Wilton Stroud Pyle ~ 52 Ancestors #21

I am participating in this year's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge from Amy Johnson Crow. Each week has an optional writing prompt and this week's writing prompt is Military.

Wilton Stroud Pyle was a second cousin of mine who died while serving in the Vietnam War. Wilton was the son of David McAlpin Pyle (1914-1984) and the grandson of David Hunter McAlpin Pyle (1886-1944), the older brother of my grandfather, Charles McAlpin Pyle.

There is an entry for him in the U.S., Vietnam War Military Casualties, 1956-1998, database at Ancestry.com. He died 49 years ago tomorrow (on May 29, 1969). According to this record, his military tour had started just two months before, on March 27.

Additional information from this record states that he was born on April 6, 1946, and lived in Morris, Litchfield County, Connecticut. He served as a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund has a website which includes the Wall of Faces, a virtual Vietnam Veterans Wall, where photographs of those who died can be found. Wilton Pyle's page includes messages that have been shared there over the past nineteen years.

In addition to his parents and extended family, he left three younger siblings.

His FindAGrave memorial provides additional information about him and includes a photograph of his gravestone, which is at Arlington National Cemetery.

Courtesy of photographer "Hope" at FindAGrave

Wilton

Stroud

Pyle

New York

2d Lieutenant

U.S. Marine Corps

Vietnam

April 6, 1946

May 29, 1969

In memory of the second cousin I never knew.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Henry Clay Copeland ~ 52 Ancestors #20

I am participating in this year's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge from Amy Johnson Crow. Each week has an optional writing prompt but this week, instead of using the prompt, I'm sharing another photograph from my aunt.

Henry Clay Copeland was born in Norridgewock, Maine, in 1832, and died in 1912 in Calais, Maine. I don't think I've ever seen a photograph of him and my aunt had four copies of this same image. This appears to be the clearest one.

Following is the backside of another of the images showing three different handwritten notes (suggesting he was 41 years old) as well as the photographer's imprint.

July 1873
Henry Clay Copeland
[sideways:] Eastport - Aug. 21, 1873

The photographer was Davis Loring, owner of Loring's New Rooms in Eastport, Maine. (I looked him up at Langdon's List of 19th & Early 20th Century Photographers.)

I have written about this second great-grandfather at Henry Copeland ~ Lumberman and Military Monday ~ Henry Clay Copeland.

Henry Clay Copeland

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Lowell Copeland

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Lowell Townsend Copeland

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My mother

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Me

Mother's Day ~ 52 Ancestors #19

I am participating in this year's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge from Amy Johnson Crow. Each week has an optional writing prompt and this week's writing prompt is Mother's Day.

I recently visited my mother's sister and she had the following photograph framed on her wall. I did my best to scan it using my Flip-Pal scanner.

The woman in the center of this photograph is my great-grandmother, Ethel May (Greeley) Copeland (1875-1931). Daughters Elizabeth Sewall Copeland on the left (born 17 March 1903) and Ruth Lyman Copeland on the right (born 8 July 1907).

(Perhaps this was taken when my grandfather, the girls' older brother Lowell Townsend Copeland, was away at school in the mid-1910s; or perhaps it was just a mother-daughters photo session)

A later photo of Ethel is at Ethel May Greeley. A yearbook photo of great aunt Ruth is at Ruth Lyman Copeland-Her Yearbook Entry.

Ruth Lyman Wells ~ 52 Ancestors #18

I am participating in this year's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge from Amy Johnson Crow. Each week has an optional writing prompt and this week's writing prompt is Close Up.

I feel like I know an ancestor "close up" when I have many photographs of that ancestor in addition to other documents.

My third great aunt, Ruth Lyman Wells (1862-1943), not to be confused with her father's sister, my fourth great aunt, Ruth Lyman Wells (1816-1882), was a much younger sister of my second great-grandmother, Eliza May Wells (1839-1880), who married Samuel Sewall Greeley.

Following are just a few of several photographs that I have of Ruth, who was born July 28, 1862.

This photograph has a Civil War revenue stamp on the back with a May 29 date, suggesting a year 1865. (Revenue stamps were in use from July 1864 to July 1866.)

Ruth was born in Brookline, Massachusetts (close to me; this is just a few miles from where I live) and lived there, in Cambridge, or in Boston all of her life.

However, she did travel.