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!

May the luck of the 18.75% Irish Be With You

In celebration of St. Patrick's Day, I decided to determine exactly how Irish I am. To figure this out, I looked at my great-great-grandparent's generation. At this generation, I have 16 ancestors, three of which were born in Ireland. This makes me a total of 18.75% Irish. Using the same method I calculated that I am 37.5% German, and 43.75% Colonial American (by which I mean families that have been in America for at least 300 years). It is likely that some of the colonial branches of my family have Irish origins, but I consider these to be too distant to be a real connection to Ireland.

The families I trace back to Ireland are all in my mother's family -- the Sullivans. Three surnames on this side trace back to Ireland -- Sullivan, Hickey, and either Gallagher or Shields (this last family is a bit of a brick wall). These three families arrived in the St. Louis, Missouri area from Ireland between 1855 and 1875. Despite the relatively small percentage of my ancestry that is from Ireland, it is a heritage with which I closely identify, mostly because the Irish families represent the most recent immigrants in my tree.

Socialists among us!

I have not yet posted on my mother's family, the Sullivans, as I have been focused on catching up with posting all my research on my father's family first. However, I have not been neglecting this family. Just yesterday I made an interesting discovery while researching my g-g-grandmother Hannah Selby Sullivan's family.

Hannah Selby was born in 1848 in Rockville, Indiana. Her family is a very interesting one. I am descended from Mayflower Pilgrim Richard Warren on her mother's side. Richard Warren is the pilgrim who left the most living descendants. Consequently more Americans are descended from Richard Warren than any other pilgrim, so his families are well documented and have many interesting and prominent stories.

Hannah father's family had remained a mystery. I know from Hannah's death certificate that her father was Joseph Selby, born 1824 in Rockbridge County, Virginia. Even though the death certificate was filled out 96 years after Joseph's birth, I had reason to trust it, as it was filled out by Hannah's older sister, Elizabeth, who was the person most likely to know where her father was born.
I had difficulty finding the family for Joseph Selby because he left Virginia prior to 1850, the first census that shows all members of a family. Based on other census data for Rockbridge co. I had hypothesized that his father was a John Selby, born 1786 in Maryland. But I did not have any information to confirm this. I also had no confirmation of what had happened to Hannah siblings.

Yesterday I got a response to a message board post on Ancestry.com which cleared up this mystery. The poster had a copy of a manuscript entitled "Mary Ann Selby: Her Ancestors and Descendants, Vol. 2" by Ruth Thayer Ravenscroft, 1948. This manuscript contained information given to the author by Fanny Selby Hindman, Hannah's sister. It confirmed that her father was the son of the same John Selby I had spotted on the census records in Rockbridge county. The manuscript also listed the names of his siblings, and his mother, Hannah Miller, daughter of Hugh Miller.

However, perhaps the most interesting nugget to be found in this manuscript was in the info on Hannah's siblings. One of them was John H Selby, who I had in my records born 1857 in St. Louis died 1893 in St. Louis. Strangely, his St. Louis death record said he was buried in Terre Haute, Indiana. I had no idea why. Fanny Hindman's records cleared this up: He had married a woman named Eugenie Debs, who was from Terre Haute. He was buried there with her family.

You may think Eugenie Debs sounds like a familiar name. I thought so too. A quick search of the census records confirmed my suspicion. Eugenie Debs was the sister of Eugene V. Debs, the famous Socialist candidate for President in the early 20th century. Eugene V. Debs is easily the most famous American Socialist. Debs started his career as a railroad union organizer. He gained fame after a strike in 1894 in Chicago led President Grover Cleveland to send in the Army to quell the strike. After the strike he was put on trial, where he was represented by the famous attorney Clarence Darrow. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which found Debs' arrest lawful.

While serving his time in jail, Debs discovered Socialism. After getting out of jail he helped to found the Socialist Democratic Party of America. Debs ran for president on the Socialist Party ticket in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912 and 1920. The 1920 campaign was conducted entirely from federal prison where he was once against serving time for his union demonstrations. Despite being jailed for the entire campaign, he received over 6% of the popular vote in 1920, though he received no electoral votes. The next year, Debs' sentence was commuted by President Warren G. Harding. Debs died in 1926, shortly after having been committed to a sanitarium in Elmhurst, Illinois.



I will post more on the Sullivan family later, but I just thought I would share this odd connection to my family. It just goes to show that when searching for your roots, you never know what your digging might uncover!

Related Links:
Gravesite of Eugenie Debs Selby
Gravesite of Eugene V. Debs
Gravesite of John H Selby
Eugene V. Debs (Wikipedia)
Debs family, 1870 Census
John H. Selby Death Record
Hannah Selby Sullivan Death Certificate

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.