Celtic Roots

I woke up this morning, turned on the television, and remembered that today is the summer solstice when I saw a story about the crowds celebrating the height of summer at Stonehenge.  There were fewer arrests than usual.

This time last year I was on a whirlwind trip of a lifetime to Ireland, Wales, and England.  My biggest regret is that I didn’t get to see Stonehenge.  I have been fascinated with Celtic Britain for almost my whole life.  Although I haven’t followed any ancestors across the ocean to the homeland, I’m quite sure I have Scots, Irish, and Welsh blood flowing through my veins. 

It began to be a joke among the travelers last year that I was the only one who had come on the trip to see Wales.  Hardly anyone else knew anything about Wales, but I have always loved the high fantasy books based on its mythology: The Crystal Cave and its sequels by Mary Stewart; the Prydain Chronicles, a series for young people by Lloyd Alexander; and of course, anything about King Arthur.  Then as I began to do genealogy, I began to see over and over again: “They came from Wales,” when reading about the origins of my ancestors.

Wales was everything I expected.  Ireland was beautifully green and pastoral.  Wales was all rocky mountains, misty and wild.  I can see why it would be easy to invent stories of magic about the place.  The highlight of the whole trip for me came the night we spent in the wonderfully Welsh town of Llangollen, where the International Eisteddfod music competition is held every year.  At dinner I looked out the window of the hotel dining room to the top of a tall hill across the river that ran through Llangollen.  It almost looked like a menagerie made out of vines, but when we asked the waitress, we found that we were looking at the ruins of Dinas Bran.  I knew that name!  In one of my favorite fantasy series, The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper, major events in the story take place at Dinas Bran. 

Dinas Bran

Llangollen

I have been reading a book called The Sea Kingdoms: The History of Celtic Britain and Ireland by Alistair Moffatt.  While not specifically a book about genealogy, I nevertheless have found so much in it that lends background to my genealogical search.  I always thought that the thing my ancestors had in common was Southern in nature.  I hardly have a Yankee in my family tree.  I’m thinking now that what the Wheats and Mings and Powells and Bells, and even the Smiths, have in common is a background in Celtic Britain.  Another great book I have read makes an argument for why. 

Albion’s Seed by David Hackett Fischer, one of America’s premier historians, explains that four major regions of colonial America were established by four distinct groups from Britain, who brought their ways of building, speaking, naming, marrying, burying, and worshipping from their original homes in Britain.  It should be required reading for every genealogist with origins in Britain.  In Fischer’s view, the backcountry of America (frontier Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, etc.) became the new home of the border peoples of Britain: our Celtic ancestors pushed into the highlands of Scotland, and the edges of the British Isles—Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, and finally to America.

Back to The Sea Kingdoms:  Here are some things I have learned.

·         History was an oral tradition in Celtic Britain.  Time was reckoned not by dates but by genealogy.  Faced with the loyalist army at the Battle of Culloden, the Highland Scots in the Jacobite army screamed their genealogies at their foes. 

·         Because the Celts could recite long lists of their ancestors, using only their Christian names, nicknames were added to “bring life to the long lists.”  Hence, the three generations of William Pharris in Jackson County, Tennessee: “Old Man,” “Big Bill,” and Billy.

·         One of my grandfather’s favorite expressions was, “He’s too poor to buy a mosquito a wrestling jacket.”  I always assumed it was a Southern expression and understood the part about it being a little bitty jacket.  But why a “wrestling jacket”?  In traditional Cornish wrestling, the opponents wear canvas jackets tied at the front with rope.

·         The origin of the Primitive Baptist hymn singing without accompaniment may have its roots in Gaelic psalmody.

·         Long before Christianity, the Celts believed in a life after death.  “The absolute certainty of an afterlife passed unchanging from the Celtic past to the Christian future….To some sects who believe themselves elect” (Primitive Baptists—my interpretation) “life on earth is little more than a prior inconvenience to be born with fortitude and managed with dignity and little fuss.”

I’m only about halfway through with The Sea Kingdoms.  I’m sure I’ll learn even more.

Aunt Lydia Powell

Great-great Aunt Lydia, who passed down her “Genealogy of the Powells” to future generations, is a kind of role model for me.  When you’re spending all your spare time surfing ancestry.com and tracking down cemeteries and blogging not knowing if anyone is reading, you sometimes wonder if what you leave behind will mean anything to anybody.  Aunt Lydia, who wrote something that helped me in my search 135 years later, gives me hope that what I’m doing will mean something to future generations.

Lydia Caroline was born 16 January 1849 in Tennessee, the next-to-youngest child of Benjamin and Eliza Helen (Fowler) Powell.  In Lydia’s own words, “I was named for the wife of my uncle James E. Fowler of near Paris, Tenn.; she was Caroline Harris, a sister of the late Senator Isham G. Harris of Tennessee.  Lydia is for his sister-in-law, Mrs. Lydia Harris.” 

