Words We’ve Heard

This is a Crosstitch my mother had hanging on her wall. It says, “I feel more like I do now than I did when I got here”, one of her favorite sayings. We grow up with phrases we’ve heard, words or phrases — sayings we read, quotes, you name it. What about “I THINK – THEREFORE, I AM.”

Philosopher Rene’ Descartes (Rin-NAY Day-CART) in his 1637 “Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting Reason, Part IV” said “Cogito, Ergo Sum” (I think, therefore I am). You see, philosophers have this notion that it’s fruitful to think totally weird ideas like, “Do we really exist or is this all a dream?” Descartes’s point is that we, the human race, are capable of thought. If we can think, we have minds so we must indeed exist.

Ok, ok, too deep, I know. So here’s a joke my brother Rick told me. He says a doorbell rings, a guy opens his door to find a girl scout selling cookies. He asks, “How much?” She tells him. He fumbles in his pocket for the money then very slowly says, “I don’t think …” Poof! He disappears!

I guess you’d have to be a philosopher to get it.

I like saying my son came up with. Actually a lot of people came up with it but I’ll credit him with it because he didn’t know at the time that others had same something similar. He said, “Good judgement comes from experience. And experience — well, that comes from bad judgement.” I like that one.

But where do the weird little words or phrases we learned from our parents come from? Some we know. My parents always used the French phrase “beau coup” meaning a lot or an abundance. It’s originally French “biau cop” according to the dictionary which can me “a beautiful helping” of soup or beverage. Why French? Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t from our French ancestors on my dad’s mother’s side. Her maiden name was “Seay.” Originally “DeSaye”, her ancestors were French Huegonots who came to America seeking religious liberty.

I guess one of the strangest things I remember hearing when we were growing up is my dad would always say, “It went through him like a dose of Croton Oil.”

I looked that up several years ago but found nothing so I gave up searching for it. Times have changed. Now we have Wikipedia. I looked up Croton Oil and there it was! Sure enough, it says, “Small doses taken internally cause diarrhea.” That’s what I figured. But where did my dad come up with that. Was it something he heard his parents say? Something he read? Or was it a popular phrase used in his generation?

I read what Wikipedia said about its history. Croton Oil is mentioned in a Steinbeck novel. Dad was an avid reader. He may have seen it there but one thing really caught my eye. During WWII, the U.S. Navy mixed Croton Oil with the alcohol fuel used to power torpedos to keep sailors from drinking it. I remember dad mentioned that torpedos were powered by alcohol. He was in the Navy in WWII and served in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. I’m pretty sure that’s where he became familiar with Croton Oil when his fellow sailors got sick from it. Problem solved!

So what words or phrases did you grow up with? Do you know where they originated? Are they part of your family’s heritage? Like the song says, “You never can tell.”

50 Years of Genealogy

On this Christmas Day, December 25th, 2017, my thoughts are turned to family research for some reason. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s because genealogy research has occupied my spare thoughts for almost 50 years.

I’ve actually been interested in my family’s pedigree much longer, ever since my childhood, when my father would show us his family pedigree written on translucent drafting vellum in India Ink. He began documenting his ancestry in his early 20s same as I did.

My dad got his college education taking night classes with benefits from the G.I. Bill. In 1949 he took a class in drafting. The school later became known as the University of Alabama in Birmingham where my son and I also went to school. CLICK HERE to see an image of my father’s 68-year-old pedigree which he created while attending college.

Although my father began researching our family’s pedigree over 70 years ago he wasn’t the first to do so. He copied research from two relatives, the Kelly sisters, cousins of his parents. Marion and Maud McLure Kelly were researching our Vincent, Pace, and other family lines over 100 years ago. Maud was famous for being the first woman to practice law in the state of Alabama but she was equally famous in genealogical circles for writing numerous research papers on some of our ancestral lines.

Marion was first to begin documenting our Vincent family research. Maud did a lot of traveling, researching our Vincent ancestors. She clarified research on our Pace line. Years before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock on 1620, our ancestor Richard Pace was living near Jamestown, Virginia. It’s kind of cool being descended from someone who may have known John Smith and Pocahontas.

