Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- A Family's Increase

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings offers us the following challenge:

Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it, is to:
1) Pick one of your sets of great-grandparents - if possible, the one with the most descendants.

2) Create a descendants list for those great-grandparents either by hand or in your software program.

3) Tell us how many descendants, living or dead, are in each generation from those great-grandparents.

4) How many are still living? Of those, how many have you met and exchanged family information with? Are there any that you should make contact with ASAP? Please don't use last names of living people for this - respect their privacy.

5) Write about it in your own blog post, in comments to this post, or in comments or a Note on Facebook.

For this exercise, I chose my maternal grandmother’s parents, Julius Jared Pressley and Carrie Williams Pressley.

When Grandpa Pressley died in October 1958, he had three surviving children, eight grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

When Grandma Pressley died in September 1966, she had three surviving children, eight grandchildren and *several* great-grandchildren, one of which was yours truly. I had just turned two years old.

Though no more grandchildren were born to Grandma and Grandpa Pressley after their deaths.  There were quite a few more great-grandchildren and beyond born.

Here are the numbers by the generations. Those numbers with + after them are the least number of people for that generation.   I know that number for certain.  I know that others are on that generational line, but I do not know how many more.

5 children  - All deceased.
All five of their children were girls.  Only three of them made it to adulthood.  I got a few family stories, opposing viewpoints, from the older sister (my aunt) and the younger sister (my grandma).  I never met the middle sister, according to my mama.

Maggie Pressley Spence & Mae Pressley Worley

9 grandchildren - 3 deceased
One of them was already deceased by the time Grandpa Pressley died. She got an infection and died as a toddler.  One was murdered in his late 30s.  The other one died as an older man, already a grandpa himself.  I have met all of them except for the deceased toddler. 

28+ great-grands - 2 deceased
One great-grandson died as a newborn due to a stomach problem.  He was a first cousin.  One great-granddaughter was murdered as she performed her job as an apartment manager. She was a second cousin, the granddaughter of my grandma's sister. I met her and her three siblings.

21+ 2nd great-grands  I have met quite a few, but nowhere near all, of this generation of children.

4+ 3rd great-grands - 1 deceased
He died as an infant of causes unknown to me. I have not met any of the 3rd great-grandchildren, including my sister's granddaughter. She was born in South Carolina a few years after we moved out here to Texas.

So, that makes an increase of at least 67, but I know the number is far higher. After our move out here to Texas, over a thousand miles away from well over 300 years of family history back in South Carolina, I lost touch with those that I had grown up with.   I know there have been many more baby cousins born since I left South Carolina.  It seems everyone in my generation is a grandparent now except for me!

Some of my cousins that grew up in the state of Washington, I probably met when we were little, but I do not remember them (with one exception and that is because he came to stay the summer with one of my aunts after I got married) and I have no clue how many children or grandchildren any of them have.  I remember my cousins that lived in Virginia because we saw them every few years, but I know nothing about their descendants.

If I can pin down a number for the uncounted folks, I will put an update here on this post.

This assignment was very hard for me to do on several levels.  It certainly revealed to me that I have a whole lot of work ahead of me filling in some empty spots and not nearly enough time left to do it!
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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Where Have You Visited?

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings offers us the following challenge:

Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) A meme on Facebook has been circulating about what states, countries and other places you have visited. The average for Americans is 8.

2) Copy the list from this blog post and denote your places visited with an X, and add states or countries you've visited not on the list. Then total it up at the end of your list.

3) Put your responses in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a status or comment on Facebook.

Here are the answers for both David X and myself X:


