Who Do That Voodoo?

Uncle Peg’s Chronicles

December 22, 2022

“Who Do That Voodoo”

 

Number of pages in Outline Descendant Report: 149 didn’t change (up from 149 last chronicle)

Number of pages in basic Descendant Report: 228 (up from 226 last chronicle)

 

Francis Holmes is # 1. I am now # 326. # 324, where I was last week, is now Mary Jane Holmes Hamilton.

Jonathan Marquez (Frances Anne Holmes Ballantyne line) is last at # 477.

# 472, where he was last week, is now Keith Wellman

This should change weekly, if I’m doing my job.

 

Something new in stats, just for fun:

 

I put the names of all descendants of Francis Holmes who are either in our Facebook group or on my mailing list for chronicles, in a bag. Spouses and friends are not included as they do not get numbered in the program’s default. Those who have no descendants are also not numbered, but I’ll include them with their parent’s number. I pulled out three names, and will follow them for two weeks. Next week, I’ll draw three more. This is for fun, but if the three names I drew were not in my tree that I am using now, I insert them. Win-win exercise.

 

The three I drew last week are:

 

·         Michelle Moore Gardner is now # 446, up from 439. # 439 is now Melanie Holmes Bowes.

·         Stoney Worster is now # 272, up from 271. #271 is now Carole Goddard Newmyer.

·         Glenn Holmes is now # 281. # 280 is now his sister, Marie Holmes Dockter.

 

New this week are:

 

·         Mark MacKillop is # 429. He’s in the Charles R Holmes line. He the husband of Kaylyn and the father of two young children. He pastors the Safe Harbor Church of Rochester, Indiana.

·         Marika McGinnis Patterson is #422. Marika is in the Charles R Holmes line, and is a cousin of Mark MacKillop. She’s married to Clay Patterson, and has three young adult children, Gracie and twins Rylee and Brody. Gracie is a family DNA match.

·         Susan Hyde Stephens is # 351. Susan is in the Louisa B Holmes Ballantyne Line. She’s married to Kirk Stephens and has two sons, Blake and Trevor. Blake and Christine have given her two small grandchildren, and her grin is widest when she holds them on her lap. I was glad to get to know Kirk and Susan when we shared quarters at the 2016 reunion.

 

FYI, this takes a lot of time, but it’s kind of fun. I do it on Tuesdays rather than Thursdays. Watch for your name.

 

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I found some new to me books at the thrift store this week and I’m so pleased with my find. I bought a bunch of Munch books for Winston, nine to be exact, but I wanted to include that little rhyme. Some day, I look forward to listening to Erin reading them to Winston, as she does it best using many voices.

I think I’ll put some pretty paper and a bow on the other one, and stick it under the tree, labeled “from me to me, Merry Christmas.” I don’t know about this, perhaps Paula will know. It is called “The Little Brown Handbook.” It is the fifth Canadian edition, 2008. (There is a 6^th edition, but I think this will suffice for my needs/wants.) Why Paula? When editing my scribbles, she often mentions her little brown book. I think she has an ancient brown coloured grammar rule book. And mine is a grammar book, from a Canadian perspective. I figure it will contain the extra letters: ie, favourite rather than favorite. But, I have only made a brief skim of it so far.

I wonder if my copy is altogether different than Paula’s book, or if it is a descendant of Paula’s book as well as being a Canadian cousin. Spoken like a genealogist.

I’ll say no more, for I don’t want to make you jealous.

https://www.amazon.ca/Little-Brown-Handbook-Fifth-Canadian/dp/0321411579/ref=asc_df_0321411579/?tag=googleshopc0c-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312811949697&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=3718217967926610122&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9000124&hvtargid=pla-635300720856&psc=1

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My cousin, Doug Holmes, sent me this photo this week. I think it is one of the ugliest photos I have ever seen of myself. And yet, with the caption he sent along with it – “who do that voodoo that you do so well,” I can’t help but enjoy it. If that’s what I look like when I get passionate about sharing our family history, so be it. I am pointing to the stone of Bessie, aka Charlotte Elizabeth Holmes, who married Elias Kinnear and died a week later. I cannot find a newspaper clipping or a death certificate, and I want to know why.

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Some new people this week, and two new to me words. I know most of you won’t recall Edward Ketchum, who I mentioned last week. I haven’t talked about him much, if at all. And the other guys, the Rowlands, you won’t need to remember them. I mainly wanted to tell you about the will of one of them, and record it for myself. But Ketchum – he’s as important to us as Holmes, as he is another immigrant ancestor. Some of our immigrant ancestors knew each other, but not sure if they knew Ketchum or not This week, I reread Fen’s chapter on Ketchum, as well as several other resources I found long ago in my genealogy career. So thankful for Fen’s mentorship. But, not to worry if you don’t recall the name. Your mind is not slipping.

To help you, I am putting two charts into our Facebook group for you to refer to.

You should recall Charlotte Hoyt Holmes, wife of Daniel. Her mother was a Ketchum. If you descend from Betsy Marinda, you descend from Ketchum through our Fountain line. I haven’t talked about Fountains much either, but there’s another of our immigrant ancestors. We have a Fountain expert in our group.

