Matrilineal Monday ~ Jane Hunter McAlpin

After seeing my last blog post about a branch of the Hunter family on my mother's side, a reader of this blog asked about where the name Hunter came from on my father's side.

Hunter is the maiden name of my third great grandmother, Jane Hunter, who married James McAlpin.

Jane Hunter was briefly mentioned in a post about my McAlpin line. According to Pyle, Smith and Allied Family Histories (Privately published, 1951) which I have mentioned before, she was born on May 11, 1786, in Muckamore, Antrim, Ireland. She married James McAlpin on July 14, 1809, at Antrim, Ireland, and had one or two children before immigrating to New York, on the Jupiter, in 1811. The family soon settled in Dutchess County, New York, up the Hudson River from New York City.

I believe Jane Hunter and James McAlpin were Scotch-Irish.

Most of this information is from secondary sources (though I have seen enough references to the immigration on the Jupiter that I'm pretty sure that's accurate) so please don't go believing all this is fact - it's simply a place to start if anyone wants to do some research in Antrim County, Ireland, which is where research would need to be done to find her parents' names.

Jane's children were baptized at the Presbyterian Church in Pleasant Valley, Dutchess County, New York. In June, the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society made a book available in which I could confirm the McAlpin children's baptisms.

Arthur C. M. Kelly, Vital Records of Presbyterian Church Pleasant Valley, Dutchess County, NY 1793-1947
(Rhinebeck, NY: Kinship, 2007). Page 131 (image 135) from the index.

After her husband died in the cholera epidemic of 1849, and was buried in what is now Beacon, Dutchess County, New York, Jane is found in Brooklyn in the U.S. Federal Censuses in 1850, 1860, and 1870, with different combinations of children and grandchildren.

List Your Matrilineal Line - Update

Back in October 2011, I shared my matrilineal line - my mother, her mother, etc. back to the first identifiable mother. At that time, I only knew back five generations to my immigrant maternal ancestor, Lillias (Johnston) Alston.

I recently discovered indexes of Scotland Births and Scotland Marriages at FamilySearch.org, and have extended my matrilineal line by a couple more generations.

a) Elizabeth
b) My mother (still living) married Charles McAlpin Pyle, Jr.
c) Helen Lysle Hunter (1907 - 1990) married Lowell Townsend Copeland
d) Marguerite Lysle (1876 - 1967) married Percy Earle Hunter
e) Marion Helen Alston (1850 - 1885) married George Lysle, Jr.
f) Lillias Johnston (4 June 1806, Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, Scotland - 3 Jan 1852, Allegheny, Pennsylvania) married John Alston on 28 June 1833, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland.
g) Lilias Kennedy (27 December 1775, Douglas, Lanarkshire, Scotland - ????) married Robert Johnston, 22 November 1801, in either Douglas or Carmichael, Lanarkshire, Scotland.
h) Jean Grienshields [Greenshields] is listed as the mother on the index of the birth of Lilias Kennedy.

This line is how my mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was passed to me. Since I originally shared this maternal line, I have had my mtDNA tested (with FamilyTree DNA) and I now know that I am in mtDNA haplogroup U5b2a1a1. A haplogroup is a personal DNA signature, which can be thought of as a branch in our common maternal lineage, which traces a branch back to a shared maternal ancestor in Africa. The U haplogroup is the major branch, and because I did a full mitochondrial sequence, I know the "smaller branch" of the haplogroup that I descend from.

Mitochondrial DNA is passed along from mother to child (son or daughter), so a son can be tested for his mtDNA. (Y-DNA is passed along from father to son, so only a son can be tested for his Y-DNA haplogroup.)

Going back thousands of years in the "maternal tree" (what FamilyTree DNA calls the "deep ancestral origin"), my branch's migration was from western Asia to northern Europe. When I look at my mtDNA matches in FTDNA, they are primarily in Norway, England, Scotland, and Germany.

For a more thorough  explanation of using DNA in genealogy, I recommend the blog, Your Genetic Genealogist, written by Cece Moore. Also, The Legal Genealogist, Judy G. Russell, wrote weekly posts about DNA last year, many of which explain DNA very well.

