#52Ancestors Week 5: Census--John Marshall Dent

#52Ancestors Week 5: Census

A census entry led me to a trip to Georgia.

Just about all my direct ancestors were born in Maryland going back to the 1700's.  So, when I was researching my grandmother's family and found a census entry indicating that my great-grandfather, John Marshall Dent Jr., was born in Georgia, at first I thought it was a mistake since his family was from St. Mary's County MD for many generations back.  How did he get born in Georgia?

His father, John Marshall Dent Sr., born in St. Mary's County MD in 1844, left Maryland for Virginia at the start of the Civil War and served in the 1st Maryland Cavalry.  He retained the title of Colonel for the remainder of his life.  After the war, Dent went to Georgia where his Dent cousin, William Barton Wade Dent, had settled in Newnan GA.  JM Dent Jr. practiced law and also edited the local paper, The Newnan Herald, from 1874 to 1877.

In 1873, JM Dent married Ida Elizabeth Wright, the daughter of Judge William Felix Wright and Elizabeth Caroline Dent (a daughter of the aforementioned WBW Dent.)  In 1874, my great-grandfather, JM Dent Jr. was born in Newnan.  A second son, William Francis Dent, was born there in 1875.  In 1877, JM Dent Sr. left Georgia and returned to St. Mary's County MD where he and Ida had eight more children.  Ida Wright Dent died in St. Mary's County in 1925.  JM Dent Sr. died there in 1929.

All of this was interesting enough to me that I decided to take a trip to Georgia to see Newnan for myself.

I visited the Newnan Herald where the staff very kindly helped me do a search of the microfilmed papers from the era when I thought JM Dent had been the editor.  We discovered his farewell editorial from 1877 as well as announcement of JM's marriage in 1873.

#52Ancestors Week 4 Invitation to Dinner: Lois Gongo Evans Vernon

#52Ancestors: Week 4

While I have many family members who seem to be interesting characters and would probably be interesting dinner guests, one person from the family tree that I would really love to meet is Lois Gongo.  Lois, the daughter of Anthony Gongo and Faith (Wilson?), was born around 1660, probably in Anne Arundel County MD.  Lois is not a direct ancestor of mine; she is something like the mother--in-law of my 8th great-uncle. (Lois's granddaughter married into the Scrivener family, which is what brought her to my attention.) What makes Lois so interesting to me is that she was apparently a feminist long before feminism became a thing.

Lois married first Lewis Evans, a Welshman like her father, about 1674.  Lois and Lewis had four daughters: Catherine, Elizabeth, Sarah and Ann Evans. 

Catherine married first John Clark and second William Thornbury and died about 1768 in Anne Arundel County MD.
Elizabeth married first Francis Anktill and second Moses Faudry. She died about 1762 in Anne Arundel County MD.
Sarah married Samuel Griffith, with whom she had eight children.
Ann married Benjamin Battee and had two daughters with him.

After Lewis's death about 1690, Lois married secondly Christopher Vernon, a fairly well-to-do landowner from an old British family in Hertfordshire, who had emigrated to Anne Arundel County MD.  Lois and Christopher had five children: Ephraim, William, Lois, Thomas and Ann Vernon, recorded in the records of St. James Parish, Anne Arundel County MD.

Christopher Vernon died in England in 1724 and here is where the story gets really interesting.  Christopher was apparently a very unhappy man.  He left a will in England, which does not mention his wife and children.  He leaves his estate to aunts, nieces, nephews and other relatives.

Curious, yes?  However, back in MD, there is an earlier handwritten will, apparently never recorded that explains the will in England.  In the earlier document, Christopher castigates Lois as "stubborn and brutish" and  claims he was never really married to her since she absolutely refused to say the words "honor and obey"  when she married Christopher. (Imagine that in 1691!)  Further, he claims that Lois tried to poison him.  Likewise, he is furious that his daughter Ann married against his wishes.  And the document is full of complaints about his other family members.

The one person he seems like is his step-daughter Elizabeth Evans Anktill, beside whom he wishes to be buried and whom he wishes to be his executrix.  Christopher then apparently left for England where he proceeded to give away all his property in England so that Lois could never get her hands on it. Elizabeth did attempt to probate the earlier will, but the courts threw it out because the later English will was already on file.

Lois seems to have made out all right in the long run.  She had property from her first husband, Lewis Evans.  She made over property to her son Thomas Vernon in 1738 and died in Anne Arundel County in 1739.

So, Lois is definitely someone I would like to have a conversation with to get her side of the story.

