2013 is in the building

Shelton, Nebraska

Having once more taken care of that peculiarly Southern ritual of serving black-eyed peas, cornbread and green leafy stuff for luck in the New Year, we are looking out on a somewhat snowy landscape and watching the sunset in tones of blue. A little later today; we've passed the solstice and are heading into longer days. The light slants just a bit less today than it did yesterday, and will ease up another notch tomorrow. You notice these things up here, just as you notice the scent of snow. Yes, it has one.

The family genealogy project now includes records for over 16,000 people, on both sides of the family. Cousins continued to marry cousins, so the intertwining can be dizzyingly complex. I am finding that I am most interested in the ones who kept looking for the next frontier, the next promised land, the next homestead. There is so little left of their hard work, which is why those small structures on the endless prairies stop me in my tracks every time. They were not always so silent.

Today in ancestral history: Ambrose Cobb, 10th great-grandfather on the Brooks/Honnoll side, died in 1605 in Kent, England. He was 42 years old and didn't get out of Kent during his lifetime, as far as I can tell. At this remove of time, there is so little that we know about people who just lived their lives without fanfare. His descendants made up for it, though. His son Ambrose emigrated to Virginia, eventually patenting 350 acres on the Appomattox River. There is speculation that he first built an English-style small thatched house, followed by a mansion known as the Cobbs Hall. Ambrose and his line are ancestral to the Savages, Moons and eventually Nancy Ellinor Honnoll; Cobbs Hall is the burial place of Col. John Bolling, only great-grandson of John Rolfe and Pocahontas, to whom there is a whisper of a connection on the Shelton side of the family. I think I am related to everyone in the world at least twice at this point, and have just started calling everyone "Cousin Cousin" for simplicity's sake.

Ambrose's descendants didn't stay in Virginia long, not all of them, anyway. They moved onward, south and west, from Virginia to South Carolina to Hardeman County, Tennessee (named for, again, a family connected to the Shelton side of the family), and on to Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma. They lived in structures far more like the thatched house than like Cobbs Hall, including half-dugouts on the plains. There was always some kind of roof made out of the materials at hand, it seems.

Starting this week, I will be part of the city Historic Preservation Commission, which I hope will help me put these tiny architectural stories into a good context. If I have a philosophy about all of this, it's that one should learn everything possible about the immediate vicinity and the recent ancestors, while those stories can still be saved, so that we have images and sounds and accounts of the people themselves, not just the structures they left.

Forward into the past.....

Mollie and Kendall

I think, after much sophisticated detective work, that I have finally identified the problem at the heart of my high-tech organizational system...

The updates have been missing in action lately while I worked through a little cardiac scare. One night in the hospital and a number of tests later, I am happy to report that it was, in fact, just a scare. We are chalking this one up to 2011 stress. My plan is to deal with it by acting like a cat and falling asleep on my piles of to-do lists. You never see a cat having to take a stress test, do you?

2012 is mostly behaving better than 2011 so far. The weather has been eerily warm until today, we seem to be on schedule at the museum, and several quilting projects are back on the front burner. There may even be a better camera on the horizon.

The ancestors have been quiet the past few days, but, now that they know that their antics are not in fact endangering my heart, they are back in force again. Today the theme seems to be war casualties on the home front.

14 Jan 1876: Mary "Mollie" Savage Honnoll dies in Prentiss, Mississippi, at the age of 67. Mollie was the mother of Nancy and the wife of Peter the beekeeper. She was born in Cumberland, Kentucky, in 1818, married in Hardeman County, Tennessee, in 1836, and was in Mississippi by 1850. Her parents were Hamilton Savage and Elizabeth Martin. Mollie had 9 children. One son, William Cacy Honnoll, died in the Civil War at the Battle of Richmond. His older brother, James Wiseman Honnoll, brought his brother's body home. I cannot imagine the ways in which this war tore everything and everyone apart. Mollie's picture, taken toward the end of her life, looks as if it were all too much. I am certain that the skills that went into the quilt came from her.

Peter Ambrose Honnoll Jr. and Mollie Savage Honnoll, posted at the old Honnoll-Hunnell family site. 