Matrilineal Monday ~ Aunt Lukie, Part 2

Aunt Lukie in my
grandparents' wedding photo

I summarized the records I found about my second great aunt, Ruth Lyman (Greeley) Copeland, in last week's post. As you may remember, she married her sister Ethel's husband, Lowell Copeland, after her sister died, becoming not only my second great aunt, but my step-great-grandmother.

My mother has many memories of her step-grandmother, whom she knew as Aunt Lukie, who died when my mother was 40. She is remembered as a somewhat odd and not particularly nice woman.

When my mother was growing up in Pittsburgh, Aunt Lukie would periodically come and visit the family. My maternal grandfather, Lowell Townsend Copeland, was Aunt Lukie's nephew and step-son. After her sister Ethel died, Lukie agreed to come to Princeton (N.J.) and "keep house" for her brother-in-law, my great-grandfather Lowell Copeland. She said it didn't "look good" for them to live together, so they got married.

My great-grandfather, Lowell Copeland, died on Christmas Eve, 1935. Every Christmas after that, Aunt Lukie would write her step-son, my grandfather, a letter. I don't know what was in these letters, but my mother remembers her father saying that "Aunt Lukie drove my father to an early grave."

When Aunt Lukie came to visit, Grandfather would have a golf game... or would go out to weed the garden... or prune the rose bushes... or anything to get out of the house. "He found every excuse in the book to be as far away from Aunt Lukie as possible" as my mother remembers it. He did not like his step-mother and wanted to spend as little time with her as possible. As my mother told me: "Grandfather couldn't stand her."

My mother's maternal grandmother, Marguerite Lysle, whom I have written about before, was born in 1876, and therefore only two years older than Aunt Lukie, born in 1878. (You can see both of them in my grandparents' 1931 wedding photo.) However, after Marguerite had a heart attack in 1952, every time Aunt Lukie would ask about Grandmother's mother, she would ask in such a way that implied that Marguerite was a great deal older, but she was only two years older than Aunt Lukie, which infuriated my grandmother Helen.

My mother remembers Aunt Lukie telling her and her sister when they were young that "You girls don't have to worry about spilling any secrets to me, you talk so fast and you mumble so much I can't understand a word you say."

Aunt Lukie spent her later life in Framingham, Massachusetts, close enough for my mother and her to visit with each other. She died in 1975 at 97 years old.

Matrilineal Monday ~ Sarah Smith Lowell, b. 1795

Sarah Smith is my third great-grandmother. The little bit I know about her comes from a town history published in 1897: History of Litchfield and an Account of its Centennial Celebration, 1895, published by the Kenebec Journal Print in Augusta, Maine. I found this at Ancestry.com, and it can also be found at Google Books.

Local histories are a wonderful resource. This local history includes many genealogies of families who spent time in Litchfield, Maine. On page 311 is the family of Joseph Smith and his wife Martha Robinson.

In the History of Litchfield, the first child of Joseph Smith and Martha Robinson is listed as Sally Smith. This is the only place where I find her listed as Sally. In other records I find her listed as Sarah.

Of course, we must remember that this is a secondary source and should be used as a guide to find primary source information about a family, but for some of this family's information, this is all I have at this point in time. (Other secondary sources that mention Sarah Smith, wife of Reuben Lowell, include The Historic Genealogy of the Lowells of America from 1639 to 1899 by Delmar R. Lowell, published by The Tuttle Publishing Company, Rutland, Vt. in 1899, and The Copeland Family: A Copeland Genealogy by Warren Turner Copeland, published by The Tuttle Publishing Company, Rutland, Vt. in 1937.)

Sarah (Sally) Smith, was born as the oldest child of Joseph Smith and Martha (Robinson) Smith, on November 28, 1795, presumably in Litchfield, Maine. She married Reuben Lowell on February 28, 1820. About 1825, they moved to Calais, Maine, about 186 miles east northeast of Litchfield, according to Google Maps. Her husband, Reuben, died at the young age of 42 in 1837, in Calais, Maine, leaving Sarah as a widow with five children (three other children had died very young in the 1820's).

Reuben Lowell is in Calais, Maine, in the 1830 US Census. After his death, Sarah is the head of the household and I am able to follow her in census records in Calais, Maine.

Matrilineal Monday ~ Fanny Davenport (1785-1871)

Frances (known as Fanny) Davenport is my third great-grandmother.

