Monday, May 30, 2011
Saluting our World War II Veterans
While immersed in the Civil War, on this Memorial Day I want to especially recognize the three living members of our family who served during World War II. My thanks and admiration to each of you. We're blessed to have such a mother, grandmother and uncles with us.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Sunday evening wrap up
A hodge podge day with hodge podge results.
I spent hours looking at admixture results for our DNA testing. For someone who literally dreams about maps, vectors and migration patterns (not normal I know, but I really don't have much control over my dreams) it's been fascinating. I've always seen traces of central Asia in my grandmother's face, a slight oriental cast to her eyes. While my father's family has been firmly planted in the shadows of the Carpathian Mountains as far back as we can trace them, that's no more than 200 years. It's clear from the DNA tests that somewhere in the previous 10,000 years or so his ancestors (MY ancestors) were tromping across Asia. While 75% of his DNA reads as European in the latest admixture test, 25% is a mix of Middle Eastern, Asian and North African. Forget finding Charlemagne. I'm hunting Ghengis Khan! And one note to my descendants - all that DNA you think might be Indian comes from your European Grandfather, NOT your Colonial American Grandmother.
Switching gears, I searched GenealogyBank.com for Meredith information and found some information about a John & Thomas Meredith who were merchants in Easton, MD in the early 19th c. I would very much like rule these guys in or out as my John & Thomas Meredith but it's not clear yet.
Finally, I'm assembling some information on my grandmother Anna Pereksta's family for a new-found cousin and am, of course, obsessing over what I don't know or haven't well documented. He's more interested in what I do know and that's what I need to focus on. HOWEVER, during my one (ok, there were four of five) last check on FamilySearch I found a fascinating record.
I mentioned in an earlier post about the Perekstas that my aunt knew a family in Binghamton, NY where the first husband had been George Pereksta. He was a cousin of some sort, was working as a miner in Vermont when he was killed in a mining accident. I did not mention that his wife was named Susie and that they had a daughter Katherine before he died.
Today someone new, Katie Perkesta born 1905 in New York, showed up on my screen. Since I thought I'd found every possible Pereksta in the US after 1900 I was startled. Katie was enumerated in the 1905 New York State Census which can now be viewed. I viewed.
Katie was listed as the 5 month old daughter of Mike and Susie Pereksta both born in Austria (the Empire, not today's nation). Just as I was beginning to remember a Susie with daughter Katherine I saw Mike's occupation. Slate quarryman. The bells went off! That's awfully close to a miner. Then I looked up Granville on a map. It's awfully close to Vermont! I went back to my notes from my aunt and saw George, not Mike, staring up from the page.
So it's not a perfect fit. But this Katie and Susie are the same ages as the women in the 1920 Binghamton census. And I know too well that first names are fluid in this population and memories are not perfect. I was asking specifically about Georges when my aunt told me this story - trying to figure out just who the George Pereksta was who travelled with my aunt Mary when she came to America.
I don't have an immigration record that fits for this Mike or Susie. It's not clear whether they were married in the United States or if Mike went back to Europe to marry. I don't know where Mike died. There were plenty of slate quarries in Vermont and NY and apparently many accidents and deaths. He likely died shortly after the 1905 census, since Susie's next daughter, who was reportedly not his child, was born about 1907/1908. Immigration, marriage, birth, death records - lots to do!
I spent hours looking at admixture results for our DNA testing. For someone who literally dreams about maps, vectors and migration patterns (not normal I know, but I really don't have much control over my dreams) it's been fascinating. I've always seen traces of central Asia in my grandmother's face, a slight oriental cast to her eyes. While my father's family has been firmly planted in the shadows of the Carpathian Mountains as far back as we can trace them, that's no more than 200 years. It's clear from the DNA tests that somewhere in the previous 10,000 years or so his ancestors (MY ancestors) were tromping across Asia. While 75% of his DNA reads as European in the latest admixture test, 25% is a mix of Middle Eastern, Asian and North African. Forget finding Charlemagne. I'm hunting Ghengis Khan! And one note to my descendants - all that DNA you think might be Indian comes from your European Grandfather, NOT your Colonial American Grandmother.
Switching gears, I searched GenealogyBank.com for Meredith information and found some information about a John & Thomas Meredith who were merchants in Easton, MD in the early 19th c. I would very much like rule these guys in or out as my John & Thomas Meredith but it's not clear yet.
