Part One -
Preliminaries
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The Holmes-Krider Identification Problem
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Here are the facts, as we know
them in June, 1985:
1
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John
D. Holmes, on 5 Jan.1815, in Rowan County, North Carolina, married
Sallie Krider, b.14 Feb.1792, a daughter of Barnabas Krider, who wrote
his will in Rowan Co., 14 Feb.1823.
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2
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II-Thomas
Holmes, on 25 Jan.1803, in Roawn Co., N.C., married Susanna Barbara
Krider, b.28 Aug.1783 in Pennsylvania, also a daughter of Barnabas
Krider.
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3
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III-Thomas Holmes, on 4
Feb.1818, in Rowan Co., N.C., married Susanna Smith.
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4
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Although the Krider-Holmes
connection was not important to Jo White Linn in her direct lineage,
she was interested in a solution from an historical point of view.
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5
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I had at least one known
Thomas Holmes member of my mother's Holmes family lineage and wanted to
see how the apparently two Thomas Holmes men fit into this Holmes line
or into perhaps some other Holmes line in North Carolina.
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6
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We planned to work on this
identification problem jointly but independently:
Jo would continue
her interest in the Krider family; and
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I would do what I
could with the Holmes family identifications problem, using only my
voluminous Holmes notes, but no outside research.
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Here is my major discovery:
John D. Holmes and Thomas Holmes, although married to sisters, are not
otherwise related:
John D. Holmes is a member
of a Holmes family
that settled in a roughly triangular area in southeast Rowan Co.
bounded on the East by the North Yadkin River, and on the South by the
Granville Line. Their lands were on Crane Creek and on Grant's
Creek, and I have dubbed this the Crane Creek Holmes Community.
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Thomas Holmes is a member
of a Holmes family that settled, along with their related Blackwood and
Patrick families, in the northwest quarter of Davis Co., N.C.,
traversed by Hunting Creek and Bear Creek. I have dubbed this the
Hunting Creek - Bear Creek Community, Bear Creek for short.
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From
this point on, I researched these two Holmes families simultaneously,
but separately, and developed two different lineage studies.
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I initially identified these two
Holmes clan as the "Crane Creek - Grant's Creek Holmes Clan," and the
"Hunting Creek - Bear Creek Holmes Clan," but these are clumsy and
cumbersome to use frequently, so I have compressed them to the simpler,
"Crane Creek Holmes family," and "Bear Creek Holmes Family."
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To give you a preview of my
final identification conclusions, and to give you a chance to glimpse
the final picture, I am inserting a diagram that ordinarily would be
the last page of this whole dissertation:
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Holmes - Krider Genealogical Diagram:
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Editorial notes on the Holmes - Krider
diagram
1
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John
Holmes, 1765-1847, was married twice, as shown in the diagram.
Not pertinent to our Holmes - Krider Identification Project, are
records of his career across the southwest tip of Virginia, and his
progress across all of Kentucky to Lexington, Fayette County, Kentucky,
where he is buried.
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2
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Also
not pertinent
to our Holmes - Krider Identification Project are the notes on the
career of John Holmes, 1809-1851, as he traveled across Kentucky to
Lexington.
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3
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As
indicated by the vertical arrow ^ I have extended the line of
Prasha Patrick, mainly in Orange Co., N.C.
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4
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I
have extended the line of Susanna Blackwood, also in Orange Co., N.C.
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5
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I
have extended the line of Sally Ann Gilbert in Queen Anne's Co. and
Kent Co., Maryland.
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6
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I
have extended the line of Lyda Massey from Missouri through Kent Co.,
Maryland, and the collateral family tree line in Virginia and Maryland.
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7
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Father
extended the Langford line back through Colorado to New York State to
Rhode Island, and collateral lines through Scotland, England and the
Continent.
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8
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I
have nothing in my Holmes Data Bank to indicate the surnames of Bethia,
the wife of I-George Holmes, or of Pearly, the wife of II-George Holmes.
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The History of
My Holmes Data Bank
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Prelude: As
my part in this Identification Project depends completely on my Data
Bank, I believe it is appropriate to describe it and its formation in
some detail.
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The Data Bank Itself:
At present writing, it consists of 1,067 pages of closely written 8-1/2
by 11 inch sheets of bits and pieces of data pertaining to the Holmes
name.
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My Genealogical Expertise: - A
Disclaimer:
I am not a professional Genealogist; I have had no formal education of
any sort in the field of Genealogy, unless you count considerable
reading on the subject.
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My Educational and Business
Background:
My formal education, and many years of experience were Engineering,
both in design and in operation. Most of my business career has
been spent in administration and operation, for ten years with a small
railway supply company, the McKenna Process Company, in Joliet,
Illinois, and for twenty-five years as Production Control Manager of a
large, multi-plant manufacturing company, the Belden Corporation, with
its main offices in Chicago, Illinois. From this experience I
gained a degree of expertise in two areas that have proven useful in
genealogical research:
I learned how to detect
trends and patterns in both written and mathematical detailed data; and
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I also learned that I had
to base decisions into the future from a base of inadequate information.
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Omissions and Errors: - An Apology:
Although I have research diligently for many years, I am more than sure
that there are many sources and records extant of which I have never
seen or heard; my proxy researchers and I have been as careful as
possible, but we surely have made our share of errors in misreading,
transcribing, and interpreting data. I can only hope that there
aren't too many of those.
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How We Built the Data Bank: -
History:
We
did not build this Data Bank in any neat, orderly, straight-forward
fashion; it was done with occasional, important data reports, and our
work was interrupted many, many times by various traumatic
events. We had two factors that created continuity to our
research:
One was my constant use of
proxy researchers, selected in target areas; and
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The
other steadying influence was the use of my membership in the New
England Historic Genealogical Society to borrow books by mail from
their library; this I did for about thirty-five years.
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Chronological Notes of
the Data Bank Formation: I will be as brief as I can:
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26 Oct.1931: At St. Paul, Minnesota:
Father
attended his mother's funeral, and he and his two brothers found that
she had saved two packages of family documents. Father, long a
reasearcher in scientific areas, was nominated to analyze them, and so
he brought them home to Joliet, Illinois.
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1 Nov.1931: In Joliet, Illinois:
One
of the packages was a lot of letters, written on soft foolscap
paper. They had been written on both sides of the paper, the ink
had bled through, and they were extremely hard to read, but it turned
out that they had been written to Grandmother Langford's grandfather in
Nova Scotia from his grandfather in Scotland.
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The other package contained an
early attempt by an elderly cousin to work out Langford and some
collateral lines in New York State and in New England.
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Father showed Mother and me all
these papers and aroused Mother's interest; and so, Mother produced
some papers of her own. These were a D.A.R. application that
Grandmother Holmes had filled out for Mother before she died in 1929,
and her own D.A.R. and Colonial Dames papers, showing her Massey and
collateral lines.
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The three of us decided that we
would like to learn more about all these people, so Father and I
visited the Joliet Public Library for advice. The Joliet Library
had a small section on Genealogy and History, all of it local.
The librarian advised us to visit the Newberry Library in Chicago,
forty miles away, which she said was reported to have the finest bank
of genealogy and Town History records west of the big New York City
Public Library.
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Ca.15 Nov.1931: On
a Saturday morning, Father and I drove into Chicago's Near North Side
to have a look for ourselves at was available there. Joe Wolf,
Assistant Librarian in charge of the Genealogy and Town History floor,
showed us the book stacks, the shelf stacks, the research room and the
index arrangements. We felt that we certainly could be well taken
care of and planned to commence our research as soon as we could
arrange the time.