A couple of years after the death of her first husband, Leonard Adsit, Fanny (with five surviving children) married Orlando Davis and subsequently had three children with him. I have not done much research on Orlando, as he is not a direct ancestor. However, with a relatively unusual name, I am able to use it to find his wife, my third great-grandmother.

In the 1840 Federal Census, I find Orlando Davis in Sherburne, Chenango County, New York.

Year: 1840; Sherburne, Chenango, New York; Roll: 273; Page: 224;
Line 24; Record for Orlando Davis

The numbers indicate that the household included one young man between the ages of 10-15 and one young man between the ages of 15-20 (likely two of their three sons). There is a man between the ages of 40-50 (Orlando Davis) and a woman between the ages of 40-50 (Fanny (Davenport) (Adsit) Davis).

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Matrilineal Monday ~ Nancy Rainey Freeland

I have written about long-lived maternal ancestors before. One third great-grandmother, Nancy (Rainey) Freeland, who died about 1903 was well into her 80's, if not 90 when she died. She outlived her husband by over 40 years.

Determining her birth date from census records is a challenge, as most of them indicate a different birth year.

In the 1900 U.S. Census, Nancy Freeland lives at 1415 Buena Vista Street in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania with two unmarried children.

This census record says that she was born in December 1813, is 86 years old and a widow. She was mother of 7 [?] children, of whom three are still living. (I'm only sure of five of these children-see below.) She was born in Ireland (and her parents were born in Ireland). She immigrated in 1831, and has been living in the United States for 69 years. She (as well as the others in the household) can read, write, and speak English, and she rents her home.

Her household includes her son, William J. Freeland, who was born in August 1854, age 45 years. His occupation is "Conductor R R" and he was not out of work in the prior twelve months.

Also in the home is her daughter, Anna C., born in February 1857, age 43 years, and a schoolteacher. She was out of work for 10 months in the prior year.

There is also a 23-year-old Pennsylvania-born servant, Myrtle Kniess.

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Twenty years earlier, in 1880, the U.S. Federal Census shows widowed Nancy Freeland living at 87 Buena Vista Street in Allegheny with three unmarried children.

In this census record, Nancy is listed at 65 years old, implying a birth year of about 1815. She has a mark in the column indicating she is a widow and her occupation is "Keeping House."

Her son William J. is 27 years old (born about 1853) and works as "R.R. Brakeman. One daughter is listed as Claude A., age 25 (born about 1855) and a School Teacher. I have long puzzled about whether Claude A. in 1880 is Anna C. in 1900, and I am pretty sure they are the same person. (I have found many names for this third great aunt.) A younger daughter, Emma, is 22 (born about 1858) and also a School Teacher. I lose track of Emma after this census, so she either married, thus changing her surname, or died.

And here are the Freelands as listed in the Directory of Pittsburgh and Allegheny cities, 1880:

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Matrilineal Monday ~ Mary Elizabeth Gorin, 1833-1891

More than a year ago, I participated in a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun blog post where I listed all 16 of my second great-grandparents. See Heritage Pie Chart for the basic details - names, dates, locations and parents of this generation of my ancestors.

I have blogged about 15 of these 16 second great-grandparents. The 16th of these ancestors I want to write about is Mary Elizabeth Gorin (1833 - 1891). I have written about her husband, Daniel Morgan Ashby, and shared an ambrotype of her father, Thomas Jefferson Gorin.

Much of what I know about Mary Elizabeth Gorin is found in the Gorin Family Bible that was passed down in the family and is now in my possession.

She was born on June 28, 1833, in Glasgow, Barren County, Kentucky, where Gorins had been for several decades. Based on the bible entries, Mary E. Gorin was the oldest of seven children born to her parents, Thomas Jefferson Gorin and Mary Ann (Bowman) Gorin.

Image from Gorin Family Bible, Births page

According to U.S. Census records and city directories, she spent just about all of her life in Glasgow, except for her last few years, when she lived in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1850, the first U.S. Federal census that lists the names of all household members, she is enumerated in her parents' household as 17-year-old Mary E. Gorin.

According to the family bible, Mary Elizabeth Gorin married D. M. Ashby on February 11, 1857.

Image from Gorin Family Bible, Marriages page

Matrilineal Monday ~ Eliza May Wells

Eliza May Wells, my second great grandmother, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 20, 1839, to Thomas Goodwin Wells and Elizabeth Sewall Willis.