1860 Shelby County, TN census
Lydia is listed as Martha L.C. Powell 

Lydia didn’t marry until she was 33—to a 57-year-old man, Elisha Ray, who had been widowed twice.  She apparently used her spinsterhood to good advantage, traveling and writing stories about her adventures for the hometown newspaper.  She carried her writing implements, silver inkwell, and paper in a shagreen (sharkskin) box with gilt trim.  She visited a spa in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where she took an oxypathor treatment that she claimed made her look 10 years younger.  (Google it; it’s really interesting.)  She visited a home in Florida that she described as “decorated like a Turkish bashaw’s.”  She visited Wales, where she bought a washstand, highboy, wardrobe, and bed made of mahogany with carved roses and angels, that she left to Aunt Clara in her will.  (Uncle Angus refused to take possession of them, as it would have required that he hire a wagon to fetch them.)   My cousin owns two pictures that Lydia painted—one of a swamp in Florida and one of sheep in Wales. In 1910 Lydia was living in Briscoe County, Texas, with her sister Bennie (Powell) Keeble.  The 1910 census shows her occupation as “Teacher (art.)”

Lydia married Elisha Boykin Ray on 10 May 1882.  He had been married previously to Mary Susan Lake, who died in 1864, and Ann Rebecca Wright, who died in 1872.  Years ago, my cousin showed me a photograph of Elisha Ray with Lydia (she thought) and his two young children.  She seemed to remember that Elisha had a boy and a girl from his previous marriage, and that the boy had died young.  I posted the photo on ancestry.com and then received a message from a Wright researcher who found the photo through a search for Elijah Ray, who had married her great-grandfather’s sister, Ann Rebecca Wright.  According to her, Elisha had at least five children with his first wife; he and Rebecca never had children, but she helped him raise the children from his first marriage.  His children, the youngest of whom was born in 1862, would have been grown when he and Lydia married in 1882.  The woman I corresponded with feels that the following photograph depicts Elijah with her ancestor, Rebecca Wright, and two of his young children.  I hold out the hope that it is somehow Lydia, since I have no other picture of her. 

After I had begun to research the Powells and the Fowlers, I found a book in the library of the Oklahoma Historical Society called Annals of the Fowler Family (more about it in the next post.)  It was published in 1901, and the author, Glenn Dora Arthur, had corresponded with many of her Fowler cousins, trying to document as many Fowler descendants as she could.  Two of her correspondents were Lydia and Eliza Helen, Lydia’s mother.  Lydia really comes to life in the long and chatty letter that she sent to Mrs. Arthur. 

She addresses Mrs. Arthur as “My Dear Relative,” and then goes on to relate interesting stories of Fowler relatives during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, such as this one about Rahab Cooper, wife of Godfrey Fowler, my 5^th great-grandmother:

“She and her children were in the kitchen and she was spinning, when, just as she was drawing out a thread, she glanced up the road and saw the British coming; she hastily raised the trapdoor and bade all the children enter the cellar and keep wonderfully quiet; she then took her babe—my grandfather—and went up in the attic.  The English soldiers entered the home and she could hear them laughing about chasing all the women and children away.  They remained only long enough to eat up a lot of roasted potatoes and drink all the brandy in the house. They then left without discovering either hiding place,”

and this poignant anecdote, maybe not as historically significant, but just as revealing of the times:

“There is a sad romance about the eldest daughter of great-uncle Bullard Fowler; her name was Tillitha.  She never married, although she was engaged three times, but all three terminated disastrously.  In the first instance her intended was thrown by his horse and killed while he was on his way to wed her; the next one sickened and died near the wedding-day; the third went to Holly Springs on business just prior to his marriage, and he died there among strangers. She had suitors afterwards , but she never promised to marry anyone again.”

Mrs. Arthur makes this very Victorian response to Lydia’s letter:

“Some women have a decided fondness for family reminiscences, and I judge that Mrs. Ray has inherited this interesting trait from her very interesting mother, whose letter set me on my quest for ‘our ancestors.’ Women, as a rule, have more time for remembering traits and incidents of different members of the related families. They talk them over as they mingle in the home work; and on rainy days and winter nights something of the dear past is suggested by the snatch of a song, the odor of a flower, or the similarity of the weather, when one begins,--‘It was just such a night as then when’—and immediately everyone listens.”

I would greatly admire Mrs. Arthur as well for her helpful contribution to Fowler history were it not for her occasional cattiness.  I can’t quite forgive her for the unnecessary comment she made about Lydia’s explanation of the origin of her name:

“If there are any discrepancies in these facts I am unable to correct them, as I give them just as they have been given to me.  As a rule women are more prone than men to draw on their imagination when their stock of facts is exhausted, but I have requested facts only in every instance.”

