My Gillespie's in Armagh

It's been a busy spring - research and writing are progressing slow but sure!
 
In the meantime, I'm starting to plot some maps. Here is one for known locations of members relating to my branch of Gillespie's in Armagh (however the Drumminis location is only a possible family connection at this point in time).

Gillespie Most Wanted

Here is a list of Gillespie's that seem to have a part in my family story, but so far we can't quite connect the dots. These are people whose parentage cannot currently be established. I list them here from oldest to youngest.

1. James Gillespie, b. 1772 Ireland, d. unk. This person appears on the 1850 census of Bloomfield along with all our other Michigan pioneers. He is living with an 11-year-old named Margaret. I have not been able to trace either character before or after this moment in time.
2. Thomas Gillespie, Sr., b. 1777 Ireland, d. 1859 Michigan. He was the second husband of Nancy Gillespie, and quite probably a cousin to her. In 1855, when a petition was brought to have Thomas declared incompetent, it was stated that he had only a niece and nephew alive as heirs. My conjecture has been that would be Isabella and Thomas, Jr., who follow on this list.
   [See subsequent post My Irish Orange for possible clues to further identification of this person.]
3. Isabella Gillespie, b. 1813 Ireland or NY, d. 1891 unk but buried in Michigan. Isabella was the wife of John Greer Sr., and the mother of 15 children, one of whom was Belle Greer who married James H. Gillespie.
4. Thomas Gillespie, Jr., b. 1816 NY, d. 1899 Michigan. His death certificate said his father was James Gillespie, possibly the first person in this list?
5. Mary Ann Gillespie, b. 1816 Ireland or NY, d. unk. This person was the wife of Henry P. Sloat, who had property very close to our Michigan pioneers, and who was to become the guardian of Thomas Gillespie, Sr. when he was declared incompetent.
6. James Gillespie, b. abt. 1820, d. 1866. This person has a gravestone with the other Michigan pioneers, although I've not been able to account for him in any other documentation. His gravestone has a flag carved into it, which implies he was a soldier (and in fact Franklin Cemetery lists him as a veteran but I haven't yet determined the source of their information). I have tracked down every James Gillespie from Michigan who served in the Civil War, and none seem to be this James Gillespie. So either he served with a different state (I've looked at NY, but had no luck there), or he served in a different war (the Mexican American War?).

All of these family groups seem to have come to Michigan from the Orange County, NY area, although I am trying to keep an open mind about that assumption (some might have come to Michigan directly from Ireland?). My current thinking is that the two older characters (James and Thomas, Sr.) might have been first cousins to my John-Gillespie. This would mean we are now looking for a brother or brothers of John Gillespie. Could this get any more interesting?

Maybe it's time to look one more time at the Pine Bush Gillespie's (these are Gillespie families who lived in the Orange County, NY area but who seem to have arrived pre-Revolution and thus I have not been able to tie them to our Gillespie's who I believe arrived around 1810). On my website (see link on upper-right of my blog), there is a document in my library called "Early Gillespies" which talks about some of my research into the early NY Gillespie families. I have other notes on the subject so I'll try to compile and summarize that research in another post soon.

In the meantime, maybe I should offer a reward for information leading to the capture of my most wanted. What reward, I wonder, could possibly compare to the satisfaction in finally knowing the true story of those who came before?

Sharing Thoughts About Isabella Gillespie Greer

Happy New Year! Looks like I've been blogging for almost a year - woo hoo! I do like this way of tracking my notes, my questions, and my finds. It's been a great way to keep me 'publishing' even if in this minor way, and to get the info out where my cousins and others can find it. Yeah.

I want to give an update about my favorite brick wall whose name is Isabella Gillespie Greer. Since the day I discovered her nearly 3 years ago, I've not been able to determine who her parents were, and for this reason I have no idea really how she ties in to the Gillespie family if at all (and I hate to say that because it seems more than unlikely that she is not related to my Gillespie's in any way....).