#52Ancestors Week3: Longevity Theresa Evalina Wallis

#52Ancestors

This week's challenge focuses on longevity.  The longest-lived of my direct ancestors was my maternal great-grandmother, Theresa Evalina Wallis Sasscer.   She was born in Kent County MD on 28 December 1874 and died 25 March 1964 in Owings Mills, Baltimore County MD at the age of 90. (I should note, however, that my own mother is still going strong at 93, so I think she will eventually hold the longevity record!)

Eva Wallis was born the same year as poet Robert Frost, industrialist John D. Rockefeller, and magician Harry Houdini.  She grew up in the rural Eastern Shore of Maryland, close to where Harriett Tubman helped the Underground Railroad move slaves to freedom. Ulysses S. Grant was president, following the death of Millard Fillmore.  James Black Groom from Cecil County was the Governor of Maryland. The Wallises came from Quaker roots and were not slave holders.

Eva Wallis was the 8th of the 13 children of Francis Adolphus Wallis and Mary Georgianna Willson. She was a school teacher and met her husband, Thomas Reverdy Sasscer, when she was teaching at a small one-room school in Prince George's County and boarded with Mr. Sasscer, a farmer whose home was across the road from the school.  (Not to worry about any impropriety there because Reverdy's unmarried sister, Mary Loretto Sasscer, was living with her brother as his housekeeper.) Reverdy Sasscer, the son of John William Sasscer and Julia Ann Gibbons of Prince George's County MD,  was some 20 years older than his bride when they married in December 1894 at Sacred Heart Church in Chestertown, Kent County MD.  This picture shows Eva in her wedding outfit. According to the newspaper account of the wedding, it was a gown of tan henrietta cloth with gloves and hat to match.

By the time of her marriage in 1894, Maryland was moving away from its rural roots and becoming more industrialized, although Prince George's County, where Eva raised her family was still mostly farmland, supplying wheat, corn, potatoes, fruits and vegetables for the nation's capital.  Tobacco fields still covered significant areas of the county.

Reverdy and Eva had four children:  Francis Wallis (1895), Eunice Loretto (1897), Theresa Evalina, my grandmother, (1898), and Clarence DeSales (1900).   The Sasscers grew up on a tobacco farm at Breezy Hill and attended the one-room school across the road, where, incidentally, Clarence later met his wife, Madge, who was the teacher there.

Thomas Reverdy Sasscer died in 1920 at the age of 68, so Eva spent the last 44 years of her life as a widow, running the farm with her sons and happily enjoying her brood of 16 grandchildren. It was my mother, Anne, who gave Eva the name by which she was known in the family--Dama--Anne's attempt to say "Grandma."  In her later years, Dama often spent the winters in Florida and my mother, who was her oldest grandchild,  remembers trips to Florida with her grandmother as a teenager.  Dama was very proud of her family heritage and was a member of the DAR and other patriotic societies.  

My memories of my great-grandmother center around the annual family Christmas parties that were always held at Dama's home, Breezy Hill.  It was there that I would see my numerous aunts and uncles, great-aunts and great uncles and dozens of cousins.  I remember her as a very elegant woman. The picture below shows her in 1951 with two of her great-grandchildren at a Christmas party. 

At the time of Eva's death in 1964, J. Millard Tawes, an Eastern Shore native, was governor of Maryland and Lyndon Johnson was initiating the Great Society, amid increasing calls for more minority rights. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge had opened up Eva's native Eastern Shore to greater tourism and Ocean City became a boom town.  The Beatles made their famous appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show and Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Both Theresa Evalina Wallis Sasscer and Thomas Reverdy Sasscer are buried in Mt. Carmel Cemetery, Upper Marlboro, Prince George's County MD, along with many of their ancestors and descendants. 

#52Ancestors Week 2: Favorite Photo The Romance of Frank Scrivener and Lib Dent

It's so hard to choose a favorite photo from among all the family photos I have accumulated over the years, but I think I would have to go with this charming picture of my grandparents, Frank Scrivener and Elizabeth (Lib) Dent. Of course, I only knew them when they were much older, so I have always loved this fascinating glimpse of their youth.

The picture is not dated, but I think it was taken shortly before their marriage in 1924.  The clothes certainly seem to fit that time period.  My grandmother definitely has the flapper look going.  (And isn't she gorgeous?) Frank seems to be going for the Great Gatsby look.  Look at that natty bow tie!  I am not sure where the picture was taken, but perhaps it was in St. Mary's County at Lib's family home.  It does seem to be a rural rather than an urban location judging by the porch and flowers in the background.

