Uncle Peg’s Chronicles
July 20, 2023
“Not Atomic Number 82 “
I read
something recently. In your research journal, you should always record the name
of the source first. That way, when you need it later, it will be easy to find.
I admit that I usually recorded it after I wrote the facts, and of course, by
then, may have forgotten to do that. And wow, it can be a challenge to find
that information again. I am now recording the name of the source first in my
journal, trying to build a good genealogical habit. My current research journal
is a blue notebook that my Moore cousin, Nancy, gave me when I was in Guelph
last March. It is a bunch of scribbles that make sense to me. The chronicle I
send you most weeks is a prettier version of my research journal. I know that
some of you read it or skim it. Jeanni told me that she keeps it and indexes
it. Her computer just died, and she is trying to get it and her other work back
from the cloud – which does not sound like an easy process.
~
New this week
are Michelle Holmes Morey and Eleanor Holmes Wilson.
I haven’t met Michelle
Morey in person, but we’ve been Facebook friends for a long time now. Michelle
is the daughter of Fenwicke better known as Butch Holmes and Karla Lay, and she
is in the William Holmes line. She has four children, Bailey, Evan, Peyton and
Mason Hamblin. Bailey and Wes made her a Glammy when they gave her a grandson
recently; Evan is married to Emily. Michelle married Rick Morey in 2021 and
their journey together is definitely a journey as they seem to be on the go to
lovely vacation spots and yummy eating spots often.
One evening
way back about 2010 I’d guestimate, back before you could see who was calling
you, I received a phone call from Julian Holmes. Yes, I knew who Julian Holmes
was, and yes, I listened way past midnight, and yes, I had a sore ear. He was
delighted to receive my newsletter and I think he gave me all the Peter Ketchum
Holmes history and current events verbally that evening. Sometime after his
passing in 2012, Eleanor Wilson found that newsletter in his papers and
emailed me. We’ve been in touch ever since, and met personally at the 2014 reunion
in Hill Grove. Eleanor has helped me immensely with the Peter Ketchum Holmes
line. She is the daughter of Julian Holmes and Mary Sultzer, and the wife of
Kennon Wilson. She has a sister, Janet, who with her husband Gerard Griffith,
made her Aunt Eleanor to Victoria and Kristy. I’m sure you all remember that
Peter Ketchum Holmes was named by his parents, Daniel and Charlotte (Hoyt)
Holmes, for Charlotte’s Uncle Peter Ketchum, who is buried in the Portage Vale
Anglican Cemetery.
~
My hearty
gratitude to Ann Ward, my writing group friend, for her edit of my
article about Daniel Holmes’ will. Ann’s a busy enough lady with her own
research and writing, but she does love to edit. We had a discussion about the
word “christian” with a lower case “c” and what to do about it, as the word did
not have a capital “c” in the newspaper article. Also, thanks to Jeanni
Worster, a stickler for tenses and other general editor abilities. She
caught the “christian” error as well, along with some similar suggestions to
Ann’s and some that didn’t stick out to Ann. I decided to put quotation marks
around the whole death notice of Daniel, so as maybe not to confuse people who
might think I made an error in the opening paragraph. I corrected, revised, or
left as is, thanks to their editing. (I did have it in italics, but those got
lost in the transferring from one Word article to another. My article looks
much different than it did last week, some of that due to them.
~
My genealogy goals for this week were:
- Chronicle
several times, and publish on Thursday morning.
Keep researching and writing about Daniel Holmes for the “Where There’s a Will” article.- Keep
writing my next article for Generations, which is about the will of
our immigrant ancestor, Edward Ketchum. Its main feature is its lacuna.
- Continue
indexing old New Brunswick obituaries and death notices for the NBGS
website project.
- Spend
a bit of time on Moore family research.
- Try
to reinstall Family Tree Maker. (Waiting for Julie for that.)
I’ve made all the revisions I am going to for
the “Where There’s a Will” article about Daniel Holmes for News and Notes,
and sent it along to our new editor, Heather. September will be her first issue
as editor.