Afghanistan
Alabama X X
Alaska
Algeria
Arizona X
Argentina
Arkansas X X
Aruba
Australia
Austria
Bahamas
Barbados
Belgium
Belize
Bermuda
Bonaire
Brazil
British Virgin Islands
California
Canada X
Colombia
Castaway Island
Cayman Islands
Chile
China
Chicago X
Colorado
Connecticut X
Costa Rica
Cuba
Curacao
Czech Republic
Delaware X
Denmark
Dominican Republic
Dubai
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
England
Estonia
Fiji
Finland
Florida X X
France
Georgia X X
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Guam
Guatemala
Haiti
Hawaii
Honduras
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Idaho
Illinois X
India
Indiana
Iowa
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kansas X X
Kentucky
Kenya
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Latvia
Lithuania
Louisiana X X
Luxembourg
Maine
Maryland X
Massachusetts X
Mexico X
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi X X
Missouri X X
Montana
Morocco
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey X
New Mexico X
New York X
New Zealand
Nicaragua
North Carolina X X
North Dakota
Norway
Ohio
Oklahoma X X
Oregon
Palestine
Panamá
Pennsylvania X
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Rhode Island X
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Sicily
Scotland
Singapore
South Africa
South Carolina X X
South Dakota
South Korea
Spain
St Marten
St Thomas
Switzerland
Sweden
Taiwan
Tennessee X X
Texas X X
Thailand
Trinidad
Turkey
The Netherlands
United Arab Emirates
US Virgin Islands
Utah
Venezuela
Vermont X
Vietnam
Virginia X X
Washington
Washington DC X
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Wales

Score:

David: 30 Suzanne: 14

So, where in the world have YOU been?

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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - The Day Your Grandfather Was Born

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings offers us the following challenge:

Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) What day of the week was your Grandfather born (either one)? Tell us how you found out.

2) What has happened in recorded history on your Grandfather's birth date (day and month)? Tell us how you found out, and list five events.

3) What famous people have been born on your Grandfather's birth date?  Tell us how you found out, and list five of them.

4) Put your responses in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a status or comment on Facebook.

My response:

My maternal grandpa, William Howard Taft Spence, was born on 12 May 1910, a Thursday.

My paternal grandpa, Andrew James Gunter, was born on 27 October 1918, a Sunday.

I did a search to find a perpetual calendar in order to pin down their birth day.  I used this one: Infoplease.

I also did an Internet search (search.yahoo.com) for “what happened on 5/12/1910” and “what happened on 10/27/1918 and found three sources with which I was able to find both events and those sharing birth dates with my grandpas. Ordinarily, I would be using Swagbucks for my searches, but I have yet to figure out how to make it the default search engine on this computer.

William Howard Taft Spence, 1910-1992

12 May
Things that happened on Grandpa Spence's birth date:
1864 – Death of JEB Stuart, Confederate Army General
1932 – The remains of the Lindbergh baby were found.
1949 – Soviet Union lifts blockade of Berlin
1965 – Luna 5, Soviet spacecraft, crashes on the moon
2002 – Former US President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba

Those who shared Grandpa Spence’s birth date:
1812 – Edward Lear, English painter/poet
1820 – Florence Nightingale, English nurse
1910 – Gordon Jenkins, composer
1911 – Olive Faye, actress, USO Camp Shows
1925 – Yogi Berra, baseball player

Sources: Smriti "Simmi" D. Isaac, IMDB and Day in History

Andrew James Gunter, 1918-1980

27 October
Things that happened on Papa Gunter’s birth date:
1787 – First of Federalist Papers published, USA
1838 – Extermination Order, Missouri, Mormons must leave the state or be executed
1904 – The IRT, first rapid transit subway, opened, New York City
1914 – The British battleship, HMS Audacious, is sunk
1986 – “Big Bang”, the deregulation of financial markets in Britain

Those who shared Papa Gunter’s birth date:
1858 – Theodore Roosevelt, 26^th US President
1920 – Nanette Fabray, actress
1928 - Burt Bacharach, actor
1937 – George Carlin, actor
1948 – Steve Winwood, musician

Sources: Smriti "Simmi" D. Isaac, IMDB and Day in History


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I respond to all comments on this blog, ideally within 24 hours.  Please check back here for a response to your comment.  Thank you!
 
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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Where Did You Go to School?

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings offers us the following challenge:

For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), I want you to:

1)  Michael John Neill started an interesting Facebook meme - when and where did you go to school? 
2)  Tell us in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, in a status line on Facebook or a stream post on Google Plus.  Be sure to leave a link to your post in Comments on this post.

Here are the schools that I attended:

1971-1977 Homeland Park Elementary School, Anderson, South Carolina.  I often walked to and from school with my mother and siblings.  Sometimes, Mrs. Deanhardt drove us back and forth. I was in Bluebirds, which was part of the Camp Fire Girls, when I was in elementary school. We had our meetings in the school lunchroom.

