#52Ancestors Week 1: My Start in Genealogy

#52Ancestors
Week 1: Start

I have decided to work on the 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks challenge.  The prompt for this first week is "Start," so I have decided to write about what got me started doing genealogy.

It was my grandfather, Frank Scrivener. Sometime in the late 70's, he cleaned out his basement and came up with a box of family history materials from his mother, Louise Gywnn Scrivener.  He asked me if I would like to have them and I said yes.  From then on, I was hooked on genealogy.

My great-grandmother, Louise Gwynn, was really into family history.  She was a Regent of the DAR and belonged to several genealogy-based societies like the Pilgrims of St. Mary's, which she helped to found.  She had done a lot of research including many visits to the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis.  The box that my grandfather gave me included several notebooks full of her genealogy research.  But perhaps more importantly, Louise Gwynn was a saver.  The box also contained her scrapbooks where she had carefully pasted stories of her family members, marriages, deaths, graduations, you name it.  Even now, 50 years later, I still go back every now and then and look over the scrapbooks and I often find some detail that I previously overlooked or did not previously realize the significance.

Now, some of my great-grandmother's conclusions about family history were incorrect.  It took me many years of my own research at the Archives to find more accurate information, but I would not have started down that path if Louise Gwynn had not been there first.

Now a little about Louise Gwynn.  Louise Carmelite Keene Gwynn was born in Brooklyn NY in 1872 and died in Baltimore MD in 1946, although most of her early life was spent in Spartanburg SC where the Gwynns settled after the Civil War.  She was the third child, second daughter, of Captain Andrew Jackson Gwynn (wounded at Gettysburg) and Marie Louise Keene, both native Marylanders. She had three younger brothers and a younger sister.  I never met her as she died before I was born, but my parents and aunts and uncles say she was quite a force to be reckoned with.  According to them, I resemble her somewhat in temperament. :-)

The lavalier she is wearing in this picture is a family heirloom, worn by several generations of Scrivener brides (including me) at their weddings. 

She attended Mt. St. Agnes College in Baltimore and throughout her life she was a fierce advocate for women's education.  Louise Gwynn married Frank Phillip Scrivener Sr. in 1899 at her sister's residence in Prince George's County MD.  Her brother, Msgr. Andrew Keene Gwynn, officiated.   Louise and Frank settled in Baltimore where Frank worked as an accountant.  They had one son, Frank Phillip Scrivener Jr. born in 1900.  He attended the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and enlisted in the Navy during WWI. 

Louise was always involved in one civic project or another, charitable work and even politics.  After women got the right to vote, Louise was one of the first women to run for office, a seat on the Democratic State Central Committee.

When Frank retired, the couple moved to Upper Marlborough in Prince George's County near Louise's sister Effie.  Louise ran a small lending library from her home.  Her six grandchildren, including my father, often spent the summers with their grandparents, and this actually led to my father meeting my mother whose family attended the same church.

So, thank you, Louise Gwynn, for many, many happy hours of genealogy research.