This is one of my favorite photos, the picture tells me much, I just wish it told me who they are!
I believe the photo to have been taken in Scotland about 1850 dating the clothes and hair styles and the photographers information on the folder.
The photo reminds me of Sunday morning when trying to get little people ready for church. The little ones are dressed and looking cute as buttons. Whereas Dad is looking a bit ascue! Tie is not quite right and his collar is not right, can’t tell for sure if it should be up or down ! I can see two little ones scampering all over his lap before they were made to sit still for the photo, which in this time period is a bit of sitting still.
The on last question I have, is where is Mom? I am not sure if this is a common setting for a photo or not for that time period. As genealogy goes always questions!
Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another. From The National Standard Encyclopedia Amanuensis Monday was started on the Transylvanian Dutch Blog. This link will take you to the page concerning Amanuensis and why one should transcribe the records !
The letter below was written to my Grandparents and my Dad on the occasion of a visit from their Uncle and Great Uncle, James R. Kaye, the son of Byron and Ellen Smith Kaye of Woodstock, Ontario, Canada. This and a few more letters were found in a scrapbook that my grandmother started for my Dad. I have been sorting through them and getting them put away in protective coverings. As time allows I will post more.
Enjoy!
Oak Park, Ill. April 30, 1938
James Ross McCartney aka Jimmie
Dear Ruth, Mac. and Jimmie:
I had such a mighty fine time with you all that I have been lonesome all week, not with standing the fact that I have been swamped with work.
You cannot know what a good time you gave me, and I want you to know how deeply I appreciate it.
I have been seeing You, Mac, out in the strawberry patch. I do hope you have had our good weather and got in all the plants. I am sure the frost danger is past, and trust everything will conspire to give you a bumper crop.
I have been telling the folks that you have everything that could be desired in your little home. It is ideal. I will always be able to picture you in it, and visualize all your movements. There you are Ruth playing with Jimmie, he chewing up the bus and Mac smoking his pipe, and your mother getting the greatest happiness out of the baby. That is what I call ideal.
You will never know little Jimmie how much happiness I got out of being with you those days. It will have an enduring place in memory. You are a darling baby, and no baby ever had finer, more ideal parents and grandma than you, and no one every had a sweeter baby.
I have been telling the folks all about you, Betty, Jimmie and little Jean wanted me to tell them more, and Jean was just as much interested as the other two. She said “Jean see baby-Mimi baby,”
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by which she meant she wanted to see Jimmie baby. She calls her brother “Mimi.” They would all love to see your Jimmie.
Now, Jimmie, as I told you on the Columbus picture card, You and I , little pal, will get together some time for a joint birthday party. Won’t we have a good time! The folks will be invited, and will have the privilege of doing all the cooking and baking and join in the eating.
What a happiness it will be to watch your growing life. What a joy you are and are going to be to your Mamma and daddy, because it will be impossible to find a finer boy and a finer, noble man in a week’s ride.
I have given your mother the facts regarding the state of things here, Ruth, and my talk with Winnie.
Kiss little Jimmie for me often.
I am wishing for you all every good thing and every Divine blessing, remembering you all at the Throne of Grace, and that the Good Shepperd will keep you, protect and pasture the little in your home and keeping.
I have had the pleasure and joy to bring some old negatives back to life.
They were photos of my Great Grandparents and their children and grandchildren at that time. I came across a picture that through me for a loop. A picture of Great Uncle Norman wow! He looks like Dad or rather Dad looks a lot like him. I always thought that Dad took after the McCartney family, but I am now seeing that he resembles the Ogilvie/Kaye side of the family more. Posted below are a photo of both men. What do you think? Does Dad look like Uncle Norm?
What is leap year? It takes about 365 days 6 hours for the earth to rotate around the sun. To make up for the extra 6 hours each year, one day every four years is added so that we don’t end up with winter in July and many other strange occurrences.
Now why February was chosen that I am not quite sure.
I decided to have a little fun with my family tree to celebrate leap year. What celebrations happened on this day in my ancestral family lives. I found only 3 celebrations for that day in my tree, but with all the blank spaces in my research there must be more.
The genealogy program I have on my lap-top is Legacy. In the Legacy program there is, like most other programs, an application that allows you to make a calendar. In Legacy you can print/view a whole year or just a month. I pulled up February of this year and found the following celebrations in my family tree. This would be the path to find the calendar in Legacy>Reports>Books/Other>Calender Creator. There is also Calendar List Report just below Calender Creator that you can use as well.