1977-1978 Oakwood Christian School, Anderson, South Carolina.  During my 6th grade year, I heard a horrible story about something that happened to a girl at the junior high school that I was supposed to attend based on the school district in which I lived.  Daddy moved Heaven and earth to make sure I was able to go to a safe school during 7th grade while he made arrangements to buy property in another school district.  He often worked overtime and sometimes three shifts in a row to keep me in that private school.  I was the only one of my parents’ children to attend a private school.  They were still in elementary school during my 7th grade year.  The next school year, we were living in a different school district and all of us attended public school.

1978-1979 Starr-Iva Middle School, Starr, South Carolina.  This was my first year in a new school district and the start of five years of heck on earth for me in regards to school.  However, there were some bright spots that year and their names were Miss Ruth Elrod (my English teacher) and Mrs. Pettigrew (my science teacher).  It is also the year that I met Mae Boston and Bernice Valentine.  They were the sweetest girls and we became friends.  I will never forget their kindness to me as I tried to fit into this new group of people.

1979-1983 Crescent High School, Iva, South Carolina. This is the school where I met my then-future husband.  I was a freshman and he was a senior with the most amazing hazel eyes. They laser-locked me from across the walkway that was outside between the chemistry room and the lunchroom.  After a few weeks of me giggling at him, he said something to my best friend Holly Bevens, that made me hate him for a couple of years.  Well, okay, very strongly dislike him. Then, the summer between 10th and 11th grade, he had the nerve to write to me and here we are.

1984 University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.  I started out to pursue a degree in Early Childhood/Elementary Education (I cannot remember which anymore!).  I went to school in the Spring semester and both summer sessions.  I did not start the fall semester as we were planning to get married that fall. 

It was another 25 or so years before I went back to school and that was via online schools that are not worth mentioning.  I stopped going to school completely once I got sick and nearly died in 2010. My priorities have changed and I no longer feel a need to pursue a degree that I cannot use at this point in my life. 



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I respond to all comments on this blog, ideally within 24 hours.  Please check back here for a response to your comment.  Thank you!
 
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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings offers us the following challenge:

For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), I want you to:

1)  Using the Facebook "Learn About Each Other" meme being passed around this week, answer the 31 questions as listed below.
2)  Tell us in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, in a status line on Facebook or a stream post on Google Plus.  Be sure to leave a link to your post in Comments on this post.

Here are the questions.  My answers are in green.

1. Who are you named after?  

My daddy’s paternal grandmother Annie Black Gunter and her sister Suzie Black Skelton.

2. Last time you cried?

Thanks to this stage of life, it is a daily occurrence.

3. Do you like your handwriting?

No, not anymore. Thanks to years of typing, my handwriting has gotten terribly bad.

4. What is your favorite lunch meat?

Mesquite roasted turkey

5.  Spicy or sweet?  

I like both!

6. Longest relationship?  

I imagine at this point my mother and my Aunt Carolyn would win the prize. We’ve known each other for 51.5 years.

7. Do you still have your tonsils?

No. They were removed during Christmas vacation the year that I turned 16.

8. Would you bungee jump?

I think it would be a fun adventure, but also one that I would have to pass on.

9. What is your favorite kind of cereal?

Peanut Butter Captain Crunch for cold cereal.  Oatmeal with brown sugar and syrup wins for hot cereal.

10. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?

No. I wear sandals and they just slide off and on.

11. Do you think you're strong?

I used to be referred to as Hercules. I was pretty strong when I was young.  At 16 years old, 99 pounds, I could leg press over 700 pounds.  Now, I struggle to lift a gallon of milk, thanks to anemia.  Emotionally, the answer would have to be no. Everything makes me cry. I have always been a very sensitive, or tender-hearted, person.

12. Favorite ice cream?

Blue Bell’s Dutch Chocolate!

13. What is the first thing you notice about a person?

Eyes are generally the first thing that I notice about a person. 

14. Football or baseball?

Neither. I am not a sports fan.

15. What color pants are you wearing?

Black.

16. Last thing you ate?

Popcorn.