But what about our other ancestors with other surnames. The number of surnames in everyone’s family doubles with each generation. Your parents were born with two different surnames, your grandparents with 4, your great-grandparents with 8.

You may know your mother’s maiden name but do you know her grandmother’s maiden name? There’s been lots of family research done on my dad’s side but not on my mom’s side of the family. From 1970 to 1990 I spent most of my research time looking into my mother’s ancestry. Now I know the surnames of my 8 great-grandparents. They are:
• Vincent
• Finch
• Seay
• Pace
• Warren
• Farmer
• Blake
• Smith

I’m not so sure about the surnames of their parents. That’s where we start running into what genealogists call a “brick wall.” To sort things out, I’m starting a new project by copying cousin Maud’s idea. 100 years ago Maud Kelly started documenting her family research in a legal journal. It looks like an old abandoned log book her father, also a lawyer, may have used.

I can just see young Maud asking her dad,
“Father, do you have a book I can use to record my genealogy research?”
“Sure, daughter, use this old book. I rarely use it anymore.”

And so it began. Maud’s notes in the margins, headers, coverleaf, etc. show her entries were organized almost from the beginning. She wrote the surname at the top. My own research notes from 1970 to 1988 were rather random. In 1988 I began a new research book which I used until 1995. In it, I began writing the date of each research effort. I tried to enter a one-line description and put the current date at the top of each entry. On the inside front and back covers I recorded an index of the pages. That research log is by far the easiest to thumb through.

Over the years since then, computers, the internet, email, texting, and social media have greatly modernized communications. Writing things down (or printing them) in print form is still critically important for personal archives but these tools are wonderful for quickly documenting ongoing efforts.

How should they be organized? Why by surname, of course! So I’m entering a new era of documenting my research. With any luck I’ll live long enough to see it completed. I’ll be trying to compile my half century of written and electronic correspondence and research discoveries on the internet. For my platform, I’m choosing one of my web domains, MyKinFolks.org, that I’ve had for a few years now.

Creating and maintaining websites is so cool. The HTML code used is pretty simple to create. Uploading is kind of expensive but a good way to archive stuff in addition to printed form. Long after I’m gone, people should still be able to read and view my web pages from any web browser. To preserve the pages, I only need to copy them to a CD. Anyone with a computer can view them. They don’t need the internet.

I began documenting my ancestry online in the late 1980s with FamilySearch.org’s Ancestral File, their online companion to Personal Ancestral File (PAF). 10 years later I was inspired by Sheridan Vincent’s website and I created my first website in 1998. Another 10 years, in 2007, I purchased my first domain, vincentfam.net. A year later, VincentsFamily.org (with an “s”) followed, then VincentFamily.org (no “s”) became available. I purchased it and MyKinFolks.org in 2012.

I’ve learned a lot from other researchers working with VincentFamily.org. I’ll continue to do so. Other family lines have since heated up. A few evenings ago I received a phone call from a distant cousin about my research. I got frustrated talking to her because I couldn’t locate all the papers and books and correspondence needed. I kept having to apologize.

My years of research are in too many formats. The essential parts need a common platform. I’ll share research on other lines by starting my Smith research at MyKinFolks.org. That line has really gotten hot over the past few years. It will be fun sharing what I know online with all the other Smith researchers.

So that’s it in a nutshell. That’s gonna be one of my projects for 2018. Wish me luck and stay tuned.

Deep in the Heart of Texas – our grandmother?

My brother sent me a bunch of interesting, little known facts about Texas. Like El Paso is closer to California than it is to Dallas and the King Ranch is larger than Rhode Island — stuff like that (what a BIG state).

Our own grandmother, Oma Seay Vincent, once lived in Texas (early 1900s). Her dad, John N. Seay, returned the family east in a covered wagon. Her mother, Fannie Pace Seay, kept a diary of the trip which Fannie’s daughter, Johnnie, had ’til she died. No one knows what happened to it.