Finally, I'm assembling some information on my grandmother Anna Pereksta's family for a new-found cousin and am, of course, obsessing over what I don't know or haven't well documented. He's more interested in what I do know and that's what I need to focus on. HOWEVER, during my one (ok, there were four of five) last check on FamilySearch I found a fascinating record.
I mentioned in an earlier post about the Perekstas that my aunt knew a family in Binghamton, NY where the first husband had been George Pereksta. He was a cousin of some sort, was working as a miner in Vermont when he was killed in a mining accident. I did not mention that his wife was named Susie and that they had a daughter Katherine before he died.
Today someone new, Katie Perkesta born 1905 in New York, showed up on my screen. Since I thought I'd found every possible Pereksta in the US after 1900 I was startled. Katie was enumerated in the 1905 New York State Census which can now be viewed. I viewed.
 |
| From FamilySearch.org |
Katie was listed as the 5 month old daughter of Mike and Susie Pereksta both born in Austria (the Empire, not today's nation). Just as I was beginning to remember a Susie with daughter Katherine I saw Mike's occupation. Slate quarryman. The bells went off! That's awfully close to a miner. Then I looked up Granville on a map. It's awfully close to Vermont! I went back to my notes from my aunt and saw George, not Mike, staring up from the page.
 |
| From Google Maps |
I don't have an immigration record that fits for this Mike or Susie. It's not clear whether they were married in the United States or if Mike went back to Europe to marry. I don't know where Mike died. There were plenty of slate quarries in Vermont and NY and apparently many accidents and deaths. He likely died shortly after the 1905 census, since Susie's next daughter, who was reportedly not his child, was born about 1907/1908. Immigration, marriage, birth, death records - lots to do!
Saturday, May 28, 2011
The Whitaker Brothers, Bleeding Kansas and the Border Wars - Civil War Saturday
Benjamin Franklin Whitaker (1841-1932) and his brother Frederick Lucius Whitaker (1844-1915) were my husband's 3x great-uncles, younger brothers of his great great-grandfather Henry Lyman Whitaker (1838-1902). Born in Massachusetts and dying on the west coast, their lives spanned the continent. It is for these Whitakers that I've nicknamed my husband's paternal family the Westward Expansionists.
They were born in western Massachusetts, near Springfield, to Stephen Lyman Whitaker and his wife, Emaline Kentfield (Kantfield). Both parents were from deeply entrenched New England families. But after their father died in 1852, their mother moved her boys west - first to Illinois and then by 1858 to Pardee in Atchison County, Kansas Territory.
Atchison County is on the northern edge of the area known as Bleeding Kansas where free and slave state forces struggled over land and power in the years leading up to the Civil War. No documented deaths occurred there related to these struggles and the worst of the violence had abated when the Whitakers settled there. But it could not have escaped their notice that the Kansas-Missouri border was fraught with tension.
In 1860 the brothers were living with their mother and new stepfather, Joseph Trueax. Frank may have been elsewhere at the time of the census enumeration. He's listed as a gold seeker and I'm not sure there was much gold panning, mining or seeking in Kansas.
They were born in western Massachusetts, near Springfield, to Stephen Lyman Whitaker and his wife, Emaline Kentfield (Kantfield). Both parents were from deeply entrenched New England families. But after their father died in 1852, their mother moved her boys west - first to Illinois and then by 1858 to Pardee in Atchison County, Kansas Territory.
Atchison County is on the northern edge of the area known as Bleeding Kansas where free and slave state forces struggled over land and power in the years leading up to the Civil War. No documented deaths occurred there related to these struggles and the worst of the violence had abated when the Whitakers settled there. But it could not have escaped their notice that the Kansas-Missouri border was fraught with tension.
In 1860 the brothers were living with their mother and new stepfather, Joseph Trueax. Frank may have been elsewhere at the time of the census enumeration. He's listed as a gold seeker and I'm not sure there was much gold panning, mining or seeking in Kansas.
 |
| From Ancestry.com |
On 16 Jul 1861, six months after Kansas achieved statehood, the brothers enlisted in the Army at Fort Leavenworth. They are recorded as serving in Kansas's 10th Infantry Regiment, Company B. One regimental history states that the 10th was formed from the 3rd & 4th Regiments in 1862, however the Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kansas, Vol. 1. - 1861-1865 lists the Whitakers on the Company B roster from enlistment. (Of note is another Whitaker from Atchison County also enlisted in Company B (as an officer) - David Whitaker/Whittaker. I know of no relationship between this Whitaker and my husband's family.)
