Conway Sawyer Campaign Ad - Amanuensis Monday

Thanks to John at Transylvanian Dutch for providing a framework (and nudge) for transcribing family records, news clippings and other treasures.

To The People of Morristown and Hamblen County

This is to remind everyone that I am running for the office of 

REGISTER of DEEDS

for Hamblen County

     I have already contacted many of you personally and hope to see many more in the coming weeks. However if I have not yet seen you, I take this means of telling you something about myself and asking for your support

     I have lived in Morristown for the past eighteen years and enjoyed it because here I have met some of the friendliest and best people it has ever been my privilege to know. I am married to the former Flavia Tweed of Greeneville. Our home is at 210 East Main Street. We belong to the First Presbyterian Church.

     For many years I operated a small grocery store on the corner of Daisy and 2nd South. Many of you young people will recall eating hot dogs at my place during your junior high and high school days, and I am taking this means of asking all of you young voters to remember your old "Soggy Dog" friend by registering and voting for me in the coming election. (Don't forget that July 3 is the deadline for registering).

     About twenty-seven years ago I developed arthritis, but my case has been arrested many years and would not handicap me in any way in filling the duties of the office I seek.

     I earnestly solicit your vote and influence in the August election and promise if elected to fulfill the duties of the office honestly and faithfully.

Sincerely,

Conway Sawyer

Paid Pol. Adv.

Notes:

Conway Sawyer was my great-uncle. He was the 4th son and 8th child of Jehu Stokely (Gee) and Catherine Conway Sawyer. He was born 11 Jan. 1904 at home in Warrensburg (Greene), TN and died 19 Oct. 1989 in Morristown (Hamblen), TN. He was survived by his wife Flavia. They had no children. 

The clipping was found in an address book belonging to his younger sister Kathryn Sawyer McKenzie. I don't know when Conway was first elected but my earliest memories of him are in the mid-1960s when he was serving as the County Registrar. 

DNA and me

Well the results are in (or at least beginning to come in).  I found I was unable to resist the year-end promotions at 23andMe and ordered test kits for myself, my father and my husband. One of us was more prompt than the others (I'll leave you to guess) and I am now poring over information.

What is immediately clear is that I have a lot to learn. My reading to date has been along the lines of Genetic DNA for Dummies - and I haven't fully absorbed that. Time to up my intake levels.

I've been given some good pointers for places to explore. My weekend reading is starting with Blaine Bettinger's ebook "I Have the Results of Genetic Genealogy Test, Now What?" which can be downloaded from his The Genetic Genalogist website. I have joined the DNA forums at Genetic Genealogy Digest and posted my first query. Joan Miller pointed me to the International Society of Genetic Genealogy website. 23andMe has forums and information, though I have found it difficult to navigate so far.  Several of us have banded together on Facebook for moral support with a 23andMe Newbie group. Please join us if you wish.

Lots to absorb. I am, however, truly interested in the results so far. I have little expectation of actually connecting with relatives on my father's side, but there are some potential matches that I have started communicating with. What has most interested me is my paternal Carpatho-Rusyn grandmother's haplogroup result - H2a5. My admittedly novice reading of the results suggests that this group is restricted to the Basque region of Spain - definitely NOT what I expected.

H2a5 and the Basques

One branch of H2 is much more localized. In fact, H2a5 is found only among one group of people: the Basques of northern Spain. The Basques are an isolated ethnic group that mostly reside in the Pyrenees Mountains that separate Spain from France. They speak a language that is distinct from every other on Earth, and many scientists have speculated that their linguistic uniqueness may mirror an equally unusual genetic history. In fact, some have argued that the Basque represent the descendants of some of the earliest human inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula. Although Haplogroup H2 is found among many Europeans, H2a5 is found only among the Basque, at levels of about 6%. H2a5 likely arose about 15,000 years ago, just after the glaciers began to recede from Europe after the Last Ice Age. People carrying H2a5 expanded into the Pyrenees, where their descendants still reside today. (From 23andMe's website)

There are other non-Basques with the same haplogroup, though most seem to be Norwegian. Curious and curiouser.

Roger's Men's Clothing Store - Wordless Wednesday

Roger's Men's Clothing Store, Morristown, TN c. 1962.  

My grandfather, Bob Sawyer, is pictured in the upper right in front of the hat display.  Athletic shirts were on sale, 3 for $2.00.  Getting a gumball from the machine next to the cash register was a huge treat for us. 

Roger's Men's Clothing Store, Morristown, TN, undated. Digital Image. Privately held by Nolichucky Roots [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE], 1999.

Status updates from the past or how Grandmother beat Zuckerberg to the punch

I've just realized that my grandmother was way, way ahead of her time. Were she living today she'd be one of Facebook's biggest fans. Mark me with a little gobsmacked emoticon. She always seemed pretty Victorian to me. But no...