My outline for Great-Granddaddy Edward Catcham/Ketchum and several other spelling variations of the name.

Title: Where There’s a Will: Edward Catcham/Ketchum c. 1590 – 1655.

Quotation

Introduction

                Purpose statement

 

I               Reasons

II             Research

III            Records

Conclusion. Refer back to the Purpose Statement.

 

That’s it for today, Thursday the 15^th. I puzzled over this upon my pillow – am I crazy to include it? I decided to go with it, and I will give the “reasons” in point #1. It will include trivia, like the weird letters and the new word I learned and the lessons I have learned by repetition. The handwriting, although written by a different clerk, is so similar to the handwriting in Francis Holmes’ probate records that I was able to breeze right through it with only a few blank ____ lines. It has a great inventory, although not as detailed as that of Francis Holmes. And, it should include some clues as to where to look when you have a mess like this to work with.

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I have scheduled an American Ancestors Zoom presentation on the topic of “Deciphering Old Handwriting.” Being self-taught, I hope I can learn some helpful tools of the trade.

If asked what has been most helpful to me in this transcription journey, I would have one word to say: PRACTICE. But, of course, you have to start somewhere. Learn one thing, and practice. Then move on. That advice holds true in everything. Learning to play a musical instrument; learning to knit; learning a sport; learning to take good photographs . . . I never was good at sports, ever. I wonder if it’s because I didn’t practice. Maybe somewhat, but I don’t think so. If I hit a golf ball at all, it went sideways or backward – never forward.

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Even though my Ketchum will story is still mostly outline and info dump, it does have a tentative introduction and the start of point one: Reasons. Does it “catcham” your attention? Oh, I’m so punny.

Edward Catcham/Ketchum

c. 1590 – 1655

Memorandum – The top part of y^e following Sheets of Records was blotted with Ink

as it appears three or four years before the Records came to me as Clerk viz while

Dav^d Esq was Clerk & Col Burr Judge. And Rowland.

 

“The horrified clerk watched as the spilt ink seeped into the pages of the earliest probate record book of Fairfield County. “Oh”, he groaned, “what can I do? How could I have been so clumsy?”  He despaired as the acid of the ink devoured portions of pages 1 – 93 of the earliest probate records of Fairfield County. Thankfully, it spared the index, where I find, at the top of a page, the name of my 8^th great grandfather, Edward Catcham. The best place to research is original records. Was there, I wondered, enough information left on Catcham’s page to benefit my search of the genealogy and history of Edward Catcham, better known as Ketchum?”

REASONS (part of outline – this will be removed but for now, keeps me straight)

“Even before I took a good look at it, I could see that a significant portion of the page was intact. Why was this so important to me? Edward and his second wife, Sarah Salmon, had, along with other children, a son, Joseph. I descend from three children of Joseph and his wife, Mercy Lindall: Elizabeth, Joseph, and Samuel. As dates of the death of Mercy and his second marriage to Sarah Jaggers are unknown, some of the children may be Sarah’s. Some of my Loyalist ancestors descend from these children and settled in Kings County, New Brunswick, and Cumberland County, Nova Scotia. Further along, I also descend from Edward Ketchum and Sarah Salmon through two of my great-great parents: Daniel Holmes, originally of Nova Scotia, and Charlotte Hoyt of New Brunswick. I need to shore up my research as best I can, and the best records are original records. This probate record with its lacunae is already transcribed by others, and is not original, but I don’t find any earlier copy. I like to do my own transcribing, as well. This must suffice. Most likely, Clerk David Rowland transcribed an earlier journal, and possibly he spilled the ink that ate the paper. He definitely passed it down to his nephew, Andrew Rowland.”

Does anyone know what lacanue is without looking it up? Did anyone look it up? It’s my NEW WORD.

 

“In memory of Andrew Rowland Esq. who died July 26, 1802. [Age] 65.

I found the most intriguing start to a will in my search. So different from the Puritan wills and any other wills I have seen. Mind you, the Puritan era was pretty much done by the early 1800s. I wanted to know who David and Andrew Rowland were – see the quote. Andrew was nephew of David, educated, a lawyer and judge of probate. As he has no bearing on the story, I probably won’t include it, but I do want to keep a record of it as it seems to me an anomaly. He died in 1802, leaving a will that began:

“Know all Men to whom these Presents come Greeting:

I Andrew Rowland of the Town and County of Fairfield in the State of Connecticut make this my last Will and Testament I Order my Executors here in after named to inter my Body in Christian manner: that there be no funeral Sermon nor Pall Bearers: I Order there be no Presents given on the Occasion: And desire there be no Eulogium or ­­­­Panygerick from Pulpit or Other wise at any Time whatever: In my Opinion they do no Good: I direct an Inscription on my Grave Stones to contain the month & day & year of my Death, and in the Year of my Age: . . . “

“Presents” probably means people present at the occasion. Another NEW WORD, and my mother and aunt requested this for their funerals, but I bet they didn’t know the word: “Panegyric,” from the Cambridge Dictionary – “a speech or piece of writing that praises someone or something very much and does not mention anything bad about them.”

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I am taking next week off, so I’ll be back with another chronicle early next year.

Happy Hannukah and Merry Christmas wishes to you and your family.

Uncle Peg