17. What are you listening to?

The hum of this room. It is the loudest room in the house.

18. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

I would be either red or black. Those are two of my favorite colors.

19. What is your Favorite Smell?  

There are so many wonderful smells that I can’t pin down a favorite, so I’ll go with one of the first that came to mind: freshly mowed grass.

20. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone?

Our youngest daughter.

21.  Are you married?  

Yes. David and I have been married for just over 32 years.

22. Hair color?

Though it is very gray now, it used to be auburn.

23. Eye color?

Brown with gold flecks.

24. Favorite foods to eat?

Shrimp and cheesecake and Blue Bell Dutch Chocolate Ice Cream.

25. Scary movies or happy endings?

At this point in my life, I would have to say happy endings. But there was a time that I loved a good horror movie!

26. Last movie you watched?

Swan Princess Royally Undercover.

27.What color shirt are you wearing?
Yellow with little pinkish flowers scattered around it.

28. What is your favorite holiday?  

It used to be Thanksgiving. I don’t have a favorite holiday anymore.

29. Beer or Wine?

Neither. I do not drink. When I did, many years ago, vodka was my poison of choice.

30. Night owl or morning person?

I am a night owl through and through.  I do my best thinking and writing at night.

31. Favorite day of the week?

They are all the same to me.  We are retired. We do what we want, when we want, for the most part.



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Please be sure to visit David over at Random Thoughts and Observations.  

I respond to all comments on this blog, ideally within 24 hours.  Please check back here for a response to your comment.  Thank you!
 
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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun-- My Santa Claus Memories

To learn more about this weekly event, please click the image below. Please let Randy know that Suz at PS Annie! sent you. :)

1)  Answer these questions:

a) Did you ever send a letter to Santa Claus?
b) Did you ever visit Santa and "make a list?"
c) Do you still believe in Santa Claus?
d) When did you find out "the truth" about Santa Claus?

2)  Tell us your answers in a blog post of your own, in a Facebook post or Google+ post.  Be sure to leave a comment on this post with a link to your answers.

1.  While I don’t remember any specific letter, I am sure that I sent many letters to Santa as a very little girl.

2.  Yes, we went to visit Santa, sat on his lap, and told him our list of “wants”.

3.  I believe in what Santa stands for, but I know that no guy in a beautiful velvet suit comes down my chimney with goodies each year.  I don’t have a chimney. J

4.  I found out the “truth” about Santa when I was a little girl. My daddy was facing a layoff at work and Mama was afraid that we wouldn’t be getting any presents that year. She told us the deal, that there was no Santa, because she didn’t want us to be upset with Santa when we didn’t get any presents.  I didn’t believe her, so I set about to search the house for presents.  If I found presents in the house, then I would know that she was telling me the truth. If I didn’t find a stash hidden, then there was a chance that there was still a Santa Claus.  The logic worked for my little girl mind.  However, now I see the flawed logic.  If there wasn’t any money for presents, there would be no presents for me to find.  

I don’t remember if Daddy ended up getting laid off that year or not, but we had presents. I don’t remember any Christmases from my childhood without presents.  I do remember one Christmas without my daddy.  He was a trucker that year and was snowbound in Oklahoma. That was the saddest Christmas in my childhood.  The presents weren’t the most important part of Christmas anyway.  Family and what Christmas stands for are the important things.  Our Heavenly Father gave us the gift of His Son, who gave us the gift of eternal life by sacrificing His own.   

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I respond to all comments on this blog, ideally within 24 hours.  Please check back here for a response to your comment.  Thank you!
 
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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (on a Sunday!) - What Were You Doing in 1995?

To learn more about this genealogy writing experience, please click here or the image below.



Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) Do you recall what you were doing in 1995?  Family, school, work, hobbies, technology, genealogy, vacations, etc?

2)  Tell us in a blog post of your own, in a comment on this blog, or in a Facebook or Google+ post.






1995 was a big year for me.  There were not a great many memorable events, but those that happened were pretty big, from my point of view.

January  On 1 January 1995, David and I had been married just over 10 years.  We had 3 surviving children, two boys and a girl. They were ages 8, 4, and 7 months old.  I was approximately 3 months pregnant.