In 1804 on the 29 of February, Edmund Hallett was born to Samuel and Phebe Hallett Hallett. Edmund is the 4th great-great grandson William and Elizabeth Fones (Winthrop, Feake) Hallett which makes him my 3rd cousin 6 times removed, pretty removed I would say. Phebe is the descendant of William and Elizabeth. I have nothing on his father Samuel but I would not at all be surprised if he was also descended from Elizabeth and William.
The 29 of February 1872 Miss Jeannette Mitchell Thompson was born to William J. and Ellen Binnie Thompson in Dundee Illinois. Miss Jeannette is the wife of Harris Aleck Campbell. Helen Amelia Thompson Sunday is her sister and William Ashley Sunday her brother-in-law. Miss Jeannette is not related to me by blood she is a step daughter to my great-grand Aunt Anna Kaye.
On 29 of February in the of 1876 Mr. David Watt Burgess m. Miss Margaret (Maggie) Kaye daughter of Byron and Ellen Smith Kaye. David was the son of William and Elizabeth Ann Watt Burgess. They married in Woodstock, Oxford, Ontario at the home of Mrs. Ellen Kaye. Note to self, I wonder if they celebrated Sadie Hawkins in 1876 in Canada did Maggie ask David for his hand, or did David see an opportunity to only have an anniversary every four years and off the hook for the other three. Interesting thoughts!
Who in your family tree celebrates an important day on 29 of February? Check it out and have some fun! Here is a List of Leap Years.
Capt David C. Smith was christened on 8 May 1832 Dundee, Angus, Scotland to Alexander and Jean Nicholl Smith.
I know very little of his early life, the few pieces that I do have come from a letter written by his cousin, my second great -grandmother. Ellen said that he was a much-loved cousin whom she had spent her childhood with as her parents had died when she was young of the small pox. She also notes in her letter that David was a Godly man, and that he had addressed the Sabbath school children on the previous Sunday the 13 of May. May 17 fell on a Wednesday that year. He attended the Scottish Presbyterian Church. Ellen also notes that David was going to help her and her 6 children out financially as her husband Byron had perished on March 6 of that same year.
I was given a letter that David wrote. His grandson shared it with me. I believe that he was a well seasoned sailor and to have been a Captain at 33 must have been a testimony to that. The letter tells of his many travels and ports that he visited. He was quite thrilled when visiting Rio de Janeiro but he did comment about how lavish the city was and how not far from the center that destitution was rampant. Something sadly you will find still to this day.
David married Jane Elliot Nicholson in which year I am not curtain at this writing I have not posted this information to my data base and I need to retrieve it from my hard drive. Always work to do, grin.
The Gale of “65′ is a well know disaster that took place at the Cape of Good Hope, as this port is one ravaged by many storms this must mean this storm was above the standard fare for that port. The RMS Athens was his ship and he had just acquired commission of this ship two days earlier. She was a mail ship. The great gale came roaring in with such force that 22 ship suffered damage that day. The Athens anchors were parted and David asked for birthing at an unfinished dock and was denied the birthing by the harbor master. He then set out for open seas. Sadly they ship made it only past the mouth of the bay before a huge wave took out her boilers and left her to the mercies of the seas. All hand were lost, except for the Second and Third mates as they were on shore when the weather went bad and they could not join their ship.
Here is a short piece from the ‘The Illustrated London News’, July 29th, 1865.
ATHENS
From ‘The Illustrated London News’, July 29th, 1865.
On May 17th, a fierce storm swept Table Bay and, in endeavouring to steam out of the bay after her anchors had parted, the ‘Athens’ was carried broadside upon rocks at Green Point, between the lighthouses. Signals of distress were
made but it was impossible to give assistance, there being no lines or rescue equipment at the lighthouses. She struck at seven o’clock p.m., and screams for help were clearly heard by those on shore. Her back broke and at about ten o’clock all cries for help ceased. Nothing remained of the ship by daybreak except her engines and boilers. There were no passengers, just Captain D. Smith, Dr. J. Heath Curtis, the Medical Officer, C. Downer, T. Brown and Baker, engineers and 25 other crew members.
I have include the below link as it is the most well put together piece on the gale and the wreck of the RMS Athens that I have found.
How interesting to note how one mans life touched so many. He was not able to attend to Ellen and her family and she had to part up the family to friends and family so that they would be able to survive and in time she left Canada for Chicago to run a boarding house there. My great grandparents met there and from there the rest is history and here I sit writing of the trials of one family that became blessings for many.