Frank was the only child of Frank Scrivener and Louise Gwynn (see #52Ancestors Week 1), born in Baltimore in August 1900.  He attended Loyola College High School, where he played baseball, and enlisted in the Navy in WWI.  He was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Air Station, where he acquired quite a reputation as a quarterback on the football team.  Family legend has it that he even played a game against the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame while he was at Great Lakes.  After his discharge, he got a job with the Maryland State Roads Commission, where he worked for the rest of this life.

Lib was the daughter of John Marshall Dent and Mary Peterson Turner, born in Oakley, St. Mary's County MD in 1902, the third of their four children. She was born Ida Elizabeth Dent (named after her grandmother)  but she never liked the name Ida and never used it.  Lib attended St. Mary's Female Seminary in St. Mary's County and taught school in Prince George's County MD after her graduation.  Here she met Frank, who travelled around the state inspecting roads as part of his job.  Apparently Frank would often hang around the school where Lib was teaching, whistling outside her classroom window, and would sometimes delight her students by telling them that class was dismissed.  (No word on how the principal felt about this!)

Lib and Frank were married at St. Mary's Church in Upper Marlboro, Prince George's County MD on June 20, 1924, coincidentally just a few months after my maternal grandparents, Paul Summers and Evalina Sasscer, were married at the same church in April 1924. Twenty-three years later, my parents were married at the same church.

Lib and Frank had six children: Frank, Bill, Jack, Reds, Keene, and Bob, and raised them in Baltimore and St. Mary's County through the Great Depression.  Frank was fortunate to have a state job that enabled him to support his family.

The picture above suggests a loving and romantic relationship between Lib and Frank and from everything I know about them, that remained true throughout their lives.  I inherited one of the many loving notes that Lib wrote to her husband over the course of their long marriage.

Frank died in 1980 and Lib in 1987.  They are buried in New Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore, next to Frank's parents. 

#52Ancestors Week 1: My Start in Genealogy

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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.

The Estate of Samuel Whittington: Gotta Love Those Court Cases

When Samuel Whittington died in Calvert County MD in 1806, he had no children and left no will.  So to ordinarily, he wouldn't be of much interest to a family historian.  But in Samuel's case, the ultimate settlement of his estate, some twenty years later, resulted in a Chancery Court case that laid out several generations of the Whittington family, a veritable gold mine of genealogical information.

By plotting out the complex explanation of Samuel's heirs, I was able to trace an extended family tree for the Whittingtons of Calvert and Anne Arundel Counties.  And, because a couple of his heirs were involved in other suits, I could make even more connections between the Whittingtons and the Woods family, in the process finding a solution to a long-standing brick wall.

In 1827, when the court case was filed, Samuel's three brothers, William, Francis and James had all died intestate as had his sisters, Elizabeth and Rebecca, both of whom were married to men named Turner.

His sisters Lavinia (who married William Stevens) and Araminta (the widow of James Wood) were still living.

Because all these heirs were dead, the plaintiffs needed to name all the heirs of the heirs.  Genealogical Heaven!

William Whittington's heirs (all of age in1827) were Clement, John S., Rachel (who married Washington Green Tuck) and Mary.  The fact that there were all over 21 allows me to calculate some parameters for their birth dates: the children of William Whittington were all born before 1806.

The heirs of James Whittington were:
Eleanor who married William P. Hardesty (died intestate before 1827)
Elizabeth who married John Ward (died intestate before 1827)

Eleanor Hardesty's heirs (all infants under the age of 21) were:
John James Hardesty
William Thomas Hardesty
Joseph Henry Hardesty
Mary Ann Elizabeth Hardesty
Susan Rebecca Hardesty

The heirs of Francis Whittington were:
Francis
Charles (died by 1827, left children Maria, Ellen, Lewis and Sarah Ann, all infants)
Elizabeth Wood (died intestate by 1827, left a daughter Eleanor Wood, an infant of Baltimore MD)
Samuel
Ann
Eleanor
William (died by 1827, left daughter Drusilla)

The heirs of Rebecca Turner were:
Elizabeth who married John Hollingshead
Eleanor who married John Winfield
Mary who married Mr. Dalrymple (both of whom are dead by 1827, leaving as heirs Eleanor Gibson, John Dalrymple and William Dalrymple)

The heirs of Elizabeth Turner were:
William
Thomas who was dead by 1827 leaving Elizabeth, Richard, John, Mary Ann, Thomas and Ann as his heirs. 
Richard
Sarah who married Joseph Griffith
Wilhelmina who married Clement Chaney
Rebecca who married William Howard.  Rebecca was dead by 1827 leaving as heirs Elizabeth who married James Forsyth, Rebecca who married Walter Crosby, Peggy who married James Cox, Eleanor who married Mr. Gibson, Mary, the widow of Mr. Dew, Sally, Matilda and Willy Ann and infants  Mahala and Sophia.

