Finding the Family Details

 

There are several details about a family's history which may be available to those who know how to search through publicly-available records. But when there are no such records easily accessed—I'm thinking here of my suspected third great-grandfather William Laws of northeastern Tennessee, possible father of Sarah Catherine Laws Davis—the next step, besides looking locally, is to check for private records. That's why I reach out to others researching the same family lines, especially those who also have tested their DNA for genealogical purposes and discovered that we match.

I tend to presume that my DNA matches would know more about their direct line ancestors than I do for simple reasons. I think of all the descendants who inherited family heirlooms, or at least got some of the old family photos. When it comes to thinking about recipients of such generational gifts, that would not be me. However, in the case of one branch of this particular Laws family I'm researching, I'm thinking also of one valuable collectible I do have: the Davis family Bible.

My second great-grandmother, Sarah Catherine Laws, married a man by the name of Thomas Davis. Though the Bible I now possess doesn't reach back that far in the family's history, it does provide me with some full names, along with dates of birth, marriage, and death for my Davis ancestors, all written in the hand of an ancestor who gifted me with some of that Davis DNA.

Somewhere among all my Laws DNA matches, I'd like to hope a distant cousin might have a similar record of family members, passed along from generation to generation. So I keep reaching out to find someone.

There are other ways to check for family Bibles, of course. I was already aware of the family Bible record collection of the Daughters of the American Revolution, an index of over forty thousand such digitized records which can be searched online through their Genealogical Research System (GRS). But what I didn't know was that there are other resources for finding family records in Bibles kept by previous generations, such as through the Digital Public Library of America. Beyond that, some such resources are tucked away at various state archives and other repositories of historical material.

Granted, the patchwork spread of resources may make searching for a specific family's personally-kept records challenging. There may not even be such a record kept in prior centuries by my Laws ancestors, whoever they turn out to be. But at least I can start by reaching out to DNA matches and others who have their tree posted online and ask if they know of such a resource.

In the meantime, having such a treasure for my own Davis line makes me realize that the book, like all of us, is not getting any younger. It's time to check on the best way to help preserve it so that I can pass it on to future generations, intact and still legible. At some future point, someone may want to take a look at this keepsake for which I'm serving as current conservator. 

On Her Way Home

Well, I can't exactly say it is going to her home, but Baby Fay is now finding her way back to family. If I have this correct, her photograph will soon be in the hands of her grandson. But first, there will have to be one additional stop: to the home of this grandson's sister-in-law, the researcher whose tree on Ancestry.com led me to contact her this week.

As has happened before on this new quest to reunite abandoned photographs with family members, it has been an encouraging and inspiring connection that evolved with this week's email contact. Of course, it always starts out no different than a sales cold call. Since I wouldn't make such a good sales person, the prospect of cold calling stops me in my tracks; if it weren't for the mission behind the contact with total strangers, I'm not sure I could pull it off.

There is, however, a compelling reason behind making these connections: I always think of how I wish someone would find a photograph of one of my ancestors. I'd be delighted with the news! I realize that, because those of us who delve into genealogy share the same outlook about our heritage, I have a good chance of connecting with someone—stranger or not—who feels exactly the same way as I do.

It's just that, this time, I wasn't sure how close the family connection might have been. As I mentioned yesterday, on this particular family tree, I couldn't tell how closely related the researcher was to Baby Fay or the Randall or Panuzzi families. Maybe this researcher wouldn't be interested. Maybe I'd never get a response. After all, that has happened before, with the series of photos I found for Alta Barnes and her family.

In less than twenty four hours, I had a response from the researcher, who, as it turns out, had put up the tree online for her brother-in-law. The two of them talk frequently and their families get together often. She would be glad to pass along the photograph to him.

Not only that, but this fellow genealogist shared an experience she had which proved inspiring to me. While she hasn't done quite the same as I am doing with orphaned family photographs, she found herself sharing in a similar way.

One day, she had been browsing in an antique store, and was looking over some old books when she noticed a "very nondescript looking book." It had a very plain looking new book jacket, but when she flipped it open, she realized it was something very different than what the cover indicated.

As she explains it,

when I opened it up it was a very old Bible and it had generations of marriages and births and deaths in it.

Some of the dates in this Bible reached back into the 1700s. I could so relate to what she mentioned next:

I was so taken by it that I had to find who it belonged to and I was able to find through the last known entry the family that this Bible belong to and was able to contact them just like you contacted me.

The killer was that the family Bible hadn't just ended up in the antique store because someone didn't want it. On the contrary, according to this researcher, the owner

found out that the Bible has been accidentally left in a box full of donated books when the person who was in charge of it...ended up having to move.