Last week I was at my local FHC, and there was flyer taped on the door for the Broomfield Genealogical Society, and since I had not heard of them and since I live not that far away, I looked them up. There was a notice on their website by a member there, Diane Barbour, who is finishing her two-year study to become a certified genealogist and is offering once-a-month free consultations to members with brick walls. Well, just for fun I replied!

Of course it's hard to tell the whole story of a brick wall in 45 minutes. But Diane had asked for some details beforehand and had very kindly done a little researching on her own the night before. Here are the things she pointed out for me during our session:

• There is no question that these Gillespie and Greer families are interconnected, and that the connection easily goes back to Ireland. I guess there's a pattern with families who know each other well, and our Gillespie/Greer's fall into that category.
• Diane agreed that probably the only records to provide the parentage information I'm looking for, besides finding a letter or a Bible, would be a marriage or death record. A birth record, maybe, but we think that finding that for the time 1813 in early New York seems unlikely.
• Diane agreed that there should absolutely be a death certificate for Isabella given a death year of 1891, and the fact that turning over every rock in Michigan has not produced one says that Isabella probably died some place else. Diane asked me to follow up with locations other than Michigan where Isabella's children lived at the time of her death. In going through that exercise, states other than Michigan where Isabella's children were known to be living include Illinois, Ohio, and Colorado. I think I have located death indices in Illinois and do not find Isabella there, which leaves Ohio and Colorado - states where it is apparently not so easy to find an index of deaths that occurred in the year 1891. A little more digging is required.
• Finally Diane pointed out a huge difference in the real estate value for John Greer between the 1850 and 1860 census. I had not noticed that before and since I am going through all Michigan land records - yet again - it will be interesting to follow up on this. I don't think it will lead to Isabella's parents, but it's still something of note to look into more.

So, I want to start the new year by expressing my thanks to Diane, and to all genealogists who so kindly share. What I'm realizing is that sharing is a proactive thing. One doesn't just passively sit at home waiting for somebody to knock on the door and ask a question to which you might know the answer. There's a decision point where a choice is made to take some kind of action to reach out. I think as genealogists we realize that sitting on what we know defeats our purpose right out of the gate. None of us would be where we are without the help of others, and so along with being thankful, I look to my own resolutions about how best I can return the sharing. May 2012 be a good one for us all!

Will the Real Thomas Gillespie Please Stand?

For some time now, there has been much confusion (for me) about Nancy Gillespie because after looking at the various documents that have surfaced in the past couple years it appears that she - or more correctly stated - some person or persons with the name of Nancy Gillespie - is both a wife and a sister of Thomas Gillespie. Gad - really???

I have turned this problem every which way, and just can't seem to piece it together. Nancy was the petitioner for the probate of Elizabeth Gillespie and therein named herself as a sister and Thomas as a brother of Elizabeth. And yet in another document where Thomas Gillespie was declared incompetent, Nancy was named as the wife of Thomas. Gad - really???

What I'm learning is to go back over every shred of evidence mostly because I have now caught myself OVERlooking what is in front of me, and by that I mean I may have seen the evidence, I may have read it and filed it and posted it, but there's a very good chance that I didn't fully understand it. Such is the case for a document I found at the FHL in April 2011.

The document in question is a land deed from Thomas Gillespie to John Robert Slater in October 1860. Since Thomas Gillespie Sr. died in 1859 in Oakland County, Michigan, I presumed this document pertained to Thomas Gillespie Jr., further presuming that Thomas Jr. had somehow inherited his uncle's interest in Elizabeth Gillespie's estate (and even there I'm only guessing that Thomas Sr. was uncle to Thomas Jr.!). Furthermore, the document refers to Thomas Gillespie as being of Cavanacaw, in the County of Armagh, and it is even signed by a solicitor from Armagh! But again, I somehow pushed that aside, even knowing that Thomas Jr. was not born in Ireland, I thought somehow it was referring to Thomas Sr.'s birthplace. My gosh - look what the brain does when it doesn't grasp meaning! Well, every single thing I just wrote about is completely WRONG. And yes, eating crow is my new favorite pastime.