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The full year of 1932:
Let me describe the situation:
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First
of all, these were the years of the Great Depression, and that created
a special situation for Father and me; we both worked for the McKenna
[Process] Company in Joliet, Illinois.
Father was its President and Guiding Spirit, and I was his Plant
Superintendent, and we shared the engineering and technical
duties. McKenna operated a rolling mill designed to re-roll worn
railroad rails to the shape needed to re-install them in main line
track, alongside standard and newly manufactured rails. McKenna's
re-rolling tonnage charge was about ten percent of the cost of new
rails rolled at the big steel companies. So, the railroads, also
in the same Depression and wanting to cut expenses wherever they could,
found McKenna's services very valuable. McKenna served
practically every railroad that touched the Chicago Metropolitan Area,
and business was brisk.
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| But there were good and bad
points. |
When
a
railroad had worn rails that they needed McKenna to re-roll and
return them, they wanted all of them, and they wanted them right
away. So, during these spells, we often had to operate the mill
on two, twelve-hour shifts, six days a week. This was highly
profitable, but it left no time for anything but work.
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But
when a railroad had not accumulated a bank of worn rails, they had no
re-rolling business to give McKenna, and nothing could be done about it.
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So,
during these dry spells, we would repair and tune up the mill equipment
and attempt to persuade the railroads to send us business.
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Father
and I would go into Chicago to the railroads' purchasing departments to
check on their plans and to use our selling abilities. We would
usually finish all these visits by mid-morning, and with open time
available, we would spend the rest of the day in research at the
Newberry Library. For a time, this worked out real well, but then
came a disaster that had been brewing: The railroads ran out of used
30-foot and 36-foot rails and were now accumulating worn rails of the
new standard 45-foot length.
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McKenna's re-rolling mill had
been
tailored to re-roll 30-foot rails, and that had been stretched to
handle 36-foot rails. But the entire mill would have had to be
built again, from scratch to handle these 45-footers, and McKenna's
Trustees were unable to find a source for the capital required.
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Father
offered a solution: The railroads, all of them, had accumulated huge
piles of worn rail splice bars with no outlet except as charging
material for blast furnaces. These splice bars still retained
most of their weight, and Father had already convinced a number of
railroads that these splice bars could be forged into shapes that would
be the equivalent of new splice bars.
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McKenna's
Trustees elected to go along with this idea, Father researched the
equipment required, the Trustees found the capital required, and
McKenna built a bar mill.
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Father
had hired me in 1929, after I had worked for two years as an engineer
and planner for Belden. Two of his trusted operating foremen had
found a financial backer, had set up a competing bar mill, almost in
McKenna's back yard, and had left Father in the lurch, without a plant
operator.
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Father
was understandably hurt and bitter. He needed a plant
superintendent whom he could trust, one with engineering training, and
he thought that I would fill the bill; so did the McKenna Trustees.
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I
had worked at McKenna during Summer vacations since I was fourteen
years old, plus an eight-month stretch while I was out of college,
waiting for a required course in differential calculus to come around
so I could get it into my schedule. I had been the millwright's
helper and the furnace brickmason's helper, I knew all the other
sub-foremen as well as most of the mill hands. Father discussed
hiring me as Superintendent, and they all approved.
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When
I first arrived at McKenna, we were operating the rail mill and the bar
mill, the railroads kept us busy up to over full capacity, we were
operating 24 hours a day, six days a week, and no time ever to think of
visiting Newberry. McKenna was making handsome net profits.
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But
at
home, back in Joliet, Father and I were still working on our
projects. Father did far better than I; he had worked out his
Langford and collateral lines, had put it all together, and published a
very limited edition of about twenty copies, distributed to family
members and to libraries and historical societies of his choice.
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I had actually gotten nowhere in
researching Mother's Holmes line.
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At
first, when all I had learned so far about the Holmes line was that
Daniel Boone Holmes, 1850-1911, had said that his parents were buried
in Lexington, Kentucky, I felt that I had no problem: After all,
my Uncle Massey Holmes was a successful, prosperous lawyer, but also
somewhat active in Kansas City political affairs. I confidently
expected to find that someone had worked out and published a nice, long
record of distinguished Holmes lawyers, and that all I would have to do
was to go to Newberry and locate the book. Alas, such an easy
solution was not to be; there was research work to be done.
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So, on our earliest visits to
the Newberry Library,
I had sought out and gone through all of their books and
periodicals that mentioned a Holmes family. I took copious notes,
in case I needed to go back to them, but I never found a link to my own
Holmes family. I did the same, downtown at the Chicago Public
Library and at the University of
Chicago's John Crerar Library. The Harper
Library,
also at the University of Chicago, had no genealogy section, but they
did have a fine collection of very early Kentucky newspapers, and I
squeezed out a few notes there for my data bank.
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Up
to this point, I still knew no more about Mother's Holmes family than
that Daniel Boone Holmes' parents were said to be buried in the
Lexington, Kentucky, Cemetery. That is why I was so anxious to go
to Lexington.
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20 Feb.1933: Lexington, Kentucky -
the Cemetery:
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In
early 1933 I accidentally found my opportunity. I was elected to
answer a trouble call by the Missouri Pacific Railway to solve a rail
problem in Kentucky. The solution proved easy, I had a little
time to spare, and so I drove over to Lexington.
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The first monument contained
these inscriptions:
John Holmes 1809-1851
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Sally Ann Gilbert Holmes,
his wife 1810-1880
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John Holmes 1765-1847
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Prasha Holmes, his wife
1779-1844
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In the Holmes Lot:
Joseph Warren Holmes
1837-1852
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James G. Holmes 1841
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Sarah C. Holmes 1842-1845
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William Henry Holmes,
buried at New Orleans, Louisiana 1847-1892
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John Holmes 1844
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Andrew J. Holmes 1845
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Jon Holmes buried 1870
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James Holmes buried 1870
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On another monument were these
inscriptions:
Henry Gilbert, born Queen
Anne's County, Maryland, 26 Oct.1771, died 31 Jan.1847.
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| Sally S., wife of Henry
Gilbert, born Queen Anne's County, Maryland, 21 Jan.1778, died 6
Nov.1850. |
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On an adjoining lot:
Sally Gilbert 6 May 1850
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Henry Gilbert 21 Jan.1847
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The
cemetery's Sexton showed me that the cemetery had been dedicated 28
Jan.1850, and he said that the burials prior to that date were
re-burials. He also said that he understood that this Holmes
section had been established by a "wealthy family member" about 1895.
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I then made the return trip,
back to Joliet.
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Ca. 28 Feb.1933; Joliet, Illinois:
I shared all this big news with Mother and Father, and we had a little
Council of War.
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First,
and most important: We had now identified our true Holmes line and
could plan and direct our research to one family only, and not have to
grope any more all over the U.S.A. for Holmes clans.
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Next,
our knowledge of these three Holmes generations was limited to
Lexington, Kentucky, and so our next research move should be to find
out all we could about John Holmes 1809-1851 and John Holmes 1765-1847.
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Also,
we needed to research Lexington for our newly found collateral Gilbert
family records and to see if the Lexington records could tell us what
Prasha's surname was.
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We
felt that this Lexington research would also help identify all the new
Holmes names in the Holmes Lot. And perhaps research could
explain the concentration of the death dates in the 1841-1851 period.