The 1900 Census shows grandmother Oma living in Milam County, TX which is 154 miles due south of Dallas and 221 miles west of Beaumont. Oma’s sister, Sam Houston Seay, died in Texas according to Aunt Celia. They kept the girls clothes which Oma’s daughter, our Aunt Celia Vincent Bass, later wore as a child (clothes were expensive back then).

Moving to Texas was not uncommon back then. In a 1905 letter to her cousin, Marion, Oma’s future sister-in-law Ida Vincent mentioned several family members who had moved to Texas.

On the 1900 U.S. Census for Milam County, Texas, our grandmother is listed as “Ora Seah” (Her name was Oma Seay), a 12-year-old white female born in Alabama Sep. 1887. Family records and other sources all agree she was actually born in 1888.

The census was taken the 8th of June, 1900. It says Oma and her siblings had attended school for two months that year. Kids back then attended school far less than they do today because they were needed to help work the farm. It says she could read and write.

On Jan. 10, 1993 I interviewed Aunt Ceecee (Celia) who told me her mom, Oma, was 7 years old when her family took a train and moved to Texas to raise cotton. She was 14 when they returned to Alabama by covered wagon just 2 years after this census was taken. The trip took them 6 weeks.

Our grandmother Oma named a child Houston. You have to wonder if Texas wasn’t always deep in her heart even though she didn’t live deep in the heart of Texas.

1947 Letter from Fannie Pace Seay to Oma Seay Vincent

My grandmother Vincent was Penoma Ophelia Seay before she married, better known as “Oma.” Her mother was Fannie Walker Pace. Fannie was a very artistic woman. Our family had a oil painting Fannie made in 1896. You can see it by clicking HERE. You can read and save a document about her artwork and craft skills by clicking HERE.

My main reason for this blog post is to share a letter Fannie wrote in 1947, the year I was born. It’s an interesting letter. It doesn’t have any Genealogy information in it but it is fascinating for Family History. It’s a mirror into her life the year before she died at age 86.

You can view the images and transcripts of the letter by clicking HERE and clicking on the individual filenames, “.jpg” for image files and “.txt” for transcripts. Click on the README.txt file first for an overview.

Here’s where I need help from everyone. The letter is very hard to read. If you have time and can decipher some of the words that we haven’t yet been able to interpret, please let me know via email or by posting comments on this blog. If you don’t have time to review all this and would just like to see what we’ve been able to figure out so far, here’s our interpretation of what Fannie told her daughter Oma in 1946 or ‘47.

In the transcript below, words added by the editor (me) are in brackets. “[sic]” means I didn’t make a mistake. In the letter she actually wrote the word “I” twice. Original spellings are preserved as best I could while at the same time trying to properly interpret what Fannie was writing. You’ll have to interpret poorly spelled words in context. For instance, the word “Money is spelled “Moy” in one place and “Monny” in another.

[PAGE 1] Sunday Eve

Dear Oma, I wrote you a letter, it came back to me. I had the pneumonie in [my] right side.   my nabor kids would not come in until they heard me cough.   Mr Craft & Johnie [Fannie’s daughter] was all the ones to help me.   Staid in bed 3 weeks.   this last week was all [the time] I I [sic] have [been] able to stay up.   the grass & weeds

[PAGE] 2 has taken the place.   Most of my tomato died but law at the peaches I have had.   I saved [aa*]   a lot of [them] so do you wish any?   had 1 trre [??? bb*] of enough mad[e] pickles all from 4 serve [cc*] elbird & new derving.   this spell got me strong.   am notion [to] sell & get away.   What will be the best to sell at so you 3 kid & me will have a portion equal divid in 4 parts? [dd*]   I can sell to a man in

[PAGE] 3 town for cash if you will all sign it [ee*], if not will borrow moy on [the] place.   tel the one that loans me the monny [they can] have it for 2500 year without intest [ff*].   best to sell if I can get a place to live [that] will feed my self so write what you think is best.   haven seen of Buby[‘s] folks since last spring B cause near being killed.   not able to walk [gg*].   ever where I stay I