I’ll have to think of something to submit after
that, just to help her out. Ideas?
I am deep into the life of Edward Ketchum, who
is an immigrant ancestor and the same number of generations for us as Francis
Holmes is, and just as important (because where would we be without our
immigrant ancestors), but not the line of my main focus. This is timely, as I
found the beautifully restored tombstones of our ancestor and Edward’s
descendant, Captain Isaac Ketchum and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Ketchum, this
summer. His line provides those of us descended from Charlotte Hoyt with
endogamy. And, I have my outline done. I struggled with it. I like to have
three points, although there’s no law that says I must, and I could only come
up with two. Until . . .
I.
Last will and testament
II.
Inventory
III.
Rabbit trail
Rabbit trail doesn’t seem quite right, although all genealogists know
what it means. I need a synonym that sounds a bit more professional. Ideas? I’m
thinking – lead. Oh, not atomic number 82 with a soft “a,” but with a hard “a,”
as in an idea to chase down to see if it applies. (Peg’s Dictionary.)
You may remember that someone spilled ink on the town probate book in
which Ed’s will and inventory were recorded, and tried to dab it up with an
acidic solution that ate a hole in the top of the whole book with the exception
of the index, which was in the front. Add to that, the will was very short,
being, I think, on account of he was sick. The inventory took the rest of the
page, so it wasn’t very long either. I didn’t have much to say, but I wanted to
say it because of the lacunae (damages) to the document/book.
And then, I found the will of Ed’s son Joe, from whom we descend. Unlike
his father’s will, Joseph’s was lengthy, and the inventory very lengthy. It
names the living children at the time of his death, including the three from
whom some of us descend – Elizabeth, Joseph and Samuel. It sates that Elizabeth
was the wife of Moses Fountain, which confirms Fen’s typescript and interests
Margie Holtzapfel, who researches the Fountain line.
And, I think, just to make this article unique, I will add a Coda about
the resurrected Old Pioneer Cemetery in Portage Vale.
I am reading “Pelliana – Pell of Pelham . . .,” the story of Thomas
Pell. Pell was the man who witnessed Edward Ketchum’s will, and I wanted to
know about him and confirm that he was a doctor. That, I could do using
Wikipedia, but this book is intriguing. It gives a lot of local color of Pell’s
time and place. Pell, a few years younger than Ketchum, attended Cambridge
University; that is the place where Edward Ketchum married Mary Hall.
https://archive.org/details/pellianapellofpe00unse/page/n13/mode/2up
~
Last week I
gave you a quiz. A couple of you were brave or had enough time to give it a
whirl. I picked the easiest to read page of the bunch of Daniel’s papers, but
even then, the old handwriting and writing tools make it rather difficult. Even
some of the typed pages are challenging, because when the copies were made, the
back pages showed through. And, since I asked the archivist to enhance the
pages, he said he did, so that must be what they have.
If your answer
was different than mine – that was helpful. It gave me a different perspective,
so I reviewed my work. One of the words in which we differed was farmer.
Someone thought it was tanner. The word looked like tanner as much as it looked
liked farmer. I didn’t remember Abner being a tanner so I went to his census
record of 1881, before Daniel died, and 1891, after Daniel died. There, the
word was definitely farmer, so I’ll leave it as is. I so thank you for the
challenge!
Here are the
answers:
- Alfred E Oulton, Esquire
- Charles R Holmes and Abner Jones
- Farmer
- Salisbury
- 8 February 1883
- Charles R Holmes and Abner Jones
- $3000
- Letters testamentary
- Pray
~
The start of my
article about Edward Ketchum, our immigrant ancestor. It is colour coded for my
benefit.
Where There’s A
Will
Edward Catcham
aka Ketchum c. 1590 – 1655
Compiled and
Written by Peggy Vasseur, 2023
“Memorandum – The top part of ye 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 Davd Rowland Esq was
Clerk & Col. Burr Judge. And Rowland.”[1]
The
horrified clerk stared at the spilt ink seeping into the pages of the records.