See what I mean?  A gold mine.  And reading through all the documents in the original case file led to many more details of marriages and deaths.  After that, a search of marriage records and census records allowed me to fill in details for at least some of these folks.

Ultimately, I was able to show that the Samuel Whittington shown above as the son of Francis Whittington, was the same person who married Dorothy Wood and whose father I had been searching for for quite a while.

Overall, Chancery Court cases like this are worth reading through every last page and making very careful notes because they are full of information.

The document below shows the distribution of Samuel Whittington's estate in 1827.
 

The Disappearance of Louis Winkler

I came across Louis Winkler in the course of doing my due diligence on the Weems family.  Following up on the children of Edwin Dawson Weems and Rosetta Norman, I found a marriage for their daughter Martha Weems with one Louis Winkler in Washington DC in 1899.

Louis, a 38-year-old native of Hungary, showed up with his wife Martha in Baltimore in the 1900 Census where Louis was working as the Supervisor of the Insane at Bayview Asylum.

Then, a search in Baltimore newspapers turned up the strange story of Louis's disappearance.  On January 14, 1903, Louis apparently walked out of the house and did not return.  "He kissed his wife and two-year-old child good-bye, saying that he would be back about five o-clock, if not earlier and spoke in his accustomed endearing way to his wife.  He left about 10 o'clock in the morning  and since that time has not been seen or heard from."

His father-in-law called for the police to find Winkler, speculating that either he had met with foul play or he had sailed back to Hungary.  Meanwhile, his pregnant wife gave birth to a son, Edwin Weems Winkler, on January 29. 

I was never able to find a follow-up story, so I was forced leave this mystery unsolved.

Some years later, I came across a Find-A-Grave entry for Martha Weems Winkler who was buried in, of all places, Bozeman MT.   Her memorial was also linked to that of her son Edwin Weems where  little more of the story was filled in. His memorial said that his father had died when he was three years old and that the family had moved to Bozeman in 1910.

With that information, I went back to look for a death certificate for Louis Winkler and I did find one in 1906 in Baltimore, so that fit the information in Find-A-Grave. I made a note to go get a copy of the death certificate from the Maryland Archives.

Then I also went back to Ancestry and searched again for Louis Winkler.  This time,  a passport application from 1921 turned up.

This Louis Winkler, also from Hungary, was living in Cleveland OH and clearly had not died in Baltimore in 1906.  Were there two Louis Winklers?

Update: 7 April 2017

Yes, it turns out there were two Louis Winklers and the one that died in Baltimore in 1906 was not Martha Weems' husband.

I found the death certificate for Louis Winkler who died in Baltimore in 1906 and he was from Germany, not Hungary and was a laborer, not working in a hospital.

The Death Certificate of Louis Winkler in Cleveland showed that he was from Hungary.

Further, his occupation was hospital orderly.  A story from a Cleveland newspaper indicates that in 1906, Louis Winkler was a hero who rescued hospital patients from a damaging fire.

I got another piece of the puzzle when someone saw the picture of Louis I had posted in Find-A-Grave.  Louis and Martha's son, Edwin Weems Winkler, published notes about his mother and father, which were kindly shared with me. 

Martha, or "Dolly" as she was known, was apparently a lively, vivacious girl who badly wanted to get away from her strict parents.  She married and quickly divorced a drinking, gambling man named Cole.  The family considered this disgraceful and sent her out West to Montana to stay with her mother's sister and returned to Maryland about 1894, but still was not getting along well with her family.  She went to live with a cousin in Baltimore and ended up with a job in a hospital, which is probably where she met Louis Winkler.  They were married in Washington DC in 1899.  According to the notes, Louis was well-educated and spoke seven languages, though his English had a pronounced accent.  He was trained as a male nurse, which was uncommon in Maryland and he had difficulty finding work in this field.  He tried his hand at selling insurance, but this was not successful.  The couple had a daughter about 1900 and a son in 1903, but faced many financial difficulties and quarreled quite a bit.  This resulted in the "disappearance" article where I first noticed Louis.  Martha took her two young children back to her aunt in Montana since she did not feel welcome at the family home in Maryland and divorced Louis when she got there.  She apparently had nothing more to do with Louis and his son did not know what happened to his father.