4 give [away] my junk.   how is your Sore?   get 1 oz of Glycerine, 3 oz of Aa iodine[, and] mix.   rub over it.   if it burn[s use] grese [to cover it] with [for] 6 hours [hh*].   have cured with this Dr Harry perscrption.   it will turn skin black of go the groth.   some[one] broke open [my] house last [night???]   [They] broke [the] lock [and] stole some cotriges.   all I went after was gone [in] 1 hr.   [They] stripapad my yard [ii*].   write & tell me who you think best stora ge no who can walk.   write soon. with lo[ve] to all,          Mother

LEGEND:

aa = Evelyn? Emily? Eula? Erika?

bb = She is obviously talking about pickled peaches.

cc = She probably means varieties of peaches. Elberta is a common and very old variety but I have no idea what she means by “derving”?

dd = Fannie is talking about selling her place and equally dividing the proceeds 4 ways, one part each for: Fannie (1861-1947), Fannie’s son Beaury Walker Seay (1884-1966) aka “Buby”, a child’s nickname for “Brother”, and Fannie’s two daughters, Penoma Ophelia (1888-1955) aka “Oma” and Johnnie Christine (1891-?).

NOTE: Fannie loved nicknames and had one for each of Oma’s children. Maud Kelly writes about this in her Vincent Family History.

ee = Perhaps her husband’s will required that his property be divided equally among his living heirs. This was once common with the wife as executrix, requiring the children’s signatures upon selling the place.

ff = This is hard to read. If Fannie can’t sell, she plans to mortgage her property, but for how much? It appears she is willing to sell for $2,500.00 and no interest if the loan is paid within a year.

gg = I wish I knew more about this event. Was “Buby” (Beaury) nearly killed and not able to walk? Perhaps one of his descendants would care to comment.

hh = This is a best guess at sentence structure and word interpretation. If you look at the actual image file for this page of Fannie’s letter, it’s really difficult to tell what she has written. Her sentence structure is so broken at this point that she may have meant something entirely different.

ii = This sentence and the one following it are almost indecipherable. We’ve transcribed what we can comprehend and left words we can’t decipher as they appear. It appears someone broke her door lock and burglarized or vandalized Fannie’s home. In the second sentence, she may mean that whoever stole the ammunition (cotriges) also stripped (“stripapad”?) her yard of anything of value while she was gone for only an hour. In the sentence following she may be asking Oma if she knows of a place she can store things safely that would work for someone (i.e. Fannie) who can’t walk very well.

A Thompson Mystery Solved

A few weeks ago, on a Sunday evening, I had a discussion with some of my children and grandchildren about some photos a distant cousin, Ted McClellan, had sent me. I “met” Ted in December 2013 via Family Tree DNA. I had taken FTDNA’s Family Finder DNA test the previous July. The test shows Ted and I are relatives.

This story actually began back in the 1970s when my Aunt Evelyn Vincent Farris promised me some heirloom family photos of Andrew Thompson. He’s the guy in the above photo (click HERE for a larger version). Before I begin, let me share a pedigree that helps connect the dots. Click HERE for a photo pedigree of my grandmother, Oma Seay’s line, marked in RED.

I inherited photos of Oma’s parents. I had seen her granddad, J.N. Seay’s father in a group photo. But I didn’t know of any photos of Oma’s mother’s family. The photo we had of her dad’s father was a group photo taken during the Civil War. That photo is courtesy of one of my cousins (thanks cous’) but we didn’t know which person in the photo was our ancestor nor did we know our ancestor’s correct name.

Cousin Ted identified Oma’s grandfather, Nathaniel David Seay. He found his Civil War record from his name which matches Thompson Family Bible records where he was shown as “N.D. See.” (His name is also spelled “See” in the Civil War record)

N.D. Seay’s height and rank are in the record. The group photo only has one man who would have matched N.D. Seay’s height and rank – the back row, 2nd man from the right. The original black & white photo was later colored by hand.

