Ellen Ruth Roberts, 1919-2009

Ellen Ruth Taylor Roberts, wife of Roy Gilbert Roberts, daughter of William Daniel Taylor and Dona Westerfield, passed away on Monday, September 28, 2009. Ruth, as she was known, was among other talents a wonderful mother, grandmother, and storyteller. Her stories of her family inspired me to get back into genealogy research. I thought I would try and share a few of those stories with you to help celebrate her life. Apologies to her family if I do not quite remember every detail correctly.

Ruth was born in Arkansas on October 31, 1919. Her family moved between Oklahoma and Arkansas several times during her childhood. More than once she told the story of how her family traveled to Oklahoma in a covered wagon (yes, such events did happen in the 20th century, at least in Oklahoma). At one point she was afraid the wagon would fall into the river when they traveled over a particularly gap-filled wooden bridge, so she got out of the wagon and crawled across the bridge on her hands and knees.

When she was 14, she moved to Owensboro, KY to live with her older sister Rose, to whom she was very close throughout her life. She and her sister got jobs at the local GE factory. She told the story of how they stood in line with hundreds of people to apply for a job at the factory, and were somehow noticed by a manager at the factory who pulled them out of line and gave them jobs. I guess he thought they were pretty! Ruth was fiercely proud of her independent nature and worked hard to support herself. By the time she was 16, she had saved enough to buy a full bedroom set for herself (a set which, as a sensible child of the depression, she used to this day).

On August 24, 1940, Ruth married Roy Gilbert Roberts, son of Joseph Lawrence and Agnes Maude Roberts. Even after she was married, Ruth continued to work. She worked as a beautician for the most part, operating a shop out of the back of her home. She also held various other jobs, including for a time postmaster, general store proprietor for the town of Adair, Kentucky, a small town that was little more than a mail stop of the railroad on the way out of Owensboro. She told of how it was her job to put the mail on the mailhook for the train to pick up. When the Roberts family eventually moved back to Owensboro, the mail service in Adair stopped and the town ceased to exist.

Ruth and Roy had five children, and by saving and sacrificing, they were able to send all five to college. Roy died in 1987, but Ruth continued to live on her own until suffering a stroke in 2006. In her later years, Ruth was always full of love and advice and wisdom for her grandchildren. She was fond of proscribing home remedies, such as soaking a sore elbow in epsom salts or giving beer to a colicky baby.

Ruth Roberts' obituary can be found here. Her funeral service is 10am on Friday, October 2 at Sts Joseph & Paul Catholic Church in Owensboro, KY.

The Roberts Family

A few weeks ago I attended the Roberts family reunion in Owensboro, Kentucky. This reunion brought together the descendants of Joseph Lawrence Roberts, my wife's great-grandfather. Joseph Lawrence had 11 children, 8 that lived to adulthood. All 8 of those children have now died, the last, Paul, passing in April of this year. However, the Roberts family is still very much thriving. We had dozens of Roberts cousins attend. Four spouses of the Roberts children are still alive and three of them attended the reunion. The oldest Roberts there was Catherine Roberts, age 93, widow of Manuel Roberts. She is in excellent health and I think she may even have driven herself to the reunion! Here are some pictures from the reunion.

At the reunion, Roy Roberts, son of Roy Gilbert Roberts and Ruth Taylor Roberts, presented each family with a book of the family's genealogy. Roy's book contains a lot of interesting stories about the family and paints a portrait of what life was like for a rural Kentucky family in the early 20th century. I contributed a bit to the book, mostly by referring Roy to other Roberts researchers who had far better and more detailed information than me. Since the Roberts family already has this detailed information on their family, I am merely going to post a summary of my findings on the Roberts family instead of my usual posting that includes source documents:

The earliest confirmed ancestor of the Roberts family is a John Roberts who died in 1724 in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Family tradition is that this John Roberts was from Wales, but like most early Virginia settlers, it is impossible to tell where he was from as few colonial documents recorded this information.

John Roberts and his wife Elizabeth Trammell had at least five children. One son, John Jr., lived to be about 100 years old. We do not have exact dates for his life, but we know that he was born prior to 1703, and he is mentioned in an 1802 letter as being "one of the oldest residents in the county." He may have been over 100 when he died. He and his wife Elizabeth Russell had at least four children.

John Jr.'s son Benjamin was born in about 1741. He served as a Sergeant in the General George Rogers Clark's Illinois Regiment in the Revolutionary War from 1779 to 1782. This was the group that headed west to defend settlers on the frontier from Indian allies of the British.

It appears that Sgt. Benjamin signed up with Gen. Clark with the intention to permanently move to Kentucky. Three days after enlisting, he sold his land in Culpeper county, Virginia, and his family likely followed the army west.