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By now I had already acquired a
researcher in the Lexington
area, she had done considerable work for me concerning Daniel Boone
Holmes and his wife, Lyda Massey, and so I updated her on these
suggestions.
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I
also had a researcher in Frankfort, Kentucky, who had also done work
for me, so I sent her a copy of the letter I had written to Lexington
researcher.
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March, 1933; Lexington, Kentucky:
My researchers sent me copies of deeds and similar records but did not
find wills for either John Holmes 1809-1851 or John Holmes
1765-1847.
They did find that Sally Ann Holmes had been appointed Administratrix
of the estate of John Holmes 1809-1851, proving that he had died
intestate. But she did make an interesting discovery: The
obituary
of John Holmes 1809-1851 called him, "John Holmes of Virginia," opening
up a whole new state for me to research. She also found the
record that Jno. Homes married Sarah A. Gilbert, 1 Dec.1836, in Fayette
Co., Ky. Bondsmen were father, Henry Gilbert, and Silas Smith.
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And,
by an astonishing piece of
good luck, she had done some research on a lady named Prasha: Prasha
Wood, wife of Stephen Wood, of Clarke Co., Ky. In tracing this
Prasha Wood, she found a record of a pair of twins, Prussia and Russia
Barrow, born 10 Nov.1778, daughters of one Zachariah Barrow, who lived
in Hyde Co. and Beaufort Co., North Carolina. Prussia Barrow's
birth date of 10 Nov.1778 was so close to our Prasha Holmes' birth date
of 1779 that I thought we had her surname established and put the State
of North Carolina on my research list. More of this later.
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My Lexington researcher also
found, listed in an 1839 Lexington City Directory, a "John Holmes,
joiner and builder," who could have been either one of our two John
Holmes men.
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But we could find no records
concerning the death of John Holmes 1765-1847;
no will or estate records in Fayette Co. or in several surrounding
Kentucky counties, nor could we discover where the pre-1850 burials had
been. The Holmes family had been Baptists, but the Lexington
First
Baptist Church had preserved no written records and had no church
graveyard.
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My Frankfort, Kentucky,
researcher had been searching the records of the Kentucky Historical
Society and had found:
Lexington tax records of
John Holmes 1809-1851 and of his brother, James Holmes.
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No list of Fayette County
graveyards.
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No mention of Kentucky
epidemics.
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April 1933; Joliet, Illinois:
I
reviewed my then current Holmes Data Bank for Holmes Virginia records;
I found a John Holmes in Augusta Co., Va. that might have been John
Holmes 1765-1847. I borrowed books from the N.E.H.G.S. Library
and developed a most attractive Holmes family line, adding copious
notes to my Holmes Data Book. I also searched for Prussia Barrow
and Preasha Wood, first finding that Prussia Barrow had d.7
Nov.1847. I found Preasha Wood listed as daughter of Stephen
Wood, of Surrey Co., Nor. Car. I also noted a record I had made
some time before of the marriage in Rowan Co., Nor. Car. of a James
Holmes, where a bondsman was named John Holmes. I made a hopeful
guess that this might be my John Holmes 1765-1847.
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Feeling
that I had evidence that pointed strongly toward the Rowan Co., No.
Car. area, I secured a Salisbury, No. Car. researcher.
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| Although the Holmes family
burials in the Lexington, Ky. cemetery, concentrated as they were in
the
1841-1851 period, had suggested to me that an epidemic was the cause, I
had found no confirmation. |
But,
on 10 Oct.1985, when I was watching a CBS News broadcast of a panel
discussion on Americans' perils of living in 1985 (wars, hurricanes,
low farm product prices, illicit drugs, AIDS, etc.) they introduced a
speaker who noted that, life in the Mid-19th Century was no less
perilous in the City of Galena, Illinois, where he was the resident
authority on local history: Unemployment in the local lead mines, the
declining price of lead, low farm product prices, the high cost of
living, Mississippi River floods, the high cost of river and railway
transportation, health problems, and the ever-present high infant
mortality rate, in the area of fifty percent. Serious as all
these were, in 1845 a reportedly widespread cholera epidemic struck
Galena, completely wiping out many entire families; he showed
photographs of gravestones bearing twelve to fifteen names on each
stone.
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Illinois
and Kentucky being neighboring states, I feel that this cholera
epidemic is the answer to my Lexington, Ky. family
concentrated-death-date puzzle.
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Meanwhile,
back in Joliet, Illinois, there had been another development: The
McKenna Company had attracted the attention of the Rail Joint Co., a
New York City based company. They manufactured the complex rail
joints required by railways to attach regular rails to the crossings
and switches that they use. They had designed this item very
well, they had chosen the proper alloy steels and skills required, and
they had done such a good job that they had practically no
competition. They had also taken the precaution to protect their
product, its manufacturing process, and its use with a rather
impenetrable wall of patents.
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Their
chief Patent Attorney, who had been watching the issuance of about
sixty patents in Father's name, recognized that Father was doing the
same thing. He alerted the Rail Joint Co.'s president with the
thought that they should add re-worked splice bars to their repertory,
have their railroad customer base well developed.
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This
appealed to the Rail Joint Co.; and so they approached Father for a
license under the McKenna patents. As their sphere was New York,
far from Chicago, Father felt this to be an opportunity for Mckenna;
they negotiated an appropriate rate, and the Rail Joint Company became
McKenna's first licensee, at once commencing to pay royalties to
McKenna.
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The
Rail Joint Company had licensees in Alabama and in Colorado, and helped
Father add them as additional licensees. The monthly royalties
became substantial, a larger contributor to McKenna's profits than the
splice bar re-working business.
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A
Chicago-based railway supply company was urged by two large railroads
to get into the splice-bar re-work field; it was to their self-interest
to have a competitor, and they provided this outfit a share in the
business. This company built a re-working plant in Aurora,
Illinois, a scant twenty-five miles from McKenna, and applied to
Father for a license. Father didn't want to grant them one, but
these same two railroads threatened to take business away from McKenna
unless a license was granted, and so this new, local competitor also
became a licensee.
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McKenna's
income became mostly royalties, but re-working splice bars also brought
in money, so McKenna continued to operate the bar mill.
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At
this stage, Father was chiefly occupied with advising licensees on bar
re-working. McKenna had acquired additional licensees in Texas,
Pennsylvania, and Canada. The large companies knew how to charge
for their re-work services, but the smaller companies did not, and so
these smaller companies asked Father for his advice.
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Now,
McKenna didn't have a real cost system but had arrived at a re-work
tonnage charge that was satisfactory to the railroads and profitable to
McKenna. In his license correspondence Father had mentioned what
McKenna charges actually were, and he hinted that if they made the same
re-work charge, they could probably make a profit also. This
correspondence was later on to haunt McKenna.
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My
duties in operating the bar mill were now added to bring law &
order into the financial part of our royalty business, and I was
elected McKenna's Secretary-Treasurer, filling my work-week completely,
leaving only occasional hours at home for genealogical thinking.
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1934-1936:
This was a very important period in my private life. My marriage
to Madeleine Mitchell was deteriorating badly, ending in divorce in
early 1935. I moved back in with Mother and Father in their
Joliet home. Not too long later, I met Mitzi Gonetz. We
were immediately attracted to each other and planned marriage. I
rented an apartment in Chicago near the University of Chicago Hospital
where Mitzi was assisting in cancer research in addition to her
professional Medical Doctor duties as Visiting Pathologist for two
Joliet hospitals and two Aurora hospitals.