I was looking for articles about my grandfather for a short biographical sketch. While checking east Tennessee newspapers for baseball stories or clothing ads (found both) I found a clipping about my mother in the Kingsport News announcing her hiring as a science teacher at Rogersville High School. I knew she'd taught there briefly, always maintaining that even that brief stint had been punishment enough for the students.

Ever thorough, I decided to do a quick check to see if there were any other mentions of her. I should have known. She was, after all, from the same family that announced a 12 year old's birthday party in the local paper. Let it be clear that Mother was not sending out monthly press releases of her activities. That honor belonged to her mother, Iva Williams Sawyer.

I found this ...

And then the earth shaking news she spent Christmas at home...

Her students likely went into mourning...

I'm certain she was thrilled to have her bout with mono published...

Then there was this...

She was a jetsetter (prop setter more likely)..

And finally, this...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mother did not return to Rogersville in the fall and vanished from the pages of the Kingsport Times & Times News. I suspect, however, were I to review the Morristown papers she was featured there on a regular basis until she escaped to Washington, DC. Anonymity must have been bliss.

I ought, I'm sure, to be proud that Iva was so forward thinking. Privacy, shmivacy - the social network reigned supreme. Move over Zuckerberg. Iva was there first.



Sources:

Ancestry.com. The Kingsport Times (Kingsport, Tennessee) [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2006.

Original data: The Kingsport Times. Kingsport, TN, USA. Database created from microfilm copies of the newspaper.

Ancestry.com. Kingsport Times News (Kingsport, Tennessee) [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007.

Original data: Kingsport Times News. Kingsport, Tennessee, United States Of America. Database created from microfilm copies of the newspaper.

In search of Rachel's Hamptons - Surname Saturday

My fourth great-grandmother Rachel was the wife of Isaac Mulkey. I've always been told her last name was Hampton. I hope it is, because that's the only thing I have to go on!

Rachel was born about 1794 in what became Tennessee. She married Isaac Mulkey, a son of Rev. Jonathan Mulkey, about 1809. No marriage record has been found, though there are Washington County records from that time period. They had at least ten children. Isaac Mulkey died in 1855. Rachel lived until after the 1880 census when she was enumerated living with her daughter Rachel and son-in-law Joseph Campbell.

Issac and/or Rachel were enumerated in each Washington County census from 1830 through 1880. Rachel appears to have been in ill health the last years of her life. She is listed as an invalid in 1870. She could not write, but may have been able to read. The 1880 census listed her mother’s birthplace as Virginia, but left her father’s birthplace blank.

Rachel’s parentage is unproven. Indeed, as I mentioned before, her name is unproven. Family tradition names the wife of Isaac Mulkey as Rachel Hampton, daughter of Andrew who is the son of James Hampton of Stokes County. This information was written down by Ella Mulkey Range in her self-pubished, undated pamphlet The Life of Reverend Philip Mulkey, His Ancestors and Descendants, 1650 – 1950. It is more than a little suspect.

Range cites "Hampton and Mulkey D.A.R. records" to support her statements regarding Rachel’s ancestry. She names Andrew Hampton who died in White County, TN as Rachel’s father and names his children – Jonathan, Susannah, Andrew, John, Elizabeth, Nancy, Benjamin, Alice, Rachel, Mary, Adam, Mitchell and Catherine. She states he gave his daughters slaves upon their marriages (Range, p. 11).

Range, born in 1879 in Kansas, was a great-granddaughter of Isaac and Rachel Mulkey and may have met Rachel before she died. If so, it was as an extremely young child and very late in Rachel's life. What family sourced information she had about Rachel most likely came from her father James Duncan Mulkey, born 1836, who lived in Washington County near his grandparents until the Civil War.

There are a myriad of problems with her statements.

• The Andrew Hampton will naming the children she listed was written and recorded in Rutherford County, NC in 1805 (see Caroline Heath Davis’s Rutherford County, North Carolina, Abstracts of Wills, 1779-1822). 
• That Andrew’s daughter Rachel was born about 1777 and married Samuel Thomas in Rutherford County in 1794. 
• There is no evidence to date that Isaac Mulkey ever owned slaves. 

According to Karl Hampton, who has spent years researching two different Andrew Hamptons (termed Granville and Anson/Rutherford Andrews for the NC counties where they were recorded), two Andrews did live in White County, TN. One was the son of the Andrew dying in Rutherford County, NC in 1805 and the other was his grandson. But I have never seen an iota of evidence linking either of them to Rachel, the wife of Isaac Mulkey.

Assuming Hampton is Rachel’s surname, who are her Hamptons? Was her father named Andrew? I shall be examining potential Hampton families in the following weeks, but next will come an outline of Rachel’s children.