“Oh,” he groaned, “what have I done? How could I have been so clumsy?” He
despaired as the ink spread over portions of the earliest probate records of
Fairfield County, Connecticut. As he blotted and bleached, he watched the top
of the page disappear altogether.
Was
David Rowland the clerk who spilled the ink? Was he the one who used an acidic
substance to try and bleach the blot that ate the paper? He definitely passed
the records down to his nephew, lawyer and judge of probate, Andrew Rowland,
who wrote his memorandum on the last page of the index.[1]
Thankfully,
the ink spared the first few pages of the book,[1]
where I find the name of my 8th great-grandfather, Edward Catcham.
The ink destroyed portions of every following page in the book. Was there, I wondered, enough information left on
Catcham’s page to benefit my search of the genealogy and history of Edward,
better known as Ketchum? Would it lead me anywhere?
OUTLINE
Intro
I
The will
II
The inventory
III
The lead aka rabbit trail
Conclusion
Where there is
a will, it might not be entirely legible. I viewed with disappointment my
ancestor’s will of 1655. Edward Ketchum and some of his descendants appear on
my ancestral chart thirteen times; there is some repetition. Before me was the
will of my ancestor, dated just before his death, with an inventory taken almost
immediately afterward. As you can see, the will was short. Although there was
significant lacuna (a missing portion in a book or manuscript), part of the
page was intact.
Edward had,
along with other children, a son, Joseph. I descend from three children of
Joseph and one or both of his wives, Mercy Lindall and Sarah Jaggers:
Elizabeth, Joseph, and Samuel. The death date of Mercy and the date of Edward’s
subsequent marriage to Sarah are unknown to me, so the children may be Mercy’s,
Sarah’s, or both. Some of my Loyalist ancestors descend from these children and
settled in Kings County, New Brunswick.
This is why I
am interested in knowing whatever I can glean from the will and inventory of
Edward Ketchum. I have many Ketchum leaves on my family tree.
Margaret Jane
(Peggy) Moore Vasseur – Margaret Holmes Moore – Floyd O Holmes – Charles R
Holmes – Daniel Holmes – Samuel Holmes Jr. – Elizabeth Fountain Holmes –
Matthew Fountain – Elizabeth Ketchum Gregory Fountain – Joseph Ketchum – Edward
Ketchum.
Margaret Jane
(Peggy) Moore Vasseur - Margaret Holmes Moore – Floyd O Holmes – Charles R
Holmes – Charlotte Hoyt Holmes – Frances Ketchum Hoyt – Mary Elizabeth Ketchum
– Joseph Ketchum Jr. – Joseph Ketchum – Edward Ketchum.
Margaret Jane
(Peggy) Moore Vasseur – Margaret Holmes Moore – Floyd O
Holmes – Charles R Holmes – Charlotte Hoyt Holmes – Frances Ketchum Hoyt – Captain
Isaac Ketchum – Samuel Ketchum – Joseph Ketchum – Edward Ketchum.
(An
aside just for you – this won’t be in the article. If you don’t descend from
Charlotte Hoyt, wife of Daniel Holmes, you escape the endogamy. If you descend
from Samuel Holmes Jr or Samuel Holmes Sr, just start looking at that point for
your lineage.)
There are many
websites given to the study and speculation of the life of Edward Catcham aka
Ketchum and other versions of his name. I have read several of them and many of
them cover the same information, often putative. Some are far-fetched; some appear to be thorough and as reliable as can be given
the research obstacles. Some are sourced; some are not. If you, like me,
are a descendant of Edward Ketchum, you do well to study each one carefully and
discriminately. As there is so much information, for
this article I will focus on my purpose, that is, to glean what I can from his
will and inventory. What, if anything, is there of value to contribute to
my knowledge of my ancestor?
To be continued
. . .
~
My family
arrives on Sunday. I’ll be taking a two or three week break from the chronicle.
Fellow
genealogists – what do you use for a research journal?