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Our
baby was on the way, we felt he should grow up in the suburbs, so,
although I commuted by car forty-three miles each day, we found time to
research the suburbs, and we decided on Hinsdale, about twenty miles
from Joliet.
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We
were very short on money. My divorce decree stipulated
appropriate child support payments, but uncomfortably high
alimony. My salary at McKenna, plus Mitzi's earnings as Visiting
Pathologist were barely adequate to keep us going. But then, we
got a break; a long-delayed bequest from one of Mitzi's grandparents in
Germany.
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This
bequest, plus an account of mine that Mother had hidden from
Madeleine's attorneys, proved enough, on a shoestring basis, to let us
put a down payment on a lot and on a house, and to talk the local
Savings & Loan Co. to set up a mortgage. So we moved into our
new Hinsdale home just after our son was born. Then lightning
struck McKenna.
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Our
Aurora licensee stopped paying royalties, claiming that he didn't use
the McKenna patents, that on top of that, they didn't think McKenna's
patents were very good. We filed suit to collect the royalties
due McKenna in Kane County Court, near Aurora. While this lawsuit
was pending, other licensees learned of it and also postponed royalty
payments, leaving McKenna with accrued royalties of almost a quarter
million dollars tied up, and very little royalty income coming in to
McKenna.
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Our
Aurora licensee filed a counter-suit, again claiming that they didn't
need to use the McKenna patents, did not in fact use them, and,
furthermore, felt that they were invalid. They convinced the
Court, which ruled in their favor and enjoined McKenna from collecting
their royalties.
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The
claim of patent invalidity, and the introduction of evidence that all
of McKenna's charged the identical re-work amount, brought the U.S.
Department of Justice into the picture. The Dept. of Justice
filed suit in Federal Court, charging price fixing, then illegal.
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Our
legal staff, plus our patent attorneys, plus the legal staff of the
Rail Joint Co., defended McKenna, but the Court ruled against McKenna,
finding McKenna a monopoly in restraint of trade and declaring all of
McKenna's patents invalid. This sounded McKenna's death knell,
really, but we tried to keep McKenna alive from profits in operating
the bar mill. These profits were barely more than costs, so
Father turned in desperation to another idea: Fossil Collecting.
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1937-1938:
Father, all his life a naturalist, had learned that the strip mines,
southwest of Joliet, were creating great spoil heaps as they removed
the overburden to reach coal deposits underneath. In these spoil
heaps were claystone nodules containing very attractive and well
preserved casts of fossil plants, seeds, and various forms of animal
life. He and I had gone there to see what that was all about,
found these fossils easily collectible, and accumulated a sizable lot.
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Father
knew the names of some of them from collecting in this so-called Mazon
Creek area, back about 1910. He wanted to know more. As an
amateur archaeologist, he had worked with the head of the University of
Chicago's Department of Archaeology, and through this Dr. Cole we made
contact with a Dr. Noe, then head of the University's Department of
Fossil Plants, and considered the World's top authority. We
arranged to meet with Dr. Noe at the University, and brought along a
half dozen, ten-gallon pails, filled with carefully wrapped nodules.
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Dr.
Noe almost dropped dead; he said that at least ninety percent of the
specimens were totally new to Science, and he asked permission to
properly classify them. Then he brought out all of his graduate
student class, and they went to work to identify those that they
could. I dutifully wrote these identifications on each protective
paper wrapping paper, and Dr. Noe begged us to come back again with
more specimens, which we did, several times.
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One
of his graduate students asked permission to use this identification
project as the subject of his Master's Thesis, which he proceeded to
work up.
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This
collection of fine, identified fossil specimens grew & grew.
The Illinois State Museum financed the publication of the thesis and
wanted to get the collection. There was no way that McKenna could
treat this as a gift, so Father and the State Museum negotiated a very
good purchase price, and so we were in the fossil-collecting business.
|
One
at a time, we assembled very good, small fossil collections, which we
offered to colleges and museums all over the country. These
collections sold very well, combining with our bar mill operation to
keep the McKenna Company going for a while. Nevertheless, the
handwriting was on the wall; McKenna simply could not afford a Plant
Superintendent (me.)
|
Father
felt able to operate the bar mill by himself and did so until it became
inevitable that McKenna would have to go out of business. In 1941
we turned in McKenna's franchise to the State of Illinois and McKenna
was officially dead. Father remained in Joliet to liquidate the
business, and I went looking for a job. I found one, back at the
Belden Corp., in Chicago.
|
My
1924-1929 work at Belden had been well done; I had left in 1929 in good
standing, and with their blessing, and there was an open job at Belden
for which I was well qualified.
|
1941-1969:
My earliest assignments, as I returned to Belden, were initially as
Mechanical Engineer. Then shortly I was assigned to Equipment and
Plant Expansion Planning, and then into the administration of Belden's
Engineering Department. Then I had a new and challenging
opportunity: My appointment as Corporate Production Manager in
1944. This job was a sheer joy to me; it combined careful, well
thought-out manufacturing planning, the detail required to produce,
maintain, and control a large, expensive inventory, and the daily
slam-bang problems involved in taking care of customer orders to the
satisfaction of the Sales Department, and taking care of scheduling
manufacturing products to the satisfaction of the manufacturing
executives of our various plants.
|
Production
Management is traditionally a killer job, but it just suited me
personally, and so I thrived on it, through thick and thin until my
retirement from Belden in 1969.
|
1943:
Father had liquidated the McKenna Co., sold his old home in Joliet,
and he and Mother moved into a North LaSalle Street apartment on
Chicago's Near North Side, near Lincoln Park.
|
We
had sold to Chicago's Field Museum one of McKenna's small fossil
collections; Father asked permission to curate the collection as a
volunteer assistant, which permission was granted, and he worked there
almost all days of the week. He and I also made a few collecting
trips to the strip mines on Saturdays; that was very pleasant for both
of us. We had always enjoyed each others' company. The
Field Museum became well aware of Father's deep interest in these
fossils; and this opened up a new career for him.
|
13 May 1943: This
date refers to one of the really big events that can come along in a
genealogist's career: The
discovery of my Holmes family Bible ! Here's the story:
|
I
came home from work, and Mitzi said that the long distance operator
anxiously wanted to reach me. That I did, and the call was from
my Aunt Ethel, widow of Massey Holmes. She said, that in
preparing her Kansas City house for sale, they had found two Holmes
bibles, a package of letters, and some miscellaneous papers. She
knew that I would be excited, she was packing them up for shipment, but
she wanted to tell me the news at once.
| The big, nineteen-pound
Bible was the Daniel B. Holmes Bible. |
The small Bible was the
Bible of John Holmes 1809-1851.
|
And
in the small Bible was a much-folded sheet of paper with all the family
dates, quite obviously copied from the family-records page of a still
earlier Bible, that of our John Holmes 1765-1847.
|
|
Of
course, this was a gold mine of information, the most interesting bit
being that John Holmes 1765-1847 had indeed been married twice.
|
We had established for certain
sure that his first wife was named Susanna Blackwood, but we still
didn't know Prasha's surname.
|
The
bundle of letters turned out to be personal, concerning home
information, to Daniel Boone Holmes and Henry Holmes, who were both
attending Kentucky University in Lexington. Both Bibles had
papers in between the leaves for safe keeping, the one in the older
Bible providing a welcome and rewarding surprise: It was a
much-refolded and tattered sheet of paper, an obvious copy of the
family record page of a still earlier Holmes Bible, that of our John
Holmes 1765-1847. Let me quote this record now, verbatim:
March 29 Day 1795.
