Shakin' the Family Tree

Sepia Saturday: She made hats

2013-01-26T05:00:05Z

This is a photo I estimate to be circa 1868-1875 of the millinery shop owned and operated by my great-great grandmother, Mary Emily (Conner) Meek in Grenada Co., MS. (Click here to read more about her.)

From comparing the only known photo I have of her to this one, I think grandmama was the lady seated to the right of the post.

But I can't be sure.

This is a Sepia Saturday post. Head over there for more wonderful photos.

comments

Tombstone Tuesday: He did it again...

2012-11-27T02:22:55Z

Find a Grave volunteer Larry Hart went back to Union Cemetery in Panola Co., MS, and got the rest of the gravestone photos in what must have been the Conner family plot.

He emailed me to let me know, so I could create memorials for them.

Then he posted his photos.

William Henry Conner, 1808-1858, my 3rd great grandfather.

Elizabeth Curtis Conner, my 3rd great grandmother.

Henry Conner, 1874-1874, and Claudius Conner, 1876-1876, baby sons of James Alfred Conner, one of William and Elizabeth's sons.

And then he sent me the photos he took by email.

You just don't very often run across people like Mr. Hart.

When you do, you've found a real gem.

comments

Sentimental Sunday: Mary Emily Conner (1837-1913)

2012-11-25T14:27:29Z

This post is not a fond remembrance of my great great grandmother. I can't remember a woman who died 45 years before I was born.

Her grandson, Jo Duffie Williams, was 10 years old when she died. I don't know - and he didn't ever say - if he attended her funeral, held in Sardis, MS.

For years, I wondered where she was buried. Her death certificate gave me the answer, and I created a memorial page for her on Find a Grave.

I made a request for a photo of the stone.

Just a little over two years after I created the memorial, another Find a Grave volunteer got the photo.

Here Lies With Hope in Jesus Christ Her Saviour
Emily Conner Meek Webb
4-12-1838
4-27-1913

Not only that, but after I thanked him, Larry Hart emailed me all the shots he had taken to get a photo he felt best captured the inscription on the stone which has fallen into the ground after nearly a century. In one of them, you can see that he had to kneel on the grass to get his shots.

He gave me his written permission to use the photos in any way I wished.

The stone is interesting.

The family Bible and her death certificate give Mary Emily Conner's date of birth as 12 Apr 1837. The stone says 1838.

And since her first name isn't on the stone, I wonder if she was called Emily all her life.

This Sentimental Sunday, I am thinking of the great great grandmother I never knew, and a man who knelt patiently in the grass one autumn day to provide her granddaughter a photo of her grave.

comments

HeadDesk*

2012-10-31T23:26:33Z

Sometimes, I am a bit dense.

Last winter, I blogged about this really neat letter from Joe Thomas Meek I'd found in the massive Meek genealogy (authored by Melton P Meek).

In the letter, Joe had described a trip back to Mississippi, home for nearly a century to our direct Meek ancestors.

Joe Thomas Meek was the great grandson of James Alexander Meek, who was my great great grandfather.

Joe's grandfather was William Thaddeus Meek, 10 years older than his baby sister, Maxie Leah, who was my great grandmother.

As I was embedding some html code into the note filed of my GEDCOM on several Meek entries, I re-read that letter, written in 1983.

And two paragraphs really hit me. (Parenthetical names added by me.)

None of the family ever saw old JAMES (James Alexander) after 1868, when he
and great grandmother (Mary Emily Conner) parted.

None of the family can ever be named JAMES or ALEXANDER
again, as my grandfather (William Thaddeus Meek) promised. An old lady at Oxford
gave us his picture, a little old man with the other old soldiers
in front of the old CourtHouse at Oxford in 1911.
I had it put in a nice frame to hang in my father's room (Joseph Thaddeus Meek)
besides his favorite picture of his old grandmother, but he
would not have it. The Irish have long, long memories and
never forget any wrong, however remote.

None of the family ever saw old JAMES after 1868, when he and great grandmother parted.

What could have incensed William Thaddeus Meek so much about his father? Something so heinous that the rage was passed down to the next two generations?

Could it have been that William's father, after having been gone for three long years during the Civil War, deserted his pregnant wife?

My great grandmother, Maxie Leah Meek, was born on 10 Feb 1869 in Grenada Co., MS. Her mother, Mary Emily Conner, had been supporting her son William during James' Civil War service with her millinery shop, and continued to support both her children in that fashion after James left.