The brothers spent the war close to home, chiefly in Kansas and Missouri. They took part in the Battle of Cane Hill, skirmished with Quantrill in 1863 and guarded the military prison across the Mississippi River in Alton, IL. Both were discharged after three years, mustering out on 19 August 1864 back at Fort Leavenworth. Frederick served as a private for the duration of his service, but his older brother Frank was promoted three times, ending his service as a First Sergeant.
Following the war both married and started families. Their lives following the war are full enough to demand another post.
For further information see
Bleeding Kansas: Behind the Legend (www.youtube.com)
Border Disputes and Warfare, Territorial Kansas Online, 1854-1861 (www.territorialkansasonline.org).
Civil War, Kansas Historical Society/Kansapedia (www.kshs.org).
Watts, Dale E. How Bloody Was Bleeding Kansas?, Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains; Vol. 18 (2) (Summer 1995): pp. 116–129 (www.kshs.org).
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Our Places - Those Places Thursday
It has been a difficult week in Missouri. Even from across the state we've felt the waves of sorrow and pain radiating from Joplin. We've watched the skies all week, heard more sirens and prayed that no more lives would be lost.
I've thought of places. Places we've lived, places we've loved, places our families called home, places our families left - even fled. I've thought of what defines those places.
The lighthouse reaching out into our great lake or standing atop the rocky coast of our cape. The spires of colonial churches rising above the town. The brick townhomes. The clapboard farmhouses. Cherry blossoms, blue hydrangeas, daylilies. The ice cream stands we walked to after dinner - or our much loved St. Louis custard which requires a car trip. The cannons on beach still pointing out to the sound, still defending our shores more than 200 years after the minutemen raced down from their farms. The stone walls of Connecticut, the white fences of Cape Cod. A baseball stadium. A giant boulder left by a retreating glacier. A massive tree, up the path, with a rope swing waiting each summer. The drawbridges. The porches. The rivers running through the cities, towns and villages where we've lived. The mountains defining the views, the roads, even the lives. The sand dunes and grasses.
Some of these things will stand for centuries. Most will not.
Starina, the village where my great-grandmother was born, lies beneath the Starina Reservoir in Slovakia. A deliberate destruction for a presumed greater good. Some of the lands my family roamed in Tennessee lie beneath the Tennessee Valley Authority reservoirs. Rust belt and mill cities that sheltered my immigrant family have decayed, no longer industrial power houses. Tiny farm communities in the midwest have vanished, with only an old house, a barn, a silo marking where our ancestors lived and worked. Even those places that flourish have grown - often beyond recognition.
Such melancholy. Nothing is static. But I pray no more of our communities are blown to pieces this year.
I've thought of places. Places we've lived, places we've loved, places our families called home, places our families left - even fled. I've thought of what defines those places.
The lighthouse reaching out into our great lake or standing atop the rocky coast of our cape. The spires of colonial churches rising above the town. The brick townhomes. The clapboard farmhouses. Cherry blossoms, blue hydrangeas, daylilies. The ice cream stands we walked to after dinner - or our much loved St. Louis custard which requires a car trip. The cannons on beach still pointing out to the sound, still defending our shores more than 200 years after the minutemen raced down from their farms. The stone walls of Connecticut, the white fences of Cape Cod. A baseball stadium. A giant boulder left by a retreating glacier. A massive tree, up the path, with a rope swing waiting each summer. The drawbridges. The porches. The rivers running through the cities, towns and villages where we've lived. The mountains defining the views, the roads, even the lives. The sand dunes and grasses.
Some of these things will stand for centuries. Most will not.
Starina, the village where my great-grandmother was born, lies beneath the Starina Reservoir in Slovakia. A deliberate destruction for a presumed greater good. Some of the lands my family roamed in Tennessee lie beneath the Tennessee Valley Authority reservoirs. Rust belt and mill cities that sheltered my immigrant family have decayed, no longer industrial power houses. Tiny farm communities in the midwest have vanished, with only an old house, a barn, a silo marking where our ancestors lived and worked. Even those places that flourish have grown - often beyond recognition.
Such melancholy. Nothing is static. But I pray no more of our communities are blown to pieces this year.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Bob & Iva in the beginning - Wordless Wednesday
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| Bob & Iva Williams Sawyer, c. 1926 |
A photograph from the album of Mary Kathryn Sawyer McKenzie, Bob's sister. The photo, taken outside their home in Portland, Oregon, was mailed home to Bob's family in Tennessee.
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