She spent her childhood in Merrimack and Walpole, New Hampshire, based on the fact that I find her father and family in Merrimack, Hillsborough, New Hampshire, in the 1840 U.S. Federal Census and I find the family in Walpole, Cheshire, New Hampshire, in the 1850 U.S. Federal Census.

Louisa May Alcott was a cousin who spent time with her "Wells cousins in New Hampshire."

By 1860, her family had moved to Brookline, Norfolk, Massachusetts and in 1866, she married, as his second wife, a first cousin of her mother, Samuel Sewall Greeley, in either Brookline or Cambridge, Massachusetts. (See their marriage record here.) See Samuel Sewall Greeley's obituary for more about him.

Eliza May (Wells) Greeley then moved to Chicago, where she gave birth to five children:
Elizabeth Sewall Greeley (1867 - 1868)
Ann Percival Greeley (1869 - 1876)
Henry Sewall Greeley (1871 - 1877)
Ethel May Greeley (1875 - 1931), my great grandmother. See a photograph of her.
Ruth Lyman Greeley (1878 - 1975), who deserves her own blog post one of these days.

She was also step-mother to three sons of Samuel and his first wife.

She applied for a passport application on September 25, 1879 in Chicago, Illinois. Her brother Benjamin W. Wells confirmed that she was who she stated she was.

Ancestry.com, U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925. Record for Eliza M. Greeley (1879)

Matrilineal Monday ~ Marion Alston

After posting the photograph and the wedding invitation of my second great grandmother, Marion Helen Alston, I thought I'd share some census records for her as a child.

My guess is that she lived her entire life in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

1850 U.S. Federal Census, Allegheny Ward 3, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania;
Roll: 744; Page 105B; Record for John Alston

In 1850, the household includes John Alston, age 44, occupation carpenter, born in Scotland, with value of real estate owned at $800. Wife, Lilly Alston is 44 and also was born in Scotland.
The following are assumed to be their children, although not specifically stated:
John, age 16, occupation Carpenter, born in Scotland
William, age 8, born in Pennsylvania
Andrew, age 3, born in Pennsylvania
Lilly K., age 12, born in Pennsylvania
Margaret(h), age 10 (though looks like 19), born in Pennsylvania
Marion, age 4/12, born in Pennsylvania
Christine, age 4/12, born in Pennsylvania
And you can see in the far right-hand column that "twin" is noted for Marion and Christine. Based on the date that this census enumerator wrote at the top, 27th September 1850, I am estimating that the twins were born in May 1850.

The 1850 Census was taken over a period of five months beginning on June 1, 1850.

There are two additional members of this household (William Emson and Susan Helman) whom I cannot fit into this family except that the young man was born in Scotland and is a carpenter, so perhaps he came from the same Scottish community that the Alstons did.

Matrilineal Monday ~ Susan Arville Chapin

My initial interest in my family's history arose after my paternal grandmother died and my father inherited all of her family history materials, which included The Chapin Genealogy, containing a very large proportion of the descendants of Dea. Samuel Chapin, who settled in Springfield, Mass. in 1642, compiled by Orange Chapin, and published in 1862. With handwritten notes and "bookmarks" (little pieces of paper inserted at each ancestor going back to Deacon Samuel Chapin) made by an ancestor, this intrigued me, as I wondered whose handwriting it was and who originally owned this book.

It is very likely that this book originally belonged to my great great grandmother, Susan Arville Chapin. According to this published genealogy, another published Chapin genealogy (The Chapin Book by Gilbert W. Chapin, published in 1924), and the sampler that she embroidered at the age of 12, she was born on June 9, 1820, in Ludlow, Massachusetts, to Orramel Chapin (1791-1866) and Susan Rood (1799-????). [Note: these two secondary sources are known to have plenty of errors, as the handwritten notes made by my ancestor attest to, but it gives a starting place to research.]

Matrilineal Monday ~ Sarah Lowell

I am continuing my series on my long-lived maternal ancestors.

My great great grandmother Sarah Lowell was born in Calais, Maine, on December 30, 1833, the youngest of eight children to Reuben Lowell and Sarah Smith. Her father died in May 1837. I have not been able to find her widowed mother, Sarah (Smith) Lowell in the 1840 Federal Census, though I just found her in the 1850 Federal Census, mis-indexed as Sarah Lowde.

