Nearly Forgotten

In May 2015, I made a trip up to Alabama to do some ancestral sleuthing on my great-grandmother Mary Ella (Arnett) Macy.  She was born 16 April 1901 in the town of Roanoke, the youngest daughter of Joel Hendricks Arnett and the former Hildegarde Bonner.

The Bonner side of the family was fairly easy to track down.  They are still prominent in the area, and the local library had some great genealogical resources.  And, they are all at rest in the neatly kept yard of the active Bethel Baptist Church near the village of Welch.

The Arnett side of the family was a different story.  They were all laid to rest at the Old Salem Primitive Baptist Church near the community of Bacon Level.  Unfortunately, the church disbanded in the early 1900s, with the congregation splitting between neighboring churches at Mount Pisgah and Lanett.  

Nowadays, the Old Salem cemetery is all but forgotten.  We would have missed it completely, if not for a peculiarly bent pine tree we spotted from the rugged dirt road.  

It was a bit of a challenge to clamber up the nearly-vertical trail from the road to the rusty old cemetery gate.  If there had been a stairway, it had rotted away long ago or been repurposed.  The view inside the gate was dismaying, at least at first.  The piney woods have almost completely taken over the sacred ground.

But, after a moment or two, I began to appreciate the peacefulness of my surroundings.  It truly was a place of rest for my ancestors, undisturbed by the hustle and bustle of the modern world.  The only sound to be heard was made by my boots as they tramped through the undergrowth in search of any legible stones with familiar names.

I was rewarded.  Tremendously.

I found the stones of:

• my Confederate ancestor Jesse Thomas Arnett (1831-1908)
• his wife Sarah Hendricks Arnett (1834-1899)
• his father Jesse Arnett (1796-1886) who brought the family here from North Carolina
• his mother Martha Robertson Arnett (1798-1881)
• his mother-in-law Cynthia Reid Hendricks, who died near here 31 May 1863
• and several other members of the extended family

#52Ancestors

Popular

This week's prompt ended in me doing a statistical analysis of the given names in my family tree over the last five generations.  I wanted to see where we stacked-up against some of the other lists one sees when perusing the popular baby name sites. Results follow.

Top 5 Boy Names:

1. William - far and away the most popular on both sides of the tree

2. James

3. John

4. Thomas

5. Robert

Honorable mentions: Richard and George

(Apparently) not-so-honorable: Albert, Alexander, Benjamin, Bernard, Cyrus, Daniel, Edson, Francis, Fred, Henry, Jesse, Joel, Kenneth, Michael, Mortimer, Patrick, Paul, Peter, and Ralph.

Top 5 Girl Names:

1. Mary

2. Margaret

3. Alice

4. Elizabeth

5. Sarah

Honorable mentions: Ann, Lola, Dorothy, and Martha

Also ran: Adeline, Agnes, Bridget, Catherine, Delia, Eunice, Flora, Frances, Gertrude, Hattie, Hildegarde, Isabel, Jacquelyn, Laura, Leigh, Lillian, Loretta, Louise, Lula, Marie, Maybel, Mildred, Myrtle, Nellie, Regina, Rita, Roberta, Ruth, Sharon, and Sylvia.

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Luck

This week's prompt ("Luck") brought to mind a 130 year old story about my great great grandfather Patrick Norton.

Patrick was an immigrant from County Roscommon, Ireland, who settled in Jersey City, New Jersey, and made a good life for himself--certainly with a lot of hard work and wisdom, but doubtless with a little bit of luck.  He was Irish, after all.

Back in 1890, our Patrick was the proud owner of a gray mare named "Belle of the Horseshoe," one of the fastest horses in Jersey City.  Perhaps coincidentally, her name was derived from the city's gerrymandered District 2.  The district was drawn by the Republican controlled state legislature to isolate the Catholic population, and particularly the Irish Catholic population, because they voted overwhelmingly for Democrats.  Anyway, the shape of the district definitely resembled a horseshoe, and Patrick's horse was the Belle of it.

Well, it happened that Patrick's gray mare beat a roan gelding by the name of "Harry," owned by Judge James Tumulty.  If you know anything of the Tumulty clan of Jersey City, you know they don't like to lose.  So, he demanded a rematch, this time to include a third horse named "Kitty Mick," owned by Patrick McGrath, a Democrat party boss who ran the city's street cleaning department.

Former police commissioner Thomas Nugent and a fellow named Martin Kelly were selected by the three horse owners as impartial judges.  They selected a two-mile stretch on the Carlstadt Road.  And, it was agreed that the owner of the horse who came in third place would buy dinner and wine for both the judges and his two competitors.  But, in actuality, the stakes were significantly higher than five fancy dinners.  Residents of the Horseshoe District had bet a barrel full of money--literally a barrel full of money--on the outcome of the race.

By the way, the three owners rode their respective horses.  There were no professional jockeys hired for this event.

Conditions called for a trotting race, which favored Patrick's mare.

At the starting signal, Kitty Mick burst forth to an early lead.  But, she and McGrath were overzealous.  They were quickly overtaken by Norton and Tumulty, and it became a two horse race with Belle and Harry exchanging slight leads.  But, something happened in the last furlong.  Belle broke badly, allowing not only the gelding to surge to an insurmountable lead, but also giving Kitty Mick enough room to take second place.

So, Patrick's odds-on favorite blew it, and he was left to pay the dinner bill for Tumulty, McGrath, Nugent, and Kelly.  To paraphrase the old song, his old gray mare just wasn't what she used to be.

A lot of betting people in the Horseshoe went home disgruntled that day.  

But, those who bet on Tumulty's horse, were rewarded quite handsomely.  Among them, was a close circle of Patrick's friends.  Suspicion was rampant that he had thrown the race, but nothing could be proved.

Sometimes, bad luck isn't bad luck at all.  

I imagine the same may be said of good luck . . .

#52Ancestors

Strong Woman

This first blogging prompt for March is so appropriate, because this is Women's History Month.

I decided to highlight my aunt Colonel Roberta Lobban Gleeson, US Army Nurse Corps.

Roberta was born 16 September 1944 near the Orlando Army Air Field, where her father was posted during the Second World War.  Along with her parents and three younger siblings, she spent her youth moving around to different military assignments.  These included the US Embassy in Athens, Greece; Craig Air Force Base in Selma, Alabama; Manston Royal Air Force Base in Ramsgate, England; and Pope Air Force Base in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

While in Fayetteville, Roberta began developing her childhood aspiration to become a nurse like her aunt Dorothea (Norton) Lobban.  Along with fourteen other area high school girls, she completed an intensive training course at nearby Fort Bragg.  When she graduated, there was no doubt she would go on to nursing school at Jersey City State College, her parents' alma mater.

Roberta had a variety of odd jobs to help defray college expenses.  She babysat for a gaggle of cousins in Jersey City.  And, she worked in an ice cream shop.  When she earned her degree in Nursing, she was immediately commissioned an officer in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps.

During her years of service, she completed difficult tours of duty in both Vietnam and Korea.  (The above picture was taken of her posing near the Demilitarized Zone during the winter of 1980.)  She was also posted at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas; Fort Riley, Kansas; and finally at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas.  During her twenty years of service, she earned a Master's Degree from Baylor University and was promoted to the rank of Colonel.

Aunt Roberta died 20 May 2011 in her beloved El Paso.  The family honored her final request that she be laid to rest with her father at Arlington National Cemetery.

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