Thomas Holmes was Born in the year of our Lord of John Holmes and
Susanna his Wife .
|
Susanna Holmes Died Seased
this life on July 2nd Day 1796.
|
November the 30th 1798
John Holmes and Prasha was marred in the year of our Lord.
|
February the 9th William
Holmes was born in the year of our Lord 1799.
|
November the 10 day
Susanna Holmes was Born in the year of our Lord 1800.
|
December 29th Robert
Stafford Holmes was Born in the year of our Lord 1802.
|
June the 24th Sally Holmes
was Born in the year of our Lord 1806.
|
January 16th John Holmes
was Born in the year of our Lord 1809.
|
October 6th Elizabeth
Holmes was born in the year of our Lord 1811.
|
September 13th Ellinor
Holmes was born in the year of our Lord 1814.
|
April 3rd James Holmes was
born in the year of our Lord 1817.
|
June 3rd Urial Holmes was
born in the year of our Lord 1820.
|
January 3rd Daniel Holmes
was born in the year of our Lord 1822.
|
|
Family Record bound with the Bible
of John Holmes and Sarah Ann Gilbert:
|
Marriages:
Mr. John Holmes married
Wife Sarah P. Gilbert DC 1st 1836
|
|
Births:
John Holmes Sr. was Born
Jan 16th 1765.
|
Prasha Holmes Born March
9th 1779.
|
March 29th 1795 Thomas
Holmes was Born.
|
February 9th 1799 William
P. Holmes was Born.
|
November 10th 1800 Susanna
Holmes was Born.
|
December 29th 1802 Robert
S. Holmes was Born.
|
June 24th 1806 Sarah
Holmes was Born.
|
| January 15th 1809 John
Holmes was Born. |
| October 6th 1811 Elizabeth
Holmes was Born. |
| September 13 1814 Eleanor
Holmes was Born. |
| April 3rd 1817 James
Holmes was Born. |
| June 2nd 1820 Urial Holmes
was Born. |
| January 3rd 1823 Daniel
Holmes was Born. |
Joseph Warren Holmes was
born October 28th 1837.
|
James G. Holmes was born
May 6th 1841.
|
Sarah Catherine Holmes was
born October 12th 1842.
|
John Holmes was born
Dec.21st 1844.
|
Andrew Jackson Holmes was
born June 26th 1847.
|
| William henry Holmes was
born June 26th 1847. |
Daniel Holmes was born
March 13th 1850.
|
Sally Ann Holmes (nee
Gilbert) was born 17th October 1812.
|
|
Deaths:
Prasha Holmes Died Dec.
26th 1844.
|
John Holmes Sr. Died
January 23rd 1847.
|
Sally Ann Holmes (nee
Gilbert) wife of John Holmes, Jr. died at Lexington, Kentucky July 13th
1880.
|
|
Note
that in transcribing the records from the loose sheet to the bound
Family Record, the copyist omitted all references to Susanna, the first
wife of John Holmes 1765-1847.
|
Bible Record of Daniel B. Holmes
1850-1911:
|
Marriages:
On
the Sixth Day of
February in the year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventy
Seven in the City of Jefferson in the County of Cole in the Diocese of
Missouri I Joined Together in Holy Matrimony Mr. Daniel B. Holmes and
Miss Lyda A. Massey. I have herewith put my name this Tenth Day
of February One Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventy Seven. Charles
L. Robertson, Bishop of Missouri. Witness: Ben F. Massey &
Warwick Hough.
|
George Langford and Sydney
Holmes were married at Kansas City, Missouri, November 14, 1900 Trinity
Church.
|
| John Roy Russell and
Mignon Gilbert Holmes were married at Kansas City, Missouri November 3,
1906 Trinity Church. |
|
Births:
Daniel Boone Holmes was
born at Lexington, Kentucky March 13th A.D. 1850.
|
Of Benjamin Franklin
Massey and Maria Hawkins Withers, Lyda Adelaide Massey, was [born] at
Sarcoxie, Missouri October 12th 1854.
|
Of Daniel Boone Holmes and
Lyda Massey Holmes the following was born:
Massey Bryant Holmes
at Kansas City, Missouri January 28th 1878.
|
Sydney Holmes at
Kansas City, Missouri August 27th 1881.
|
Mignon Gilbert
Holmes at Kansas City, Missouri June 28th A.D. 1884.
|
|
Of George Langford and
Sydney Holmes Langford there was born:
Geo. Langford, Jr.,
October 25, 1901 at Elizabeth, New Jersey.
|
Lyda Langford, March
4th, 1903 at St. Paul, Minnesota.
|
|
|
Deaths: Blank page.
|
Memoranda: Blank page.
|
Presented:
To
Mr. D. B. Holmes
Sunday March 12th 1883
|
By
Miss S. H. Thwaites
His Mother's Request
|
|
Signature:
| Inside
the front cover of the Bible: |
Mrs. Sally Ann Holmes
|
|
20 May 1943: First of
all, the Holmes Bible records established my own personal Holmes family
line:
a.
|
John
Holmes 1765-1847 and wife Prasha 1779-1840
|
b.
|
John
Holmes 1809-1854 and wife Sally Ann Gilbert 1812-1880
|
c.
|
Daniel
Boone Holmes 1850-1911 and wife Lyda Massey 1854-1929
|
d.
|
Sydne
Holmes 1881-1968 and husband George Langford 1876-1964
|
The Bible records give no hint of Prasha's surname.
|
| I
had long ago made a note of the marriage 9 Dec.1793 [of John Holmes
1765-1847 - from GL,Jr. earlier notes - GL,III, ed.] to Susanna
Blackwood in Rowan Co., Nor. Car. and the fact that his first daughter
born after her death was named Susanna Holmes, caught my eye.
This was exactly the way "A Colonial Dutch Naming Pattern" was
described
in George O. Zabriskie's Climbing
Your Family Tree Systematically [Salt Lake City, Utah:
Parliament Press, 1969 - GL,III, ed.] |
| Under this pattern, the first
son born to John Holmes 1765-1847, who
was named Thomas Holmes, was named for his father, who [therefore]
would have been named Thomas Holmes. The second son born, who was
named William P. Holmes, would be named for Prasha's father, William
P., the surname not being spelled out. So, we were still in the
dark regarding Prasha's surname. |
I
wrote all this to my Rowan Co. researcher, that she continue her search
for Holmes and Blackwood data, and look for any man named William P.,
surname starting with "P." She sent me a quantity of notes, which
I added to my Data Bank, but no trace of the surname of William P.
|
I
spent all available research time at home, working with a researcher in
Augusta Co., Va. on that Holmes line and a great deal of time
researching by mail my Massey family in Missouri and Maryland, also a
number of the Gilbert colateral lines in Kentucky, Virginia, and
Maryland.
|
But, all this time, never dead,
was the hope that I could solve my Holmes, Blackwood, and William P.
puzzle.
|
7 Jul.1944:
I had learned of Mrs. Mamie McCubbins and her interest in North
Carolina historical and genealogical records and had written to her
about our Prasha Holmes identification problem, and she sent me this
record:
Will, 9 Jun.1818, Rowan
Co., Nor. Car. of Wm. Patrick, Sen.: To daughter, Preshy Holmes, 5
shillings.
|
At long last, we now had proof that Prasha was Prasha Patrick, but we
didn't know anything about William Patrick, Senior, so we put our
researcher on his trail. Time went by ...
|
14 Apr.1945: At the
D.A.R. Library in Washington, D.C., my researcher found, in a
publication on Rowan Co., No. Car. Marriage Bonds:
Holmes, John - Susanna
Blackwood 9 Dec.1797, Bondsmen Isaac Blackwood with John and Lyda
Pinchback.
|
| Patrick, Wm. - Mary Jacobs
25 Dec. 1794. John Maden Witness John and Lyda Pinchback. |
|
The
references to the Pinchbacks rang a bell with me. I knew that
they had operated a tavern, later on to be known as "the Burnt Tavern,"
near the Bear Creek Baptist Church, and that John Pinchback had granted
the church the land on which the church was built. So I looked up
my records on the Bear Creek Baptist Church, and I found listed among
the 1806 membership:
John Holms
|
William Patrick.
|
|
Also in the D.A.R. Library, he
found this reference:
Cemetery on Cunninghams Farm, in Brown Summit, in Hawkins Tp., Guilford
Co., Nor. Car.: Stones:
William Patrick Senr. d.