Detail from 1850 U.S. Federal Census,
Sarah Lowell in Calais, Washington County, Maine

This is the earliest record I have found for my great great grandmother, 16-year-old Sarah Lowell, as Sarah (Smith) Lowell's youngest child. 22-year-old Frederick A. Lowell is a third great uncle.

On December 15, 1858, Sarah Lowell married Henry Clay Copeland (1832 - 1912) in Calais. [Calais, Maine Vital Records.]

They had three children:

1. Charles Townsend Copeland (April 27, 1860 - July 24, 1952) - longtime Harvard English professor, never married.
2. Lowell Copeland (October 5, 1862 - December 24, 1935) - my great grandfather.
3. Sarah Katherine Copeland (October 15, 1874 - September 13, 1924) - married William Harrison Dunbar in 1898.

Every Federal census record from 1860 to 1910 finds Sarah with her husband, Henry, in Calais, Washington County, Maine. See Workday Wednesday ~ Henry Copeland, Lumberman.

Sarah's husband Henry died in 1912 in Calais.

Boston Journal, January 11, 1916, GenealogyBank.com

Sarah died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on January 9, 1916, at the age of 82. See a photo of Sarah Lowell.

My descent from Sarah Lowell > Lowell Copeland > Lowell Townsend Copeland > my mother > me.

Matrilineal Monday is a daily blogging prompt from Geneabloggers, the genealogy community’s resource for blogging. It is used by many genealogy bloggers to help them tell stories of their ancestors.

Matrilineal Monday ~ Esther Abigail Whitman

Esther Abigail Whitman was the wife of James Pyle, the founder of James Pyle & Sons. I have previously shared James Pyle's obituary, which mentions that he is survived by a widow, but doesn't name her.

Much of my information about my Pyle ancestors comes from a privately published book, Pyle, Smith and Allied Family Histories, privately published in 1951. Unfortunately, the primary source information is lacking, so I have to use this as a resource to point myself in the direction of primary sources.

Great great grandmother Esther was the oldest of nine children, born on February 2, 1828, in Guysborough County, Nova Scotia to Thomas Cutler Whitman and Diana Morgan. I believe that the following passenger list record for Esther Whitman from Nova Scotia to Boston could be my great great grandmother.

Boston Passenger and Crew Lists, 1820-1943. From Pictou, Nova Scotia to Boston, Massachusetts, on the Schooner Chedebuck, arriving Boston June 28, 1849. Record for Esther Whitman.

Esther Whitman is 21, making her birthdate in 1828. Her occupation is Dressmaker. She is a native of N[ova] Scotia, and intends to become an inhabitant of the U[nited] States. None of the others listed on this passenger list are Whitmans, so I can only surmise that this is her.  (Much of the rest of her family immigrated to New York in 1857.)

Matrilineal Monday ~ My Kentucky Great Grandmother

Undated photograph of Mary Bowman Ashby Adsit

Mary Bowman Ashby was born in Glasgow, Barren Co., Kentucky. She died in Beverly, Essex Co., Massachusetts. She spent most of her adult life in Chicago, Cook Co., Illinois, which is where she is buried, although at some point after her husband died in 1931, she moved to the Boston area to be near her only daughter. It will be interesting to find out where she is living when the 1940 census comes out next year. [Update: It turns out she was living in New York City, near her son in 1940.]

She married Charles Chapin Adsit in 1890. (See a wedding announcement here.) He died in 1931.

Detail from death certificate of Mary E. Adsit

Mary Bowman (Ashby) Adsit died on September 12, 1956. (The name is misreported on her death certificate as Mary E. Adsit.) The death certificate confirms her parents' names and birthplaces, which is always a great thing to find on a death certificate. According to this death certificate, her age was 90 years, 5 months, 3 days, placing her date of birth at April 9, 1866. (I like to use the Tombstone Birthday Calculator to calculate a birth date.)

However, in reviewing census records for her family, I think she was 93 when she died.

Matrilineal Monday: Grandmother's family 1900-1910

My maternal grandmother, Helen Lysle Hunter, born February 1, 1907, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was the youngest of five girls. She married a man with two sisters as his only siblings, and was mother to three girls, two of whom went on to have only daughters. (How did I end up with all brothers, marrying a man with only brothers, and being mother to sons? A genealogical balance of sorts?)