As a genealogist, I can certainly appreciate Mrs. Arthur’s devotion to the facts, but unless our ancestors come to life for us, what is the point of names and dates?  Lydia may have had imagination, but I’m so glad she did, or I would never have heard such interesting stories about my Powell and Fowler ancestors.

Castle In-Laws and Their In-Laws

Before I leave the Castles, I would like to summarize what I know about their in-laws, the Days, and their in-laws, the Reeds, Oneys, Patricks, Lewises, etc. 

My great-grandmother, Sarah Florida Day, was the daughter of James Thomas Day and his wife, Nancy Emily Reed.  She was born in White Oak, Magoffin County, Kentucky, and a couple of generations of family members are buried there. The counties of Morgan and Magoffin border each other, and in fact, if you just keep driving out of West Liberty on Hwy. 460, you will reach White Oak in about 10 minutes.

The parents of James Thomas Day were Andrew Jackson Day (1836-1921) and Sarah Oney (1840-1862).  They were married on 25 September 1855 in Morgan County. The marriage registration shows that “Jackson” Day, age 19, lived in Caney, Morgan County, and was born there. Sarah “Owney” was born in Tazewell County, Virginia, and was living in White Oak at the time of her marriage at age 15.  Sarah died in 1862, and Andrew J. Day remarried to Catherine (Jane) Reed. 

Marriage record of Jackson Day & Sarah Oney

Andrew Jackson Day & 2nd wife

Sarah Oney’s parents were William Oney and Susanna Coburn who were both born about 1807 in Kentucky. (Correction: Not true. Sarah's parents were Rhoda Day and James Oney, who were first cousins. James Oney's father was probably William Oney from Tazewell, Virginia. See post "The Oneys and a Couple of Great Stories") They were still living and listed on the 1870 census in Floyd County. Most researchers on ancestry.com list William’s father as Benjamin Oney with a trail leading back to Tazewell County, Virginia. William’s death record on 9 Mar 1878 lists his father as Samuel Oney from Pike County. That’s a question to be answered on another day.

William Oney, died 9 March 1878, father Samuel Oney 

Andrew Jackson Day’s father was Thomas P. Day. He was born in 1804 in Virginia and died before 1880 in Kentucky. On the 1840 census he is in Tazewell County, Virginia; on the 1850 and 1860 he is in Morgan County; and on the 1870 he is in Magoffin County.  His wife was Margaret “Nancy” McGrady, who was born in 1812 in Grayson County, Virginia.

Thomas’s father was Joseph Day who married Rhoda Cock, daughter of Andrew Cock, on 10 August 1796.  Rhoda died 16 August 1827 at age 49, after having given birth to at least 10 children.  Joseph remarried to Rebecca Dunn in 1830, and his second wife had 7 children!  At the age of 80, just a few months before his death, he wrote his will and listed his youngest son as age 8.  Joseph lived in Grayson and Carroll counties in Virginia.  Joseph and Rhoda are both buried in Carroll County, VA.

Nancy Emily Reed’s parents were Lewis Reed and Sarah Patrick. They married 3 May 1849 and were living in Morgan County at the time of the 1850 census. On the 1860, 1870, and 1880 censuses they are living in Magoffin County in Salyersville and Johnsons Fork. Lewis died on 9 December 1895 in Elsie, Magoffin County.  Sarah Patrick, daughter of Robert Patrick and Elizabeth McMullen, was born 5 January 1830 and died 15 March 1892 in Elsie. Robert Patrick was from Staunton, Augusta County, Virginia.  He was born in 1779 and died in 1859 in Madison County, Arkansas.  His headstone reads “KY Militia, War of 1812.”  His parents were Hugh Patrick and Susanna Harris.

Patrick Cemetery, Madison County, Arkansas

The parents of Lewis Reed were Daniel Reed and Martha “Patsy” Lewis.  Daniel was born 3 April 1806 in Virginia.  Daniel and Patsy were enumerated on the 1830-1870 censuses in either Morgan or Magoffin counties. They were living near the mouth of Cow Creek when Daniel died on 8 February 1878. Patsy died on 18 April 1880 in Magoffin County of pneumonia.   

Patsy’s father was John Lewis. He was born in North Carolina in 1782 but was living in Kentucky by 1820 and in Morgan County by 1830. His parents were James Lewis and Winnie Henson.  According to Lewis family researchers, James came from Wales to America with his father Nathaniel in 1740. They settled first in Virginia. James died in 1825 at Cutshin Creek, Perry County, Kentucky, and is buried in the J.C. Lewis Cemetery in Wooton.  He served in the North Carolina Militia during the Revolutionary War. There is a sign in the cemetery listing his children and commemorating his service.