I had always assumed that James was around for the death and burial of his first daughter with Mary Emily Conner - a three year old named Lizzie - short for Hettie Ann Elizabeth (who must have been named for James' own mother).

Lizzie died on 28 Sep 1868, and is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Sardis, Panola Co., MS.

But perhaps James wasn't around for that event either.

If that is true, it certainly could account for the bitterness over the "wrong, however remote."

And I have to wonder if James' POW experience had lingering consequences for him.

comments

Sepia Saturday: Hats

2012-09-08T12:57:39Z

I have a fair number of photos of my family decked out in their hats.

I even have an ancestress who made them.

The millinery shop of my g-g-grandmother, Mary Emily Conner, in Grenada Co., MS, about 1870-1875.

My grand-aunts, Ocie (left) and Arkie Burris, photo about 1909.

My grandfather, his brother and their double cousins, Elbert and Earl. Photo about 1905.

Left to right - Elbert Burris, Homer and George Burris,Jr. (brothers) and Earl Burris (brother of Elbert)

This is a Sepia Saturday post. Head over there for more cool old photos and postcards.

comments

Who was Belle Webb?

2012-04-22T16:43:05Z

Browsing the 1940 census, and found my great-great grandparents, Jo and Maxie Williams, living at 2310 S Ringo in Little Rock.

This house...

With them was a 76 year old widow, Belle Webb.

Grandma Maxie said Belle was living there on 1 Apr 1935. So Belle was a long time lodger.

I looked in the 1940 Polks Directory for Little Rock. Belle Webb, widow of John T., was listed at 2310 S Ringo.

Now I am very curious.

Maxie's mother, Mary Emily Conner, married Samuel Webb, just two weeks after she divorced Maxie's father in 1871.

I'll have to look for the connection to John T Webb...

comments

A letter from Joe Thomas Meek

2011-12-17T16:04:53Z

An excellent source of genealogical information for researchers of the Guy Meek family is a book written by Melton P Meek, Vol 2, Guy Meek Family, Descendants. It was digitized by Brigham Young University and is available on their website.

On page 569 of the book, I found a letter written in 1983 by Joe Thomas Meek to Melton P Meek, providing Melton Meek - and me - with some more insight into my Meek family, particularly what appears to be the the complete and total estrangement of my great-great grandparents, James Alexander Meek and Mary Emily Conner, after their divorce in 1871.

LETTER FROM JOE THOMAS MEEK, CORRESPONDENT, 4 Dec 1983.

That is in America. We found the old grave of SAMUEL MEEK,
brother to ALEXANDER (Samuel, forebear of Dr. Rider). We
went to Alexander's grave and found a cow scratching on the
Italian marble stone and raked a hundred years & more debris
from the old stones.

We found the graves of old JEFFERSON J. and HETTIE at old
Sardis (MS) and that of GREAT Grandfather JAMES at Oxford (MS).

None of the family ever saw old JAMES after 1868, when he
and great grandmother parted.

None of the family can ever be named JAMES or ALEXANDER
again, as my grandfather promised. An old lady at Oxford
gave us his picture, a little old man with the other old soldiers
in front of the old CourtHouse at Oxford in 1911.
I had it put in a nice frame to hang in my father's room
besides his favorite picture of his old grandmother, but he
would not have it. The Irish have long, long memories and
never forget any wrong, however remote.

Now I am the last of my family, glad to have come and unafraid
to go, but no one remains to carry on this history,
this tradition.

So, Dr. Meek, if you like it, here's several pages written
on a dull, wintry day to add to your collection. Shakespeare
said "What assurance against the ravages of time except to
breed". Another famous writer one commented "I wrote it all
so that I wouldn't utterly perish." And so will I, if you
will put it in the ringed notebooks and add it to your 30
feet of shelving.

Now for a good meal, and a long winter's nap.

Yours Truly, Joe T. Meek

...glad to have come and unafraid to go...

Would that we all felt that way.

Joe Thomas Meek was born 5 Oct 1928 in Pope Co., AR, and died there in 1987.

comments

Let's talk about something I can change...

2011-10-22T15:22:29Z

With a couple of exceptions, I haven't been able to bury myself in the family history this week.

I did receive a couple of email contacts though. From a man who seems very insistent that I have incorrectly identified the wife of one of my Conners.

He left two post-its a couple of minutes apart on Margaret E Blann's individual record, saying she was not a Blann, but a Hays instead.

