#52Ancestors-Week 4 Invite to Dinner

Week 4's challenge is to write about who you would "Invite to Dinner". It's a difficult choice to consider.  There are my beloved grandparents, my parents,  and my two brothers to consider. How wonderful it would be to sit down with any of them for a meal again.  And then there are those ancestors who I never knew that I have some brick walls that would be wonderful to solve.  But the one person who keeps coming to mind for me that I would like to invite to dinner is my Aunt Gen.

Genevieve Elizabeth Murphy was my great-aunt, sister to my grandfather.  And

keeper of the family secrets.  As I got to be an adult, we often had long phone conversations late at night, when my baby was sleeping and my husband was working second shift.  She shared many, many family stories.  Of course, at the time, while I found them interesting, I didn't record them.

Aunt Gen was born in 1903 in Peoria, Illinois.  She lived with her parents until she married in 1952 at the age of 48.  So living with her parents all those years meant that Genevieve knew well all the Murphy history.  And she was a great (interesting) gossip who always seemed to know everything about everyone. That's why I would chose to invite Aunt Gen to dinner one more time.  I have to admit, I would also love to see her and spend an evening with her.

We would have a grand time going over all the old Murphy stories and she could answer so many questions about the family that I can't seem to solve.  Why, why didn't I ask the questions?

#52Ancestors-Week 3 Longevity

Longevity is defined as "long life".  My great-grandmother, Ingrid "Ida" Olauson Seeber, lived to one hundred and one years old.  I am awarding the title of "Longevity" to her! 

I don't know for certain where her longevity came from.  Her parents died at ages fifty-four (her mother) and seventy-five (her father). Although, I guess for the time (1925) after living in North Dakota for years perhaps seventy-five was considered a life of longevity.  And as I look at Ingrid's grandparents, Ingrid's paternal grandfather lived until age seventy-six (died in 1900).  So I am going to make a reasonable guess that Ingrid's longevity came from her father's side of the family.

Ingrid's sister, Elise, lived to age ninety-four. None of her other four siblings lived past age seventy-three.

However, Ingrid's children lived to ages ninety-seven, eighty, eighty-one, eighty, ninety-four, and fifty-three.

An interesting pattern for the family is that it seems to always be the oldest child that lives the longest.  Ingrid's father was the eldest, Ingrid was the eldest and Ingrid's child who lived longest was also the eldest.

Below is a picture of Ingrid and her sister Elise taken on Ingrid's one hundredth birthday! Ingrid is on the left.

#52Ancestors-Favorite Photo-Week2

This was both an easy and a hard choice.  With all my ancestors, my siblings, my children and my grandchildren, I have many special photos.  But the one photo that stands out for me is an interesting choice.  It's a photo of myself at the age of one year old.  That seems rather self-centered, I know, but the reason it is my favorite photo is because it is a photo that my grandmother displayed prominently all of my life, right up to her death in 1986.  When she died, my mom let me have the photo and so I have it in its' original frame on my desk in my bedroom.  Every morning when I see it, I think of how much I was loved.  What a gift a grandmother's love is. 

#52Ancestors: Rosa Kerrott Smyth-the Starter

For Starters I decided to write about my 3rd great-grandmother, Rosa Kerrott Smyth.  Rosa was the first of my grandmothers from this line to come to the United States, thus she was the "starter".

Rosa was born on the 14th of October in 1814 in County Down, Ireland to John Carrott and Catherine Fegan.  John Carrott was a farmer.  At this time, I have identified two siblings for Rosa: William Kerrott, born in 1810, and Edward Kerrott, born about 1813.  In 1833, Rosa married Patrick Smyth, the son of a neighboring farmer.  At the time of their marriage, Rosa was 18 years old, and Patrick was 23 years old.

It appears that Rosa was the first of her family to leave Ireland.  Patrick and Rosa left for the United States the day after their wedding!  They landed in Albany, New York.  Rosa's brother William emigrated to Canada in 1835 and her other brother, Edward, emigrated to Canada around 1845.  After about 20 years in Canada, William moved to Minnesota and lived there until his death in 1897.  Edward remained in Canada and died in 1888.  It is interesting to wonder if Rosa ever saw her brothers after she left Ireland.

Patrick and Rosa stayed in Albany for 13 months, and then went to Trumansburg in Tompkins County, New York.  There Patrick worked as a laborer.  Their first son, Francis, was born in New York in 1835 and the following year, their daughter Mary was born.  Sadly, little Francis died in 1837. The next year Patrick, Rosa, and Mary left New York and came to Kickapoo, Illinois, and in the fall of 1838, they purchased their first home. Their daughter Catherine was born that year.  Another daughter, Anna, was born in 1839.  Again, sadness struck when little Catherine died in the fall of 1839. Following the death of Catherine, Patrick and Rosa went on to have 11 more children, for a total of 15 children born to them.

Rosa and Patrick's last child was born in 1858 and three years later, Patrick died.  When he died, he and Rosa owned about 284 acres.  Rosa was 46 years old when Patrick died.  The 1860 Census shows that 12 of their children were living with Rosa and Patrick.  When Patrick died the following year, his sons Frank and Jack were ages 21 and 19, so they probably managed/ran the farm for Rosa.  Patrick did not live to see any of his children married.