May 29, 1771 in 33rd Year
|
William Patrick, Jr. d.
Mar.3, 1805 in 34th Year
|
James Patrick, d. July
1835 in the 74 Years
|
|
1945-1946:
I had established to my own satisfaction in 1943 that the father of
John Holmes 1765-1847 was named Thomas, so we searched Rowan County and
many surrounding No. Car. counties for a Thomas Holmes who could fit
into my Holmes family line, adding, thereby to my Data Bank. We
also searched the 1790 No. Car. Census, and then the complete 1790
Census records that had survived, without finding any usable data.
|
When
we had found that John Holmes 1809-1851 had been in Wythe County,
Virginia, we figured that the only way he could get to Lexington,
Kentucky in 1850 was to trek across Kentucky, starting at Cumberland
Gap. So my Census researcher took notes for the years 1820-1820
and 1840 in all Kentucky
counties.
|
| Whenever we found a record that
pertained to [John
Holmes 1809-1851] I secured a researcher in the indicated county to
scan the Court records. By this technique we added a great deal
of knowledge about John Holmes 1809-1851 for our data bank. And,
I got a good start researching the Massey ancestry of Grandmother Lyda
Massey Holmes 1854-1929, getting particularly interested in her father,
Benjamin Franklin Massey. |
My Production Manager job at
Belden, plus a certain amount of business travel, gave me no time at
all to visit Newberry.
|
1947:
The Field Museum, recognizing Father's knowledgeable interest in
fossils, appointed him Curator of Fossil Plants, and he began a new
career. He and museum staff members made many collecting trips to
the Illinois strip mines, and I also went there a few times with Father.
|
Father
also wrote, illustrated, and arranged two volumes of a field guide to
fossil plants for collectors who liked to collect them, wanted to know
what they were, but were not interested in working through the jargon
that was used in the low circulation scientific journals.
|
Father also went on several long
fossil collecting expeditions in the ceramic clay pits in Tennessee,
Alabama, and Mississippi.
|
1948-1961:
Both Father and I were far too busy in our jobs to attempt Newberry
visits, but I used spare moments at home to push along my Massey line
in Missouri and in Maryland with borrowed N.E.H.G.S. Library books.
|
1962: Father
was retired from the Field Museum,
kept up a vigorous correspondence, handled all the problems of their
apartment, and devoted most of his time to care of Mother, who was
failing mentally quite rapidly. She could not enter
conversations, but she liked to listen to the rest of us.
|
Mother
was like a happy child, could take care of her personal problems, and
Father did not consider her care a chore. I used to visit them
once or twice a week, arrange to have dinner
sent in from the Red Star Inn, and monitor Father's finances, which
were getting slimmer, and eventually to supplement them adequately.
|
Father and I paid one visit to
Newberry and took Joe Wolf out to dinner, but did no research.
|
16 Jun.1964: Father died,
suddenly, on his way to the hospital.
I had been visiting my parents the night before; he had enjoyed
watching the Chicago Cubs playing baseball that afternoon, and was in
fine spirits and apparently in good health. But Mother telephoned
me at Hinsdale, told me that Father was ill, and asked me to drive
in. This I did; he was in great pain, so I called an
ambulance. He was holding my hand to help his pain, but I felt
his grip loosen and knew he was gone. Right up to the moment of
his death, at age 88, his mind was as good as it ever was.
|
After
the funeral we moved Mother back to our home in Hinsdale; and Mitzi and
I, with some nursing assistance, cared for her for about two
years. At that point her doctor felt that she could better
receive the 24-hour care she required at a nursing home. We found
an unusually pleasant one about five miles away, where we could visit
her and take her out easily. We added her to our I.R.S.
household, and Mother, still a capable artist, amused herself by making
portraits in chalk of the nurses she liked. LaGrange was easily
reached from Chicago, and she also had a steady stream of visits from
her friends.
|
Mother
had inherited substantially from her sister-in-law but was incapable of
financial planning, so my attorney in Hinsdale had arranged to have the
Northern Trust Co. of Chicago appointed Conservator of her estate and
me appointed "Conservator of the Person."
|
So,
in addition to being busy at my Belden job, I had to work with the
Northern Trust Co. as they managed her securities and income, and as I
supervised her care.
|
1965: Mitzi had developed cancer
and had a severe operation, but appeared to be cured.
Things were very pleasant at home.
|
11 Jul.1968: Mother died,
quietly and peacefully, while I was visiting her at the nursing
home in LaGrange.
|
1968: Mitzi's cancer had
spread and another radical operation was required. She
recovered very well and even resumed working in the garden. But
it was not to be.
|
| 9 Feb.1969: My wife Mitzi
died in the hospital in Hinsdale.
In mid-1968 her cancer had spread, she was bedridden and required day
and night care. I had arranged this and we were able to care for
her at home until about Christmas, although she required pain
medication and was often comatose. Her last lucid moments came
when our son was home for Christmas vacation, and they had a long,
loving visit. We
could no longer care for her properly at home, and our doctor arranged
her admittance to the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital, about three
blocks from our home. I would stop at the hospital for a visit
each evening on my way home from Belden. For about a month, we
could have a visit; then she could recognize me, but couldn't
talk. After that, she was always comatose. On her last
evening, while her doctor and I were both with her, she slipped
away. We had been married for thirty-four years. |
July, 1969: After Mitzi's
death,
I put the Hinsdale house up for sale and spent the next two months
looking at cities on the East Coast from New York State to
Georgia. I drove six thousand miles and went to forty-two
different cities. I finally decided to move to Harrisonburg,
Virginia, and returned to Hinsdale to make positive moving plans.
|
I sold the house for cash,
possession to take place in July, and returned to Harrisonburg to find
a place to live.
|
My
Hinsdale attorney had recommended the firm of Clark and Bradshaw, so
Henry Clark found me an apartment available in July, wrote me a new
Will, recommended a doctor, a dentist, a stock broker, and a tax
consultant, and so I was all set to move.
|
So
I moved. The place was on Pleasant Hill Road.. On arrival I
phoned Henry Clark and was invited to spend the weekend at the chalet
that he had just finished building at the Bryce Mountain Ski
Resort. He also put me up for membership in the Harrisonburg Golf
Club, and I was promptly elected.