What was irrevocably lost through mishap was inexplicably retrieved through one of those random acts of genealogical kindness—the hallmark of a community of researchers who believe in giving back. Perhaps that's why this researcher remarked that she and I are "kindred spirits." The experience made such an impact on her that she now makes it a practice to "always look at the books with the plain binding."

As this researcher observed in her email to me, "It makes the heart feel good when you’re able to get back something that belonged to somebody."

So far, in rescuing these few photographs I've found over the past year, I've found that to be true, myself. The response has always been so positive. And there certainly is no lack of supply of hundred year old photographs containing enough clues to send them back home.

Keepers of the Family Stories

Most families manage to pass down some of the stories of their ancestors to the next generation. In many cases, those are oral traditions, which run the risk of inadvertent alteration. In the case of the Gilmer family—those ancestors to whom missionary Peachy Taliaferro Wilson can point when affixing responsibility for his rather unwieldy given name—they can claim the good fortune of having at least two books compiled for that very purpose of preservation of family history.

One of those books was not the anticipated dull, dry tome that you might expect for a genealogical litany of begats, but a volume spiced with anecdotes of strong personalities, punctuated by the author's own wry comments. While a writer nowadays might not be able to get away with some of the revealing observations tucked between the covers of Sketches of Some of the First Settlers of Upper Georgia, the candid remarks by author George Rockingham Gilmer afford us a glimpse of life for these family members which we might not otherwise see.

The other book, privately printed nearly fifty years after the earlier Gilmer edition, was written by John Gilmer Speed and published along with a genealogical record compiled by Louisa H. A. Minor. It is in this edition, The Gilmers in America, that the issue of conflicting reports of the origin of the Peachy name surfaced.

This later researcher observed, "The name Peachy Ridgway Gilmer will be found to recur very frequently in the Gilmer record"—which is true—and began to provide the various explanations of why that might be. All have to do with the original Gilmer settler in America, a Scottish doctor named George Gilmer who—not unlike many men of that period and circumstances—was married three times.

The first wife was said to be the only child of a London doctor with whom Dr. Gilmer had worked, by name of Ridgway. According to the Speed book,

In one branch of the family at least there was a tradition that Dr. Ridgway's wife was the daughter of a French military man named Peachy, and that the name "Peachy Ridgway," given to Dr. Gilmer's first son, was a combination of the two family names of his first wife.

"I doubt this," was the blunt assessment given by the author. For one thing, the young couple were privately married just before Dr. Gilmer took an assignment in 1731 by the directors of the Royal Land Company to examine and report on some large properties in the British colony of Virginia, which he did, leaving his wife in London. Upon his return home almost a year later, he was greeted with the unfortunate news that his wife had died in his absence.

Understandably, one would presume that Dr. Gilmer's first son could be named Peachy Ridgway Gilmer—which he was. One could also presume that that son would have been given two family names from his maternal side.

The only problem with that scenario was: that son's mother wasn't likely Dr. Gilmer's first wife, the daughter of Dr. Ridgway and the French military man, supposedly named Peachy. That son was born to the second wife of the good doctor.

Some parts of the family assert that the name was given in honor of that beloved first wife, even though she was not the mother of the child. And yet, knowing the full name of second wife—referred to as "Miss Walker" in some documents—was Mary Peachy Walker, it seems more reasonable that the Peachy came not from any French military ancestor of a previous marriage, but from the maiden name of his own mother.

All that, and even more detail on the controversy, was provided in a three-page-long footnote beginning on page eight of the Speed book. Still, it doesn't speak to the issue of where the Ridgway name did come from. Perhaps the true explanation lies somewhere in the middle: a little of the one tradition for the Ridgway portion, the rest dependent on the documentation referred to in the Speed book, alluding back to the Gilmer book and the underlying basis supporting that earlier book—the Gilmer family Bible.

In that record, at that point in the hands of the author, the former Georgia governor, George R. Gilmer quoted:

     Mary Peachy Walker, daughter of Thomas and Susan Walker, of King and Queen, was married by the Rev. Mr. Jno. Skaife, at his house, her Stepfather, to George Gilmer, May 13, 1732.
     March 6th, 1737-8. A son born, christened the 20th by the Rev. Mr. Hith, by the name of Peachy Ridgway...

Quite clearly the son of Dr. Gilmer's second wife, this Peachy Ridgway Gilmer, no matter how he happened upon his name, became the inspiration for several namesakes in subsequent generations. As to how well-received the gift of this honorable mention might have been, the author commented,

The present generation of the families that once were proud to call their children Peachy appear to think the name not entirely lovely, for I know of several instances where pseudonyms have been adopted instead of the once highly cherished Peachy.

While John Gilmer Speed wrote his family history in 1897—just one year before our P. T. Wilson's death—I can't help wondering whether that was the case for our Peachy. Or was his a name simply subsumed by the era's penchant for addressing gentlemen by their double initials?