About Skeletons in the Closet

I got an email today through Ancestry. 

For context Almira Gay is my 3rd great aunt. The Charles and Anna mentioned in the email are my 3rd great grandparents and grandparents to Anna Gay Rae. 

Charles Whiteman, the scoundrel, is no relation.  

Hi Chris,

Our connection to the Gay family is through my husbands great grandfather.  Charles Whiteman married Almira L. Gay in 1869. They have an interesting story.  Charles worked at the Pacific Bank and embezzled $20,000. Around 1872 he and Almira ran away to California.  Their daughter was born in Salinas, but they ended up in St. Helena, CA. (About 45 minutes from where I live!)  They changed their name to Youngs.  Evidently he was very charismatic, he ran a novelty shop and was involved in city government. Almira died young and Charles buried her in St. Helena under her maiden name Gay.  Almira's brother Charles married Anna and their daughter was Cornelia.  I believe this young lady is Cornelia.  The notation on the back of the picture of both of them says "Aunt Anna and Daughter"  There is nothing noted on the younger girl's picture.  Charles married two other women and had 3 other children.  He went back to New Jersey, the postcard is sent to Butler New Jersey and is dated 1907.  Almira's daughter married Nelson Vanderbeek and lived in New York.  They did not have any children that I can find.

Where do they fit in your story?  Do you have a story on the Gay Women?

It is all very fascinating.

Cathy

Aunt Anna and Daughter (probably Cornelia)

Mirror, mirror on the wall

There's this mirror at my parents' house that used to belong to Jack and Louise. It's a federal style wooden mirror, probably made from cherry wood with a gold eagle on the top. It looks something like this mirror, you get the idea. 

I don't remember where this mirror hung when Jack and Louise lived in the house at 3900, but I do remember the round gold convex mirror with the eagle on top. I never quite understood the point of a convex glass because everything was hilariously distorted, but it was a super cool mirror! 

So this federal style mirror has an envelope on the back with a yellowed piece of paper inside. 

Given to Nina by her Great Aunt Genivise (?)

Gregory Graves July 1899

This glass was bought by Amasa Gregory 

at an auction about 1844.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

We've been asking that question for years. 

As luck would have it, I've found two of the three people named on this piece of paper. 

I can't link Amasa Gregory to our family (yet), but he did have a daughter, Emily, that married a Graves. So I may have found the "Gregory Graves" link. I'll keep digging.

Nina could very well be Nina M. Benner, first cousin to Hattie Idella Benner. 

I haven't found much more about Nina that I can verify. She may have been married twice. The first marriage could have been to a Samuel Pinkham in 1899. However both she and Samuel show up a few years later with different spouses. The second spouse is George Savory who perished in an explosion on a friend's yacht in Buzzards Bay in 1908. There are conflicting reports about him. The death certificate lists him as married, with no name of the wife, but newspaper accounts of the accident say that he had no wife or children. I can find no record of Nina ever having children. 

I'll keep digging about Amasa. I think he lived in near the Boyntons and could have been a family friend. I'll let you know what I find out. 

As the weather gets more pleasant I spend less time at the computer, but I'm still digging around. I've scanned a few more photos and slides and will get them cleaned up and posted soon. 

I hope everyone is well! 

About more cousins

This is gonna be one hell of a family reunion!

Note: I totally stole this information from other web sites. All you need to do is Google "famous Mayflower descendants" or anything similar and the rabbit holes are endless. And I also didn't calculate the cousin relationships. That was another Google search. Links are below.

For what it's worth: We all know that if it's posted on the internet it's true, right?  

Descendants of Richard Warren

• President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 8th Great grandson. [7th cousin 6x removed]
• President and General Ulysses S. Grant. 5th Great grandson. [6th Cousin 7x removed]
• Henry David Thoreau. Author and Poet. 5th Great grandson. [6th Cousin 7x removed]
• Alan B. Shepard, Jr. Astronaut. 8th Great grandson. [9th Cousin 4x removed]
• Orville and Wilbur Wright. Aviation pioneers. 8th Great grandsons. [9th Cousins 4x removed]
• Orson Welles. Actor. 8th Great grandson. [9th Cousin 4x removed]
• Julia Child (1912-2004) Chef. 8th Great granddaughter. [9th Cousin 4x removed]
• Ernest Hemmingway. Author. 10th Great grandson.
• Laura Ingalls Wilder. Author. 7th Great granddaughter. [8th Cousin 5x removed]
• Amelia Earhart. [9th Cousin 4x removed]
• Matt Damon. 10th Great grandson.
• Richard Gere. 10th Great grandson.
• John Cena. 10th Great grandson. Professional Wrestler/Actor. Typically a pro wrestler wouldn't interest me so much (at all) but he has granted more "wishes" for the Make-a-Wish Foundation than anyone else, therefore he gets a nod.
• Marie-Chantal Miller. 10th Great granddaughter. Crown Princess of Greece. 10th Great Granddaughter. [11th Cousin 2x removed]
• George Herbert 8th Earl of Carnarvon, owner of Highclere Castle (aka Downton Abbey) 11th Great grandson. [12th Cousin 1x removed]

Descendants of Isaac Allerton

• President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 6th Great grandson. 
• President Zachary Taylor (1784-1850) 3rd Great grandson. [4th Cousin 8x removed]
• Joanne Woodward. Actress. 9th Great granddaughter.
• Louis Comfort Tiffany. Artist and Designer. 6th Great grandson.
• George Herbert 8th Earl of Carnarvon. 10th Great grandson.

