Stampin! with Jaydee

Happy Wednesday and greetings from a beautifully sunny (mostly!) day.  We are currently on the final leg of our sail to Southampton and expect to reach there early tomorrow morning.  Thankfully, the seas have been much calmer and the nights more restful.  We are currently somewhere off the coast of Cornwall.  Although I have been on this ship since the 21 December, our sail away from Southampton tomorrow evening that truly begins our round the world trip. 

When I began doing my genealogy back in the very early 2000s, I was looking to find out more about my grandparents and great-grandparents.  I knew my maternal grandparents, but only my grandmother on my paternal side.  I knew nothing about anyone beyond that.  What I did know... I was as English as English can be and a true Yorkshire lass.  I started to trace my family history and found that my maternal grandmother's side of the family had very strong, very deep roots in the area where I was born and had not moved more than 8-10 miles from the Debyshire area that abuts Yorkshire.  Those roots go back beyond the 1500s with a decent paper trail.  Sadly, the research on my father's side was nowhere near as lucrative and I have many dead ends.  Anyone tried to identify an Edward Jones from Wales?  Yeah.... It's like trying to identify a Wang born in China!  Well, technically not quite as bad as there are far less people in Wales... but you get the point :-)

One thing I was absolutely sure of - and I mean I would have bet $1M on Who Wants to be a Millionaire - that my roots and my ancestors were firmly on the island and hadn't gone far.  I thought of myself as the great pioneer.  The one who had spread her wings and lived on 4 different continents.  The only one in the family to do so.  Oh.... boy!  Would I have lost that $1M!!!

For 15 years I tried to find one set of my ggg-grandparents deaths.  I had one set of hints that had them dying in Derbyshire, but when I did the paperwork I found that the research was incorrect.  Yes, they had the same names as my great-great-greats - but the two who died in Derbyshire had never left Derbyshire and he had a different occupation.  So, back to the drawing board.  I kept getting these hints from the Ancestry US site and for 5 years I completely ignored them.  It was only when I got a message on one of the genealogy sites from a lady in the US that I realized those hints were actually meant for me!

Reading that message and doing the research that came from it, made me realize just how narrowly I had looked at my ancestors.  That research on a single couple led me down a path that runs deep and wide across the US.  What a surprise to suddenly find that my great-great-greats and a couple of their children had migrated in the 1860s to the US.  Although William and his wife Ann did not come in through Ellis Island, they did come in through the Eastern seaports.  Immigration grew even more after their arrival - with nearly 12 million people between 1870 and 1900.

What strikes me about their journey was their ages.  William was born in 1798 and made the journey to the US in 1863.  He was 65 years old.  Ann was only 1 year younger. During their years they managed to bring 7 children to adulthood.  Eventually 5 of those children made their way across the pond.  William, Ann, their youngest son Jacob, daughter in law Eliza (wife of oldest son James - who was already in the US) and 5 grandchildren arrived in New York on 3 November 1863.  Their ship - the Resolute sailed from Liverpool to New York.  The Resolute was originally built in 1819 and was still in service transporting immigrants from Liverpool to New York well beyond 1867.  Sadly, I could not find any etchings of depictions of this specific ship. 

It took me a couple of years of deep research to understand where William and his children had gone, what they had done, and the families that had been generated from those children.  Sadly, I have not been able to find the death dates, or places of either William or Ann, but I have been able to track the families of their children to the present day.  Oh, what stories they had.

All of the boys were miners - just like their father.  James, the oldest son, had 6 daughters in a mining town!!!  They first settled in Missouri, then moved to McAlester in Pittsburgh County, Oklahoma - which was his final resting place.  I managed to find a wonderful photo of the 6 girls - two of them were twins and it was wonderful to look back at these young women dressed in dark Victorian gowns and think about how tough it must have been for their father fighting off suitors in a mining town!!!

I thought you might like to see that photo.  The photo is taken from a newspaper article that was written in 1970!!!

Apparently, the family grew so big over the generations that there is a family reunion with hundreds of attendees that happens every few years.  I really am tempted to make the trip down south and go meet some of my cousins. 

So, this northern lass who thought she was the great world traveller, was nothing on these guys.  Some of the boys moved from Missouri and Oklahoma to Iowa, Ohio, participated in the gold rush on the west coast and even settled in Texas. 

Reading the stories and doing the research on the descendants of the children of the 5 original immigrants, you realize why they moved.  Some of their stories are what the great American dream was all about.  Owning houses, sending your children to universities, including Ivy league universities.  I found connections that I would never have thought I had.  Rear Admirals, a cousin who died on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, a cousin who married into the Choctaw tribe and married the grandson of Col George W Harkins who delivered a Letter to the People on behalf of the Choctaw nation in 1832.  A cousin who died in her early 20s in Minneapolis who was doing research on bleeding edge treatments for diseases.

I look back and realize that my family has roots that go back to the times of the American Civil War.  Some lived on tribal lands.  Some made the trek across territories in the mid 1860s and I cannot begin to imagine what it was like for them.  They grew up in mining towns in Warwickshire, England.  Moved to Lancashire, then Derbyshire, then Yorkshire.  From there they made their way to the south and mid-west of America.  What a different world it must have been.  Oh... how much braver they were than I!

It's my intention to write a book about this side of the family and how the move to America made a difference to their lives - and the lives of their descendants.  It moves me greatly to think of two people in their mid 60s making that journey.  Here I am, just a few years older, sailing in luxury across the pond - a totally different experience.  But, I know, that when I get back to the shores of America in early May, Lady Liberty will be there and I will think of those family members who made that journey.  I also ask myself, why were stories like this lost across 2 generations?  I heard NOTHING about these family members.  I heard nothing about any family members emigrating to the US - within living memory I might add!  How sad their stories were lost.  But what a bonus for me to be able to uncover them!  Subsequent research on a different side of the family, finds that I have ties going back much, much further to the early days of settlement in the North East.  My own personal story is so much richer because of those that came before me and who would have thought that the travel bug - for whatever reason - could possibly have been a part of me before I was even born!

I'll be back on Friday with the story of another set of cousins who made that same journey many decades later, coming through Ellis Island.  In the meantime, warm hugs and prayers for those of you who require a little lift today - and thank you to any of you who managed to read to the end of this story :-)

Hugs

Jaydee