How can I say this when it seems so obvious? Elizabeth Gillespie's brother Thomas was a resident of Ireland. He did not live in either the United States or Canada (where Elizabeth's half-siblings had emigrated). This Thomas, the real brother of Elizabeth Gillespie, is a separate individual from the Thomas Gillespie who was married to Nancy and declared incompetent and died in 1859. He is the brother who stayed in the homeland. OMG.

So who was Thomas Gillespie Sr., the second husband of Nancy Gillespie, sister of Elizabeth? This could well be another case of cousin marrying cousin, which is probably the only thing that makes sense - as if there is any sense to be had in the tangled web of this family! So now the parentage of Thomas Gillespie Sr. becomes a mystery. Naturally I get to swap one mystery for another. WhatEVER.

Traditional Naming Patterns for Both Scots & Irish People

This is the title of an article I found online at http://cotyroneireland.com/guide/NamePaterns.html.

The detail that interests me here is this:
"The only difference between the Scottish & Irish naming patterns was that when the Irish father remarries after his first wife died, the first daughter born to this new marriage was often named after the deceased wife, and included her whole name."

Having been told that the Gillespie clan considered themselves more Scotch than Irish, the relevance of this detail could be questionable. But it's still interesting to peek at the family tree and consider the two marriages of John Gillespie. The Gillespie Family Record tells us that the mother of John's children by his second marriage was Sarah Woods. Curiously we have now three pieces of documentation that record the name Jane Woods, not Sarah, as the mother of the second-marriage children. Among us cousins, we mumble "well, her name must have really been Sarah Jane Woods." Ha. We don't know what we know.

But now given this information about naming patterns, perhaps we have a clue. If Sarah Gillespie was the first-born daughter of the second marriage (we don't know for sure, perhaps she was the only surviving daughter from that marriage), then MAYBE she was named for the first wife who died (presumably died - I really have to watch my assumptions lately). Unparenthetically speaking, maybe the first wife was named Sarah?

And maybe half the answers to all my questions pertaining to the details of family history (and life?) comes in a simple reply: tradition.

Reading Between The Lines

I stayed up late last night reading old letters that my fabuloso cousin has been so diligently transcribing. These letters add so much insight into the life and times of Alexander Gillespie and his family. But there is one letter in particular that I consider heart-pounding, from Alexander Gillespie to his son Alexander Garfield Gillespie, written October 28, 1911 from Gaines, Michigan. There is one run-on sentence that reads like this:

"Well it will soon be Halloween it was just 56 years ago on that night we came to Oakland County to Uncle Jimmie Greers and his 80 acres and the 40 acres your Aunt Elizabeth owned, that is the forty the share is not paid on. Well the 120 acres has been sold about 3 weeks ago to Detroit parties for $40,000 for a summer resort."

Oh my. Until now there has been not one shred of personal documentation that ties the Gillespie and Greer families together (before the marriage of James H. Gillespie to Belle Greer) - how cool is this? Maybe the most significant truth brought to light here is timing. Since discovering Pioneer Elizabeth and her probate record that mentions her half-siblings, I assumed that our Robert Gillespie came to Michigan to collect his inheritance in 1857 when Elizabeth died. Wrong. He was in Michigan a full two years before she died. With his family! This is a big wow for me. I keep crossing out and rewriting what I think I know!

But now several other questions bubble up from this letter of Alexander's, a few of which are:

1. The letter mentions coming to Michigan on Halloween, which is a curiosity in itself. I'm pretty sure that Halloween is a uniquely American holiday (to Europeans it was All Saints Day), so it must have been a strange thing for a Scotch-Irish-Canadian to consider. And what exactly was the custom then? Did poor rural kids in the second half of the 19th century dress up and go out asking for candy??? This is a topic that could use more looking into.
2. As I have reported elsewhere in my blog, our family historian, Edith Gillespie, published for many years a family newsletter. In one newsletter, there is a snippet from THIS letter telling about Alexander coming to Michigan on Halloween to stay with Uncle Jimmie Greer. But now that we have the actual letter, we find there is also the mention of Aunt Elizabeth's 40 acres. Now comes a bevvy of new questions:
   