Descendants of Mary Allerton Cushman

• President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 5th Great grandson.
• Louis Comfort Tiffany. 5th Great grandson.
• George Herbert 8th Earl of Carnarvon. 9th Great grandson.
• Joanne Woodward. Actress. 8th Great granddaughter.

I warned you that this is nerdy...

Links:

Cousin calculator
Mayflower Society Notabel Descendants
Mayflower History Famous Descendants
Mayflower American Ancestors
Famous Kin

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About Cousin Eli

If you are a Ganzer, and most of you are in some form or fashion, you've heard the family story that we're related to Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin. To make a long story short, yes, we are.

Now to make a short story a little longer...

Here's how I got there and how we're related. For my generation (great grandchildren of Violet May) Mary Ann Whitney is our 4th great grandmother and Violet's great grandmother. I logged into Family Search and pulled up Eli's family tree which was pretty easy since he's a historical figure. Lots of data online about him. Oddly enough Eli and Mary Ann are roughly the same age so I figured that if I went back through enough generations I might find a common ancestor. It got confusing because we have a lot of Nathans and Nathaniels and so does he. But after six generations I hit pay dirt--John Whitney and his wife Elinor. 

It appears that they had a bunch of kids over more than 20 years. Eli is descended from their second child and oldest son, John, and we're descended from John's youngest brother, Benjamin. John (the dad) and Elinor Whitney are Mary Ann's and Eli's 4th great grandparents making them 5th cousins.

So you can't really call Eli an "ancestor" since we aren't directly descended from him, but we are related. I have more digging to do because it looks like John and Elinor were part of the Great Migration from England to the New World. They were both born in London, England in the late 15th century and died in Massachusetts. On my "to do" list is to figure out what ship carried them across the pond.

But what is our exact relationship to Eli? He is our 5th cousin 6x removed. How does that even work?  Beats the hell out of me. I lose count after second cousins. I'd like to say that I figured it out in my head, but Ancestry.com did the calcs for me. 

I guess it was simply family lore that kept the story of his relationship to us alive. Keep the lore alive! 

If you want access to the info in our family tree that I've added on Ancestry.com shoot me a message through Facebook or here and I'll get you hooked up. 

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About an e-mail

So what I've enjoyed the most about this little project of mine has been the new connections I've made with my cousins. And it's not just on the Ganzer side of the family. I've been chatting it up with the Beck relatives too. I see an offshoot of this site for the Becks in the future. (Nutshell...my mom's parents' families came from Finland/Russia and Sweden around the turn of the nineteenth century...you'd never tell by looking at us that we had Scandinavian heritage, right?)  

Back to the new connections with the cousins. In particular Walt, my dad's 1st cousin. I met Walt when I was barely 5 years old on a road trip to California, and if I remember correctly he came through Wisconsin at some point in the 70s. Or was I hallucinating? Anyway. Back in 1969-ish my grandfather got a wild hair (hare?) to drive from Minneapolis to southern California to visit his brother. I may have this all wrong, but this is how I remember it. I was 5 for crying out loud. 

Before we left on the trip we shopped for stuff to keep us busy in the car...like crayons, books, etc. This was a big deal because we couldn't open or play with any of the stuff we bought until we started the trip. So exciting! 

There was a station wagon involved. So I'm not really sure how we made this happen. The travelers: Jack, Louise, Candy, Bob, Mary, Karen, me. In my opinion (as a rather open minded 50-something year old) this was a recipe for disaster, but as a 5 year old this was an amazing adventure! We had a mattress in the back. Seriously. A freaking mattress! I'm still trying to put all the pieces together of how it was decided that this was a good idea. Probably started with a "beer and a little one"...classic Jack. 

I don't remember how long we visited with Uncle Bob and his family, Emma, Susanne, Steve, Walt and Jeff (and their great danes...and maybe a small dog too?) in California, but I thought they were so cool because they had a pool in their back yard. Sweet! I have no recollection of being in the pool, but I do have memories of a beach, Disney Land and Busch Gardens. Disney Land is my biggest memory. I got to ride in the tea cups and the Small World, but Candy and Walt got ride the Matterhorn. Cooler than cool in the eyes of a 5 year old. 

So there's my first California vacation in three paragraphs. But this isn't about a road trip, it's about an email I got from Walt the other day. The part about not being able to shut his dad up cracked me up. I wonder if the reel-to-reel audio tapes that Bob and Jack sent back and forth still exist...but I digress. 

Here's the email from Walt:  

These are some photos you probably already have.  The last photo is of uncle Harold(Bob and Jack’s uncle.  I believe Harold was his middle name.  He served in WWI in the rainbow division(Douglas MacArthur’s division).  My dad once said he was a chauffeur for a general.  Wouldn’t it be something if he was MacArthur’s driver.  I’m sure if he was I would have heard about it.  As you know Grandma Ganzer’s father died at a young age.  My dad told me once that he was a Pullman railroad car painter and his death was caused by lead poisoning.  I noticed some Whitney’s in the genealogy.  When we were kids my dad always claimed we were a distant relation of Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin.  Anyways thanks for the info.  If my dad was alive you wouldn’t be able to shut him up about how he had a ancestor who came over on the Mayflower.  WG 

PS I believe my parents wedding reception was held at your great grandmother’s house.  Anna Ray?  If so that is where that one wedding picture was taken.

Jack, Bob holding Karen

I'm thoroughly enjoying this, can you tell? 

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