|
| August - September 1969:
For about five years I had been so overloaded that I had no time even
to think about genealogy, but now I was all by myself, and questions
popped up that now I could look into. I commuted to the Augusta
County Courthouse in Staunton, Va. to see if the Court records would
substantiate my theories that the John Holmes, wife Meelsee and John
Holm, wife Agnes Cousl were not related to my John Holmes
1765-1847. I piled up a lot of notes in my Data Bank, was fully
satisfied that this Augusta County, Va. Holmes family had no connection
with my own Holmes line, and turned to other things. |
October - December 1969:
I long itched to visit Rowan County, North Carolina to see what some
direct personal record searching could accomplish, and now I had the
free time to do so. I alternated record-searching in North
Carolina during the week while spending the weekends at Bryce Mountain
with Henry and Mary Ann Clark, who had decided I was a pretty nice guy.
|
October 1969:
It was on this first trip to Salisbury, I believe, that I first met
you, Jo, when we were both wrestling some big deed book in the court
house.
|
April 1970:
Right along in parallel with my Holmes research work, I had been
steadily amassing records of my maternal Grandmother Massey family and
had developed a great personal interest in my Great-Grandfather,
Benjamin Franklin Massey: his career, his ancestry, and his descendants.
|
Taking
stock of my interests, and considering my advancing age, I made the
decision that I would devote all available time to a book on Massey,
very important to me, and to abandon any thought of a publication about
all these Holmes families, most of them of no interest to me
personally. But before starting, full blast, on a book on my
Massey family, I had some loose ends that wanted to take care of, so I
went to North Carolina again.
|
April 1970 - Hillsboro, North
Carolina:
I worked in the Court House for about ten days, on Blackwood and
Patrick families and on a big Orange County Holmes family that included
a John Holmes. I posted a mass of records; Blackwood and Patrick
were collateral families, but the Orange County Holmes family proved
not
to be linked to my Holmes family.
|
April 1970 - Raleigh, North
Carolina:
The State Library had a complete collection of the printed records of
all of the 1790 Census of all the U.S.A. states. I went through
all of them, looking for my John Holmes 1765-1847, who would have been
age twenty-five and single at the time. I found a total of
seventy-one men named John Holmes, but not one that I could claim as
mine.
|
April 1970 - Salisbury, North
Carolina:
For the first time, I actually saw, and got acquainted with Mamie
McCubbins' huge collection of notes at the Salisbury Library and took a
quick run-through of them to see how the collection was
organized. The Mormon indexing system was very hard to work
with, but I made a few Holmes notes, including notes linking the Holmes
and Krider families.
|
28 Dec.1970 - Harrisonburg, Va.:
I had returned to work really hard on my proposed book on Massey,
working with Maryland books borrowed from the N.E.H.G.S. Library,
supplemented by work done by my Washington, D.C. researcher in the
Washington libraries and government facilities.
|
Weekends,
I was still welcome at Bryce, and I became well acquainted with a lot
of the Clark and Bradshaw children. I was invited to come for a
day there when all of the Bradshaws and Clarks, and all of their
children, would be spending a skiing weekend. And that is where
and when I met Neva and her sister, Ann. The three of us got
along just fine, and I asked them if I could take them out to dinner
when we all got back to Harrisonburg.
|
That
turned out to be a good idea, and every week or ten days we would go
out to dinner at the Country Club, and then to my apartment on Pleasant
Hill Road, where I would treat them to rum Old Fashioneds.
|
1970:
This pleasant state of affairs went peacefully along, with me working
steadily on my Massey Book project, visiting each of my sons from time
to time, and even returning to Chicago to take care of some financial
business. I was still in the process of learning how to manage my
investments, had no consultants handy that I wanted to trust, and this
also occupied lots of time while I tried not to get caught in an
unstable stock market.
|
I still had some faint questions
about my North Carolina families, so I made another trip to Raleigh.
|
1 July 1971 - Land Grant Office:
I had been puzzled by their Index Books and how they operated, so I
went through them again, posting Holmes notes. In the list of
Rowan County Grants was one dated 1779 for a Robert Holmes. I
hoped that he might be the father of my John Holmes 1765-1847.
|
The
original Survey Maps and Warrants were carefully kept in metal boxes,
and this particular map should be, according to Martha Paskewich, the
nice Land Grant Clerk, in Box 010. What we found was an
assignment from a Thomas Brooks, dates 1792, to a Robert Holmes , and
this paper was witnessed by John Holmes. John Holmes' signature
exactly matched the John Holmes signature in his Bible record.
Now, this semi-miraculous genealogical discovery was also a
semi-miracle at the Land Grant Office. Martha was all excited,
and about the whole staff came down to see it all.
|
We also found Thomas Holmes'
1820 Grant, and the surveyor's map on Hunting Creek in Rowan County.
|
23 July 1971 - State Library:
I shuttled back and forth between the Land Grant Office and the
Library, and most of it in the Library. I made lots of
interesting notes and made a few pertinent ones:
Wm. Patrick's 1818 Will.
|
John Blackwood's 1819 Will
in which he mentions his grandson Thomas Holmes.
|
|
September 1971:
Our periodic dinner dates had been very pleasant, not eventful, but on
this date we fell violently in love and wanted to get
married. Neva felt that she should announce this to her eldest
child, so with some trepidation we went to tell Mary Ann Clark, not
knowing what to expect. Her reaction was, "What kept you so long
?" She called Steve and Jim Bradshaw, and a celebration party
started at once at Jim's house. We set the wedding date for 28
Dec.1971, and immediately bought a lot and started building a
house. All this was a seven-day wonder in Harrisonburg; Neva had
lived here for fifty years, and for sixteen years had been the Widow
Bradshaw. I was a newcomer, known only, really, to the Clark and
Bradshaw families, but things settled down in due time.
|
| 28 Dec.1971 - Neva and I were
married in the Clarks' living room by our Presbyterian Minister,
and set off for a honeymoon in Mexico City and Guadalajara, Mexico. |
Easter,
1972 - When we got back from Mexico, our house builders hadn't finished
it, so we lived in my apartment on Pleasant Hill Road and more or less
superintended the finishing of our house. On Easter Sunday
we were hosts for dinner with the whole clan.
|
| 1972-1974 - Neva and I were very
busy.
We had to get settled in our new home, which took some doing.
Neva had always been popular and now was even more so, so we kept a
very busy social life. I also took over managing Neva's
investments, adding that task to my own. Then I had to have a
gall bladder operation in early 1973. In May 1973 Neva and I
spent the whole month in Europe and had a wonderful time. |
August 1974:
My Virginia researcher had located the Tax Records for Virginia,
and we could fill in a big gap between the time John Holms 1765-1847
left North Carolina and showed up in Kentucky.
|
| September - December 1974:
The stock market had been hitting new lows all Summer, and I felt that
a rise was about to occur, so I put all my stock on margin and bought
some more. I had judged the market rise all right, but I was
about
three months ahead of the actual low. During this period I was
monitoring my stocks almost daily, attending to margin calls, and not
sleeping very well. My financial situation was getting really
grim. To make a long story short, I weathered the storm and made
a substantial profit from my margin operation, but the wear on me
wasn't worth it. No time at all was available to work on
genealogy. |
January 1975 - August 1975:
I had laid aside all of my Holmes Data Books and was devoting all of my
spare time to my Massey Book project, when Neva required an immediate
gall bladder operation.