   • Why did Edith drop this detail from the newsletter? a) she was simply short on space, cramming all the monthly news onto one sheet of paper whenever possible, b) she assumed Alexander was talking about his own sister, Lizzie Winslow, having no idea whatsoever about Pioneer Elizabeth, c) she knew everything there was to know about the Greers in Oakland County and just decided not to tell us.
   • Can we assume that Alexander probably did not first introduce the topic of arrival in Michigan in this letter, but he had told his son (and other of his children) about it personally at some previous point in time? And if Alexander G. and any of his siblings knew the full story of arrival in Michigan, why didn't THEY ever pass it on, even if only verbally?
3. And what about those 40 acres? I just don't understand what Alexander is referring to nearly 50 years after Pioneer Elizabeth's death. Elizabeth originally purchased 78.45 acres. My understanding is that our Robert Gillespie got 40 acres (I'm not sure how he got half with several other heirs), but then it appears to me that he sold it almost immediately to the administrator of Elizabeth's estate, namely Robert M. Greer. Then Robert M. Greer sold it to Mary Slater for $75. It is entirely possible that I am still missing some of the details of the transaction, but this is what I know about it to date. What is meant by "the 40 the share is not paid on" is completely unknown. We have a few suspicions, but that's for another post, I think.


4. Summer resort? Does that still exist today? And who collected $40,000? I can only guess it was a Greer?

Well, two of these questions are about what other people knew or didn't, which might not seem to have any relevance now. But I sometimes feel like we are learning about our past through two distinct layers - one is our own discovering and reading of documents and letters, and the other is Edith's earlier translation of those same documents and letters. It's so interesting, isn't it? It's like the difference between painting my own picture based on what I see now (even though I am farther away still from the true events), and turning around and looking at the painting that has been hanging on my wall since childhood, the one painted by Edith. When I started doing all this, I assumed these two paintings would be identical - mine would just have fresher paint. But they are not identical. They are strikingly similar, and some might argue in most of the ways that matter. But my story is different, so full of stubborn questions. And to think that at some point in the future, somebody will wonder about my own translation of this family history, what I really knew about, what I didn't tell about, and why. More and more I come to more fully comprehend history not only as a tangled web, but one that is still in process of being woven.

Covenanters

Well, I thought I was on to something today, but I always think that, right? I ran across some excellent history of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, also called the Covenanter Church of Southfield, Michigan. Mostly this is a reprint from an interview done with Mary E. Thompson for the Birmingham Eccentric and published in 1915. The history related in this piece is just wonderful. I got excited because I suddenly recognized surnames that I haven't really paid much attention to before: STEWART and PARKS. In addition are other surnames that have connections, like MCCLUNG.

David Stewart + Ann Porter
     Margaret Stewart + John Parks
          David John Parks + Mary Greer 
         (dau of John Greer Sr. + Isabella Gillespie)

Alexander McClung + Sarah McWilliams
     Ellen McClung + Thomas Gillespie

What I was really excited about was remembering recently reading a book (available on google) called Genealogy of Hugh Stewart and his descendants. This great book goes into some detail about Stewart-Gillespie marriages. If I could tie the Covenanter Stewart to any of the Hugh Stewart's then at last there might be a connection between "Pine Bush" Gillespie's and my NY Gillespie's.

But for naught. The very bottom line is TIMING!! All the "early" Stewart's and Gillespie's arrived before the American Revolution. There's just no getting around that. David Stewart arrived in 1800, which is precisely when I suspect "my" Gillespie-Greer's also arrived. The rub has been did they arrive before or after the War of 1812? And better yet, maybe they were deported as enemy aliens and then emigrated again?!

I will say this. The Covenanter connection is important in tracing these family lines. AND that connection seems much more obvious along the GREER lines than the GILLESPIE. The Gillespie's were definitely practicing Presbyterians in Quebec where the children from John Gillespie's second marriage landed. And Thomas Gillespie (Jr.)'s marriage to the daughter of a Covenanter elder would probably have him involved in the church as well. But generally speaking, I am finding more church association in America for the GREER than the GILLESPIE families.