, stoneless set with a break in the thinned, well-worn wedding band, she fell in love.

With the older set.

I predicted this as Ang wears clothes from vintage shops that look very much like what I wore to college 40 years ago.  Except they look much better on her.  She manages to make those double-knit a-line dresses look great.

The end of this story is that Ang received the old, repaired, restored engagement ring that my mother wore so many years ago for Christmas.

Mom would be tickled–in the sense that her grandson is marrying someone who values the history of that set of rings, but also because she (Ang) prefers what she (Mom) set aside almost 25 years ago.

Welcome to the family, Ang.

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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.

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I went looking for the daily blogging theme for Friday and apparently there are no prompts for Friday and Saturday.  Wouldn’t you know?  So I’ve had to come up with my own.

A few weeks ago my husband insisted on buying me a MacBook Pro.  I am conflicted.  I have been a PC user since the beginning–we had a personal computer very early.  I remember one I had had two pop-up disk drives on top.  All of my files, including my considerable genealogical materials, are all on my PC–both desktop and laptop. I bought Office for Mac since that will evidently allow me to use my documents and powerpoints, etc., ,etc.

But what am I going to do with my genealogy data?  Do I want to continue to try to use both platforms?  Reunion is the only genealogy software package I know of for Mac.  I did see one other program in the store last night but it didn’t seem like a good choice.  I know Reunion has been around awhile and is highly regarded by those who use it.  So I bit the bullet and bought it.

My thinking is that I will enter my husband’s line into this software.  I had his family info in some version of my TMG about 4 computers ago.  When his sister got interested in researching that line, I sort of stepped away from it.  And now who knows where the disks are that have his family data?  I know it was some of the first research I did so doing the data entry again will probably yield a much stronger database.  I still have all the documentation and I do have printouts from the original database so it won’t be like starting all over.  And I’m so disenchanted with what happens when trying to import data via gedcom, I wouldn’t try it even if it were a possibility.

Some of this decision is driven by the fact that Nathan Murphy has selected my husband’s immigrant ancestor to be part of his dissertation study of 100 prisoners sentenced to transportation to the colonies–I wrote about this possibility earlier.  I need to get the data I have into a better format to share.  I have a collateral relative’s application materials for the Sons of the American Revolution.  I scanned all that in using my new ScanSnap, which I love.  It scans both sides with one pass and the document feeder handles a stack of paper in about 3 minutes that would take 3 hours to scan one by one.  It’s truly amazing and I now have some hope for clearing my office of so many stacks.

But I digress.

So far, I’m struggling a bit with Reunion.  I can’t figure out how to make the source function work well and I MUST be sure to do a good job of entering that data.  I’ve worked with TMG and its predecessor for years and know how to make that work.  For some recent work for some clients, I’ve entered the data into Legacy and like working with their source templates.  I’ll keep reading and working at it.  I need a manual to have beside my computer as I work through the steps–there is help, of course, but no printed manual comes with the rather pricey program.

So let’s just say that Friday’s theme is Frustration.    I’ll keep you posted from time to time on my progress.

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Here are the scans of the front and back of the postcard I wrote about yesterday. In my excitement at finding it, I didn’t notice at the time that the postmark on the $.01 stamp makes it just a few months over 100 years old. Thomas M. Spindle and his second wife Eliza Harris Spindle, shown in the photo below, ran this inn and a livery stable in the small dusty Texas town of Stamford, Jones County, Texas.

Sometime between 1908 when daughter Angelina was born in Stamford, Texas, and 1917 when son Malcomb was born in Roswell, New Mexico, the family moved out to New Mexico. So this may very well have been made while the Spindles owned and ran the Stamford Inn. I don’t yet have the details of their ownership.

But it was a great find for our family. We do have some other pictures of the family in front of this building, but this photo shows the size of the place.

I can’t imagine being responsible for the laundry of linen for this enterprise.

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Today for part of the today I staffed the booth for the Oklahoma Genealogical Society.  It is always fun to talk to people about their Oklahoma roots.  Persons researching family in Oklahoma express a great deal of frustration–Oklahoma won’t turn loose of their vital records, not even an index.  And since it’s a relatively new state, entering the Union in November 1907, vital records are really not all that consistent until the mid 1930s.  I was talking to a Texan who was frustrated by this, but she also asked some questions that reminded me how much we have to get out of our skin when doing research.  Because Texas kept birth records at the county level, she assumed Oklahoma did too.  Not so, as a general rule.  And then she asked how long people had to be deceased before their death certificate could be released.  In Texas, people have to have been deceased at least 25 years–I blogged about my extreme frustration with the Texas system earlier.  As far as I know, there is no time requirement nor do you have to prove relationship, as is also  the case in Texas.