June  In late spring, I gave birth to our youngest surviving daughter, Maggie.  It was about 4 o'clock in the morning when I felt the contractions. We had been through so many false alarms with all of the pregnancies, I didn't get too alarmed. I just got up and went to the shower.  While in the shower, I was hit with THE FEELING, the one that says, "We aren't playing. This kid is coming NOW! ".

I woke David up and let him know what was going on. He called my mama to come to be with the other three children.  Although, in reality, it only took maybe half an hour for her to get there, it seemed like she would never get there.  Once she did, I had to gear myself up to drive to the hospital. 

David was already legally blind and no longer licensed to drive.   The car was having problems and stalled every few feet until we got out of the parking lot of the apartment complex. Once we were on the road, things were okay in regards to the car, but I was having contractions, at most, 2 minutes apart.  A huge contraction hit as we passed by Sister McIntire's house. I thought that I was going to drive into her house at that point. Thankfully, I didn't. We made it to the hospital. 

I had another contraction as I parked the car, as I went into the Emergency Room, at the ER desk, in the elevator, at the nurses' desk on the maternity floor, as we entered the birthing room, as I tried to get into the bed in the birthing room. The nurses waited outside the door because they thought I was praying.  The contractions were coming rapid fire. They checked me and I was at 7cm dilation.  Then, they asked THE QUESTION: Do you need drugs?   Being a wimp this time around after the horrible tearing with the baby before, I said YES!  They should not have offered them nor should I have accepted them. The drugs slowed down the whole process and didn't change anything else for me personally. They went straight to the baby. 

She was born just over an hour after we got to the hospital and born asleep.  This freaked me out. She wasn't crying, but at least she was alive, unlike her previous two sisters.  Thankfully, one of those previous two sisters was revived and is sitting in this room with me today.  Our Dorian went on to Heaven and is waiting there for us to join her.  Anyway, Maggie finally woke up and started crying and all was well with her, so we thought. 

The morning after she was born, David was at work. A team of about a zillion doctors came into my room. One of them said, "We have something to tell you about your baby."  I was scared to death. I didn't know what was wrong with my baby, what they were going to tell me, or how I was going to deal with it there all alone in a sea of white coats.  They told me that her collar bone was broken, that it is a fairly common birthing accident.  In reality, it turned out to be a birth defect known as pseudo-arthrosis, not a broken collar bone.  Unlike a break, this is not something that would re-set itself.  The bones that were supposed to grow towards each other and connect as she formed inside me bypassed each other, thus giving the appearance of a break in the collar bone. This is with her for life and, at this point, causes her a great deal of pain.

July  I had all of my wisdom teeth removed soon after I had Maggie.  Dr. Shriver, in Anderson, South Carolina, was the oral surgeon that removed them.  Although he was an oral surgeon, he was a very nice man and had some great stuff to insure that I had neither pain nor any recollection whatsoever of what he did inside my mouth.  Too bad every dentist doesn't use that stuff!  He put it into my veins and BOOM! I was out. The next thing I remember was waking up in recovery and Aunt Carolyn taking me home.  After the medicine wore off, it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't completely painless either.

August   In mid-August, I had my 30th birthday. This one was especially funny for me because I could still remember the day that my mama turned 30.  I was 8 years old at that point. We were going around town paying the bills, and I remember specifically at the insurance company's office telling them, "Mama is 30 today!"  She was not impressed.

At the end of August, we made one of the hardest decisions that I've ever consented to. It went against what I personally believed to be right, but felt we had no other choice. We didn't know where things would go with either Maggie's bone disorder or David's brittle diabetes. The decision was made for me to have a tubal ligation.  Dr. Chisolm asked me if I was sure that it was what I wanted to do.  I told him it was what I needed to do and that he needed to do it. For a multitude of reasons, it should never have been done.  In addition to the emotional cost, it has wreaked havoc on my health in many ways.

November   David and I had our 11th wedding anniversary.  While I don't remember specifics, I know there were lots of diaper changes involved!

December  At the close of 1995, David and I had been married 11 years.  We had 4 living children, 2 boys and 2 girls, born in boy-girl-boy-girl order. They were ages 9, 5, 19 months, and 6 months old.

It was a busy life!

Our family, almost 20 years later...

 
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