Finding Cousin Ted was a story in itself. Actually, he found me. I had connected with another cousin who Ted already knew. Since our DNA matched, he contacted me via FTDNA.com and we began emailing back and forth. It was Ted who explained to me where Andrew Thompson comes in. Ted is my 2nd Cousin Once Removed.

As it turns out, N.D. See died in the Civil War. His wife remarried a man named Thompson. My grandmother’s father, J.N. Seay, never liked his step-dad but he was very fond of the man’s son, his younger half-brother, Andrew. J.N. Seay ended up with at least 3 photos of Andrew Thompson which were passed on to my grandmother Oma when he died.

My Aunt Evelyn got the photos when my Oma died. My Cousin Cass got them when Aunt Evelyn died then Cass sent them to me. Andrew Thompson was Cousin Ted’s grandfather! What a revelation. He knew all about the family and literally covered me up with information about my grandmother’s ancestors, all sorts of stuff I never knew.

I was very grateful and thought, since he’s a direct line descendant, he should have two of the three photos of Andrew Thompson. So I scanned hi-res images as copies and sent him two of the three originals. I kept the one with Andrew and J.N. Seay together. In return, Cousin Ted sent me a stack of wonderful old photos of my Oma’s mother’s family I never knew existed. Wow! Those are the photos I showed my children and grandchildren that I mentioned in the first paragraph of this blog post.

As you can see from the photo at the top, Andrew must have been a skilled blacksmith. If you’re curious to know more, please email me. If you think the rest of the family might want to hear your comments or questions, please comment to this blog. Thanks. -Ron.V

P.S. Here are photos of Andrew Thompson, Seays, & Paces:
A photo of him standing outside his shop with an unknown man
(the black man in the background was related to “Aunt Febby”)
A photo of Andrew with Oma’s father, J.N. Seay
A photo of my grandmother’s sister Johnnie sent by Cousin Ted
(Our Aunt Celia Christine was named after Johnnie Christine)
A photo of Oma’s Uncle Joseph Brown Pace, her mother’s brother

(Many of these and photos on The Pedigree are courtesy of Cousin Ted McClellan)

Hap & Joe

This photo is a great first post for our family’s genealogy photos blog. By the way, in case you don’t know how to migrate here on your own, just go to MyKinFolks.org and click the Link to “Photo BLOG” at the lower-right.

This is one of my favorite photos in the collection. I didn’t know it existed until cousin Judy sent it. She’s Joe’s daughter and my only 1st cousin on mother’s side still living. That’s Joe on the right sitting next to my dad, Wilburn “Hap” Vincent. His grandchildren called him “Giddy.”

These two WWII veterans represent both sides of my family, my father’s side including the surnames of Vincent, Seay, Finch, Pace, etc. and my mother’s side (she and Joe’s wife were sisters) including the surnames of Warren, Blake, Farmer, and Smith among others.

Hap and Joe are sitting in Hap’s living room which us older folks will remember. The photo is not dated. It was in Joe’s wife’s collection. She was called Tincy by the family. I’m guessing that’s because she was small when young and the name stuck. We called her Aunt Tincy but her given name was Mildred.

The photo was in Tincy’s collection when she died. Cousin Judy inherited it and shared it with me so we could all enjoy it. Thanks, cousin Judy! In fact, Judy shared a lot of photos with me which I’ll share on this blog in future posts.

According to Cousin Judy, this photo had to have been taken in ’67 or ’68. My dad was pretty gray headed by the 1980s. Please check the comments to this blog post for the most current information.

The full-sized copy of this photo can be viewed and downloaded 1) by clicking the photo above, 2) by going to MyKinFolks.org then Photos, then Abels, or 3) by clicking the following link:

http://mykinfolks.org/photos/Abels/Abels%20-%20Joe%20%28right%29%20&%20Vincent%20-%20Hap%20%28left%29%20in%20Vincent%20Family%20living%20room.jpg