Once in Kentucky, Sgt. Benjamin was part of the expedition that established a fort at the Falls of the Ohio, which was the founding of the city of Louisville. Also present in the expedition were several of Sgt. Benjamin's cousins, including the confusingly similar Captain Benjamin Roberts, son of George Roberts. Many researchers (including myself) have mistaken these two, as they were about the same age, from the same county, and both married to women named Anne (hence the reason I refer to him as "Sgt. Benjamin").

The Falls of the Ohio at Louisville, Kentucky, circa 1912, before dams largely removed the falls as an obstacle to boat travel.

During his service, Sgt. Benjamin filed for a land grant for land in Jefferson County, Virginia that eventually became a part of Henry county, Kentucky. His wife, Anne Duncan, died shortly after arriving in Kentucky in 1780. Sgt. Benjamin remained on his land in Henry county for the rest of his life, and died after 1810. Sgt. Benjamin and Ann had 8 children.

Sgt. Benjamin's son James was born in 1766 in Culpeper county, Virginia. He moved to Henry county, Kentucky with his parents in 1780 and then on to Daviess county, Kentucky around the time his father died after 1810. James was married twice in Henry county. James and his first wife, whose name is unknown, had three sons, James, Merry, and Benjamin. His second wife, Elizabeth, had two sons, Willis and Henry. All five sons moved with their father to Daviess county to the village of Yelvington. James died there in 1822.

James's son Benjamin was born about 1793 in Henry county. Moved to Yelvington in Daviess county prior to 1820. In 1821, he married Rebecca Frazier, daughter of James and Nancy Frazier. The had seven children, and lived in Yelvington their entire lives.

Marion Franklin Roberts and Relly Ann Bowlds Roberts

One of Benjamin's sons, Marion Franklin, known as Frank, was a bricklayer in the Knottsville area in Hancock county, Kentucky, who helped build one of the first Catholic schools in that area. On May 9, 1917, at age 80, Frank converted to Catholocism. He died at age 88 in 1924 and is buried at St. Lawrence Catholic Cemetery in Maceo, Kentucky along with his wife, Arilia Ann (Relly Ann) Bowlds, daughter of William N. Bowlds and Sarah Pickerell. Frank and Relly Ann had six sons and five daughters. Their son Joseph Lawrence, born July 6, 1881, married Anges Maud Hartley on January 2, 1909. It is the descendants of their children that attended the Roberts family reunion. Most of their descendants still live in Daviess and Hancock counties, Kentucky.

Famous Fridays - Barack Obama

Barack Obama
44th President of the United States
Barack Obama is my 12th Cousin on my father's side (via the Beasley family) and is my wife's 8th cousin on her father's side (via the Roberts family). My common ancestor is Robert Brasseur born in France, died about 1665 in Maryland. My wife's connection is a few generations closer, through Jacob Duvall, born 1715, died 1796 in Maryland.

Likelihood of relationship: 50% for me, 70% for my wife.

If you would like to learn more about our president's heritage, click here. That site contains a really great presentation on the genealogy of President Obama. My wife and I both connect to him through the Brasseur/Duvall line in his tree, which is shown on the far middle-left. The tree contains many interesting stories about his relatives and even contains a bit of genealogy for his Kenyan heritage. It also explains how President Obama is related to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Harry Truman, among others.

Frank Family Reunion

Late summer seems to be the choice time for a family reunion. I have three between now and October. This last weekend was the Frank family reunion in O'Fallon, Missouri. Next weekend is the Roberts family reunion in Owensboro, Kentucky. Then in early October is the Dickson family reunion in Tebbetts, Missouri. I have been busy preparing information to share at each reunion, and I hope to come back from all three with lots of new information.

The Frank reunion was a lot of fun. The Frank family is very small, and the reunion was just the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of my grandma and grandpa Frank. We used to all get together for Chirstmas and Thanksgiving, but now many of us live in other states and have conflicting schedules for which holidays are with which families. The summertime reunion is a great way for me to keep in touch with all my cousins.

Below are some pictures from the Frank Family reunion at my Aunt Zoe and Uncle Dave's house in O'Fallon, Missouri. This reunion also served as the 90th birthday for my grandpa, Forrest F. Frank Jr. His birthday isn't until the end of the month, but we celebrated early because that was when everyone could get together. We also used the reunion as a time to remember my grandma, who passed away last year. My mother brought all my grandma's jewelry to the party and the grandkids all went through picking out items. As you can see, there was a lot of jewelry. It was really fun to see all that jewelry spread across the table and to remember some of the huge earrings, bracelets and necklaces that she was so fond of.

Click on the photo slideshows to go directly to the albums and see more detailed descriptions.