In 1870, seven of Rosa's children were living with her on the farm.  And by 1880, 4 of their children were listed in the census with her, along with 1 grandson.

Rosa Kerrott Smyth died on the 14th of April in 1882 and is buried at St. Patrick's Cemetery in Kickapoo.  She was 67 years old when she died.  She had lived 21 years past her husband's death.  She must have been a force to reckon with to have raised all those children and managed the farm!  She had 66 grandchildren.  She saw 3 children of her own die before her (Mary died in 1879).

I consider Rosa a starter because she was the mother of my great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Smyth.  Elizabeth married William H. Murphy, which was the start of my direct line to the Murphy family!

Tombstone of Patrick and Rosa Kerrott Smyth in Kickapoo, Illinois.

Review of 2017 and Goals for 2018

2017 turned out to be an amazing year for my genealogy pursuits.  I have been working (usually daily in some capacity) on my genealogy since about 1995.  I am constantly amazed at the new findings out there, especially as access to old records open up.

I felt like I did a good job keeping up with the Ancestry hints.  They can get very overwhelming if one isn't vigilant on that.

I had two very major breakthroughs this year.  As stated, I have been working on genealogy for over twenty years.  And one of the very most elusive challenges has been trying to locate my great-uncle's children.  The family lived about four hours away from us. Oddly, the children are younger than I am (my mother's uncle was only seven years older than her).  The children's father died in 1963 and there was only sporadic contact with them over the next few years.  Once I started working on genealogy, my mother continued to ask if I could find them.  I never could.

Then in the middle of last March, out of the blue, I received an Ancestry message from the oldest daughter, my first cousin one time removed.  She had been on Ancestry and found my family tree. It has been wonderful catching up with her and sharing with her over the past few months.  I've been able to share pictures with her, and even some of her father's letters from WWII.  I hope to be able to visit with her in 2018.

The other breakthrough was finding the will of Luke Tippitt as I have written about on this blog.  It took some tenacious work, but I did it!  And it has opened up some other clues for the Tippitt family, although so far, I haven't been able to successfully follow up on them.  But the discovery was from a hint on Ancestry, where old records were open for access.

My goals for 2018?  I am going to participate in the #52Ancestor Challenge again this year.  I did it a couple of years ago and it was very helpful in getting me to dig deeper for records and information, so I am hoping that I can stick with it!  It is a lot of work.  I have begun a genealogy bullet journal to help me with my genealogy pursuits.  It will be interesting to see if I find it helpful or burdensome!

Benjamin Tippitt

Benjamin Tippitt was the son of Luke Tippitt and Nancy Adamson.  His name was the one that I had not known and found in the will of Luke Tippitt.  I have not been able to learn anything more about him.  I don't know or even have a good estimate of when he was born. The 1825 Edwards County Illinois Census shows three sons in the family, which fits with Benjamin being there.  The only "clue" about Benjamin that I have is from Luke's will where it states:

"Will of Luke Tippett
 Luke Tippett during his last sickness declared the following to be his last will and Testament.
 To my son William Tippett I give and bequeath my sorrel mare. To my son Matthew I leave my sorrel horse.  At the same time he requested that his son-in- law James Sawyers take the boys and learn them a trade and that Sawyer take the horses and dispose of them or keep them and at the time the boys attain the age of twenty one he Sawyers deliver them horses equal in value or their worth in _______ at the time he received them-he Luke Tippett stated that he gave to his wife the old sorrel mare and the remainder of his property for her support and to raise the children to wit Milly and Benjamin Tippet." 

So I'm not sure if by the "boys" he meant William and Matthew, and was leaving the remainder of his property to his wife to care for their daughter and Benjamin? So does that mean that Benjamin was the youngest of the children? I know that Milly was born in 1812, William in about 1815, and Matthew was born in 1817. So William and Matthew were only about 11 and 9 years old when Luke died.

I have searched census records but have been unable to locate Benjamin Tippitt.  I have not found his mother Nancy Tippitt after Luke's death in the 1830 or any other census.  I don't know if she remarried or died early.  In a biography of Matthew Tippitt, it states that:

 "A short time afterward (after Luke's death) our subject, accompanied by his mother, removed to what is now the city of Olney, then in Lawrence County, and settled upon a farm." 

So what happened to Benjamin Tippitt?  Or to his mother, for that matter!

Update on Luke Tippett

As I wrote a few days ago, I was frustrated with being unable to locate the will or probate for Luke Tippett after I had found his name on an index for Wills and Probates for Edwards County, Illinois.  I wrote to the County Clerk and to the Illinois Regional Archives Depository for Edwards County and neither found any records of Wills or Probates for Luke Tippett.

Today, I decided to take another look at the Index that I had found on Ancestry.com.  I started looking at the actual records there and after awhile I realized that the stated page on the index did not match with the page of the microfilm that is on Ancestry.com.  So I began a list of matching  names and numbers of the index compared to the microfilm records.  And, after about an hour of work, guess what I found!  Yep, the will for Luke Tippett!

The will gave me the name of a son that I didn't have before and the name of a son-in-law that I did not have.

A will from 1826=happiness for me!