52 Weeks of Ancestors Challenge 2021

  Week 13: Music Is Musical Talent Hereditary? For this week’s prompt I had to go a little closer to home as I have yet to find any wandering bards, operatic divas or country stars.  The furthest ancestors I know of whom music was a significant part of their lives are my children’s grandfathers.   Stanley Stevens Kirkpatrick (1934-2012) When I was a kid, my dad had a jumbo acoustic guitar that he would strum in the living room.  He played such memorable ditties as “I Washed My Hands in Muddy Water.”  Later on, he bought an amp and a Lyle electric guitar which he kept by his chair in a guitar stand. He figured if it was out, he’d be more likely to play it. He liked to play old country songs, mostly around the house but sometimes with relatives at family functions. On occasion he would take his guitar to a hootenanny at the Sweet Service or Ola Service and play with locals who also were musical. (By the way, there is a significant difference between a hootena...

  Week 12 - Loss Nothing can be as heartbreaking as the loss of a child.  Here are two examples of women who faced a lot of hardship and lost children, but maintained their faith.  The first one is my 4th great grandmother Wealthy Eddy.  The other is my cousin Tad's 3rd great grandmother Charlotte Patterson Taylor and her sister Mary Elizabeth Taylor. Wealthy Eddy It is said that well-behaved women rarely make history, and I get a feeling that Wealthy Eddy falls into this category.   She is probably one of the most interesting women in the Cherry family line, mainly because of all the hardships she endured. Much of the information given here can be found through the Jared Pratt Family Association. (akahttp://jared.pratt-family.org/other_brother_histories/william_histories_list.html). Wealthy was the daughter of two cousins with the same last name: John Fuller Eddy and Rhoda Eddy.   Most records state that she was born in Somerset, Maine in 1810.   ...

  Week 11 - Fortune This week’s entry involves my cousin Jackie’s ancestors: Could Jackie be a long-lost heiress?   There is plenty of DNA evidence that shows Jackie is somehow connected to a Hatley family connected to Robert Edwards.  While it is unverified as of March 2019, it appears that Jackie’s 4th great grandmother could very well be Martha Edwards, married to Sherwood Hatley.  Which makes this story found on Ancestry very interesting: Edwards Millions 1877 New York City Martha Edwards, wife of Sherwood Hatley had an unmarried brother, Robert Edwards, who owned a valuable new York City property late in the 18th century and all his legal heirs were being advised to take a claim in this 18th long-ago Edwards estate (77 acres on Wall St., now thought to amount to 650 billion dollars).  The legend: the fortune is said to result from a lease in 1778 by a Welshman, Robert Edwards, of approximately 77 acres of land in New York, forming what is now a significant ...

  Week 10: Name’s the Same Littleberry Leftwich I thought the name Littleberry was a strange one when I came across this 5th great grandfather on my great grandma Kirk’s side of the family, but the name seems to be fairly common in the South in the 1800’s. This Littleberry was a son of Augustine Leftwich, who had several sons.  They were a military family with most of the men being of high military rank.  Littleberry Leftwich was born in Bedford, Virginia in 1757. By the time he died, in 1823, he had a lot of property.  There’s good, bad and ugly in every family tree, and you can probably guess that a man in Virginia with a lot of property in the early 1800’s had slaves.  In his will he names the ones he left to his wife: Mily, Dice, Joe, Bowser, his wife Betsy and her two children Narcissy and Tener. I don’t have a lot on Littleberry’s military career - it’s hard to sort his records from the other Littleberry’s, but what this Littleberry seemed best known for w...

  Week 9 - Multiples The prompt for this week is Multiples. The first thing that came to my mind was multiple births, as in twins, etc.  The second thing that came to my mind was multiple marriages. There are about three people who come to mind for multiple marriages, and I will be featuring them in later entries, so I’m going to go with twins for this week.  George Osborn Carlock is my 3rd great grandfather. His father’s name was Abraham, as was his twin brother Abraham Willard Carlock. The Carlock twins were born April 7th, 1800 in Augusta, Hampshire County, Virginia.   Marion Pomeroy Carlock, a descendant of Abraham Willard Carlock, wrote a book titled History of the Carlock family and adventures of pioneer Americans in 1929.  Unfortunately it is out of print and expensive to purchase.  However, it is also available digitally, which is where most of this information comes from.  According to Marion Carlock, George was born first and is therefor...