One of my favorites was Meg Hacker’s talk about the criminal case files for Fort Smith housed at the National Archives in Fort Worth.  She says if you have family in western Arkansas or Indian Territory during the time period, you can probably find them in the index.  She said she usually makes this statement and some audience members are just sure that their relatives would not be in the index to criminal cases.  She says she hasn’t been wrong yet–there were just so many ways to get into trouble in Judge Parker’s court.  So if your family was in this area, take a look at the Archival Research Catalog (ARC) at NARA.  Some members of my family are in there–they were in western Arkansas and they were evidently in violation of one of the liquor laws.  Meg indicated that it was common to sell pound cake or candy and include a free shot of whiskey.  I’ll be interested to see if my family were this entrepreneurial of if they just went for the straight sale when I order a copy of the file.

My really serendipitious find today was a post card depicting the huge inn and livery stable building operated by my husband’s great-grandfather in Stamford, Texas.  There are little girls standing out front who may be family members–there were only 12 children.    I’ll post a picture of the postcard later–I evidently put it in my car with the load of books I bought for the library.  I was prowling through the Texas postcards to see if there were any for my hometown in the panhandle–didn’t find those but I was thrilled to find the photo of Thomas Spindle’s Stamford enterprise.

Tonight is the banquet and tomorrow it’s back home.  I picked up literature about the next conference in Knoxville.  Hope I can make that one too.

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Most of the postings on this blog have been about my family. When I first started doing genealogical research, however, I was as passionate about exploring my husband’s family a I was my own. I posted about one of the most rewarding experiences in my quest when I wrote about finding William and Grace Dryden Spindle living in Virginia on land that had been in the Spindle family since the late 1700s.

Now another opportunity in the Spindle arena has arisen.

Reading Dick Eastman’s newsletter this morning, I found the following from Nathan W. Murphy:

Can you provide convincing evidence that an ancestor was one of the 50,000 English convicts transported to Colonial America in the 1700s? If so, and you’re one of the first 50 people to contact him, a professional genealogist in Salt Lake City is offering to research that person’s life and overseas origins for you FOR FREE.

Nathan W. Murphy, MA, AG, an expert in tracing transported convicts and indentured servants in Colonial America is collecting information on these immigrants for his Ph.D. dissertation. He’ll be happy to provide a written report of his finds at no charge. You may contact him at nmurphy@pricegen.com or visit his website at www.pricegen.com/nathanwmurphy.html to learn more.

I immediately submitted “our” John Spindle, progenitor of our Spindle line in the Americas. This entry at the online records from the Proceedings of the Old Bailey is my husband’s 4th great-grandfather:

23. John Spindle was indicted for stealing a Feather Bed, 2 Pillows, a Quilt, a Coat, a Waistcoat, a Jacket, and 2 Cotton Shirts, the Goods of Benjamin Cook , in the Ship call’d the Isabella , the 29th of April last. Guilty 10 d.

We originally found John Spindle in one of Peter Coldham’s books about convicts who had been sentenced to transportation. John Spindle arrived in the Colonies in 1732 aboard a ship named the Cesear.

Despite his inauspicious beginnings, John did pretty well for himself. If he didn’t marry the boss’ daughter, he did marry well–Bridget Martin, daughter of John Martin. He died as owner of a 4 plantations, as the farms were then called, and he left that land to his children.

I sincerely hope that John gets chosen to be one of the lucky research subjects. We have not been able to link John to a specific family back in London, though I have not worked as diligently on that particular issue as I have some others.

Stay tuned, I’ll keep you posted on whether John makes the cut.

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written for the 7th edition of Smile for the Camera–A Carnival of Images

• The word prompt for the 7th Edition of Smile For The Camera is Oh, Baby! Show us those wonderful family photographs of babies, or those you’ve collected. Share the ones that are too cute for words, or those only a mother could love. Your favorite of grandma or grandmas’ favorite. Grandpa on a bear skin rug or grandpas’ little love. Everyone has a baby photo, so let’s see it!  Choose a photograph of an ancestor, relative, yourself, or an orphan photograph that is the epitome of Oh, Baby! and bring it to the carnival. Admission is free with every photograph!

Here are my entries:

A contemporary baby in our family, with her my mother-in-law, her great-grandmother.

Gram Lillian Hagar Spindle and great-granddaughter Brooklyn.

….and a slightly older baby–me.

In the only two-piece you’ll ever see me in, at my grandparents’ home in South Dakota.

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