The problem with that is that her FAG memorial says her stone is inscribed, Daughter of J and L Blann, wife of J A Conner. (J A Conner is James Alfred Conner, my second great-grand uncle.) I've replied to him with that information. I can't change the gravestone inscription, and since it was "carved in stone" at the time of her death, I tend to place more credibility on Blann as her maiden surname than his cryptic post-it, which offers no sources at all.

I know he's been in FAG, because he also told me - in a separate email - I had misspelled the name of the cemetery, and referred me to two FAG memorials in that cemetery as proof of the correct way to spell the name of the cemetery.

They are my memorials, and the name of the cemetery is misspelled in FAG. I can't change that, either.

Maybe it's just a difference in style of approach.

When I find something online that looks like the same person in my tree, but different information, I poke around for hours trying to see how the other person might have arrived at the conclusions s/he reached before I make contact.

And in my email, I cite the sources I used to draw my own conclusions.

I just figure that's the best way for either of us to make the changes we can...

comments

And it wasn't a window envelope...

2011-09-23T20:25:07Z

I got mail today.

And it wasn't a window envelope.

I'm sure it was in the back of my mind, as are many things in my quest to discover who my people are - whose genes had anything to do with the making of me.

But I had almost forgotten that several weeks ago, I mailed a form and a $15 check to the Mississippi State Department of Health for an uncertified copy of a death certificate for my great-great grandmother, Mary Emily Conner.

I took off work earlier this afternoon, did a couple of errands and came home, looking forward to throwing open the windows of the cottage on this wonderfully cool and breezy day of the autumn equinox.

When I checked the mail, I saw the envelope's return address.

I think others of you reading this will identify with my next move.

I reached in the mailbox and laid my hand on the envelope to feel its thickness.

It wasn't one of those flat, skinny envelopes. I could tell by touch there was more than one sheet of paper - that standardized form letter - announcing, We're sorry but we were unable to locate the record you requested.

And then, they keep your $15 for looking...

Some of you may identify with my next move...

Since I was where my neighbors could see me, and wearing a skirt, I did a restrained happy dance, and came in the house and laid the envelope down on grandma's table.

I decided to savor the opening and discoveries of that envelope.

So I ditched my bra and shoes, quickly did a few chores, got a cup of coffee and kicked back on the couch.

And opened the envelope.

When I sent off for this record, I had hope for the answers to a number of questions about Mary Emily Conner.

Did I have her date and location of death correct? Where was she buried? How had she died? Who provided the information for her death certificate, and what relationship did that person have to her?

Did she die alone?

Most of my direct ancestors have a portrait in my mind's eye.

For Mary Emily Conner, that portrait includes a real visual image. I am lucky to have at least one known photo of her, and I wouldn't be surprised if she is not in some of the unlabeled photos in the Williams family album, although at an older age than the 1873 photo.

I am also fortunate that she was a notable character in a written Meek family history - even though she was an in-law, and then, a divorced in-law at that.

From that written history, I learned that Mary was an educated woman. She was fluent in French.

She was a business woman, and was able to support her family with her millinery business while her first husband, James Alexander Meek, was fighting a lost cause in the Civil War, getting wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg, and being held prisoner for nearly two years at Pea Patch Island.

Although I don't know the back-story, the timing of her divorce and re-marriage may also say something about a woman who was able to leave the past behind and move on...she and James Meek were divorced on 10 Oct 1871, and she was married to Samuel Webb (a successful confectioner) on 26 Oct 1871.

And wouldn't I love to have that back-story? Uh huh.

Date and location of death? Check. 27 Apr 1913, in Sardis, Panola Co., MS

Where is she buried? Union Church Cemetery, in Sardis, Panola Co., MS

Cause of death? Diseases arising from old age.

Not attended by a doctor, she died at home. The informant, and physician who signed her death certificate, was William J Hays, her nephew. He was the son of Mary's younger sister, Elizabeth Conner Hays.

He gave his address as Sardis, MS. I know his mother, Elizabeth Conner Hays, died in Sardis.

So although my great-great grandmother may have died at home alone (although the death certificate only says she died at home), another question was answered...

I always wondered when Mary decided to move back to Panola Co., MS after the death of her husband, Samuel Webb in 1882 in Russellville, was she near family?

I think she was...and so the portrait gains another layer, moving into filling out some of the gaps in that third dimension. In my mind's eye, I can see her, sitting and visiting for a spell, with her sister - talking and maybe having some refreshment, as Southern ladies once did. Perhaps Mary's nephew, the doctor, stopped by every once in while to check on his elderly aunt. I can picture her being proud of him...

So cool when it's not a window envelope...

comments