Always frail, the operation was hard on her, she had a long hospital
stay and a slow recovery at home. I had outside help, but
attending to her care and keeping the household going left me very
little time for genealogical thinking.
|
December 1975 - March 1976:
My sister Lyda Hinrichs, who lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a suburb
of Washington, D.C. had a bad fire in her house, suffered cardiac
arrest and severe smoke inhalation, and was hospitalized for several
months. I went back and forth to give her moral support at the
hospital, and then, when she was handling problems of insurance and
rebuilding. Again, I had to put aside all genealogical thought
and action.
|
April 1976 - December 1976:
I worked long and hard on my Massey Book project, getting lots of help
from my Cousin O.L. Hough, who had done much work on his part of our
Massey line; our grandmothers were sisters. With Lou Hough's help
and encouragement, later supplemented by Judge Frank Massey of Fort
Worth, Texas, I was getting a lot accomplished, about one-hundred-fifty
pages camera-ready, as I recall. The time-sheets that I
maintained showed that I was actually working twenty-five to thirty
hours per week on it.
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1977 - Spent every available hour
on my Massey Book project, stepping up my work-week to the
thirty to thirty-five hour level.
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December 1977: I
wrote Miss Flossie
Martin of Mocksville,
whom you surely know, and she sent me a blueprint of a mosaic map of
Davie County that the county surveyor had made, and here in a cozy
little group were the grants of Robert Holmes, John Holmes, John
Blackwood, William Patrick, John Pinchback, and the Bear Creek Baptist
Church. This map, and the accompanying list of grantees in the
northwest corner of Davie County, represent the sum total of all my
contribution to my Holmes Data Bank in 1977.
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1978 - The year started
with me still putting in a thirty-hour Massey work week, but a little
work on Holmes sneaked into the picture.
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April 1978: I had spotted a
reference,
in the N.C.G.S. Journal I believe, citing a Col. Robert Holmes and two
sons, John Holmes and James Holmes. As my John Holmes 1765-1847
had a brother James Holmes, I followed this lead. First, with Red
Watt, whom you know, and then I begged your help, the only time in my
long research career when I had the help of a Certified
Genealogist. Well, as you know, Col. Robert Holmes, although a
noble character, was not related to my Holmes line, but it took until
mid-November finally to prove it.
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July 1978 - Having found my John
Holmes
1765-1847 in the Wythe County, Virginia Census, and then in the
Washington County, Virginia 1820 Census, my curiosity boiled over and I
spent a week in the southwest corner of Virginia in several county
court houses, phoning Neva every evening to report progress. I
learned a great deal about my John Holmes 1765-1847 and added a bundle
of notes to my Holmes Data Bank.
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November 1978 - My Virginia State
Library researcher found the tax records for a dozen years, and
I made another trip.
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| December 1978 - This time I found
several deeds, plus a transcript involving my John
Holmes 1765-1847. It seemed that he bought a horse for $164.00
but moved on West without paying for it, but his creditor caught up
with him several years later and collected his money. |
During this same period, in
between my long hours my Massey project, I got curious about R.W.
Ramsey's maps in Carolina Cradle
and figured out how they fitted together. Also, during 1978 with
your interested help, I arranged that my assemblage of big loose leaf
notebooks on all my research should all go to the Salisbury Public
Library, snuggled up, no doubt, to Mamie McCubbins' monumental
contribution.
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1979
- Having taken a few Holmes excursions in 1978, I went back again to my
major project, my Massey Book. I was really making progress; I
even found a letter recently, telling my Washington, D.C. researcher
that I expected to have it completely ready before the end of the
year. Then came another big event in my life.
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31
Oct.1979: Massey Printz, of Alexandria, Virginia, wrote Judge
Massey, who by now had published two books about Massey families,
asking information about his own Kent County, Maryland family, and
Judge Massey had told him that I was the expert on the Maryland
Masseys. So Massey Printz got in touch with me and sent me about
a hundred pages of notes, plus the names and addresses of several of
his Massey line who had joined him in research. It developed that
his line and mine both went back to a common ancestor. For some
reason, the notes that I had made assumed that Massey Printz's line had
become extinct. Not so ! To date, I have found 225 Massey
names to add to my book, and the research into Massey Printz's line
still continues. By the end of 1980, my Massey Data Bank had
added up to 1669 pages.
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| By
the end of 1978, I had assumed that I had secured all the information
on
my Massey line that I was ever likely to get, had even gotten well
started on pagination, and was starting to work out the details of
indexing. Now, with this Pandora's Box of new names, I face a
real problem when I resume work on my Massey Book. I will have to
shoehorn, as best I can, all of the written pages into the work that I
have already completed without having to go back part way and start all
over. |
I had partly worked out the
mechanics of doing this when another diversion popped out.
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November 1980 - March 1981 - The
Bradshaw Genealogy:
One of Mary Ann Clark's Bradshaw Aunts had been saving family letters
and papers for years and gave her about a bushel of papers,
photographs, and momentoes, including an obviously valuable gold watch
with some hard to read engraving on it. The whole family was
interested, and so with a magnifier we solved the engraved
message. Lots of the letters were seventy-five to one hundred
years old, and they wanted to find out whether their Bradshaw ancestral
line could be worked out. Naturally, I was pulled into service; I
started in and really had a four-month picnic.
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Neva's
maiden name was Garletts, and her sister, Ann Carney, a very capable
amateur genealogist, had been working on the Garletts line for
years. Ann had a correspondent in West Virginia who, through Ann,
learned that we were trailing the Bradshaw line. It turned out
that she was a Bradshaw descendant, so she and I collaborated from that
point on.
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We
did very well; we traced the emigrant James Bradshaw and Edith Springer
when they came, in 1802 from Protestant Ireland, and eleven correlated
lines through Ohio and Virginia back a bit farther.
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I
had come across several links into England, but I wanted to get back to
work on Holmes and Massey. So I interlaced my "Bradshaw
Genealogy"
with notes and instructions on how to pick up the open trails where I
had left off, made a copy each for Mary Ann Clark, Steve Bradshaw, and
Jim Bradshaw. Since then, some more Bradshaw papers have turned
up, but I have declined to analyze them, leaving it up to Mary Ann, or
some other member of the Bradshaw family, to get interested and
follow in behind what I had produced.
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During
this four-month "Excursus Bradshaw," I had put my Massey Book project
entirely out of my mind, and I had decided some time ago to do no
further Holmes family research, so I added nothing to my Holmes Data
Bank.
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6 April 1985: Neva, with a
congenitally inefficient heart, had developed emphysema,
was getting weaker and weaker, and by 1984 required nursing care.
I had competent outside help, but monitoring the medical operations,
plus the household operations, was more than a full time job for
me. And on top of that I had no zest left for family history
research. We thought that we had Neva's care under good control,
but she died, painlessly and peacefully in her sleep on April 6th.
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19 June 1985:
As I had been Neva's money manager ever since we were married, I had
all of her financial and personal records. So I was very busy
with Steve Bradshaw, her Executor. I did no genealogical work at
all.
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But
in your letter to Mrs. Ruby Carr regarding the Holmes-Krider tangle,
you referred to me as "XXXX" and I couldn't resist that, so I have been
back ever since on my thirty-forty hour weekly schedule, and completion
of this project is in sight.
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Conclusion:
Building up my Holmes Data Bank has not been done in neat, orderly,
steady fashion. It was interrupted frequently by serious,
unavoidable circumstances, and helped only occasionally by important
genealogical discoveries that I badly needed for inspiration to keep my
genealogical hopes alive. You have now qualified as Chief Witness
to my many stumbles and very few easy moves, on my long road to
completing my Holmes Family Data Bank. I must admit that it reads
like a combination of a Grade B Soap Opera, and an unrehearsed
performance of "This Is Your Life," but that's the way it was.
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