Happy Fourth!

Ah, to sit outside on a big porch dressed in a long white muslin gown on a hot July day!

William Henry Scales House, ca. 1910

It’s July 2, 1910, and if you’re a Northern- or Western-born citizen of Noxubee County, Mississippi, you’re invited to a soiree celebrating the country’s independence. The event will be held at the home of Moses C. Weyburn, a transplant from New York via Illinois. Hungry? Thirsty? Not to fear: The tables will be "loaded down with viands."

An RSVP is not necessary.

So you may wonder who Moses C. Weyburn was and why I’m spending time on him today. Was he related to any of us? Probably not. I took an hour or more chasing him down through history, going backwards from Macon, Mississippi, to Dixon, Illinois, and then to Geneva, New York, where he was born in 1845 to Elizabeth "Elsie" Wooden and Edwin Weyburn, who was a physician.

Here’s what was written about Edwin and Elsie when they died:

Along my journey today I found out that Moses married a woman named Eva and had children Elsie and Florence; and then he married Minnie Weibezahn (her parents were from Germany), and Samuel Edwin, Marie and Robert Oliver came along. Some time after Robert was born, Minnie died, and Moses arrived in Noxubee County, MS.

Why? He’d lived in New York and Illinois, so why Mississippi? I couldn’t answer that one. Maybe it was because his first wife had died, and then the second, and he wanted to escape things that reminded him of them. I just know that by 1910 Moses Weyburn was throwing a party for other people like him who’d landed in Noxubee from distant locations—"foreigners," they’d have been called.

Some time later his son Robert Oliver enlisted for the WWI draft.

Perhaps he didn’t go; I found no record that he did. But one of Robert’s sons—Donald Edward—was 21 when he died in 1943; possibly he served and died in WWII. Robert is buried in Oddfellows Cemetery in Noxubee County, along with Donald, and Robert’s wife Edna.

 

 

The family history of Dr. Edwin Weyburn and Elsie was fascinating enough to me so that I spent another hour tracking down THEIR ancestors, all the way into the 1500’s! Elsie Wooden’s father was named Benjamin; he was also born in New York, in 1787, and he was married to Julia Condit, also from New York, born in 1797.

Now follow along, as this gets interesting, even if, like me, you have no horses in the race.

Julia Condit’s father, born in 1770, was named Moses. (Talk about family monikers being handed down…)

On FindaGrave’s website, someone’s posted this story about the family’s Independence Day celebration, taken from a newspaper I believe isn’t in existence anymore:

The "Condit" name had started out as "Condict," the way Moses’ father Jabez and his wife Phoebe Smith spelled it. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/12179422/jabez-condict 

…And the way HIS father Philip spelled it… https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/12180126/philip-condict  

…And Philip’s father Peter had arrived in the USA in the mid-1600’s. Whew.

I’m including at the bottom of this post a few more links to the family branches if you’d like to go through them. They’re all from FindaGrave.

And none of these people are related to me, so far as I know. Still, let’s "branch out" a little—but keep it all straight:

And, just like that, you have some descendants of early United States citizens showing up in Macon, Mississippi. A traceable part of the line goes all the way back to 1559.

And yet…look at the bottom right of the family chart, where you see Minnie Weibezahn’s parents.

Edward and Martha Weibezahn

They got to the U.S. straight from Germany. I could say we ALL got here from SOMEWHERE, from a long line or a short one—but that would be editorializing, wouldn’t it.

Tomorrow we celebrate the 243rd anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. As you serve up your version of holiday food or do whatever you may do, take a look at a celebration held about 110 years ago in Noxubee County, Mississippi. The article and picture originally appeared in a magazine-style brochure aimed at advertising the many advantages of the county and was published around 1912 or so.

Look at those faces, at the patriotic bunting hung on the house, and read about the welcome these "foreigners" received into the community. By the way, Moses Weyburn is the guy I called "Colonel Sanders" before I figured out who he was. You'll see him at the top of the steps on the left, with one of the posts at his back. He's also on the front porch of the house pictured at the beginning.

I’ll let the article and picture do the rest of the talking for me. The surprise ending is below.

 

The surprise ending? That’s MY house now. It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places; here’s a more recent picture of it, with a light snowfall. I have to say, I’m proud to own a home where, so many years ago, non-native Noxubee citizens were considered to be "of Worth, Intelligence and Honor to the County."

And a happy Fourth of July to you!

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/176260600/richard-daniel-harrison

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/176555546/sarah-harrison

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/105627509/john-ward

Ælfwine

 

Times Are A-Changin'

"Oh, look out you rock 'n rollers. Pretty soon now you're gonna get older..." 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl3vxEudif8 

The David Bowie song above came out in the ’70’s: “Time may change me,/But I can’t trace time.” —Words that take on a completely different meaning when you consider them from different perspectives! My mind goes there today because I have so many things changing in my own life right now...so many, in fact, that it took me this long to put up another post, which I’m finally doing today.

It’s been a while since my last one. Life tends to get in our way. It was always my intention to put up documents as I could find them, photos, and so on, and for relatives to contribute as they made discoveries.

As I mentioned, though, in the blog I do for my father and mother’s sides of my family, serious problems arise when you get into the mid-1800’s:

…People moved around a lot more than we might think they did.

…There were no copy or fax machines, computers, phones…and, more to the point, many of our ancestors weren’t all that great at writing.

...And my favorite: Paper burns.
The last one accounts for a good many dead-ends when people begin to draw out their family trees. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Well, that courthouse burned down in 1880—” or some other year, making it nearly impossible to get certain documents I needed from a specific time.

So let’s start the conversation again, with a report from a Thead cousin in another state. (I won’t name him myself but will let him “own” this if he chooses.) Not too long ago he had a DNA test run, as he—like so many of us in the South—had grown up with a family legend about a Native-American ancestor. Here’s the data on his test:

His results pretty well match those of a couple of other Thead relatives', all descended either from James or Alexander. (See my previous post on this.) I gave my own daughter a test kit as part of her Christmas present, and her data came back pretty similar to these other relatives.

In my last post I asked why people in the 20^th century wanted so much to manufacture a Native-American ancestor. Other than the possibilities I posted, I have no other explanation. Anyway, there it is.

I alluded to “changes” at the top of this post, and it seems proper for me to tell about them instead of presenting a “guess-it” moment: I’ll be at a different school in the fall, teaching art, which is scary and exciting at the same time. I have always been an artist and find it interesting that at this time of my life that seems to be the path I’ve been put on.

It comes to my mind sometimes to wonder how many of our ancestors felt the same emotions we do when they left their native countries (Europe, mostly, as I said above), sailed to the United States, then moved around from state to state in many cases, finally settling into one area, perhaps, or maybe continuing to move. They were restless people, searching for…what? Unless we have writings by our predecessors, we’ll never know for sure.

Happy Fourth of July, and my next post will be a digression onto that topic. In the meantime, if you have any information or documents you’d like to share, get in touch with me so we can let everyone have access to them. 
Ælfwine