Picture posted by Mona Mills at Find a Grave. 

Gravestone picture posted by Peggy Herridge Wilson at Find a Grave. 

Mollie is buried at Gilmore Chapel Cemetery along with William Cacy and  a tiny grandchild, Jimmie Honnoll Walker, my great-grandmother's next-youngest sibling. Peter remarried and died some years later. If his grave is at Gilmore Chapel, it is unmarked. Apparently he was a tough old reprobate who did not believe in churches. His son Moses Wiseman Honnoll more than made up for his father's apostasy by becoming a Methodist circuit preacher. My great-grandmother and her family must have left Mississippi soon after Mollie's death.

16 Jan 1815: Kendall Savage dies in New Orleans. The location and the timing makes me think that he was a casualty of the Battle of New Orleans, as he was from North Carolina and had no other connection with Louisiana, nor any sign that his family ever lived there. Kendall would have been Mollie's uncle, brother of her father Hamilton Savage, gone before she was born. There is no record of his burial place.

Today is a day celebrating peaceful change to make the world a better place, one neighborhood at a time, in celebration of the life of Martin Luther King. We remember what the price of peace is, but hope for a time when war is no longer necessary.

Savages and Moons

Mary "Mollie" Savage Honnoll

This day in family history:

11 Dec 1678: John Savage dies in Savages Neck, Northampton, Virginia. He was born in Accomac, Virginia, in 1624, son of Thomas Savage, one of the Jamestown settlers. Accomac is in Accomack County, just so you Virginians don’t assume I don’t know how to spell. Apparently the K is negotiable. Jamestown was a marshy, swampy, hostile environment for the English settlers; never mind that "History is Fun" stuff. Thomas came over in 1608 at the age of 14 on a ship called the "John and Francis," married Hannah Tyng there at 27 and died there at 39. John Savage confounds the family migration trend by moving east from the Eastern Shore across the Chesapeake to a tiny point of land close to the end of the Delmarva Peninsula. I’ve been there, on the way to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, though with no idea of the family connection at the time, alas. John lived on the bay side of the peninsula. His son Hamilton stayed there, too. His grandson Levin struck out for the Appalachians in the next century.  I wonder if John was a waterman on the Bay. That would make me happy. Just the idea that there is a place called “Savages Neck” is great. Keep reading for more Savages.

11 Dec 1710: Keeses, as promised. I hardly know what to make of this. Among his children, John Keese may have had two sons, William and Shadrach. Or he may have just had one, William Shadrach. At least one of them died this day in Providence, Rhode Island. The records are conflicting. In some, William was born 10 years before Shadrach (26 Oct 1685 vs. 05 Nov 1695). William was 25; Shadrach was 15. Whoever, or whichever, someone died this day and did so 10 years after their father almost to the day, and 10 years before their mother. There is no other information that I can find. Some young man died far too young, that’s certain. This must have been devastating for their family. Their brother, Jonathan, lived to 1771 and married Mary Bowne. He is my 6^th great-grandfather. Jonathan left Providence for New York sometime before 1719. I wonder if there was too much tragedy in Providence for him. His son was the first Elijah Keese in this line. One genealogy line insists that William (not Shadrach) married in 1743 after dying in 1710, but I don’t think my family is that talented. Always check your references.

11 Dec 1726: Stephen Moon dies in St. Peter Parish, New Kent, Virginia. St. Peter’s Parish is still in service today and is the site, among other notable history moments, of George and Martha Washington’s wedding. Stephen died five years before Martha was born, but the families undoubtedly knew each other, it being a small population at that time. He was born there in 1681 and was another one who stayed where he started. You’d think that the ancestors would stay put in such a lovely part of the world, but you would be mistaken.  His son Jacob headed west, from the coastal plain east of Richmond to the Appalachian foothills northeast of Lynchburg. My ancestors seem to have liked the Appalachians very much once they got there. The Moons are descended from Capt. John Moon, who came over in the early 17^th century from Hampshire, England. The line follows from Martha Patsy Moon through the Martins to Mary Savage, descendant of John (above) and mother of Nancy Ellinor Honnoll Walker, the quiltmaker. See? More Savages.