While I was there, I also took some photos of old family photographs. These include photos of my 90-year-old grandpa as a young boy in a sailor suit, him as a young man going off to World War II, his mother and father, and a few very old and priceless photographs from the Dickson family.

Finally, on my way out of town I stopped by St. Charles Borromeo Cemetery to take photos of the grave of my mother's great-grandfather. I recently learned that the Archdiocese of St. Louis has records of all their cemeteries online. Most of my family was not Catholic, but I searched anyway, as a few of the cemeteries were popular with non-Catholics as well. I found a listing for my great-great grandfather, John Patrick Hickey, a native of Ireland. What's more, the Archdiocese website revealed there were five related graves in the same family plot: His wife and four children who never married. Stopped by the cemetary and easily found the graves. Below are some photos of the graves.

Back in Action

For the last few months my genealogy research has taken a back seat while I finished my final semester of law school and studied for and took the Bar exam (and hopefully passed it!). Now I am finally free of school obligations. I am not completely free as I now have to go from excessive studying to be a lawyer to excessive working as a lawyer. Still, I hope to squeeze in the time for a post a week on this blog.

I have a large backlog of information that I have collected over the last few months that I need to process and organize into posts. Some of my finds have been quite exciting and I really hope to get the time to post about them soon. I have contacted other researchers who gave me a wealth of information on my wife's family. I also have received a large set of obituaries for the Frank family that I hope to post soon. There have also been numerous updates to other related families in my tree. I will spotlight some of the more interesting people in these less well known parts of my tree through regular "Spotlight" posts.

It will take me a while to get a lot of this information digitized and organized enough for publication. Until then, here is a status update on the various families of interest in my research:

Frank (my father's family): I have obtained numerous obituaries for my earliest Frank ancestors. These included the obituary of my earliest known Frank ancestor, Jacob Frank. His obituary (actually, several obituaries in various local papers) confirm many of my theories about him, including his town of origin and his occupations.

Sullivan (my mother's family): My mother has provided me her family photo album which contains a wonderful collection of old family photographs of ancestors going back to the Civil War. I am currently scanning these photographs when I have free time. Unfortunately, most all of the photographs are unlabled. I am trying to identify as many photographs as I can. I am hopeful this will help me identify some current Sullivan relations.

Dickson (my paternal grandmother's family): I have begun writing the story of this family for a blog post. I have one major missing link in this family that I am trying to resolve first. I was hopeful to answer some questions about this family when I took a recent trip to Raleigh, North Carolina for a wedding. Raleigh is home to the State Archives, which have the old court records for all NC counties. Unfortunately, the office was closed for an extended Memorial Day holiday while I was there. I will either write to them or contact other researchers that might have the information before I post.

Roberts (my wife's father's family): I have been in contact with a few researchers who have extensive information on this family. I am also going to a Roberts Family Reunion in Owensboro Kentucky next weekend. After this I will try and post my findings.

Ebelhar (my wife's mother's family): As I have previously mentioned, I found out a great deal of information on this family. My wife's mother's families have especially interesting stories to them, including murder and other shocking deaths. I simply have too much information to sort out right now, and will need to get that done before I write some posts.

I also have updated information on several related families in Missouri, Indiana and Kentucky, including the following surnames: Beasley, Gruenewald, Hickey, Kelley, Riney, Runge, Shelton, Shields and Weber. If you are a researcher interested in any of these surnames in these areas, please contact me!

Digging for Roots

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sanh.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today.

-- Inaugural Address of President Barack Obama, January 20, 2009.


Hello and Welcome!

The above quote pretty much sums up why I am interested in genealogy. The stories of our ancestors make us who we are today. Their life stories, both famous and obscure, rich and poor, remind us of the significance each life has on the rest of the world.

I have created this blog in order to keep my family updated on the findings of my genealogy research. Most of the posts will be updates on research into particular family lines. I will post updates and interesting stories I find on the families I am researching. Along the way I will also post on other subjects related to genealogy. I am especially interested in efforts to digitize ancient records and make them accessible to the public. I will post on these efforts as well as tips on the resources available on the internet that I have found most helpful in my searches.

Here are the main family names I will am researching:

My father's family:

• Frank
• Dickson
• Beasley
• Backer
• Shelton

My father's family is from Callaway County, Missouri.

My mother's family:

• Sullivan
• Hickey
• Gruenewald

My mother's family is from the St. Louis, Missouri area.

My wife's father's family:

• Roberts
• Westerfield

My wife's mother's family:

• Ebelhar
• Riney

My wife's family is from Daviess County, Kentucky.

You can keep up to date on my findings for all of these families by subscribing to this blog's rss feed. Thanks for visiting, and I wish you the best of luck in your own searches.